It’s been a long time coming but finally Zynga has launched real money poker on Facebook, however at present it’s only available to UK players. Back in April 2013 Zynga launched its real money poker product in the UK, Zynga Plus Poker which sits in the Party network, and is again, only available to UK residents, and pre-launch the talk was surrounding what sort of a difference could Zynga traffic make to the network, the answer was in fact very little.
The real money poker launch came during troubled times at Zynga with profits non existent, offices around the world being closed and a new CEO moving in, while at the same time announcing that it would not be partaking in the regulated US online poker scene. That news came as a shock to many and did point the finger to that maybe Zynga wasn’t ready to do battle with the big real money poker companies, stating that it’s focus was to remain on social gaming, however maybe the launch of the real money Facebook app signifies a turn around on that. The Facebook application still uses Party software and liquidity but is however fully integrated into Facebook meaning that there is no client download. It will be interesting to see how that runs on in the face of such strong competition tied in with dropping numbers of users on Facebook and with so many UK regulated companies offering poker it’s one of the toughest spaces in which to be operating.
