Wladimir Taschner Publishes The History of Online Poker in October 2026

Wladimir Taschner has published The History of Online Poker: The Players, the Money, and the Making of a Billion Dollar Game, released in October 2026 and available on Amazon. The book chronicles 25 years of online poker, detailing platform origins, major figures and regulatory shocks including Black Friday. Taschner combines his own table experience with archival research and interviews to map the game's internet-era arc.

Why Taschner wrote the history of online poker

Taschner says he began the project after running a poker-focused podcast with a friend and realising there was no single narrative that collected the game's online story. He frames the book as two parts: one that records factual development — platforms, training sites and key figures — and another that collects stories from beyond the tables. He describes poker as an activity that attracts strong curiosity from non-players. "It's like drug dealing or being in the mafia," Taschner told Poker.org, using a phrase he says people often use when hearing poker stories.

The book is partly autobiographical. Taschner recounts his trajectory from free-rolls and microstakes to high-stakes online cash games, moving across stakes from $5/$10 up to $40/$80 on Full Tilt Poker, and later to pot-limit Omaha as no-limit hold'em games grew more technical. He credits coaching from Jay Rosenkrantz and names a sequence of opponents and peers who populated his online career.

A 25-year arc: platforms, players and pivotal moments in the history of online poker

Taschner structures the factual portion of the book around platform evolution and watershed moments. He identifies PokerStars and its founder Isai Scheinberg as central to the online poker story, and he places Chris Moneymaker alongside Scheinberg and Tom "Durrrr" Dwan as formative figures.

He argues Scheinberg and PokerStars preserved the industry during the Black Friday episode, when Full Tilt Poker failed to pay players and the US-facing market suffered a regulatory crackdown. Taschner writes that Full Tilt's collapse left a gap that PokerStars helped fill. He also recounts the heyday of Full Tilt's high-stakes cash games, naming Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom and Tom Dwan as examples of players who reshaped public perception of online skill.

Taschner's table record and who he faced

Taschner details his own climb through stakes and opponents. He says he played microstakes, progressed to $5/$10 and then $10/$20 and $25/$50; he reached $40/$80 on Full Tilt Poker before shifting to pot-limit Omaha as the no-limit landscape became dominated by software-assisted strategies such as CardRunnersEV. He names specific contemporaries he shared tables with: Ben Sulsky (Sauce), Ben Tollerene (Ben86) and others. He notes that Phil Ivey's action was beyond his bankroll and he never sat with Ivey.

Research method and narrative choices

Taschner divides research into two streams. For the factual chronology he relied on archival research because he was not present in poker's earliest internet era. For the anecdotal sections he used personal memory and interviews conducted while producing the podcast that preceded the book.

On selecting the book's most influential individual, Taschner defers to perspective but singles out Isai Scheinberg for his role building PokerStars and helping to stabilise the market after Black Friday. He also mentions the public impact of televised and streamed performances by Tom Dwan and the catalytic effect of Chris Moneymaker's run from an online satellite to the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event title — a sequence that dramatically increased mass participation.

"It's like drug dealing or being in the mafia," Taschner said when describing outsiders' reactions to poker stories. (Wladimir Taschner)

"I think it depends who you're asking," Taschner said when naming the people he considers most influential in online poker. (Wladimir Taschner)

Where the book sits for operators, regulators and the poker community

Taschner's account supplies a single-volume reference for the industry's internet-era history, useful to anyone examining platform business models, the impact of training sites and the regulatory consequences of Black Friday. The narrative makes explicit the role of platform founders and the operational failures that produced large player losses. For regulators and operators the book offers a timeline of market shifts; for players it offers memoir and anecdote.

Availability and format

The History of Online Poker: The Players, the Money, and the Making of a Billion Dollar Game by Wladimir Taschner is available now at Amazon. The book follows a pair of companion projects Taschner and a friend started with a podcast, and it joins other recent retrospectives on internet-era gambling businesses.

Key scenes and examples Taschner preserves

• Early online era: the "Wild West" that produced PokerStars.

• Chris Moneymaker's satellite-to-WSOP Main Event run, which broadened participation.

• Full Tilt Poker's high-stakes era, featuring Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom and Tom Dwan.

• Black Friday and its impact on the US-facing poker market; Full Tilt's failure to pay players.

Taschner balances recollection with researched fact. He avoids reconstructing early timeline events from pure memory and supplements personal accounts with documentary sources where he could not be an eyewitness.

What readers in the iGaming sector should note

Platform operators and compliance teams will find the book helpful for context on how platform policies, liquidity, and international regulatory shocks altered player pools and behaviour. The book underlines the role a dominant operator can play in market stability — a useful snapshot for anyone working on cross-border product strategy. For a contemporary news read, see related coverage in our news section.