Poker as a form of gambling has been in existence for nearly two centuries but has reached new heights with the arrival of its online version. Various online casino gambling sites have sprouted in the past few years driven mainly by the popularity of poker. However, online poker did not pioneer casino gambling online, as sportsbooks were the first to arrive in the Internet during the mid-90’s.
One of the first online gambling casinos was from Microgaming, which arrived in 1994 and is now a popular gaming software developer.
The first mainstream online gambling casino was Planet Poker, which was established in 1998. A number of bigger and better online casino gambling sites came up after a few years. The initial rate structure of 5% and a max rate of as high as $3 have been the industry standard ever since.
Current industry leader Paradise Poker was created in 1999 and at the same time Dutch Boyd founded the controversial Poker Spot. Poker Spot was the first online gambling casino group to operate poker tournaments online and continued to do so until it was hit by a major problem. Poker Spot was unable to withdraw player deposits from its credit card partner. Players failed collect their winnings, as the funds were not transferred to Paradise Poker’s system. The unreliability of Poker Spot’s system eventually resulted in its collapse afterwards.
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