The rising popularity of poker, as a sport in the United States of America
Since most people love a good sport, they love poker too. It took a while for poker to achieve its current levels of popularity, mostly due to legal constraints on online gambling. But the astronomical rise of poker in the USA in recent years has been coming for a long time.
Currently, poker players around the world are estimated to be 100 million with Americans making up to 60 million of that number. This statistic is even more astounding when you consider where poker was before the 2003 “poker boom”. In the 1999 World Series of Poker, only 393 competitors participated, and not all of them were AMericans.
Today, poker is viewed as a wonderful American game with some people believing it to be a game that symbolises the true American spirit. Playing legal online poker is practically a sport, with its dedicated fans, players and inter-player competitions.
Why is poker so popular in the United States?
If you’re American, you’ve probably heard the term, “No-limit Texas Hold ‘em”. That’s how popular poker is in the US but no one is quite sure at what exact point poker became that popular.
Nonetheless, there are a few reasonable theories that explain where poker's popularity surge began.
Chris Moneymaker and the 2003 WSOP
In 2003, Chris Moneymaker, an accountant suffering heavily from credit card debt, made an $89 buy-in to enter an online tournament that eventually made him $2.5 million when he won.
Not like poker wasn’t popular before Moneymaker, because it was. But, the victory of a man like Chris Moneymaker was a blinding indicator to viewers at the time that you don’t have to be a “pro” to win. It was an exceptional story and so it was easy for most people to believe that it could happen to them too.
So people started playing poker and that was how the poker boom began. By the next year, players in the WSOP had more than tripled in number.
The rise of the Internet
Before the Internet, in-person (brick and mortar) poker was the only version of poker that existed. The expensive cost of running in-person poker combined with the overall hassle to play did not exactly make poker inviting to the masses.
However, with the arrival of the Internet and its introduction to poker, online poker greatly reduced the entry barrier which in turn encouraged many novice players to play poker.
The introduction of “satellites”, online tournaments that gave players a chance to play in in-person poker tournaments, added to the poker thrill.
It is important to mention that the internet, while being hugely responsible for poker’s rising popularity in the US, had most of that effect in the early days of the boom.
The current contributors to today’s current poker popularity are favourable legislation and the Covid-19 pandemic. States like Nevada and Delaware are starting to see a spike in online poker participation because their laws allow for it.
With very little to do while the pandemic lasted, many more players in the United States spent time playing online poker, despite the restrictions that come with it.
Poker is a game of skill and more people are starting to see that they have what it takes to enjoy a poker game. Hopefully, federal poker laws in the US allow online poker in the near future.