Igor Terebinov: "How poker is evolving to match customer requests"

Development and technologies are changing the world today, changing the lives of all people. First of all, it refers to the speed of life in which we live—mobile communication and social media technologies make the exchange of information instant, and a huge number of new services facilitate people's lives in everyday spheres, reducing the time spent on getting the desired result to a minimum.

The poker industry is no exception. In the era of rapid acceleration of life processes in the world, the modern user transfers the mental image of their daily life to the sphere of entertainment. It is not without reason that the various categories and subcategories of gambling, which are characterized by fast results, have recently experienced an extraordinary boom, and we can witness how live betting, micro-betting, instant games, and slots are growing at a great pace year after year.

These games shorten the distance from the action taken by the user to the game result obtained, allowing them to be done continuously. As the gaming industry, following global trends, also accelerates its lifestyle, poker has nothing to do but transform itself to meet the expectations and demands of its users.

Poker, in the traditional view, is a game that combines luck and strategy. It has many variations and is popular as a recreational game as well as a competitive sport with major international tournaments and championships. But, whatever form a particular poker game takes, classic poker is certainly a long game, with a considerable distance of game session. This characteristic is true for both offline and online poker. Whether the user sits at a real table with real chips or plays in an online poker room, it almost always means a long game. More accurately it would mean, as mentioned above, poker keeps up with the general trends of the industry and goes along with the times.

First of all, we could see all new varieties of fast games appearing in online poker—turbo tournaments with short stacks and fast level rises, heads-up games against selected opponents, all-in or fold games and others. In such games, users have an opportunity to join the game, knowing in advance that they will get the result of such a game very quickly. This is exactly in line with the trend of accelerating, getting a faster result, reducing the time of a poker game session, and bringing it to a value that is less different in duration from betting and casino product verticals.

Secondly, we can also see that many poker rooms are trying to increase the level of fun in the user's time during the game. After all, the creation of new game varieties is limited, so operators have started to introduce game features into current game formats—when users can communicate with each other in in-game chats, send smiley faces and gifts, or participate in in-game drawings, which can increase the level of the game prize or even give an opportunity to get the jackpot.

In my opinion, the future of poker's transformation to meet the needs of users will be in the field of creating additional, one could say side, fun in the process of the game. Micro-lotteries, raffles, the possibility of betting on the result of a hand—and other mechanics that allow you to perform game actions without leaving the online table, will undoubtedly evolve in the near future.

Also, there is confidence that the mechanics that will expand the scope of game interaction between players will also be developed. Players spend most of their gaming session time in contact with each other and there's no doubt that with further developments in technology, operators will introduce more and more ways to immerse players in third-party product branches during the games.

This way, users will be able to get the desired level of fun while staying within their one game, without transferring interest to other product verticals. Poker rooms will compete with each other not only in terms of guarantee sizes and loyalty programs, but also with such features of their poker software. Today, it is no longer enough to operate only with these components in building a successful configuration of interaction with players.

More and more comes the understanding that the user forms their feeling and perception from contact with the platform not only from the parts of the game associated with numbers. The impression is formed in a cumulative way, which is formed from all elements of the gameplay and the smallest detail in this process has its own weight. The profile of the recreational poker player is changing, and so is their demand in getting satisfaction from the game and the desired fun. And to meet these demands poker operators will also change.

Undoubtedly, the classic forms of our favorite game will remain and have their place. First of all, of course, we are talking about offline—poker clubs demonstrating their development in many countries, and new records in the size of guarantees and the number of participantsare set at the top world poker series every coming year. But the same, in turn, can be said about the big tournaments and tournament series of the world's poker rooms, where they set their own records in terms of the number of prizes and participants.

So, the fans of serious tournaments, deep stacks and large-scale competitions will be able to find a suitable format of play both online and offline. But there is no doubt that the overall profile of the game is changing.

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