News

Sunday, 10 October 2010 10:26

Until now, users of iPhones have played their favourite casino games for fun only, but that's all changed as real money poker is live on Apple's hand held devices.

This weekend saw the introduction of a new online browser from switchpoker.com that interfaces with Apple's iPad, as well as the iPhone and the iPod Touch. This has given poker players their first shot at playing for real money while on the move using these devices.

It has been set up as a browser rather than an application to enable users to log in from a number of different devices and not restricting them to those produced by Apple. By logging into switchpoker.com, poker players on the move as well as those at home can now gamble on live ring games.

It has been the subject of some pretty intense development to bring poker games played for real money to a wider audience to enjoy and this is the first time this option has been available for users of iPads and iPhones, according to a statement released by the company.

With poker now being one of the world's biggest and most popular forms of online entertainment, this has come at just the right time. There has for a long time been a real necessity for the industry surrounding online poker to create good quality, working applications that can be played on the new breed of intelligent mobile devices that are fast becoming more like miniature high spec computers. Over the past few months we have seen several apps having been created for mobile gambling, but this is the first of its kind to be available to a wide range of mobile devices that is not an application.

What has been achieved by SwitchPoker is the complete bypassing of the application process and the creation of a full blown website that works across many different device platforms and is not tied to any one company. The most noteworthy of these is Apple whose mobile devices have come under fire recently for only allowing dedicated apps to work on them. SwitchPoker is accessible from all the major Apple devices as well as any other which, according to SwitchPoker founder, Conor McCarthy, will open the online door to poker players in their millions all over the world.

With laws governing the use of mobile devices for online gambling murky at best in many countries and fully accepted by others, this is a huge advancement for the industry. Even in the United States, where online gambling is still unregulated, poker players can access the website and pay for their bets no differently to the way they do it now.