There were mixed expectations for the year 2000 since most people thought that a revolution was going to take place. Some thought that vehicles would be flying and robots would get to surface. The ideas could be defined by all sorts of crazy but all of them had not been brought out for all eyes to see. What no one thought is the game of poker adopting an internet platform and being played from a laptop or a home PC and being such a huge success like the multi-million dollar industry that it is at the moment.
The whole concept of online poker can be traced back in the 90’s from the idea of IRC. There were developments here and there until BITNET was invented. This was a predecessor of the internet.
The IRC infiltrated the telecommunication world after the military thought it could use it especially for communication. Soon enough it was being used to play games, including poker. The poker was managed by a program by the IRC which could receive online commands as they were typed. The speeds became faster than the real case of face-to-face games. Graphics were thrown in and typing was no longer a necessity. Soon enough some virtual currency was invented that allowed players to play a pretend game without putting any real money at steak. With these games, players like Chris Ferguson were able to start building on their poker careers.
A virtual casino was soon formed as an online casino by Mike Caro. This way real money games could be played. Mike came up with a virtual poker player that he called ORAC that challenged Bob Stupak to a match worth $ 500,000. Bob won.
There was a lot of challenge in the initial years of online poker as all the details had not been cleared out? The advantages had already been established; it would be easier to play owing to the removed distractions and the unnecessary situation of facing the players that were being played against. This made it easier for the beginners to get an edge of the game without having the inconvenience of seating at the same table with more advanced poker players. But there were challenges that lay up ahead. Bluffing for one was impossible to pull off on a virtual platform and that means that the sales would not be so high since bluffing was considered an essential part in a game of poker. Back when this idea was being introduced, there was still a long way for the internet to go since it had not really been well established like it is now. The world market was still familiarizing itself with the information super highway. The virtual casino could therefore not make any real competition to the land based casinos that were existent at the time. The good news is that some people got to accept the technology readily as they loved the idea of playing poker at any period of day or night.
This article was written by David L.