Who will be the first poker operator with an iPad poker client?
I’ve used my iPad for a few weeks now. I’ve noticed a few specific areas where it is used more than others. The main things I use my iPad for are:

Playing games: the iPad is the perfect companion when you want to play games. Especially multiplayer games work so well!
Surfing the web:
Watching movies: It is the ultimate device to watch movies in bed :)
Work related matters: doing presentations, writing documents, doing mindmaps and even making simple design mockups.

I’ve almost …

Markus Lind at Inside iGaming wrote an interesting blog post, Fight for fifth, in which he discusses the poker networks and who will take the fifth place after PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, PartyPoker and the iPoker network.
It is true that PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have an advantage accepting american players, but I believe they would still be in the top even if the didn’t. The main reasons:

They are not a network, insted they run their own operation and focus on their poker product
They make massive advertising on tv and in …

Today most gaming portals offer bingo, casino, games, poker and a sportsbook. Is this the best way? Look at Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and PartyGaming who promote brands for one kind of game.
For instance players go to PokerStars to play poker, but when you go to for instance bwin, Unibet, Ladbrokes and many more gaming portals it is difficult to know what the player want to play.
Almost all gaming portals offering many different games have a start page where they show their different offerings where the player have to make a choice …

Is instant poker as good as the download versions? Not at the moment!
If you compare Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars mac client with an instant version from any of the competitors then you’ll see that Full Tilt and PokerStars is way ahead. It is faster to load, faster to start tables and have more features.
An instant version works well when you are using a computer on which you aren’t allowed to install software.
Many poker rooms today have both a download version and an instant version of their poker client.
You can …

It is important to help your players complete their goals. In the image above you see how 4 different poker sites, Partypoker, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Unibet (Microgaming), and their implementation of the Buy-in dialogue.
When a poker player sits down he needs to bring money to the table. How much he can bring in depends on his bankroll and the table limits.
In all the examples above you see that they have done a couple of different implementations to the same functionality.
You should base your design on stats!
You could …

Image 1. When will we see iPhone poker apps?
When will we see iPhone Apps from the big poker sites?
I know that you can’t play for money on iPhone Apps, but all major poker sites also have a “for fun” site (usually the same url as the normal site but “.net” insted). So why not make an iPhone App for your “for fun” site?
This would be good move for a number of reasons:

You will get knowledge on building iPhone Apps.
You will be able to attract players to play on your site …

Image 1. PartyPoker’s start page.
Earlier this month I wrote a blog post “PartyPoker could make it easier for mac players!“. Today when I went to PartyPoker’s start page they’ve removed the movie banner and replaced it with a big button saying “Instant Play”.
I think this is a good change to the start page and I am know that it will be seen in the logs that many players click on the button to start playing the instant poker client.
Good job PartyPoker!
/Staffan

Image 1. PartyPoker instant sign up form.
One of the most important things for gaming operators is to make sure all the basic functionality works 100%!
Today I tried to sign up at PartyPoker using their instant poker client and everything worked fine until I got to the second step (in the first step it was a real hazzle to find a username not already taken).
But I couldn’t complete the second step. As you can see in the image above I got error messages saying “Please select your country from the list” …

PartyPoker can make it a lot easier for players using data on which operating system the players use.

Image 1. PartyPoker’s start page.
I am using a Mac and went to partypoker.com to play some poker, on the start page there is a huge button saying ”Download Now”. I clicked on the button expecting to download the poker client.

PartyPoker’s Instant Play page.
But it didn’t start to download the poker client, insted I was transferred to a page for PartyPoker’s Instant Play (a poker client you run in your browser). That would have …

Today many of the largest poker networks give mac users the possibility to play poker in their network.
According to Pokerscout.com the largest poker networks are;

PokerStars
Full Tilt Poker
iPoker Network
PartyPoker
Cereus Network
Everest Poker
Microgaming
Ongame Network
IPN
CakePoker Network

In all but 3 ( iPoker, Everest Poker and CakePoker Networks) a mac user can play poker, either with an instant or a download version of the poker client.
It is great to see that mac users can play poker as well. The number of mac users increase so it is a good business decision to offer a version for …