Like many other groundbreaking things this century, there was serious opposition to online gambling. For a while it looked like it was tethering on the brink of illegality, with conservatives and liberals alike attacking it from all angles. It was illegal, it was unconstitutional, it was keeping kids away from school and mothers away from their children. But after weathering the storm, it’s here to stay. And it’s one of the fastest growing online markets, and it’s not showing signs of slowing down. From its humble beginnings, there are now dozens of high quality online gambling websites and even virtual, second-lifeesque casinos.
Truth be said, there is more money in online gambling than the chips lying on a virtual table on your laptop’s screen. Money from sponsorships and advertising in poker tournaments has sky-rocketed in this decade. Not to mention the insurmountable amounts of money that banks are getting from taxing bank transfers and that governments are making on taxing winnings. Gambling has always been a sort of inconvenient truth, and not everybody can be happy about how much it is booming thanks to the internet.
Spearheading the online gambling movement are internet poker games. In fact, gambling and poker are pretty much synonyms nowadays. Be it freeroll games, where you play with imaginary money, low stakes games that just “keep things interesting” or actual high-stakes hardcore poker, there’s something for everyone’s taste and pocket. And it looks like it’s here to stay also, at least until we find something else to spend our money on.