Zynga Live Poker – the best iPhone poker app?

If you’re one of the millions of players who have jumped on the online poker bandwagon, you may have searched for a way of playing real-money online Texas holdem on your iPhone. Probably without finding any.
Because of Apple’s resistance towards opening the iPhone platform for gambling, there are no real-money poker games available for the iPhone today.
Meanwhile, Apple is very well aware of the value of having a good poker app for the iPhone. Their own “Texas Hold’em” poker game is proof of this.
Even if “Texas Hold’em” is a neat game which makes impressive use of the unique iPhone interface, it’s also rather limited. It doesn’t look much like real poker, although you can actually play against a few friends over a WiFi network.
Instead, if you’re looking to play poker online against thousands of players around the world, you should take a look at Zynga’s “Live Poker”.
And Zynga has done a great job in adapting the experience from real poker to the iPhone format. The interface looks a lot like real online poker. If you have played online poker before, you won’t have any problems with the Live Poker interface.
A clock tells you when it’s your time to act. You can chat with the other players at the table and even buy them a drink to celebrate your big wins.
This iPhone game integrates with Zynga’s enormously popular poker game on Facebook. On Facebook, Zynga Live Poker often has more than two million simultaneous players, an astounding figure that beats the crap out of even the biggest online poker sites.
As stated above, you cannot play for real money. At least it’s not supported by the application. But at least with Live Poker you play with great entertainment value in an environment that feels a lot like genuine online poker.
As usual when you play poker without real money, or some other kind of real value, there’s no real challenge in Zynga’s Live Poker. You receive a decent amount of chips and it will be refilled along the way.
Nevertheless it’s in the nature of the play money game – if you have nothing to lose, you won’t play good poker.
This is fine if you’re just looking for some entertainment, as long as you don’t start believing you’ll do well in real poker just because you make millions in Live Poker.
There are really no new or revolutionizing features in Zynga’s game, but the game we’re playing is the popular Texas holdem that so many players around the world fancy so much.
All in all, Zynga Live Poker is definitely one of the best ways of enjoying poker on the iPhone, while waiting for a poker game with real money to pop up. Which might very well never happen.
To play Zynga Live Poker your iPhone must be upgraded to iPhone 2.0. The game is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch.