Poker Sites
Regulation
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 Paradise
Poker was the unquestioned online poker industry leader until mid-2002. Only a year before that it had over 85% of the market to itself.
ParadisePoker was not the Internet's first poker room, but was the first to produce stable, secure software and nearly
glitch-free games. After opening in September 1999, Paradise quickly became the premier place to play poker online.
After Party Poker had World Poker Tour television ads to themselves, and PokerStars had one of their players, Chris Moneymaker,
win the World Series of Poker, Paradise was pushed down to third place, less than half the size of PokerStars. But Paradise still
had one more "market leader" trick in its bag (see
Sportingbet article).
Years of reliable service go a long way in any online business. Paradise Poker always made customer trust a priority. Their
SSLv3/TLSv1 encryption algorithm, collusion detection and independent shuffling review by Price Waterhouse helped make them
an attractive destination even in the early years of online poker when poor players (who thought they were great players)
complained on message boards about phantom "feelings" that something wasn't right about online games. The passage
of a few more years has made one fact all the more clear: there are a lot of terrible poker players in the world.
After adoption of the
Safe Port Act, Paradise Poker
stopped taking US players.
Prior to February 2007, Sportingbet had been running two poker platforms, Paradise Poker and Sportingbet Poker, which
operated on the Boss software network. After Paradise lost 90% of their players due to the Safe Port Act, the two platforms
were of equal size, but the Boss platform offered greater liquidity due to higher player numbers (since other sites were
contributing players to the Boss games too). So, Sportingbet decided to close the Paradise platform and channel all players
to the Boss one. What exactly will be done with the Paradise Poker name in the long run is unclear.
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