Gambling News - May 2005 Edition

"Next Up in the Poker Craze? It's in Your Hand"

Feel like a game of Poker? Take out your cell phone!

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago at that, if you wanted to do a spot of gambling, you had to drive out to Las Vegas or Atlantic City, go into a casino where you could play at the card tables and slot machines on the premises. Eventually the casinos spread out to different Indian reservations across the nation, making gambling slightly more accessible.

Nowadays, all you have to do is to take out your cellphone and you can play poker.

Internet gambling has driven the subject of gambling to new heights with a sort of hysteria following closely. Cellphone technology promises to drive that hysteria to even new levels. Now, just about anytime you feel the “urge”, during your commute to work, during your lunch break, or even while you’re sitting in the office, all you have to do is to whip out your cellphone, connect to a service that allows you to play peer-to-peer for real money and you’re in the game.

CEO Patrick Selin, of PokerRoom.com, the Stockholm-based company that offers cellphone poker is betting that the game will be the next major development in online gambling. “We are the first site in the world where you can actually play peer-to-peer for real money”, said Selin. He also noted that if you get bored with cellphone poker you can simply change over to wireless slot machines or bet on sporting events.

But it’s poker that is attracting most of the players and, in particular, the most popular version is Texas Hold’Em. Since cable television started televising poker tournaments a few years back, the popularity of poker has ballooned at a phenomenal rate. The rising popularity is fueled by the growing accessibility of Internet online casino sites which only require a computer and a modem.

Another company that tracks trends in poker, Pokerpulse.com, reports that 1.7 million people played Internet poker for real money last month. That’s a huge amount of money passing hands. Current estimates put the amount of money changing hands on online games every day at about $190 million.

PokerRoom.com’s new software does away with the need for a computer and modem, and since most cellphones have sufficient computing power to host online casino games, anyone with a cellphone can play at any time. The only limitations are the battery life, the small screen and the cost of the online minutes, but die hard poker fans certainly won’t mind these.

PokerRoom.com and Salin’s position as first in the cellphone poker industry won’t last long once others in the industry see the potential that the new market offers online gamblers using cellphones. One such company, Zone4Play. They have already developed the same type of software and it’s going to be deployed by Britain’s third-largest operator of online gambling parlors and other European online gambling services.

Online gambling is not without its critics. Many fear that online gambling and, now, cellphone gambling has opened up a whole new can of worms. “Anytime you expand gambling onto a higher electronic platform, I think there are concerns about gambling addiction,” said Carey Theil, a Brighton resident who sits on the board of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion. “Studies show that the faster the forms of gambling, the more addictive they become”, she added.

Internet gambling companies and Internet gamblers are very excited about the popularity of online gambling and the new technology advances that continually allow new developments and growth of online gambling.

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