As many as 700,000 new players have got on board the online poker bandwagon in the UK over the last four months, according to a report by the Gambling Commission.
The report confirms that but online poker is the British public's second favourite form of remote gambling, only behind the National Lottery in the popularity stakes.
In a poll of 8,000 adults, 8.6 per cent said that they had participated in a form of remote gambling in the past month, up 1.2 per cent on the same time the previous year.
People most likely to participate in remote gambling were men rather then women and tended to be in the18 to 34-year-old age bracket.
With 6.7 per cent of people gambling via a computer, laptop or handheld device, these were the most popular forms of remote gambling, compared with 5.2 per cent last year. In addition, 2.9 per cent of adults polled had gambled via their mobile in the last year to June, up 0.7 per cent on 2006's figure. Meanwhile 0.1 per cent more people had tried gambling through interactive or digital TV, with 1.8 per cent of respondents saying they had accessed gambling in this way.
As many as 700,000 new players have got on board the online poker bandwagon in the UK over the last four months, according to a report by the Gambling Commission.