Online Poker Popularity Rise and Fall

Poker is undoubtedly one of the greatest card games and is still hugely popular. The boom started back in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker after winning his main event seat online for $86 which at the time was around £49. Since then poker schools and games were everywhere you looked. Local pubs, clubs, households had their own games and anytime Monday to Sunday you can find a game of poker day or night.

However in 2010 the popularity stared to dwindle and it seemed poker was another “fad”. What will replace it is any ones guess but you can still play online poker, you can still win seats to the WSOP but it’s just not as busy and many online poker closed their doors after the American players were banned due to old laws prohibiting online gambling.

Luckily all those poker chip sets everyone bought are still put to good use. You can use chips instead of cash for any game really. Recently I witnessed them being used at a “race night” where people bet on virtual horse racing. It was a charity night and great fun, it was also nice to show off my chip tricks which I haven’t done for many Years.

Using chips is a great way of keeping games a bit more friendly, it doesn’t seem as bad betting with poker chips as it does throwing real money around. You can set the poker chip colors to any value you want from pence to pounds, cents to dollars.

Personally I’d love to see poker make a big comeback but doubt it will ever reach the appeal it had a few Years back. The UK still hosts plenty of live tournaments such as the GUKPT and UKIPT but player numbers are falling Year on year. We need something new to play, something that gets people interested again. But what could that be?

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