Monthly Archives: July 2012

No More High Stakes Cash Games at PartyPoker?

Reports suggest that PartyPoker have taken the decision to remove No Limit Texas Hold em and Pot Limit games with blinds of $10/$20 or higher and also Fixed Limit Texas Hold em with blinds of $50/$100 or greater.

One respected player over on the Two Plus Two forums questioned PartyPoker and received the following email from their support department –

We have removed some of our super high stake games, this decision has been taken to make improvements to our poker ecology and in our players best interests.

We will still offer high stake games at NL1000 PLO1000 and FL 6000.

We believe this change will improve the action at our tables and is in the best interest of the poker room as a whole. The change will remain in place for the foreseeable future

Please let us know if you need help with anything.

Clearly PartyPoker won’t have come up with this decision on a whim so there must be some compelling business reasons for doing this backed up by their own datasets so from an immediate financial decision one can only assume that PartyPoker as a poker room will benefit. It is much harder to evaluate the longer term repercussions.

Will high stakes players simply move down levels so that they can continue to play at PartyPoker? This is unlikely in my opinion. If you have worked your way up to high stakes levels you will want to continue to play at the levels of your choosing and not be dictated to by a poker room. Typically, players will work their way up the blinds scales, not work their way down!

Is the PartyPoker software and clientele alluring enough to keep high rollers playing at lower levels? No, not in my opinion.

So realistically we will see a small number of high stakes players moving over to other poker rooms and given that those players were likely on very generous incentive schemes and were taking money out of the PartyPoker poker eco-system I imagine that in purely financial terms PartyPoker won’t see a massive loss.

I would argue that the greater loss is in the PR side of things. Having active high stakes games is good for PR. Forums dedicate threads to particularly wild high stakes cash games and in poker where room confidence is key it is reassuring for players to see other successful players playing (and being paid) at high stakes cash games. PartyPoker could get a reputation as a lightweight poker room for grinders at the lower end of the spectrum which is not a good perception for a publically listed company where trader confidence is key.

Either way it will be interesting to see what actually does happen and how long it will take PartyPoker to restore all poker games at all blinds levels.

888 Poker iPad App Review

888 are one of the only providers to have given poker players the option to play full poker games for money on their iPad’s. The 888 app provides much of the functionality of the standard 888 main software with the added bonus of being able to play on the move and using convenient touchscreen navigation.

The best part is that if you are in the UK and you don’t currently have an 888 poker account, you can get a free £5 to play with. No deposit is necessary and it is a great way to familiarise yourself with 888 and maybe to win a few quid!

First steps before downloading the 888 app

As with all apps for the iPad you need to get the download from the Apple App store and download the application directly onto your device. The 888 poker app is free of charge to download and is 16.2MB in size, so downloading it should only take a few minutes. You can get the link for the app directly from the 888 poker website which will redirect you to the app in the app store so you don’t need to search for it.

To be able to use the app you will need to sign up for 888 poker because you will need to use your 888 poker username and password combination for the app to run on your iPad.

Click here to get a new 888 poker account and qualify for the FREE £5 bonus.

Signing up for an 888 account is very easy and it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. You don’t need to add a credit card or any financial information if you don’t want to, although you should put valid contact details and a valid email address otherwise your account may not get setup correctly and when you want to withdraw winnings you might have problems, so keep your details present and correct.

You can sign up directly from the 888 website you can sign up directly from inside the mobile app itself.

Downloading the app is simple. Whether you already have your new 888 account or you plan to sign up through the app you can download the software from the 888 poker iPad app link.

Once you have downloaded the app you simply need to open it and then use your 888 poker login credentials which will then take you to the 888 poker lobby where you can choose your game or you can sign up directly from the app.

Once you have logged into the app you will be taken to the poker lobby.

Choosing your game

Games are limited to variants of Texas Hold ’em. Unfortunately there is not Omaha, Stud, etc. but you do have the option of No Limit, Fixed Limit and Pot Limit Texas Hold ’em.

You can choose to play for real money at 6 to 9 man Sit and Go’s or you can play micro stake cash games which range from 3¢/6¢ to $3/$6. Alternatively you can switch to practice play.

