GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 11 - January 2010

gerWoodsof poker–home in tenthplace whenhe caught amiracle ace on the river togivehimabetter full house. But as if that weren’t enough, Money- maker’s showdownwithSamFarha is the stuff of legends. Moneymaker looked the young, ruffian online poker part, wearing a polo shirt, PokerStars baseball hat and metalicsunglasses.Meanwhile,Farhawas the smooth-talking, well-dressed, debo- nair poker player who had been relieving tourists – and pros – of their money for years. Farha, wearing a dark suit and an open-collar dress shirt,was everyone’s fa- vorite towin the title. But thatwas before thebest televisedpokerbluff tookplace. Holding just King-high, Moneymaker pushed all in. Farha had the better hand – apair of nines.He toldMoneymaker he thought he had the better hand. But he couldn’t bring himself to call the bet, and anew legendwasborn. Poker players everywhere wanted to be ChrisMoneymaker, the poker playerwho bluffed Sam Farha, the poker player who won the biggest poker tournament in the world, the poker player who won $2.5 million and the poker player who quali- fied for theWSOP in a $39 online poker tournament. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to play poker online. Everyone wanted to qualify for theWorld Series of Poker online. And thenumberofpeopleplayingpokeronline skyrocketed. Moneymakermay have played for Poker- Stars, but the “Moneymaker effect” lifted the entireonlinepoker–andonline gam- bling – industry tometeoric heights. And one of the first companies to take advan- tage of the boom was PartyGaming. In June of 2005, PartyGaming was the big- gest andmost popular online poker room in the world. On June 30, PartyGaming listed its shares on the London Stock Ex- change for the first time. The listing gen- erated a market value of approximately £4.6 billion, making PartyGaming one of the richest andmost important online gaming companies in theworld. PartyGaming’s presence on the London Stock Exchange also brought another sense of mainstream credibility to online gaming. PartyGaming wasn’t an online poker roomwhose operators and owners were unknown. PartyGaming was a pub- licly traded company that had to follow very strict rules and regulations. And it gave the online gambling industry a bea- con to point to as others questioned its credibility. WhilePartyGaming’s impressivedebuton the LondonStockExchange brought a lot of mainstream credibility to online gam- ing, another major event in the U.K. was poised to bring structured and credible regulation to the industry. In 2005, the British Parliament passed the Gambling Act, which provided, among other things, a comprehensive regulatory framework for onlinegambling. The regulatory structure set up by the British and enacted in September of 2007 is easilyone of themost progressive ever created for online gambling. Unlike many countries that require online gam- ingproperties tohave aphysical presence within their country, Englandwentwitha muchmore inclusiveapproach. Online gaming licenses from any coun- try on its “white list” –which automati- cally included European Union nations, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibral- tar, the Isle ofMan andAlderney–were recognized in the U.K. That allowed gaming sites located in those places to legally advertise and offer their services toU.K. players. In addition to granting automatic “white list” status to a number of jurisdictions, theGamblingActallowednations toapply for “white list” status. These nations had todemonstrate that theirregulationswere consistent with British standards. So far, only Tasmania and Antigua and Barbuda havebeenadded to the “white list.” Most online gaming companies have chosen to stick with their offshore, but white-listed, licenses for taxpurposes.But Britain’s regulatory structure has created a legitimateone-market system for online gambling. 14 Online Gaming Stories of the Decade