Published on 04/28/2008

Poker is a very old game, and has been around for about two centuries. However, the game has become hugely popular in last 15 years or so, and now many new players and even amateurs are taking to playing poker professionally. This trend is being witnessed in UK, but more so in the US. What are the reasons that have led to poker being so popular among the masses, and led it to enter the drawing room of countless Americans?

One of the main reasons for this phenomenal rise of poker popularity is the fact that people have started perceiving it as a sport, rather than a game, as it was previously thought of. This is mainly due to ever increasing media coverage of the various poker tournaments. Most of such tournaments have very high stakes, like the 2003 World Series of Poker, apart from several weekly tournaments of the World Poker tour. ESPN, a major sport channel has been a front-runner in covering such tournaments, along with The Travel Channel. However, various other television stations quickly picked up the trend, including BRAVO network, and Fox Sports, which regularly air poker tournaments.

In a bid to create more excitement, and hook the television viewers, some formats of poker were pushed back, while others received substantial coverage. Texas No Limit Hold’em is a favorite that is covered by most of the television channels due to the explosive and confrontational aspects. Other traditional formats like 5-card draw or 7-card stud did not receive as much support as it lacked the excitement that Hold’em is able to provide, especially to the watching audience.

The World Series of Poker has been able to tickle the imagination and the interest of viewers all over, mainly due to the fact that the tournament is much sought after by the major poker players in the world. The pay out for the winner is high, and the fact that even regular people from different professions can win the tournament has added a charm that has been able to grip the masses.

People have started playing poker in a big way, thanks to the advance of internet poker. There are thousands of sites today where anyone can play poker, and even make real money in the process. The tournaments, which are mostly sponsored by big internet poker companies, has led to increasing number of people getting hooked on to the game on the internet, winning and losing huge sums of money. Various advantages of playing poker online have led to even those who were previously not interested in the game getting hooked on to it. With increasing bandwidth, and rising broadband connectivity, coupled with ever-improving software to play the game with heightened security measures and tons of options, all this has led to wide spread acceptance of the internet version of the game.

Many of the players that enter the big tournaments are those that have only played online poker most of the time. The fact that even such amateurs are able to win and rake in huge sums of money is leading to an increasing number of people opting for online poker with the aim of making it to a big tournament one day. And there is no shortage of such people in the capitalist America.