Poker the top topic searched on the Internet, after porn

January 8, 2008

There’s no secret what the most-searched-for item on the Internet is: porn.
Whether it’s a curious search for the latest Paris Hilton nipple slip or some type of sick and twisted fetish, sex is the undisputed online king. It has the crown and always will.

So what’s the most popular search outside of the sex realm? It’s a close cousin as a vice, but remains pretty PG.
According to one of the industries leading search engines, Lycos.com, poker was the most searched topic on the Internet. It’s the second year in a row the game has earned such honors.Poker drew more interest than MySpace, YouTube and golf. It even dominated the interest in the volatile Britney Spears.

The interest in poker remains hot, despite a constant forecast that the fad is nearing its end. It all started in 2003 when a Tennessee accountant named Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. It was his first trip into a live casino, and by the time he walked out of it he was $2.5 million richer.

The success story fueled the poker boom, and it hasn’t died down since.

The reason is money. It’s impossible to cite an exact figure on the U.S. poker-playing population, but it’s been estimated to be between 50 million and 70 million players. This is hardly an arbitrary number.

Some players play very high stakes, but most of them play for a measly $10 or $20 per session.