Early Poker Rooms
Poker and poker rooms likely date back to the first millennium “anno Domini” --- after Christ. Although no historian is willing to narrow down for us an exact date and place, historians have made a number of guesses as to the origins of this game. The most popular point of view puts the origins of poker into the range of 900 A.D. in China, possibly as a derivative of Chinese Dominoes.
Egyptian archeologists have dug up evidence of playing cards dating from roughly the 12th or 13th century.
Others argue that poker found its humble origins in the Middle East as a derivative of a game called “as nas”. This game had five cards players, five suits, and a total of 25 cards. However, recorded history only acknowledges this game back to the 17th century.
The Indian card game “Ganjifa” has been suggested to be the first game to incorporate playing cards such as those we use in poker rooms today.
To date, no historian has offered definitive proof that any of these suggested origins provided the basis of poker as we know it today.
The closest we come to finding a definitive origin is in New Orleans, circa 1480. It is known that the French settlers, met to play a game called “pogue” that did incorporate betting and bluffing into the game play. It has also been stated with some certainty that “pogue” was the first known game to have used the four suits of a modern poker playing deck: the spades, diamonds, clubs and hearts.
The first written evidence of a game being called “poker” was in the 1830’s. The writer made written reference of the “cheating game” that was played in the poker rooms on the riverboats of the Mississippi River, and the writer called the game “poker”.
Fast Forward 500 Years
The computer and card games have been good friends since the very early days of computing. When I got my first real P.C. in the early 1990’s, I quickly made friends with Solitaire again for the first time since my childhood. Microsoft was a pioneer in the first $2000 paperweights that knew how to play cards with poker software.
Fortunately, Solitaire could only hold my attention for a couple of weeks. Then I was off on the hunt for the real card game that intrigued my interest… and five-card draw poker software was one of my favorites, complete with the ability to gamble with imaginary money. Poker software was still in its infancy in those days, but there was poker software available for purchase.
Online Poker Rooms and The Challenges of Internet Access
Although difficult, Microsoft Windows 3.1 and McIntosh could both be hooked up to the internet in the mid 1990’s, but they were both only responding to the cry of Netscape.
Fortunately for us, in 1993, Netscape was blazing a trail. They were the first company to offer a Graphical Internet Browser. We owe the availability of online poker rooms to the graphical browser, because without it, we would not have any online poker rooms at all. We all owe Netscape a pat on the back for revolutionizing the playground of the scientific community by making the internet a visual experience.
Despite the power of Microsoft and McIntosh, Netscape blazed on, continually cutting new ground… that is until Microsoft decided a free internet browser was necessary to finally conquer Netscape. Microsoft eventually won the Internet Browser war… Imagine that… Today, Netscape is the redheaded stepchild and pawn of AOL.
Online Poker Rooms: Introducing AOL and Compuserve
People have always considered AOL and Compuserve to be part of the internet, although both companies considered themselves to be “online services”. Both provided their customers unique tools, resources, and content, and both were proud that they were separate entities from the badlands of the disorganized and dangerous internet.
They were the first services to offer free online poker rooms for their customers who wanted online poker rooms, although they did not provide a platform for betting with real money.
Today Compuserve is owned by AOL, and AOL still offers some access to free online poker rooms through their “services”, and still you cannot bet real money through their systems.
The badlands of the internet have always held the best hope for those interested in online gambling and online poker rooms.
Online Poker Rooms: Introducing Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems began business in 1982, and developed the first universal software platform in 1995, which is called Java Technology. In 1996, the true revolution began when Sun began to license the Java Technology to hardware and software companies.
Finally, with the licensing of Java Technology, software programmers finally had a tool that they could use to deliver online card play through online poker rooms and other online gambling to the masses, no matter what operating system they had on their computers.
Even now, ten years after the introduction of Java, online gamblers have two basic choices of software platforms for playing online poker in the various online poker rooms. They have Java-enabled software, which allows them to play cards in online poker rooms through their internet browsers. And, they have the option of downloading software from a poker website, which can be directly installed onto their computer like any other software program.
Poker downloads generally offer a bit more range in customization and personalization features in the online poker rooms, than what is generally built into Java-based online poker rooms. But with poker downloads, you have to make certain that you download the copy of the program that is designed to be installed on your particular operating system. If your computer is a McIntosh, you might have to do a bit of hunting to find a poker download that will work on your machine --- although it is not as bad as it was just five years ago. More companies are working hard to make sure that their online poker room software will work on Macintosh, as well as Microsoft Windows and Linux, and this is great news for the online poker rooms that rely upon a poker download for game play.
