Mobile Phone Poker

**VancouverKarl** · 2nd March 2005, 11:40 AM

Anybody know much about mobile phone poker?

When I get back to the UK in September ill be getting myself a new phone. Ive heard a little about big company mobile phone poker deals being made but does it actually exist at the moment? Are there special mobile poker rooms or do they use existing networks?

The prospect of being able to play unlimited poker on a mobile phone is quite exciting.

The thought of losing signal and being folded when holding the nuts is a bit scary. Reminds me of playing on a 56k modem where similar events occurred

Any info appreciated

**TheKing** · 13th March 2005, 05:21 PM

I had a chance to see the Pokerroom.com mobile phone software recently and it looked extremely cool. There's a mobile gambling conference in London coming up early next month which should showcase a few more too. From what I can gather there are still some connectivity issues at times though.

**SlaineMcRoth** · 14th March 2005, 07:41 PM

I just don't see how they can do it. Do they not charge for the phone time? Connecting to any kind of server through your mobile costs quite a bit of money as far as I know. So how will they attract players? If I get charged for going on their poker wap site (cause I think it'll be a wap based applicate or maybe even Java technology) per minute that I'm 'mobily' online AND get charged a rake, what's the point of playing? It's a double rake in effect and I for one am not willing to pay. Online sites already charge a hefty rake in comparison to brick and mortar casino's and cardrooms, which by the way should be their competing angle instead of the sign-up bonus as it's an ongoing thing, but if you add to that an mobile charge per minute (or half hour/hour/whatever) I feel like you're just handing them money that could be much better spend.

**TheKing** · 14th March 2005, 08:05 PM

Hmm, yeah... never really thought about that. I guess most mobiles using GPRS these days charge only for data that you download, so probably the initial software download might cost a little bit, but after that it's simply small amounts of binary data being transmitted for the scores, the cards, etc. Perhaps they take a smaller cut of the rake to reflect this? Hmm...Good point though.

**Aces High** · 5th April 2005, 12:02 PM

The phone companies must be grinning with joy if you're going to spend three hours of GPRS time playing poker or whatever.

Is it really going to be as easy as using my PC? I hate the thought of pressing all those buttons.

Connectivity should be okay, what with 3G and all that, but I think what they need to do is match their mobile games with their online games. I bet that will take some doing.

**SlaineMcRoth** · 5th April 2005, 08:09 PM

Thing is, mobile games these days don't rely on you being constantly 'online'. It's just a download of the game and that's it. Hence the one off fee for games on mobiles at the moment. But I can imagine that having a couple of thousand players on your 'mobile poker' server will certainly strain the bandwidth these mobile companies have. Not only that, but most of them share their network between them with all kinds of deals that they have. I can imagine that if, par example, 'Orange' was to suddenly to take a whole load of bandwith from say 'Virgins' telephone network, that either Virgin wouldn't like it or the customer ends up paying for it.

**winnit** · 23rd May 2005, 04:52 PM

I've tried a few mobile casinos, and some are actually quite good. The Coral one, for example, is good but limited only to one game. I know BlueSquare have one. I played recently at VivaWapVegas and thought they were pretty good.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could send some decent links to Mobilecasinos@yahoo.com. I'm think about putting a site together, as there's very little out there at the moment.

Thanks.