By Samantha Willims
Online poker is one of my absolute favourite things to write about – while Julie Andrews may have preferred brown paper packages and whiskers on kittens, poker should have definitely been in her list of favourite things. It is just so interesting; the stories about winners and the game’s on-again, off again, drama’s have become legends.
Players like Chris Moneymaker, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot and many others are real life poker heroes with tales which read like novels or screen-plays. It is interesting in itself that poker attracts such interesting characters.
After sports betting, online poker was the next real money gaming to take place online and by 2001 PR Newswire claimed that approximately 8 million people had already gambled with real money online. InterCasino was the first to go online in October 1997 and accept the first real money wager, and only a year later Senators from US congress were opposing online gambling, however the first Act against this activity failed to pass.
Despite US opposition and the UIGEA which was enacted into law in 2006, this has not stopped online poker operations and other online gambling activities. However countries such as Canada, China and Turkey were very quick to kiss US ass by also cracking down on internet gambling in their countries too.
Now we see sites such as Poker Stars, which feature more games at every level, more tournaments and more players than many other sites and they are also the home to the World Championship of Online Poker. Titan Poker, Full Tilt Poker, Bodog, Party Poker and about 540 other poker sites offering gambling services to players of this well loved game, but not many sites cater for US players!
Online poker is the most popularly played online game in the history of the internet and although UIGEA saw 2 003 online gaming operators “folding ’em” in the US industry. This did not stop operators from turning to other markets.
Offshore poker operators such as Bodog, FullTilt and PokerStars did not back down and are still holding ’em to this day by accepting US players. Not sure how they managed, but it has something to do with World Trade Organization courts and the fact that these companies were licensed in Antigua and Barbuda, and fair trade.
Neteller was forced out of the country, money was left in limbo, other regulators jumped on the bandwagon. But no matter how many unlawful internet gamblers were nipped in the bud, like a three headed dragon, another financial method, ewallet or site was there to replace the one before it. And people want to play online poker, they want to gamble, it is their God given right to play online poker if they want to and I say, let them!
