Online Poker
The rise of online poker has been evident in the last two decades, much of which is due to Chris Moneymaker. In 2003, Moneymaker entered an $86 tournament on Pokerstars and came in first place with the reward being a spot in the $10,000 World Series of Poker(WSOP) main event. He eventually won this tournament and $2.5 million. This led to a boom in the online poker industry as by 2006, the field for the WSOP main event increased ten-fold and there were more than 38 million tournaments hosted by Pokerstars.[1]
Today, there are numerous big name sites that command thousands of players daily, such as PokerStars, Partypoker, and Americas Cardroom. Additionally, the emergence of covid-19 in 2020 significantly hurt casinos but was extremely beneficial for online gaming.
Ethics in Online Poker
Collusion
Bots
Gambling Addiction
One of the psychological issues related to online poker is the idea of gambling addiction. Gambling addiction occurs because the actions "activate the same reward circuits in the brain as drugs and the clinical characteristics of gambling disorder are the same as those of drug addictions or alcoholism"[2]. While this is a major issue related to gambling in general, it is compounded with the accessibility and improvements of the online gaming industry.
All of these ethical issues are more and more relevant as the number of players increases.