Online Poker Rooms: Bandwidth Challenges
Although the Java platform made it easy for software developers to create online gambling opportunities through online poker rooms, the platform actually arrived ahead of its time.
It is important to remember that Java began to be used as a software delivery system in 1996, and in 1996, most of us where still using 14.4kbs or 28.8kbs to access the internet. At those speeds, it was still nearly impossible to play a real-time Java-based game, poker rooms or otherwise, in “real time”. The 100mhz and 133mhz computers available in those days, as well as the slow connect speeds created a situation where Java games would often crash our home computers. If we were playing a hand in the online poker rooms when we crashed, we would have to pray that the poker server did not decide that our absence was an indication of us leaving the online poker room by choice, thereby folding our hand.
In those days, ISP dial-up connections could drop without warning, requiring one to dial back into the system and to hope that we could return to the online poker room before our hand would be folded. Having reliable and fast connections to the internet was only a dream for most of us until the late 1990’s. If you have ever been in an online poker playing a great hand, and your internet connection suddenly dropped, then you can really appreciate the value of cable internet and DSL.
It would be another couple of years before 57.6kbs became widely available to internet users everywhere. And it would be another couple of years before cable internet and DSL became affordable for the average home user.
So, although the software technology existed that would allow people to compete in online poker rooms with real-time competition over the internet, the dial-up technology that existed in those early days made the online poker room experience a long-shot at best.
Online Poker Rooms: Overcoming User Fears Concerning New Technologies
In the early days of the internet, people feared the safety of their financial information online. They feared the worst when contemplating whether they could safely purchase goods and services online.
By now, the online security technology has proven itself safe to all but the very few people online.
The fear of depositing cash into a poker account online has driven many players into the free online poker rooms. After all, in a free online poker room, one does not have to worry about the safety of their money. And, in the end, free online poker rooms allow them to still enjoy the benefits of being able to learn how to be a better poker player. In good time, the poker players who utilize the free online poker rooms may eventually overcome their fear of play for money, and in doing so, they will gravitate to the online casino website that has offered the poker player their free poker rooms since the player began to play online.
Today, the biggest concern for anyone is whether to trust the company behind the transaction. With online casinos, and more so with online casinos based in the U.S., there are regulations that govern the online gambling industry. Your money is often safer with an online casino than it is with the multitudes of mom-and-pop shops that occupy the internet.
Now and again, a fly-by-night online casino will come online, take their customer’s money, and then disappear. To alleviate the danger of spending money at a fly-by-night online casino, there are steps you can take to protect yourself.
First, be sure to check out a new casino by looking at poker room reviews of the online casino on any of the online casino directories or online poker room directories. You can also check into the legitimacy and honesty of a particular online casino by visiting eCOGRA (eCommerce and Online Gaming and Regulation and Assurance) at: http://www.ecogra.org/ . eCOGRA reviews different online casino websites and works as a middle man between disgruntled players and online casinos.
As an additional option, you can check into the longevity of an online casino website where you are about to send your hard-earned money. There is a sweet little Whois Tool that I use almost daily. Type the following into the address bar of your browser: http://whois.sc/the-name-of-the-gambling-domain-you-are-checking-on.com and then hit enter. Using this tool, you can see who has registered the online casino domain and when the online casino domain was registered. If the online casino domain is sitting on a disreputable server, you can usually find out in a moment. If the online casino domain was just registered yesterday or last week, you can choose to give additional thought to the possibility of this online casino website taking your money today and shutting down tomorrow.
Even on the internet, it is still a “Buyer Beware” world.
Online Poker Rooms: Version 1.0 Poker Rooms
“I want to play poker online and I want to be able to safely gamble with real money.” This was the basic guidance for the first online poker rooms. Version 1.0 poker rooms were only concerned with providing a game of cards, with the ability to gamble with real money while offering the user the most basic encryption to protect the user’s financial data. The encryption software used today is more than just the basic encryption software of yesteryear. In fact, today’s encryption technologies are awesome.
