In the spring of 2003, the World Poker Tour's inaugural season debuted on the Travel Channel on American cable television.
The impact of the boom was escalated in May 2003, when amateur Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event.
[citation needed] Another view holds that the poker boom was a classic speculative bubble.
[8] The end of the boom is generally considered to be October 2006, when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) became law in the United States, and several online poker sites, including the industry leader at the time, Party Poker, left the United States.
[10][11][12] On April 15, 2011, three of the biggest online poker sites serving players in the United States had their web domains seized and shut down by U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which alleged they were in violation of federal bank fraud and money laundering laws.