PokerStrategy is 3 !
On 18th January 2005, PokerStrategy was born. Since then, it has evolved from a little forum to the biggest poker community in the world. Let's have a look back at these three great years
Let's go back to 2005:
Poker is still relatively unknown, notably in Germany. People know about the movie cliché that poker is a gangster's game, and they know about strip poker, of course. But online poker? For cash? Not many people know about that.
So one day, a former Oxford student decided to import this game, which was quite widespread in the UK, to Germany. Since the late 90's, he was known under the nickname "Korn" in the StarCraft: Brood War (an online strategy PC game) German scene. In 2000 he was one of the first European gamers to play against the best of the best in Korea. Shortly afterwards he took a break because of his studies.
In the autumn of 2004, he heard of a game at which you could win money through good mathematical and strategic skill. Being a maths student he quickly learnt the game and started playing Fixed Limit $2/$4 in early 2005.
At that time he founded PokerStrategy, aiming especially for players who shared his enthusiasm for online strategy games. Quite a few of our top players and Black members started with Brood War, among which sammy, Schnibl0r, SlannesH, TheJoker, weyoun and Wishmaster.
Why he founded this site? He knew that with his help players could become poker experts. Thus he hoped to get new and good players to discuss hands and develop the fixed limit strategies (No-Limit was still an ugly and nasty variant then). That's how the forum rapidly grew in a few months.
In mid 2005 PokerStrategy gets a great boost: Matthias Wahls, chess grandmaster and former German champion, contributes greatly to the strategy section.
In autumn 2005 the poker boom gradually started in Germany. Eurosport and DSF started airing live tournaments weekly. Moreover DSF ran a short documentary about poker every day, which included online poker and even an interview with the PokerStrategy founder.
As the number of members began to rise in early 2006, more and more PokerStrategists climbed to limits upwards of $10/$20.
In order to reward these players, PokerStrategy organized the first big promotion, giving away a total of $20,000!
And that wasn't all. A few months later, the next big PokerStrategy promotion was set up; the top 100 players of October 2006 would compete in an online tournament for a Porsche Boxter! The brand new sports car was finally won by 28 year old Marco from Hamburg.
Another important step forward came in September 2006, when the new website went online. Whereas there were just unsorted strategy articles in the forum, they were now organised in well structured guides and sections.
In addition to that, the new strategy section finally included No-Limit Hold'em articles.Since then much more beginning PokerStrategy members opted to start with this variant rather than fixed limit.
Moreover, the news section went up, where you can now find news and articles about PokerStrategy and the rest of the poker world.
But the development of the site didn't stop there:
In December 2006 the Top25 promotion started, with $20,000 in prize money. It took place every month since then and is now the Top100 with an increase in prize money to $80,000! And this isn't even the only PokerStrategy promotion! There is for instance the weekly example hands, since January 2007, which are now included in the "Content Week".
Speaking of content week, we're at the 19th edition already. You'll find FL, NL, SnG articles and videos every week, whether you're Bronze or Diamond!
In addition to the changes in the content area, a very important feature was the possibility to play elsewhere than PartyPoker. Indeed, we started offering starting bankrolls on Titan Poker in May 2007. In the next few months, this was followed by the introduction of six other sites: Mansion Poker, Poker Kings, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, InterPoker and Everest Poker!
So it's fair to say a lot has happened in the last three years. And we're sure there will be much more to come in the future.
Thank you for your loyalty, support, and contribution.
To many more years!
