Mobile Poker Trainer: History

I had been toying with the idea of a mobile, offline multi-player poker game for about a year before the project finally got greenlighted by Ongame e-solutions (the company that develops the software for the PokerRoom site). Since both my original web client and server were written in Java, I could recycle a lot of the code. And to speed up the development I cut and pasted some of the graphics I had designed for the initial release, with the overhead view and weird character designs. They made better use of the available screen space, which is in very short supply on some phones, as you can see on the Technical Stuff page.

Since mobile Java is capable of making HTTP connections, provided the phone is WAP-enabled, it was decided that we should include some element of competition into the game, tied to an online highscore list. But we weren't sure what to use as a measure of success. Stack size would be logical, but not much fun after a while, since we'd basically just reward patience. The maximum amount is always $1000, after you have cleaned out a full table of computerized opponents. I suggested best hands, which is similar to what is used on the Pokah! poker community site. Although this makes the competition more of a lottery, even beginners have a chance to win and, more importantly, there is no way to cheat even if it would turn out that the AI has some weakness that can be exploited.

Nowadays this Poker Trainer application has been retired, and replaced by a much more advanced mobile game that lets you play online against other people. At PokerRoom it is only available to real-money customers, however.