Best Social Gambling Apps 2012
Saturday, 1 December 2012
These days, it seems, everything has to be about “social integration” and gambling is no exception. It no longer involves standing around in a bricks n’ mortar bookies in quiet desperation, it’s all about collecting “power-ups” and chatting to your “friends”. Bluff takes a look at the best social gaming apps on the market and ponders what on earth drives people to pay real money for play chips.
Zynga
News that Facebook’s play money poker app Zynga Poker recently partnered with bwin.party to offer real money poker and casino games for the UK market has sent us delirious with anticipation at Bluff Towers. This could be huge. It could herald a new poker explosion. Zynga Poker is the most “liked” Facebook page of all time and over 30m players are currently signed up for Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker. Should Zynga continue to develop its real-money games in more jurisdictions around the world (which is presumably the plan) we would only need a tiny percentage of conversions to real money from its gargantuan base of players to usher in a fish-feeding frenzy the like of which poker has never known.
To what extent these “social gamers” will become real-money players is open to speculation, but let us not forget that, as mad as it may seem, many Zynga players already use real money to buy play chips, and smart people have made thousands through the buying and selling of Zynga chips. Why they do it, we don’t know, but they do. Poker boom, anyone?
Pick-live is an innovative take on the popular fantasy football model that neatly combines in-play betting and social networking. Unlike other fantasy football leagues, in which the player commits himself to a season-long haul, Picklive allows you to play in real-time while watching a single match on TV. You know how it is with regular fantasy football – you pick a squad that performs awfully on the first game of the season (maybe, for reasons known only to yourself, you picked Gervinho) and your interest starts to wane. But with Pick-live you pick five players in a single match and get points for everything they do. Adds a fun new dynamic to Super Sunday.
Big Fish CasinoBig Fish Casino is a play-for-fun social casino available on all mobile platforms, with all the casino favourites, such as slots, blackjack, hold’em, video poker, roulette. It allows you to create a profile, upload pictures, chat with your friends in private or public games, win prizes and power-ups and take part in a unique social slots mini-game called “Slot Races,” where individual slot players race each other in high-speed tournaments. There’s also a global leader board, although we imagine that being the luckiest person on the planet in a play-money environment must be something of a poisoned chalice.
Bingo Friendzy / Slots FriendzyIn August, Bingo Friendzy became the first Facebook app to offer real-money games and was followed shortly after by Slots Friendzy, both created by Gamessys, the company behind the popular Jackpotjoy bingo sites. Now, we confess to having a secret fondness for bingo, as evidenced by an impressive pair of bingo wings, and it’s the perfect game for the social media environment, with housewives, and, increasingly, househusbands, shooting the breeze before it’s eyes down for a full house. Slots Friendzy offers a wide array of slots whizzing and humming and burbling their way into your living room. Stakes start at a few pennies, with the (fat) chance of winning up to 20,000 times your stake. Must be nice…
2Bet22Bet2 is Facebook’s play-money sports wagering app, which combines deep social integration with the opportunity to bet for fun on real sporting events. Before you scoff, remember that a lot of Americans live in jurisdictions where legal sportsbetting is not permitted, so this is as close as many of the poor bleeders get. Betting odds are formulated in a similar way to a Vegas sports book, and are updated continuously. All major sports are covered, including 25 different European football leagues. By showing players their friends’ bets and allowing them to “taunt” or “respect” these bets, as well as the through the “Challenge a Friend” function, 2Bet2 achieves a high level of social interaction and competition.
Fresh Deck PokerFresh Deck Poker is a cross-platform, play-for-fun social poker app, available on mobile and Facebook, with quirky, full-customisable avatars and “massive” multi-table tournaments. Fresh Deck Poker is being developed to offer real-money games one day, but we may have to wait until the regulation of poker in the US for that to happen. Until then, as with a lot of Facebook games, players level up as they go, unlocking special avatar items, new tables and “unique challenges”. And yes, they do go all-in every hand.