In Italy, 11% of the population, or 4.3 million people between the ages of 14 and 64, have played poker at least once, according to data from StageUp Sport & Leisure Business and Ipsos. The typical pokerplayer is male, under 34 and resident in the South, especially in cities with more than 30,000 population.

Currently, there are 670,000 regular online poker players but the legalization of ability-based games on the internet, including poker, will rise to 1.7 million and will include people who say they have never played but that they might like to, according to the report.

The research shows that poker in general is a fast-growing mass consumer phenomenon in Italy.

Numbers of frequent players (who say that they play regularly), have more than doubled. The surge in players is due mostly to the spread and knowledge of poker, including on television, of poker as a sport, principally the Texas Holdem form of the game, according to the report.

The data shows that a year and a half ago there were 1.7 million Italians who knew of the US-originated game, while in June 2008 there were more than 5 million, a growth of 188%.

As I have said, countless, countless, times, poker is truly the universal game that brings us together.

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