Can New Casinos Strike a Balance between Nostalgia and Innovation for Poker?

Poker is a game that was completely reborn in the internet era. In fact, it would be hard to think of many games that have boomed in popularity as much as Texas Hold’em did in the early 2000s. The game was only played by a select few in the 1990s, and this was underlined by the small playing figures at the World Series of Poker. When Mansour Matloubi won in 1990 there were 194 players, but in 2006 when Jamie Gold prevailed, there were 8,773. Internet sites made poker more accessible and reinvented the way the game was played. With poker still extremely popular, will it be able to offer players the same nostalgic game they know and love while adapting to new technologies, such as virtual reality?

Nostalgia meets VR

New casinos, which still have to prove their mettle with experienced players, often go for a mix of nostalgia and innovation to attract poker players. At Bluefox Casino, for instance, the Triple Pocket Hold’em Poker Gold Series game harks back to the golden age of poker when it was all about sitting around a table and trying to get a read on opponents. But Double Bonus Poker at the same site is a more modern offering for online players that encompasses the fast-paced nature of digital play. In the future, new innovations such as VR could be combined with nostalgic elements to create unique poker experiences. The technology is expected to blow up in the next few years, with the projected revenue in 2022 being $192.7 billion. If poker breaks out onto the platform, it could play a major part in this emphatic rise.

Online poker brought about a different way of playing the game. Instead of relying on psychology and being able to read opponents, players had to refine their mathematical approach to the game. This involved more focus on bet-sizing when putting in a bluff. Players like Daniel Negreanu flourish in live poker due to their exceptional ability to work out what someone is holding because of their tells. Online, bold players like Tom Dwan have prevailed due to their understanding of out betting opponents and working out their odds of winning a hand.

New technology may bring back classic poker

VR has the potential to bridge the gap between the techniques that have become prevalent in online poker and live poker. Some poker sites in the past have allowed players to create an avatar and sit around a virtual table with others. VR could take this one step further and actually allow players to sit around a virtual table with a first-person perspective. If Microgaming’s VR Roulette is a game that other developers will strive to recreate, players will be able to grab chips and pick up their cards in VR poker. This would mean that psychological cues of live poker could be used in an online setting. The advantages of playing online, such as the ease of finding a game, would also still be present.

This happy medium between online and live poker could be achieved with VR, and it may mark the next stage of the evolution of the game. It may even be enough to trigger another poker boom similar to what was seen in the mid-2000s. With this new technology, we may, ironically, see poker return to its roots, with tells and player psychology playing the same vital role online as they do in classic live poker.