A Comprehensive History of Paradise Poker

Updated: 15.08.2025

Paradise Poker has been a true pioneer in the online gaming industry since the late 1990's and has played a major role in the development of online poker.

Things changed drastically for Paradise Poker in 2004 when they were acquired by the up-and-coming Sportingbet PLC. Since that acquisition, Paradise Poker has experienced a series of ups and downs, including the unfortunate events catalyzed by the UIGEA that forced the company to close its doors to US customers. The following is an in-depth look at the history of Paradise Poker.

Mysterious Start

In writing the history of Paradise Poker, we would prefer to begin by taking the reader through the individuals who built this online poker empire. Unfortunately, we are unable to do so because the identities of the founders of this site remain a complete mystery.

While little information exists about who founded Paradise Poker, we do know this much: three men from Canada started the poker site in 1999. However, their names were never made public and they remain a mystery to this day.

Early Competition

Paradise Poker arrived on the Internet at just the right time. The only other poker site at the time was Poker Planet, which had been founded a year earlier but had recently suffered a major security crisis. Hackers had broken into that site and gotten their hands on some serious information. They were able to figure out what cards were going to be dealt next. And since this was poker - cards with faces and backs, not message-encoded cards - winning combinations were inevitable for the hackers and their inside accomplices.

This unfortunate situation for Poker Planet was exactly what Paradise Poker needed to rapidly expand its customer base. Following Poker Planet's demise, its former customers were looking for a new, secure online poker room, and they found it in Paradise Poker. Upon its arrival on the online poker scene, Paradise Poker quickly became the world's leading online poker room. It was well on its way to establishing a virtual monopoly on the fledgling online poker market.

The original Paradise Poker software was much more reliable than the Poker Planet software. It didn't freeze as often and was much easier to use. Paradise Poker was the first poker site to participate in Google's pay-per-click advertising program, and it paid off handsomely. After a while, you couldn't search for "poker" without seeing a link to Paradise Poker in the sidebar. Today, Google doesn't sell ad space to any kind of Internet gambling company, but back then it was the perfect marketing tool.

Paradise Poker continued to improve their software, adding new features such as the ability to play more than one table (they call this multi-tabling), and they started giving out tons of statistics such as the average pot size and other important (to us anyway) data that let us know what was going on with the cards and the players. They also started offering much higher stakes to their many high-rollers, something their competitor, Poker Planet, never did.

Unfortunately, things started to go downhill for Paradise Poker in the early 2000s. Although more and more poker sites came online, bringing with them even more exciting options for players, these very sites were the ones that stole Paradise Poker's player base. And now, Paradise Poker is on the verge of going out of business.

A New Owner: SportingBet.com

In 2004, Sportingbet PLC acquired Paradise Poker, which was looking for a buyer. However, Sportingbet decided to keep the Paradise Poker name as it was a reputable enough brand name that some of its former customers might migrate to the new Sportingbet site. Paradise Poker was soon looking for a buyer and that's when Sportingbet PLC stepped in and acquired the site in 2004.

Bonaire, a company based in the British Virgin Islands and owned by the three enigmatic Canadian gentlemen mentioned earlier, was presented with an offer of $160 million in cash and $88 million in stock, which they happily accepted to complete this arrangement. To this day, Bonaire remains Sportingbet's second largest shareholder, holding just over 11% of the company.

A few months after Sportingbet acquired Paradise Poker \(see our lead story this issue), we caught up with Scott Wilson, Director of Poker Operations at Sportingbet. \n\n In response to our question about how they intended to keep players loyal to the newly revamped Paradise Poker, Wilson pointed to a number of factors that he felt improved the experience of playing at the site, factors that he felt could just as easily be applied to the experience at other sites operated by Sportingbet.

At the time, Bruce Stubbs was the marketing director for Paradise Poker. He holds a bachelor's degree in entrepreneurship from Simon Fraser University. Stubbs served as Paradise Poker's marketing director from 2005 to 2008, overseeing the development and subsequent rise of the online poker room.

Most of his fame comes from his work in developing the million-dollar free-roll tournament. But he also introduced several other exciting concepts to the table, including the first professional poker team and the first hybrid tournament that combined both online and offline players.

