We are not going to Heaven.

[AlunB]

Good article on Planet Poker here http://www.pokerplayer365.com/news/features-news/randy-blumer-is-the-pioneer-of-online-poker-you-could-see-this-was-going-to-be-the-crack-cocaine-of-gambling/

[Ironside]

didnt you used to host tv shows with poker heaven tikay?

my favourite software was bugsys/pokerschool/THM(before prima) it was bought out by pokerstars in the end

[david3103]

Wasn't Paradise Poker founded on the back of money and expertise from the online adult entertainment industry?
Source: Ghosts at the Table by Des Wilson, possibly misremembered.

[arbboy]

Was that the tv poker channel (poker heaven) which just showed endless stt's running with automated hand commentary for hours on end on some back channel on sky?  

[AlunB]

Wasn't Paradise Poker founded on the back of money and expertise from the online adult entertainment industry?
Source: Ghosts at the Table by Des Wilson, possibly misremembered.

That's Party Poker I think. Ruth ran phone sex lines before setting up an online casino if memory serves.

[tikay]

Really great bunch of people to work with, so am a bit gutted for them. Though they have their fingers in a few pies so hopefully they'll all still be busy (Same people who did the Poker Channel originally). I know one of the bigwigs over there and it looks like they are still busy with other stuff, my guess is that they were just getting rid of a not very profitable part of the business.

Amazing how fast things change.

In 2001, global poker revenues were $82 million - in 2005, they were £2.5 billion. That's meteoric growth by any yardstick. No idea what the figure is now.

They were?

Stars forecasting $1bn for 2015, with a bit of that being casino revenue. Let's say 10% so $900m total. They say they have 70% of poker market so total market is worth $1.3bn or so?

Well according to this, yes. ......

http://www.newsweek.com/going-all-online-poker-117991

Well worth a read that, hard to imagine an article that dated so badly. A fabulously evocative read.

Haha! Indeed. Although we've all been guilty of the "this is how things are now so this is how they will always be" idiocy many many times I'm sure.

That makes playing or hosting poker games on the Web a little like going a few miles over the
highway speed limit. It's technically illegal, but everyone does it and you probably won't get in
trouble

Right.

I see it was $2.4bn, that sounds a bit more plausible. Party was $860m in 2005 and they were circa 50% of the industry so still sounds pretty toppy to me, but those estimates of market size almost always are.

Yes, my bad, I used ££'s instead of $$'s.

That article is an awesome read, though I'm not mocking, everything looked so different then. And now.

[AndrewT]

A lot of money behind internet poker came from the online payment processing industry, which was mostly pushed in the early days by porn, so it wouldn't surprise me. Though I thought Paradise Poker was started by a group of Canadian programmers (who, when they sold it for something like $300m made it a condition of the deal that their names were not made public)

[tikay]

didnt you used to host tv shows with poker heaven tikay?

my favourite software was bugsys/pokerschool/THM(before prima) it was bought out by pokerstars in the end

No, Poker Night Live was the PRIMA (sp?) network I think, the site that originally sponsored The Hendon Mob I think.

That was another major site in it's day, which seems to have vanished.

[AlunB]

A lot of money behind internet poker came from the online payment processing industry, which was mostly pushed in the early days by porn, so it wouldn't surprise me. Though I thought Paradise Poker was started by a group of Canadian programmers (who, when they sold it for something like $300m made it a condition of the deal that their names were not made public)

Yep. I'm not sure it ever emerged who they were, which is pretty impressive bearing in mind all that happened after they sold up.

[Ironside]

didnt you used to host tv shows with poker heaven tikay?

my favourite software was bugsys/pokerschool/THM(before prima) it was bought out by pokerstars in the end

No, Poker Night Live was the PRIMA (sp?) network I think, the site that originally sponsored The Hendon Mob I think.

That was another major site in it's day, which seems to have vanished.

yeah think pokerheaven was on PRIMA as i am sure i signed up for the pokerheaven through PNL to play some freeroll

i had several PRIMA accounts (365/SJ/ etc through THM)

[Gazza]

I have just been sent this, too......


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Poker


If there were an Internet Poker Hall of Fame, Planet really ought to be in it, I'd say. From little acorns & all that.

There is, and they are (well the founder).

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=48208899&postcount=6

[SuuPRlim]

first site I ever ran it up on.

Software was GOD-AWFUL but I liked it