The Birth Of Mobile Poker - Part II

BM: Why do you think you were the first to market with mobile poker?

CMcC: We were poker players with iPhones and a strong desire to play poker on mobile. We were a small team 100 percent committed to a common aim: design a product for poker players, a game that they would love as much as we do.

Large companies are nearly always slow to change direction. If they have a good thing going they may feel there is little reason to go to the trouble of experimenting with something new. This would lead to a lack of motivation to do anything groundbreaking.

If the motivation to create a mobile poker game did exist for other companies, they may have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t actually possible with the technology of the day. At the time Apple did not allow any gambling related games in the App store. So on first look mobile poker may have appeared out of reach. The possibility of a web-based client may not have occurred. There were not many popular web-based games in existence at the time so it took some imagination to see what was actually possible.

BM: Post-launch the innovations came thick and fast. How did poker for Android devices differ from poker for Apple devices in its development and the difficulties you encountered?

CMcC:The major difference between the Android version and the Apple version is that the Android version is ‘native’, meaning it runs directly on the device, while the iPhone / iPad version runs from within the browser. To play on an Android device you download an application which installs on your phone while on the iPhone you simply visit a web page and the game appears instantly in your browser.

Developing for Android natively offers some advantages. There is better sound support for one. Also, the development tools are more advanced which eases development.

Much more care was needed in respect to screen layout in the Android version. There are only three screen types that need to be accounted for on Apple devices: The iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and iPad (the mini and original sharing the same screen shape). This makes it easy to plan the screen layout. Android is a whole different story. There are hundreds of different screen size, shape and resolution combinations. To cater for this we needed to design a number of main layouts. The best match will be picked which will then stretch and squeeze to fit the screen. Development of this proved tricky.

Updates to the web-based game are much easier to handle. We can, and do quite frequently, make updates multiple times each day to the web-based version which are picked up automatically when the player re-opens the game. This feature came for free on the web-based game but we needed to go to some lengths to make the update process painless in the Android app.

Some development challenges were shared across the platforms, one of which was the bet slider. A lot of work went into making the bet slider bar work well. It was tricky to stop it jumping between small and large bet amounts when a player was deepstacked. The formula behind the bet slider went through multiple revisions over the last two years to get it where it is now.

BM: You were one of the first to market with Bitcoin poker. Explain a little about Bitcoins and how they work and what attracted you to the notion of Bitcoin poker?

CMcC: Like most online/mobile poker players I know, I have a passion for exchanging poker news and comments with other player on forums. One night I happen to read a chat between an Australian and Canadian players who were wondering if they could use their Bitcoin to play poker. Bitcoin? So I did some research on the subject and I decided to take my next challenge; use Bitcoin to play poker.

Bitcoin is a new type of money. Unlike the typical type of money that we are all familiar with, which has its value backed and controlled by governments, Bitcoin has no central controlling entity. Instead, Bitcoin is collectively controlled by the hundreds of thousands of people who use it. This has some simple but powerful ramifications.

Bitcoin allows people to send any amount of money to anyone in the world for free (or very close to free), provided they have a computer and internet connection. There is no intervening body able to suspend or cancel the payment.

This is good news for most people and great news for those who live in countries with a weak, expensive or oppressive banking system.

Like cash and unlike credit card payments, once you receive a Bitcoin payment you can be certain that the funds are yours and cannot be taken away from you. This gives piece of mind to merchants as they no longer have to worry about fraudulent payments.

An international bank transfer takes at best a couple of days to process. Bitcoin payments are complete within a few short hours. This means, in the case of online poker, that players can start playing and winning more quickly and they can access their winnings much sooner.

To be continued Catch up on Part I here.

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