Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide. In 2005, revenues from online poker were estimated at US$ 200 million per month. Ever since the first online casino was launched in 1995, Internet gambling has grown exponentially, with estimated revenue of more than $6 billion a year and nearly 2,000 Web sites offering everything from sports betting, lotteries and blackjack to bingo. But online poker seems to be defacto in the popularity of online gaming.

This means that there is an opening for websites that cater to local groups. Just like the friday night friendly poker match with friends in real life there is also a market for online social games like poker. Gaming online is a really good reason for joining a social network and brings with it a lot more page staying power and interaction than photo blogging.

Though many open source CMS projects have labored to incorporate funtionality that promotes content production by users none have gotten into the online gaming industry. Drupal, joomla and Wordpress communities are not clamouring for PHP gaming engines or Poker API code.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is because online gaming takes real programming skills, prowess in mathematics and a mindset for security. This type of programming cannot be done or understood easily by the hobbyist or newbie PHP programmer. It could be that there is a lack of interest in the open source PHP world because of the potential to make money from a booming online poker industry. But regardless there are a few open source GPL applications out there that are written in PHP.

Resources

• PHP Poker Engine
• PHP Poker 5 card draw
• PHP My Poker Site

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