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The demand for online poker became bigger and bigger because more and more people where using the internet and wanted a way to play poker online. It all started on IRC in the late 90’s, but these games where just for fun. The first real money hand was played on 1 January 1998 on Planet Poker. After this, poker took big flight and grew very strongly. Other reasons why online poker became very big, very fast are that it is very accessible to everyone, and it’s cheap to set up if you compare it to a live poker pit.
Furthermore all kind of limits can be played, and the rake is lower than in live games (due to lesser costs). At online poker rooms you can play cash games, tournaments and sit and go’s, in these three main forms you have a lot of variation. In cash games you can play with $2 in front of you or $2,000. Tournaments are also available in different buy-ins and can award cash prizes as well as prizes (like tournament tickets). The same goes for sit and go’s, there are ‘Winner take all sit and go’s’ or ‘Jackpot’ sit and go’s outside of the regular sit and go action, these special events have other winning criteria then other sit and go’s.
After the poker business became ‘booming’ a lot of new networks and stand alone rooms entered the market, some more successful than others. To date, PokerStars is the biggest independent poker room followed by Full Tilt Poker and PartyPoker. In total there are about 702 online poker websites, 16 are independent rooms and the rest are all skins on the different networks like Ongame, Cake and Microgaming.