Startup creates first real money iPhone/iPad poker site | Hacker News Reader

Startup creates first real money iPhone/iPad poker site

blog.switchpoker.com

10 pointsflibble12 comments

For those of you own an iPhone or iPad and play online poker, you'll know that there is unfortunately where to play poker (for real money) using it.

I've been reading HN for over 2 years and seeing the number of great web apps that have been created by 1 - 4 person startups here gave me the push I needed to get a small team together and do something about it. Earlier this year we decided to create the first real money poker site for iPhone and iPad users.

The user interface currently falls short of the standard set by some of the HNers here, but I'm working to improve it. Please give me your feedback. The real money tables won't be launched for another two weeks, so there's still lots of time for improvement.

I've always been curious about the legalities of running an online real-money poker site. I see you're based in Costa Rica, where (presumably) this service is legal - how does the illegality of this in the US play into your business plan?

I've been joking about this with my roommate (hardcore poker player i.e. 4 or 5 hrs a day), the day poker comes out for the iPhone he is done. I'm surprised it took this long, the big sites dropped the ball.

Why would a hardcore player want to play on his phone? Away from poker tracker, multi-tabling, etc? Seems risky, but might attract enough fish to be worthwhile.

Is this intended for the hardcore player? Seems like those guys would have such a customized/assisted setup on their primary machines that they would have no incentive or desire to play on something so restricted as an iPad.

Not my product, but I'd imagine this is aimed at more casual players - for example, college students. People who would have no problems playing a one-hour session sitting in a Starbucks while waiting for something else, as opposed to the people who play multi-hour sessions on multiple tables professionally. The poker equivalent of scratch-and-win lottery players, as compared to players of casino games.

I completely agree. I was specifically asking krschultz why he thinks his hardcore poker-playing roommate would be interested.

If they can get a app in the App Store, Apple's walled garden would be perfect at keeping bots out.

I doubt that; jailbreaking is relatively trivial and that gets you your bot software on the phone. If I'm playing online poker with bots and approaching this as a money making venture, step two is buy 10 iPhones off Craigslist.

The portability of the iPhone means I can sit around different coffee shops and use their wifi for an afternoon, or better yet, pay someone else in coffee and doughnuts to watch my backpack for the afternoon.

But what if Apple doesn't allow it? How many people would jailbreak their phone to play poker?

The game is playable through Mobile Safari, it isn't an App Store App.

To play a user only needs to browse to the website. There is no need to download an App.

This is also illegal!

Why would it be illegal where you are?

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