The beginning of online poker

Do you love playing poker and spend hours in poker rooms? On popular websites such as your favorites: Lock Poker, Bovada and Sportsbook Poker. As hours slip by and you spent the evening playing poker, have you ever wondered where and how online poker ever got started?

According to Casinoanswers.com, the first online poker room was Planet Poker. Planet Poker originated in January 1998, founded by Randy Blumer. The poker game that was featured on this website was Texas Hold ’em. The average pot size ranged from $3-6 per game.

Wikipedia, states that the site traffic and growth grew tremendously during 1998. This one website became a huge hit. It brought many people on the Internet. However, during Planet Poker’s regime, the website was introduced to several problems. Some were that the game was poorly developed and lacked certain options that are necessary during gameplay for Texas Hold ’em. Other problems included problems with Internet connect, although the majority of them were using dial-up. This aggravated the players. Blumer was unable to maintain a business agreement with the software developers, and struggled to keep up with newer competition.

In 1999, a new cardroom was developed. Paradise Poker became the new poker hit. During the first week, Paradise Poker did have its own technical problems; however, the new cardroom rapidly surpassed Planet Poker’s users. In only a few months, the traffic in Paradise Poker’s elevated from approximately 400 users, to 1500 users. During this period, Planet Poker had a huge deficit to regain until 2004. As a result, a third poker website, Party Poker ended up almost leading the online poker games.

Unfortunately, the highest amount of users Planet Poker received was 1,200. As time went on, more websites were developed and other cardrooms held traffic and members in the hundred-thousands, while Planet Poker trailed. Interestingly, the 1998 website can still be visited and playable today.