One year after the major acquisition, Paradise Poker became the first online poker room to offer a $1 million free roll tournament. A whopping 3,900 players from all over the world participated in this unprecedented event. This was no ordinary online poker room throwing around $1 million like they had it to spare.

Commenting on the recent announcement of a $1 million dollar free-roll tournament, Stubbs said, "ParadisePoker.com is a great experience at the best of times, but when you throw $1 million into the pot and make it a free-roll for amateurs, you discover a whole new crowd capable of challenging the best of the pros.

Within two years of the change in ownership, Paradise Poker was making over $150 million in profits and seemed to be on a steady upward trajectory. Then Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which was designed to make it more difficult to enforce U.S. laws against Internet gambling.

Dealing with the UIGEA

The UIGEA was accelerated and passed on October 30, 2006. It was very damaging to the future growth of the online gambling market. This act forced many of the leading sites in the online gambling space to close the doors to their US customers because transactions had to be done through banks, and it just wasn't possible to have the money going to or coming from those sites.

Sportingbet PLC, under which Paradise Poker operated, lost a tremendous number of valued customers after the passage of the UIGEA. It affected them so badly that I can tell you this: The company made over 60 percent of its profits from U.S. players in the year leading up to the UIGEA.

In an attempt to recover from these huge financial losses, Sportingbet took steps to bring back Paradise Poker and make the site available in Canada, Europe and a few other select countries around the world. US Paradise Poker players were given one month to cash out before the site was shut down again, and were warned that any remaining balance on the site could be lost forever. While this was a major blow to the Paradise Poker brand, the site has tried to bounce back and regain its footing in the online poker community. Below we will take a look at Paradise Poker as it is today, in the year 2022.

Paradise Poker: Game Selection

Paradise Poker offers a wide variety of games, with Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven Card Stud, and Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo among their most popular options. They offer these variations in Limit, No Limit and Pot Limit formats.

Paradise Poker offers cash games and several types of tournaments. The most revolutionary are the satellite tournaments, which can earn players entry into larger, live events such as the World Series of Poker. The events hosted by Paradise Poker have even won some awards. The highlight in this department occurred in 2006 when Casino Player Magazine named Paradise Poker as having the "Best Poker Tournaments" on the Internet.

What Else Does Paradise Poker Have to Offer

Paradise Poker has a customer support team that is always ready to help, located at the intersection of e-mail and telephone. They provide us with a FAQ section that may be able to answer our questions right away. If not, the support staff is more than willing to help us with any problem that may arise. When it comes to our money, Paradise offers an impressive array of deposit and withdrawal methods, ensuring that every customer can find at least one that suits their needs: bank transfer, check, credit cards, Neteller, PayPal, and a number of methods far too numerous to list here.

Paradise Poker has a loyalty program called the Players Club. It works like this: Every time a player plays a real money hand, they earn points. The points can either be redeemed for cash or for entry into a variety of tournaments.

One particular aspect that stands out about Paradise Poker is how customizable they make their site. Players are given the ability to control the sounds, animations, deck colors, and several other features that allow you to make playing at Paradise Poker as personal and, more importantly, as close to your ideal poker experience as possible.

Charitable Causes

Poker tournaments for charity have been hosted by Paradise Poker and Sportingbet, with celebrity participation and proceeds going to this select group of charities. For the Providence of Wolverhampton and the other areas in which it serves, the sponsorship of Championship football team Wolverhampton Wanderers, which ran from 2009 to 2014, facilitated the provision of funds and equipment to the team to make it a success in each of those seasons.

Nigel Payne, pictured above, has held the role of Finance Director at both Sportingbet and Paradise Poker since June 2000. In February 2011, he and seven other team members from various online gaming companies joined forces to attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. However, they did not go without a cause - over $55,000 was raised from their sponsors in the lead up to the climb.

They split the money they raised between three different charities: Care for Breast Cancer, the Fund for Injured Jockeys, and the Sports Center for the Disabled in Israel.

Still More Changes to Come

In late 2012, Sportingbet and Paradise Poker became part of William Hill. So far, there hasn't been much of an impact on Paradise Poker's site since the acquisition, but insiders say a revamp for the site may be in the cards - all puns intended.