The proliferation of underage players on the Internet at online poker rooms and casinos is difficult to measure, as there are so many poker rooms and so many players that monitoring them all would be impossible.  The best that the online poker rooms can do is to provide a stopgap measure against players by forcing them to fill out a questionnaire or provide other types of software that filters out players due to age verification services.  The problem with these programs is that they have been less than successful in the past when utilized at adult oriented sites on the Internet and restricted access content.  Whenever these programs have been utilized, underage users, generally some of the most knowledgeable users of the Internet, have always found a way to circumvent and disable them without leaving any type of trail that the casual user, generally the parents, can detect.  With the wealth of online poker room and casino options on the Internet, it is a simple matter to find online poker rooms and casinos that do not have the strictest of age verification services and can be easily taken advantage of by underage players with some technical skill.

The truth about underage players in online poker rooms and casinos is that it is a somewhat self policing industry.  Underage players generally tend not to have credit cards or any other types of large amounts of income in their names, making it impossible for them to engage in large-scale gambling on the Internet, even in poker rooms and casinos that are more or less set up for this type of activity.  As players grow older, however, it becomes easier and easier to access large amounts of income in the form of summer jobs or whatever other types of currency can be generated by the underage player.  With this limited availability of income, most underage players tend to stay away from online poker rooms and casinos that require a deposit, making the underage verification services and security systems a moot point.

The concern by critics at large is that the draw of online poker rooms and casinos will assert itself at a very young age and turn into a problem later in life for some underage enthusiasts of this type of gaming on the Internet.  It remains to be seen what type of problem gamblers emerge from the under age playing of online poker rooms and casinos on the Internet.