Card games were among the first games people played on the web, long before Flash portals and .io arenas. Poker and blackjack in particular have a browser history of their own: free Java card rooms in the 1990s, the first real-money online poker in 1998, Flash tables during the poker boom and play-money apps that drew millions of players on social networks. Here is that story, from applet to HTML5.
The Java card rooms
In the late 1990s, browsers could run small Java programs called applets. Portals used them for multiplayer card and board games. Yahoo! Games offered free poker, hearts, spades, euchre and blackjack-style games, and Pogo and others built similar lobbies. They were slow by modern standards, but they introduced millions of people to playing cards online with strangers, and to the chat-room culture around a table.
The first real-money poker
Planet Poker is generally credited with dealing the first real-money online poker hand, on 1 January 1998. Paradise Poker followed in 1999, and PartyPoker and PokerStars both launched in 2001. Most ran as downloadable clients, but browser-based "instant play" versions in Java and later Flash let players join without installing anything, an approach the casino industry also used for slots and blackjack until Flash was retired, as we describe in the death of Flash.
The poker boom and its end
In 2003 an amateur named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event after qualifying through an inexpensive online satellite tournament. His win, televised with hole-card cameras, set off a boom in online poker. In the United States it was slowed by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which targeted payment processing, and ended abruptly on 15 April 2011, "Black Friday", when federal prosecutors shut down the US operations of the biggest sites. Some states later legalised online poker within their borders.
Play money goes social
Free poker never went away. Zynga's Texas HoldEm Poker, launched on Facebook in 2007, became one of the most played games on the platform, built first in Flash. It showed that people would play poker for chips that could never be cashed, and some would pay for them. That model became the social casino industry described in social casinos and free browser slots.
Blackjack in the browser: from trainers to card counting myths
Blackjack has a special place among browser games because it is a game where decisions matter. In 1962 the mathematician Edward Thorp showed in Beat the Dealer that a player who tracked the cards could gain an edge, and basic strategy, the mathematically best play for each hand, became standard knowledge. Browser blackjack trainers that flag mistakes are one of the most useful kinds of free card game.
One thing does not transfer: card counting. Most online blackjack games shuffle a fresh virtual deck for every hand using a random number generator, so there is nothing to count. Live dealer games streamed from studios use real cards, but they usually reshuffle often enough to make counting impractical. For why that RNG is trusted, and how it is tested, see the RNG behind slots.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Late 1990s | Free Java card rooms on Yahoo! Games, Pogo and others |
| 1 Jan 1998 | Planet Poker deals the first real-money online poker hand |
| 2001 | PartyPoker and PokerStars launch |
| 2003 | Online qualifier Chris Moneymaker wins the WSOP Main Event |
| 2006 | US passes the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act |
| 2007 | Zynga's Texas HoldEm Poker launches on Facebook |
| 15 Apr 2011 | Black Friday shuts major sites' US operations |
| 2010s | Card games and casino tables move from Flash and Java to HTML5 |
Why card games still suit the browser
A card table needs very little: a few images, simple animation and a fast connection. That is why poker and blackjack were among the first browser games and are still among the most played. The technology has changed from applets to HTML5, but the appeal of a quick hand on a break has not. Interested in where skill ends and luck starts in poker? Read skill games versus games of chance.
