The World Poker Tour (or rather, the company that owns the WPT) IPO’d last August, and since then is trading at more than double the IPO. Not surprising.

But now there’s an overseas look into the IPO, and PartyGaming, the largest UK website for poker, is planning an IPO this month on the London Exchange and fully expects to be the largest offering in four years. Add in the fact that the UK has recently passed a gambling law that gives even greater leeway to online gambling operations.

This IPO, however, will not see any new shares. All of the shares that will be sold are being sold by founding shareholders. The painfully-named Anurag Dikshit is the group operations director and largest current shareholder at 40% of all shares, and his stake is estimated to be worth $3 billion once the IPO hits. That’s if he keeps all 40% of his shares, which presumably he won’t.

Currently there’s a slight downward trend in casinos away from poker towards slots, the perennial moneymaker. But online gambling (of all kinds, not just poker) is expected to move from 3.4 percent of all gambling in 2004 to 8.1 percent in 2009; in dollar signs that’s $8.4 billion in worldwide online gambling revenue in 2004 to an expected $22.7 billion in worldwide online gambling revenue in 2009 - 22 percent a year - lofty expectations, but not unimaginable.