In North America and Europe, especially Great Britain and Scandinavia, a virtual poker boom took place around 2005. Everybody started playing the game and everywhere you went people talked about online poker - how much they won, how much they lost and all the bad beats they had suffered.

A couple of years later, poker became increasingly popular in other parts of Europe, for instance Germany, France and Italy. And in 2007, the online poker rooms were jam-packed with players from all over Europe and the United States.

But the game is still growing and Asia is the continent all major poker sites want to conquer.

Today, Poker Stars opens the doors to a brand new poker room at Macau's Grand Lisboa. This is the largest poker room in central Asia (22 tables) and the casino will host weekly tournaments, the Macau Poker Cup as well as the annual Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Poker Festival.

"It has been extraordinary for me to watch the growth of poker culture in the eighteen months since the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour first brought poker to Macau." said Joe Hachem, member of the Poker Stars Team.

If you want to go to Macau for a holiday or poker trip, you should sign up at Poker Stars and keep an eye out for satellite tournaments to the poker site's events in Asia. And as always, in places where poker is a new phenomenon, players are usually beatable.