For 200 years poker has been the dominant cash-stakes card game in the world. Its image is dangerous, romantic, evoking frontier town barrooms full of guns-slinging outlaws with whisky on their breath and aces up their sleeves. While online poker might not be quite that exciting, its appeal is undoubtedly driven in part by this association with the old west.

But surprisingly, poker was quite late to join the craze for online gambling. Sports betting and online casino table games were pretty much in full swing by 1998, the year the first poker room went live on the web. It was called ‘Planet Poker’, and remains an icon of web-pioneering, despite having sunk into relative obscurity since. The peer to peer technology was revolutionary at the time, although players eventually preferred to play poker live without having to download any software.

Skip forward to 2012, and online poker is big, big business. A number of the small sites from the early days – the old lawless west of the internet itself – have become public companies. Even more interestingly, huge brands which, twenty years ago, would never have associated themselves with gambling decided they wanted a piece of the action. Sky is one of the most successful examples, with a growing community of players (click the link to see Sky’s poker site) and evermore advanced gaming technology.

Back in the early days – around the turn of the century – it didn’t take long for professional poker players to set up their own, player-focused sites. Dutch Boyd is one such player. A legend in poker circles, he established Poker Spot in 2000, immediately organizing huge online tournaments – another first for online poker. Poker Spot soon ran into financial difficulties and disappeared from the web.

Part of the problem with the player-run sites was with administration. A number of big payouts failed to materialize, sending trust in online gambling plummeting. In response to the crisis, e-cash and bitcoins have emerged – not to mention PayPal and Neteller – to make things far more secure for player and website alike. Since the early noughties, both fraud and defaulting on payouts have reduced significantly.

With this resurgence in player trust, and a new level of corporate stability permeating the online poker world, the huge tournaments really took off. Chris Moneymaker is one of the most legendary names in online poker. Starting with just $40, he qualified for the World Series of Poker in 2003, going on to beat off competition from 839 entrants – including some of the world’s best professionals – to become champion. He won $2.5 million was which, as well as making him a rich man, a huge coup for the industry, as it was the first WSOP win for an online entrant. His influence on internet gaming – and internet, period – became so huge, it became known as ‘The Moneymaker Effect’.

There used to be a time when casinos were mysterious places where only those in the know went to at night, dressed up to the nines, to win large sums of money. Thanks to the advent of the internet and the huge popularity of the online casino, it now seems that just about anyone can do it, perhaps even in their pajamas if they prefer to! Today, you can choose the kind of game you most like, such as the Golden Games Online Slots or 2 Ways Royal Video Poker.

Just remember that although this is the time where we can find any information on Wikipedia in five minutes and any video clip in a flash on YouTube, or instantly chat with someone on the other side of the world, it’s always better to be informed than to just assume that you know everything and are protected everywhere you go on the internet.

The good news is that there isn’t a lot of research that you have to do about your online casino. There are only three things that are of the utmost importance. Firstly, is your online casino reputable and does it use reputable software? Secondly, is your online casino fully licensed and legal in the country that you live in? And thirdly, what security measures does your online casino undertake to ensure that you are protected during financial transactions.

A quick internet search of your online casino and its chosen online casino software platform will answer the first question. Remember that there are only about ten top online casino software platforms out there and that you should always stick to one of these. The online casino website should have a link on their home page, telling you where they are registered and what their address is. They should also tell you on there what their security and privacy policy is and what your options are in terms of deposits and withdrawals. If they don’t tell you this on their web page, rather move on to the next offering.

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