Vancouver-based Jackpot Digital has developed a poker table with virtual cards: PokerPro. These tables can also be programmed to offer things like horse or sports betting to poker players who are waiting for new hands.
Jackpot Digital’s CEO Jake Kalpakian calls the tables “basically one giant iPad,” where games move faster because dealers don’t have to count chips or shuffle cards. His company already has made a deal with Carnival Cruise Line and will soon begin deploying its tables in poker rooms all over the U.S.
In his column in the Miami Herald, Nick Sortal observed: “Good Texas Hold ’em players fold as much as 90 percent of their starting hands, which makes for a lot of down time. Walk into any poker room and you’ll see players fiddling with their phones, snacking, or even reading a book. In any poker room at a site that offers horse racing, you’ll probably see some players studying the daily charts.”
That’s gold waiting to be mined by an electronic poker table.
Kalpakian doesn’t expect his tables to completely edge out actual poker tables, but he does expect them to carve out their own niche.
