Poker is regarded as to be born within the United States within the second half of the twentieth century. For an extended time poker has been just one of existing gambling’s but everything changed in 1970. The owner of a legendary casino “Binion’s Horseshoe” in Las Vegas, a good fun of poker and an eminent player Benni Binion and his son Jack Binion organized in their casino a tournament between the most known US players. Within the tournament took part six players that have been competing during seven days in gambling of distinct kinds of poker. A champion was determined by voting and that was Johnny Moss. This tournament provoked a poker boom among people and attracted more audience. Many individuals expressed their will to take part in the next similar tournament.

Binion took decision to continue organizing such tournaments and united them under the name World Series of Poker (WSOP). Annually the range of WSOP participants grew in geometric progression. If in 1971 the number of participants made 14 persons, in 2004 it made 1700, in 2005 – 5800, in 2006 – 8900 and in 2007 – over 6 300.

WSOP is the greatest tournament but besides that a good range of the additional attractive and popular tournaments took place in Paris, London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Moscow etc.

Poker was given a powerful incentive in development and popularization in the 90s of the past century with development of the internet network and appearance of on-line poker rooms. Poker turned to be the most pertinent and the most interesting gamble for millions of users all around the world. Poker fever in Internet is still going on. Mostly because of internet a number of individuals prepared to compete in “live” tournaments, clubs is growing by leaps and bounds. And now nobody is surprised by the idea that the winners of prestigious poker competitions are skillful casino players experienced in online poker room games.

Today poker is no more a gambling, it turned into a popular socially important phenomenon. Thus, based on the results of the American Gambling Association in 2005 the number of people ready to play poker made 35% of the us population aging from 21 to 39, 18% of the united states population aging from 40 go to the website 49, 15% of the us population aging from 50 to 64, 11% of the us population aging over 65. In conformity with the final results of the polls by the Association for most of this people poker might be more than a gamble, it turned in to a way of communication, a nice leisure.

Poker became largely covered by many medias. Popularity of the gamble in the modern world lets co-exist a dozen specialized magazines dedicated exclusively to poker, online poker rooms, poker players, poker strategies. The most popular of them are the magazines “Poker Europa”, “Card Player”, “Poker Magazine”, “Bluff”, “Woman Poker Player” etc. The final couple of years were marked by a burst of poker. Poker turned to be extremely entertaining sport gamble. Many sport channels pay considerable part of time and provide prime-time to great poker tournaments.