It’s here: Real Money Poker on the iPhone and iPad
No jailbreaking, no remote desktop, no hacks; just real-money poker running on your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone.
Ok, Blackberries will probably work as well, but since I hate them they don’t get top billing.
Since apple announced the iPhone back in January of 2007, every online poker player in the world had one thought: will I be able to use this technological wonder to play poker.
The phone had a state-of-the-art browser, 3rd party apps, and a huge display. Everything we had hoped for was there, and the poker world rejoiced. Unfortunately, any joy online players may have had initially dissipated almost instantly once Apple announced it would not allow any applications which facilitated anything illegal, adult or basically controversial in any way.
Since online poker was basically all three of these things at once (in the USA), it became clear we wouldn’t see a Full Tilt poker app any time soon.
But all was not lost, as there was still the browser, which rendered true versions of WebPages rather than the scaled down text-only versions we had gotten used to on our mobile screens. Unfortunately, any hope was once again squashed once we learned that the iPhone would not, and had no intentions of, supporting Java or flash in the safari browser.
This left us with our only option being to hack (jailbreak) our phones, or to play online via RDP to our home desktop computers. Neither really worked well enough to be considered a true solution.
After over three years of being told what we can’t do with our phones, some smart kids over at Switch Poker decided to make a new poker room (from the ground up), designed specifically to work with the iPhone.
This room has just opened its doors for play money users, and will open the doors for real money play as of October 8th 2010. The site runs purely in HTML and JavaScript, keeping it 100% compatible with just about every high-end smart phone on the market.
The iPhone Ready Poker Room
As you can imagine, running purely on JS and being built for speed, the room itself is very scaled down in terms of looks.
Despite looking about as ghetto as humanly possible, the games run rather smoothly, and are very simple and easy to use on your iPhone screen. I turn off as many graphics as I can when I play online poker normally, so this bare-bones design doesn’t really phase me.
Especially for people using 3G (or slower) connections, keeping the game lag-free is always a priority over making things look crispy.
Information
While the site is still very much in its infancy, it would be silly not to at least give as much information as I can. Here’s just about everything you need to know about the site:
- The games run in JavaScript
- All games are 6-max No-Limit Hold’em cash games ranging from 1¢-2¢ and up
- All games are in Euro currency
- The room is supported on just about every up-to-date browser
- The site currently accepts non-us deposits only
- Payment options include: Visa, MasterCard and Moneybookers
- Neteller and other payment options to be added soon
Switch Poker Review
Obviously, the first thing that will jump out is the lack of traffic and game selection. This is to be expected, and isn’t really a worry for me at this time. We’ll see what kind of traffic the real-money rooms can bring in after a few months.
The lack of game selection is definitely a negative, but again it’s expected. It would be asking a lot for a new room to launch with more than just Hold’em out of the gate. While I’d love to see Omaha and Svitten, I won’t hold this against them.
While JavaScript is supported by just about every browser, I don’t have a full knowledge set about the shortcomings of the framework, in terms of security. If any of you readers have some decent knowledge about how secure JS is in this scenario, please drop a few comments as I’m sure we’d all love to know.
While it’s unfortunate the operators aren’t allowing deposits from US customers, it’s to be expected. This is just one more reason to write some more letters in support of online poker.
You have written letters haven’t you?
All in all, the site itself it an exciting step forward in mobile poker. Only time will tell if enough players accept this option as a viable way to play poker, but either way I applaud the work these guys have done.
If you’re going to go check out the site yourself, please sign up following my affiliate link here. If any of you ever turn into real money players, it would be neat to actually get some money from my blog.
Sign up (for free) to try out Switch Poker on your iPhone
Become an affiliate, and shameless plug the site on your own blog!
-Lind
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