It’s been a weird and long year for the world of poker including online poker, the year started out with nothing but bad news as many people worried about the future of the online poker industry after the UIGEA. With he processing companies not dealing with American customers have raised many questions about how exactly people would be getting money online now, and what it would do to the online poker industry.
And after everything that has happened in 2007, PokerStars broke an online poker traffic record yesterday, becoming the first online poker site to reach 20,000 simultaneous real money ring game players. According to the site, Party Poker record was 16,960 players in 2006, right before they quit taking action from U.S players.

When you consider all of the scandals of the past 12 months that have tarnished online poker’s reputation, this number is all the more impressive. You had Absolute Poker, “TheV0id”, more cheating scandals and a dud of a 2007 WSOP Champion, and Poker Stars was still able to set a traffic record in the same year that all of this happened? That speaks volumes about the resiliency and rock-solid strength of the online poker industry.

The UIGEA benefited not only PokerStars expansion but the entire market seems to be growing outside the U.S. The industry moved forward and adapted, with Pokerstars leading the charge. I mean, I remember in early 2007 reading some of the blogs of the biggest online poker players, and some of them were talking about quitting online poker and going back to school because it was nearly impossible to get money online. Times have changed. If you want to get money online now, you can.

The future of online poker still uncertain and it is had to imagine that we will have to deal with anything close to the amount of bad news that we had in ‘07. But no matter what happens, the online poker industry will continue to adapt and thrive, and there is nothing that anyone in Washington can do about that.

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3. World Poker Tour report Loses
4. Canadian Poker Tour owners enter deal with online poker operator
5. WSOP: The biggest poker tournament