Do you remember the time before online casinos and online poker? Nowadays virtual casino gaming sites poker rooms are now part of our lives and we can not imagine the world of gambling without them. If you look back to the 80's, in case you wanted to play poker you had to gather a few friends who were willing to play their own money, and you needed a poker table and at least a deck of cards- just ask any player like Doyle Brunson or the guys from the old poker school.

Who would have imagined that these sites like Poker Stars and partypoker.com would represent the future of the traditional poker tables? No one ever thought that playing poker, and retire or raise money in poker was going to be as easy as a mouse click in front of a pc, and poker players were to be found in a tournaments playing from the comfort of their own homes, in pijamas and they were to be represented on a screen with their own nicknames in a virtual poker room accessorized with tables, chairs, dealers, animations and everything! Will online poker replace traditional poker in the future? With more and more online poker guides available it is likely that even the unexperienced poker players will start to enjoy the trills of online poker.

Online poker has its origins in the IRC poker, a sort of virtual poker played in the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in the nineties. The Internet Relay Chat is a form of Internet chat also called synchronous conference, and it was developed byJarkko Oikarinen, a Finnish programmer and software developer , who, in 1988 developed the firstso called IRC server and browser programs, as effort to successfully replace the MUT (Multi User Talk) used by the BBS Oulubox, a Finnish company. Inspired by the system known as Bitnet Relay Chat which operates in BITNET, an ingenious network that had been created created in 1981, before the breakthrough of the Internet, cooperation with the university system in which files and e-mail messages were traveling from a server to another one. NetHistory agree with, BITNET originally meant "Because It's There Network (Because there Network) and eventually changed the name to Because It's Time Network, and it became very popular among universities, it had spread to nearly 500 organizations and 3000 centers. All universities and education institutions were able to join BITNET to satisfy a few requirements like a lease of a phone line from the center to another BITNET point, and buying compatible modems for all lines, sending a site of the connection point; c. Allow others to connect and to enter their site.

Oikarinen used the available resources to create the Bitnet Relay IRC, which won its well deserved place in the world of telecommunications, where it was mainly used by military groups and institutions to communicate when blackouts occurred in the media. After that it became a more popular tool for faster and remote communication and this was long before it was being used for gaming, includingthe game of poker.

IRC poker was a computer program developed to trade and operate games of poker and commands where a line had to be written directly into the standard IRC program, One would get answers from a line in charge of the program, which flowed into the game faster than the games were played almost like face to face. The rapidly developed graphics programs of IRC no longer required writing. IRC poker was using virtual money, which became attractive to novice players who wanted to develop a few skills without having to risk funds. This Online Poker helped several primitive personalities is like Cris Ferguson to build his advantage in poker until he was professional enough to play in real tournaments.

In late 1990, Mike Caro, poker player, writer, programmer and a true visionary, was the founder of Planet Poker, an internet casino hall which offered to its players the opportunity to play poker for real money as a breakthrough in the history of virtual gaming. Mike had the great vision that online poker was going to have a huge success among poker player communities.

According to the executives of Planet Poker, in the early years of vitual poker things were not simple. Although they knew that online poker had lots of advantages over the poker table, including the elimination of real distractions in the table and the huge stress of maintaining a calm and cold poker face, it had immediate challenges: the Internet and the use of a computer was still establishing a trend of communication in the world, in this way it was difficult for the casino to have a large clientele like traditional casinos. They started a brainstorming for advertising online poker, and based on the advantages of the face to face poker. The ads stated that you could play in your pijamas and plays were held until 2 am. The tone was good and the players started to arrive. Not long after, hundreds of players playing online poker started the revolution of poker on the Internet. The problem of trust in an online casino gaming site was resolved quickly, by keeping a very good reputation with their customers. All poker hands were being examined, and cheaters were excluded from playing online poker and the players were receiving refunds for real complaints. Like any poker room, the virtual one won the confidence of players through fair play and honest management.

After the big step of virtual Poker, the rest became history. As creativity exploded, competition began among virtual casinos and the variety of successful marketing promotions and inventive advertisements that can be found across the Internet, with great online poker rooms set to maintain a large clientele like land based casinos do.