The origin of the game of poker is not well known, but is considered to be a very old game. There are some theories about its origins, but the most popular one is that the game of poker was invented around year 900 from a Chinese domino game played by the emperors. Another theory is that poker has derived from the Persian game “As Nas”, that used 25 cards and 5 suits. The German and French theories said that Poker has its roots from “Pochspiel” and “Poque”.
If the genesis of this game is still unknown, is good to know that today`s poker dates from the second decade of the 19th century when the French colonists from New Orleans brought this game in the USA.
Until 1834, when this game receives the name of “Poker” was played with only 20 cards. From 1836 the 20 card game was replaced with today`s 52 card game. During of Civil War, many soldiers were playing this game, and in that period many changes additions were impregnated in the game, appearing different variants as Draw Poker, Stud Poker (5 card variant) and the Straight
Even that the traditional game of poker is played from almost 200 years, the online poker appeared at the middle of the 90`s, but it has an amazing success.
First time the online poker was promoted by the online sportbooks. The first poker room that ever existed was created in 1998 by Planet Poker. This poker room is still online but is in the shadow of the success poker rooms from our days. Many don`t know, but the rake system was implemented by the people from Planet Poker.
The differences from the beginning of online poker and the online poker from our days are of course the promotions.
At the beginning you just deposited money and played. Now the things are different, today`s poker promotions are like a poker heaven for everybody. You can choose from first deposit bonuses, royal flush bonuses and rakeback deals on almost every poker room that you can find over the internet.
From 2004 the online poker industry exploded, the popularity of the online poker has grown very much because of Chris Moneymaker, an online poker player that have qualified to WSOP through online satellites and won the 1st place and a prize of almost $3,000,000.
Increasingly, many people started to play poker over the internet hoping to have Chris fate. In this moment the companies that own the poker rooms invest a lot of money promoting the online poker, several of them entering in the stock market as well.