The connection you can use to play poker is through 3G or WiFi so the games run very smoothly. In fact once you are sat at a table you likely won’t notice any difference between playing on the 888 app version versus the standard 888 poker software version for PC.

Positives of using the app

See below for a list of the positives of playing poker using the 888 app.

  • Undoubtedly having the flexibility of being able to play poker on the move or on your sofa at home using your iPad is an extremely welcome addition for poker players.
  • The app runs quickly and smoothly.
  • You can deposit and withdraw money using the app.
  • There are options to play cash games and sit n go’s using the app.
  • New players will get their welcome bonus of a free £5 if they create an 888 account using the app.
  • The actual functionality of the app is very similar to the slick feel of the standard PC 888 poker software.

Negatives of using the app

There are only two main negatives to using the 888 poker app. They include –

  • There are only a limited range of games available which are limited to Texas Hold ’em and the games themselves are limited to low stakes. However, it is expected that forthcoming updates to the app will include an increased number of poker games available at higher stakes.
  • There is no current facility to multi-table using the 888 iPad app.

Overall

Taking everything into account this reviewer see that 888 have produced an extremely polished poker app which transfers most of the functionality of their full PC poker software onto the iPad. Games run smoothly and quickly and graphically the app is awesome.

Download the 888 iPad poker app today and get your free £5 no deposit welcome bonus.

Poker on the iPad

The popularity of iPad’s and tablet devices in general is increasing at a rapid rate but unfortunately it would appear that online poker sites don’t appear to be part of the iPad revolution. Whether there is a belief that tablets are just a fad, popularity will die out and people will go back to their desktops and laptops or there is a genuine lack of understanding about the power of mobile marketing today I don’t know. Whatever their reasons, poker rooms on the whole are not making enough of an effort to allow players to play poker from a mobile device like an iPad or Samsung Galaxy tablet.

What poker apps are out there?

So you want to play poker on your iPad? If you go into the iTunes App store you will see several tens of different apps that will allow you to play poker, but the vast majority of these are simply play money games designed to pass a few minutes. There are very few dedicated poker room apps that you can install and play for real money.

There are two large poker rooms that have embraced mobile apps and these are –

PokerStars – See more information
888 – See more information

Both are established brands and their apps have great functionality that allows you to have the facilities of your desktop client on your iPad.

A smaller brand which has a more dedicated approach solely to mobile is Switch Poker – See more information.

Few if any of the other major online poker sites have chosen to introduce a dedicated mobile app for their customers which I find perplexing to say the least. What reasons could they have?

Why aren’t there more mobile poker apps?

Technically speaking there are loads of poker apps that you can download for the iPad. It is the apps where you play for real money that are lacking in the market.

You could argue that app development is an expensive business and poker rooms don’t want to go to the expense. I don’t buy this argument. Given the profits in online poker I don’t believe for a second that there aren’t the finances in place to develop an app.

Perhaps the thought is that people that are going to use the apps are already customers and so the return on investment for the app being developed is not high. This is a possibility, but I would argue that given the extremely small number of mobile poker apps that are available that allow you to play for money, I would say that the poker rooms that head down the app development route will get early adoption boosts because people who want to play poker on their iPad currently have so few options that they will be forced to use what is on the market.

There are undoubtedly issues surrounding the fact that the iPad can’t play Flash, so this has been a barrier towards a lot of online poker being played through a browser, but with a native iPad app this wouldn’t be an issue.

Finally, there might be the perception that there is no need for creating poker apps because the players don’t want them. I simply don’t believe this to be the case. The use is mobile devices is outstripping the demand for virtually every other entertainment device globally, so the logical extension to that is if people are given the opportunity to use their mobile device to play poker, they will. They just need the app to use in the first place!

The future for mobile poker apps

I think in the next year or two most if not all of the major poker rooms will have their own Apple and/or Android powered apps. I’d like to think that the days when eager players that want to play poker on their iPad have had to use a VNC to remote desktop into their laptop of home computer to access the poker software from there have gone. Why make it more difficult for poker players to play? Give us all mobile poker apps and we’ll play on our mobile devices. Simple.