With only two online poker rooms currently up and running in the state of Nevada, it should come as little surprise that both are based in the state's gaming center of Las Vegas.
That is set to change early next year, however, when the Siena Hotel Spa in that biggest little city in the world, Reno, launches its own Nevada-facing real money online poker room. Siena has paired up with gaming company Z4 Poker to offer online poker games to Silver State residents; Z4 is working on developing the platform for Siena, which will call its poker site HD Poker.
Site will initially launch in play money mode
With HD Poker's start date expected to be sometime in the first quarter of 2014, the company said that it first intends to launch the site in play money mode, with a real money version to follow.
"We’re extremely excited for the opportunity to compete in this new market. Our belief is that players will prefer excellent software and gameplay to expensive ad campaigns," said Z4's CTO Eric Colvin via a press release.
"The technology in the online poker industry has hardly moved in over a decade, especially relative to the video game industry. While all the buzz is around the future convergence of social and real money iGaming, we are living it today. We plan on launching something completely innovative that hopefully will be greeted with a sigh of relief by the community – something that will be disruptive to the existing technology. Open beta is just around the corner," Colvin continued.
Games will be available across a wide variety of platforms
One feature that will distinguish HD Poker from the two real money poker sites currently running Nevada - Ultimate Poker, which launched in April of this year, and WSOP.com, which went live just last month - is that from the get-go, games will be accessible across a wide variety of platforms.
According to Z4's press release, HD Poker will be available for Mac, Android devices, Windows, iOS (iPhones and iPads), as well as on Facebook. This cornucopia of options bests its competitors - Ultimate Poker is only available for Windows at the present time, and WSOP.com is accessible for Windows users and also offers real money poker games for Mac users, however currently has no mobile compatibility.
For now only online poker on tap for the Silver StateNevada became the first state in the U.S. to regulate some form of online betting when it passed legislation regulating online poker back in 2011, an act that was followed up by Delaware and New Jersey.
Currently Nevadans are only able to access online poker, as state law explicitly prohibits the placing of other forms of Internet-based wagers. In Delaware, where real money betting sites are set to go live tomorrow, a comprehensive array of betting options will be on offer, and the same will be true in New Jersey when the market there officially commences on November 26 after the completion of a five day "soft launch" period that will start on November 21.
Despite rumors that have circulated for months suggesting that Nevada lawmakers might introduce legislation that would permit a broader selection of online betting options in order for the state to compete with the markets in New Jersey and Delaware, last week the head of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, A.G. Burnett, said that for the time being Nevada will continue to only offer real money online poker to residents and visitors who are located within the state's borders when logging onto the sites.