Version 1.0 poker rooms did not offer any of the bells and whistles that we find so common today, such as automated blinds, automated budgeting, one-click purchase of additional poker room credits, online poker room chat, the ability to add photos to our poker room profiles, personal historical tracking data in the online poker rooms, competitor statistics, player notes, personalized color coding on the graphical interface in the poker room, poker room animations, animated tutorials to help your game play in the poker room, tips for playing a particular hand, and various other delivery methods of poker tips in the online poker rooms.
Version 1.0 poker rooms were very “plain Jane” by today’s online poker room standards.
Online Poker Rooms: Competition Moves the Poker Room Industry Forward
With hundreds of online casinos and thousands of poker rooms and other gaming rooms vying for your gambling dollars, innovation and expansion are sure to continue to fuel the growth of the features in the online poker rooms.
Competition is so fierce that version 1.0 poker rooms just will not cut it anymore. People want choices and options in the poker rooms. They want customization and personalization of their choice online poker rooms. People want tips and guidance to improve their online casino gambling experience. They want to be able to socialize with the people that they play poker with in the online poker rooms. It is all about the enjoyment of the poker room experience.
With so much competition in the online casinos and online poker rooms, it is very easy for a player to leave one online casino and head to another online casino to find the features and benefits they want in an online poker room. The success of an online casino is secured by their ability to bring new customers to their gambling website and to keep them around for more than just a few spins of the online slot machine or a few hands of cards in the online poker rooms. And, the only way to keep a customer at an online casino website is to give him or her the tools and resources to improve their gambling experience at the online casino or in the online poker rooms.
Given that it may cost an online casino a bare minimum of $82 to get one customer signed up to bet money in the digital slot machines or to play their first hand in the online poker rooms, and given that it costs three to five times more to get a new customer than it costs to keep an existing online casino customer, it makes good sense for the online casinos to bend over backwards to keep their existing online poker room customers more than just happy.
If you have found an online casino you like, and you begin to have issues with them, don’t be afraid to contact their customer support services. You might just find that their online casino customer support team will bend over backwards to help resolve your issues or at least make it worth your while to stick around a bit longer and play in their online poker rooms for a few more weeks.
Online Poker Rooms: Attracting New Poker Room Customers
Online casinos measure their success by two factors, the customer acquisition costs and the lifetime value of their customers. When they can either reduce the cost of customer acquisition or increase the customer’s lifetime value, the online casino will improve upon their bottom line.
All along, many online casinos have offered free online poker rooms. The thought behind the free online poker rooms is that if you come in and play for fun or for the learning experience, then hopefully one day you might venture off into an actual real money poker room for some real money play. Free online poker rooms are an excellent resource for the poker player who does not yet have the confidence to play for real money. The free online poker rooms also offer salvation to those players who are still a bit leery about using their credit cards online with an online casino, online poker rooms, or otherwise. Another advantage of the free online poker rooms is that many people begin their online gambling search at their favorite search engines using the terms “free online poker rooms” to find the online casinos where they will choose to play in their poker rooms.
In the early days, online casinos would offer sign-up bonuses in the range of $10 to $25 to bring in new customers to their online poker rooms. Competition has sure changed “our luck” over the last several years. Some online casinos are offering as much as $600 - $1400 to get new customers to sign up with their online casino website. The sign-up deals are absolutely unbelievable, and you can use these incredible sign-up bonuses as real money in the online poker rooms.
Add to this the fact that several of the online casinos offering these sweet sign-on bonuses are also offering payouts in the high 97% range, and these online casinos become very attractive.
Then consider that many online casinos are offering excellent poker room playing experiences to their customers in their online poker rooms and that many poker sites are now offering poker tournament play with huge money poker tournament prizes in their online poker rooms. Our poker room good fortunes just seem to be getting better and better.
Online Poker Rooms: Then and Now
In the good old days of our youth, we were restricted to playing poker over at a friend’s house or in some seedy backroom poker room at the neighborhood bar. In the early 1980’s, we were finally able to play poker for fun on our home computers, but only for fun. As the twentieth century was winding down, Java technology finally brought us the dream of interactive online poker rooms over the internet, although other technologies weren’t up to the task of keeping us inside the online poker rooms at the playing table. That was then and this is now.
As the new millennium begins, we are beginning to find real and viable online poker rooms to accept our bets and to bring us to the table with other poker players from all over the world. Between the availability of online poker rooms, the new fascination with poker related reality television, the World Series of Poker, and the improvements in internet technologies, the 21st century is shaping up to be “the millennium of the poker player”.