Online Poker History Facts

History of Online Poker

The game of poker may go back as far as 200 years, but the online version as we know it today is only a mere 13 years old. The first virtual poker hand was dealt over the Internet on January 1, 1998 when the very first online poker site was launched, Planet Poker. Planet Poker was founded by poker pro, author, and legend, Mike “Mad Genius” Caro and is still in existence today, though it quit taking real money bets in March 2007 following the UIGEA fiasco (more on that later). The first real-money poker game was a Texas Hold ‘em game of $3/$6 stakes. Although Planet Poker was the first online poker room, it failed to tap into the crowds of players waiting to be summoned.

I was reading this tonight and thought it was very interesting to share with other players that might not of known when online poker was first played.

Hey interesting post, 13 years is not such a long time for an industry. I had never heard of planet poker.

nitulbhatia said:

Hey interesting post, 13 years is not such a long time for an industry. I had never heard of planet poker.

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This.

Good thing to look at when it comes to the state of OLP in USA too. I think we overlook that. A lot of people are saying its doomed and it'll never happen. But when something has only been around for 13 years you can't really say you have a read on it entirely. That'd be like thinking 20 hands is enough to base a villain off of.

2013-1998 = 15 years

I remember Planet Poker, even though it really was never huge, pacific poker was bigger than they were, but they weren't the first. Then came the likes of partypoker, PokerRoom.com, UB, AP, pokerstars, Fulltilt, etc.

PlanetPoker is now a subscription based site like ClubWPT.

ParadisePoker ftw.

I actually meant to say Paradise, not Pacific, but they were both there.

Dang, didn't know online poker has only been here 13 years! Nice little fact. Also never heard of Planet Poker! Wonder how long it lasted...

Rappyness said:

Dang, didn't know online poker has only been here 13 years! Nice little fact. Also never heard of Planet Poker! Wonder how long it lasted...

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Poker

Interesting note on Planet Poker not mentioned even in the Wiki Article, is that a "White Hat" third party was able to examine the Shuffling Algorithm used by the Software and determine how to break it (the only documented case of an outside party doing so) and determine what cards would be dealt on the flop.

The 'third party' never profited from the discovery and instead put out a white paper on the subject and publicly disclosed the flaw in Planet Pokers Software.

How We Learned to Cheat at Online Poker: A Study in Software Security (September 28, 1999)

Obviously, todays RNGs used at online poker rooms are many times more secure than Planet Poker of 1998

iirc, that was why Planet was down for ~ a week around when Paradise started.