Table of Contents
There have been controversies about the precise origin of poker. Some people believed that it was initially known as the American spin and originated from As-Nas’ Persian game. But since historians’ evolution in the 90s, they have claimed that it is not true as they believe that the claim has no record in history.
But over two centuries, the poker casino game has developed into a multi-million tournament. Also, it has created some historic moments along the line. Below, we list some of the historical moments that have been associated with the poker game.
The Inception of the World Series of the Poker Game
In 1970, Benny Binion, an entrepreneur, and a banker gave the poker game more prominence. He is the founder of Horseshoe, a popular casino in Las Vegas. Alongside with Tom Moore and Vin Vickery, they would hold the first and only gamblers’ reunion party in the United States.
Although Tom Moore is to be acknowledged for the WSOP competition’s birth, Vin Vickery also had ambitions in the gambling industry. The competition entails high-stake games that were organized among fans. Johnny Moss eventually won this competition and was awarded the “all-around best player” prize as all other players agreed.
This competition didn’t gain much publicity until another WSOP competition was held in 1972. The game, won by “Armadillo Slim” Preston, personally gained the much-needed publicity for the competition. After winning the competition, he went further to write hot-selling books, star in movies, and even went for talk shows.
Publicity for poker games increased even further in 1973, where CBS broadcasted the WSOP event and four other preliminary activities.
Online Poker Games
The first casino to begin online poker games is the Planet poker in 1998 and was developed by Blumer Randy. Blumer wanted to gain publicity for his website in 1997 on Card Player Magazine. And when he launched the Planet Poker in January 1998, he already had a vast customer base to play the game.
The problem he could have faced was that he had a few technical staff in the backroom, and people were not familiar with the internet. However, Planet poker hit great numbers within its first month, and by February, people starting taking turns to play the online game for days. It started gaining more popularity till other online poker games apart from the Planet poker began to spring up.
The Moneymaker Effect
As this online game continues to grow in fame rapidly worldwide, there was a certain unknown man from Atalanta, Italy. With no previous verifiable links to poker games, he started the online poker game with $86 and went on to win a whopping $2.5million. This encouraged many people around the world, and more people were interested in the poker game.
This move was later termed the “Moneymaker Effect” by the media.
The Black Friday
The black Friday moment happened on the 25th of April, 2011. On this day, several players were accused of various charges ranging from bank fraud to money laundering and breaches of UIGEA. Not just that this caused a significant loss to the industry, assets worth $3million were also forfeited.
Although the poker industry experienced this downside a few decades ago, the poker game’s future looks promising with the AI technology development. This made is one of the most memorable moments of poker