HPPY BRTHDY, PKR

The only online poker room that has the guts to ask "Who needs vowels?" is celebrating their one year anniversary, and we would like to say "Cngrtltns!"

PKR.com opened their doors online August 17, 2006, and the online poker world sat up and took note. To this point there had been online poker rooms were players could log on, compete with other players, and make money. There had also been video games where players controlled 3D avatars at poker tournaments (mostly modeled after real life poker pros) and watched their players do chip tricks, show emotion when winning or losing a big hand, and generally behave like a real person. PKR was the first company to blend the two into one entertaining offering.

At the PKR site you control a 3D avatar at a virtual table and can do chip tricks, laugh, cough, make weird motions, check your cards and generally act up. You do all of this, of course, while actually playing poker at the table with real or play money. The novelty of the site is backed with great play experience and plenty of action—enough to have brought about more than twelve and a half million visits to the site over the last 12 moths.

PKR was coming into the game (so to speak) of online poker right around the time of the UIGEA. At that point they had not yet set up to accept US players (perhaps they had caught wind of a thing or two that made them nervous) and after the UIGEA hit it was a simple matter of never taking that step. To date, no US players are allowed, which makes all the accomplishments over the last year all the more impressive.

In addition PKR has had a few other big accomplishments, including more than 900,000 members, hitting more than 50,000 log ins per day,  dealing out more than 150 million hands of poker, spreading more than 15,000 real money MTTs (and 870k real money SNGs) and passing out over $250k in freerolls.

Not bad, PKR, not bad.

What do you have in store for Year Two?