This is probably gonna be good, but not OMGHEADASPLODE good. It would be amazing if the fish could login to FB and play real money games, but this wont happen.

i still don't see how you expect 30mil FB likes will translate into more people spending real money to play poker. I think might give a slight image boost to bwin.party image and thats it.

I just dont think the play money players on facebook will even know about this real money partnership that zynga is getting into. I doubt facebook would allow zynga to advertise for their real money games and I highly doubt facebook would allow them to offer real money games directly on the facebook website.

It is a lot different if you can easily deposit through FB (not sure if this will actually happen as poster above eluded to) vs. seeking out a third party site to deposit on.

wait, so uk players cant just log in put money into zyna/party software that's already on facebook when this happens?

they hav to goto completely different page to signup/download software etc if they want to play for real money?


really hope its the former, otherwise i don't think its that big of a deal since they will just continue to play for play money on facebook.

30 million facebook likes? It's more than double that! More likes than facebook's facebook page itself haha. It will help grow the player base and give light of the new developments...Power of advertising.

i still don't see how the casual online play money will suddenly develop a love for online real money poker. Just doesn't make sense.....if you guys wanna risk buying stock in Zynga go right ahead but i think its fools gold to think that somehow Zynga will change the market.

This is very, very commonly debated in the industry right now. To what extent will "social gamers" convert to real money gamers? Some are just as skeptical as you and believe it to be a mirage. After all, it can be shown that Zynga players and RMG players are just very different kinds of consumers.

Others insist that, with a little bit of proper marketing - well, not to mention the employment of their consulting services - substantial profits can be reaped once something like Zynga goes live with RMG.

I think a much more moderate and accurate view is that, you don't really want to place a lot of hope on Zynga becoming this ocean of RMG action overnight, but what you want to do, is look at some of the lessons and examples that can be learned from social gaming like Zynga, and then try to adapt those to your own RMG system in order to enhance things like marketing, loyalty, etc.

I guess that, while different in many respects, it's not too dissimilar a study of how play money gamers (like play money on Stars, for instance) can convert to real money themselves. There are probably a lot of habitual play money gamers on Stars that are perfectly aware there's an RMG alternative, but just don't want to or don't care. I've even heard someone recently say "don't confuse social gaming with free-to-play," or something like that. Apparently, they're worlds apart as well!

As far as advertising goes, I don't see this will be a problem. I get tonnes of betting websites come up as advertisements down the right hand side of my Facebook homepage. I don't think Facebook see gambling advertising as an issue.

No it doesnt, i think allowing a platform for gambling directly through fb is against the TOS, though.

Have you ever done advertising on FB?

Whether Real money zynga is the gravy train many are anticipating will be interesting. I'll laugh if its just full of optimistic 2+2 regs sitting there waiting for the fish to turn up and is the toughest game online.

WOW. zynga real money is the nuts. i wish i could just up and move to the UK this will be a goldmine

I can't speak for the UK, but if this were to happen in the US it would be very huge. Think of all the casual players who have gave up on online poker when Party left. Now, think about the people who gave up on online poker after Stars and FTP left.... You see where this is going? Most of the people who still play in the US are decent at worst and do thing to improve. Not to say they all are, but the majority are people who go out of their way to play poker so naturally they are better players. I know many people who are too scared to play on Merge, Lock, Bovada etc for obvious reasons and now just play on Zynga so they can get their "poker fix" in. These same people would still play for real money given a legit place to play.

1% of all the traffic their play money site would make them about as big as Stars if not bigger. That is HUGE, especially given the monopoly that Stars/FTP have created.

Congrats to U.K. players on this. Does anyone have any idea how many UK players there currently are on Zynga Poker? Any idea on what type of conversion rate they might be able to get to move to real money gaming (1%, 5%, 10%)? Even if the number is relatively small it would seem that the number of casual players on PartyPoker/Zynga would increase by a fairly substantial amount.

As far as application TOS go, this is what Facebook says ;

'Permission from Facebook: You must not promote, or provide content referencing, facilitating, or containing online gambling, online real money games of skill or online lotteries without our written permission.'

From this, I assume it is not out of question with Facebook's consent.

EDIT :

A further look into things and infact we all seem to have overlooked the fact Facebook already has a real-money gambling app in full operation. 'Bingo Friendzy'.

It is currently only accessible to UK members.

Interview from a Facebook representative ;

"Real money gaming is a popular and well-regulated activity in the UK, and we are allowing a partner to offer their games to adult users on the Facebook platform in a safe and controlled manner," she told the BBC.

Facebook intends to use age-gating technology to ensure under-18s and "vulnerable people" are unable to access the app.

The social network typically takes a 30% cut of transactions on its network


Real-money poker through Facebook is very much a real possibility and with the latest movements looks more than likely to happen.

wooo god save our queen f yeahh wooo

Its funny. Everyone on 2+2 wants online poker "back" yet is so pessimistic and negative about it coming back.

Mainly just bitter americans.....

Dunno why people assume that Zynga is going to full of fish donating you their cash. 99.99% of people who play on Zynga for fun will never actually deposit a penny of real money.

How thin was there air you pulled this 99.9% figure from? Was it 32% O2? In the USA there are many people who won't play on any of the sites they can still play on and use Zynga as something to do. Many of these casual players would put money on a real site, if they had a legit one to play on.

Seriously...

Most of my friends who were casual players have no idea what the current state of affairs are in the US. They just know they can't play on Stars/Party/Full Tilt so they gave up and just assume there aren't other options.

On the other hand, everyone has a FB and most people are aware of Zynga (and if they're not, advertising). If this became an option in the US, there's no way "99.99%" of people wouldn't put any money on.

How are you people saying 0% of the players would. They obv like poker. Like everyone said, even if 0.5% or 1% signed up, thats still a massive player pool. Have you ever heard of an upsell? Most convert more than 1%. Heard of free trials? Those normally convert to real money consumers buying products far more than 1%. I don't even understand the stupid comments going on here.

Not saying this will workout the way it is shown to be, just saying if the deal actually goes through and they are allowed to email all their players for signup to a real money site, there is no way they will not get signups.

53st

I think this will be good, and think that if a second poker boom were ever to exist, social network+ gambling= the vehicle.

It's in zynga interest to get conversion ratels high as poss so they will push it strongly offer free 50$ for play money mtt wins things like that so people can have a taste for themselves and hopefully deposit there own money