In spite of the question of legality in the United States concerning online gambling, the online gambling industry and, particularly online poker, is burgeoning. While the U.S. is wrestling with just how to handle online gambling, Britain has gone ahead and passed legislation that permits online gambling through the use of strict controls and regulation. As a result, one of the biggest online poker companies, Party Gaming, has made plans to float on the London Stock Exchange at the end of this month. Financial estimates place PartyGaming’s value at 5.5 billion pounds and, with its flotation, it is set to become one of the biggest companies in England, overtaking such household names as Boots, British Airways, and Cable and Wireless.

PartyGaming’s owners, Ruth Parasol (a former California lawyer who made her first fortune in the porn industry), Parasol’s husband, and two graduates of India’s premier technology university, will become billionaires if the flotation is successful.

First fueled when television stations started televising the Poker World Series back in 2001, the popularity of poker has grown even more with the advent of Internet poker and, in turn, the rise of Internet poker has been nothing short of spectacular. Audiences watching the Poker World Series became hooked and started wanting to play too. The appearance of celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Nicole Kidman, Tobey Maguire, and Sarah Jessica Parker, at these tournaments lured even more players to the game, creating one of the fastest growing industries around. Last year, the online poker market grew by 466 percent in 12 months, reaching 1.4 billion dollars. Industry experts predict that that number will double this year bringing the amount to 2.9 billion dollars. Pokerpulse.com, an online poker monitoring service, reported 200 million dollars in wagers in just the last 24 hours alone. CEO of PartyGaming, Richard Segal, said “What we have done using the technology of the Internet is give people the chance to play whenever they want, in their own homes, without the intimidating prospect of having to look their opponents in the eye if they were in a real-life game”.

The online gambling industry does have its share of detractors largely due to the fear that the easy access to gambling that the Internet provides will result in skyrocketing numbers of people with addictive gambling behavior. Counselors at Gamblers Anonymous, an organization that provides counseling to people with gambling problems, are seeing the results of the Internet gambling boom first hand. Referring to the dramatic rise in the number of calls the service receives for gambling addictions, a spokesman for Gamblers Anonymous said: “gambling on the Internet is like pornography on the Internet. Clicking a screen on a computer is much easier for many people than going in to a sex shop and buying the goods face to face.” Most of the callers blamed the Internet for their addiction. With all of the money being made from Internet gambling, however, it is unlikely that much will be done to curtail the rapidly expanding industry.