Poker is a discipline that has been known for decades as a game requiring many skills but where chance and luck also have their place. And although it was known in its early days exclusively as a casino game, the general public is now beginning to see it as a mental sport, like chess, where the player’s abilities take center stage. However, on the Internet, poker has not yet finished developing and it still attracts more and more new players. But as it is essential to know how to adapt quickly in this digital age, a new possibility for poker has just emerged: the metaverse.
In the whole evolution of digital poker, it may not be the most important to franchise and it could completely revolutionize the world of cards. The metaverse is a virtual world in which users create an avatar with which they can wander around the platform and interact with other visitors. The ultimate goal is to create an alternate reality in which human beings could go about their favorite activities, including those related to hobbies and social networks, without needing to leave the comfort of their homes.
And among all these potential activities, there is of course that of playing poker. Decentraland is precisely one of these most popular metaverses, managed by Decentral Games, and a virtual casino has just opened its doors there where players can try out all the iconic games of such an establishment. And of course, the most visited tables in this virtual casino are those of poker, with daily sessions where you can count up to 1000 visitors playing at the same time. According to casino creator Miles Anthony, more than 30% of people online every day just to play poker.
Consequently, it is indeed the poker players who influence the first breath in this still embryonic world and who are the pioneers of its evolution. This amounts to saying that card games are currently the main agitator of the metaverse, both through the ultra-popular variant of Texas Hold’em and with other alternative versions of poker. Decentraland announced that, only 3 months after its opening, the virtual casino had already generated a turnover of 7.5 million dollars (real). These figures bode very well for the rest of the project.
But why are poker players supplied by this new tool? The first reason is that the metaverse provides complete security to players’ personal data, because it uses new blockchain technologies. Blockchain is now renowned for its decentralized and synchronous structure, and for its unique nodes without intermediaries that allow any digital transaction in a completely secure manner. And the second reason is that the specific characteristics of the metaverse, recreating as faithfully as possible a virtual reality, allow a new gaming experience to the amateur of poker because allowing a feeling of proximity absent from more traditional online sites. We are closer here to an experience that we could have in a physical casino, but without having to leave home.
Another main attraction of the metaverse are cryptocurrencies, because they are the ones that act as currencies in the metaverse. Moreover, if you want to play poker on one of these platforms, you will have to be invited or else acquire a package of tokens used here (the famous NFTs). These tokens are elements containing unique information and which belong to us once acquired. Therefore, they can either be used by the player’s avatar in the metaverse or sold later. These are often revalued, and the functioning of the market is entirely free from the normal financial system.
On the poker tables, we bet with these cryptocurrencies and we win pots filled with these virtual devices. They are sometimes high-value currencies, and in any case have gained popularity in recent years as an investment possibility. Additionally, the rewards for poker players in the metaverse are constant and already nicely lucrative. It will therefore not be necessary to wait long before seeing the best French poker players rub shoulders with these digital universes.
In this idyllic landscape is added the possibility for communities and poker platforms to take advantage of the expansion of Decentraland to buy land there in order to transfer part of their activity there. Companies are already thinking about it, so much so that they are preparing the ground by evaluating their model and retaining new players while waiting for this new virtual world to be further developed (because there is still a long way to go).
For online sites like ours, which already provided for a huge community and poker tournaments bringing together several thousand players, the metaverse should not be seen as a formidable new adversary, but rather as an opportunity to have poker evaluated towards a unique model. You can check the calendar of our next events to come and play with us, before trying your luck in the metaverse.
