Long read

This week in online poker history

Updated October 12, 2026We read the operator paperwork

Once a week this column went back through the same calendar week in the earlier years of online poker and picked out what had aged interestingly. The run covers week after week — the middle of February, the turn of the year, the first week of December — and the material ranges from the table etiquette of a decade before, to the multi-accounting exploits that got a teenager banned under a borrowed name, to a game of musical chairs at the World Series of Poker and the antics of a casino robber the room had nicknamed.

21+. Play only where your state regulator allows it. We take a commission from some operators; it never moves a room up the list. Gambling problem? Call the National Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738).

The weekly editions did not survive into this archive. The events they looked back at are covered where they happened.

Scandal — the cases, reported at the time.
PokerDev — how the rooms of that era were designed.
Rabbit Hunt podcast — the weekly audio of the same beat.

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