According to an e-mail sent to Black Card members, Full Tilt Poker is searching for Beta testers for Rush Poker Mobile. The application, which is available for Android-powered phones, features both real money and play money Rush Poker tables. Supported phones include the Acer Liquid Stream S110, HTC Desire, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Evo 4G, HTC Google Nexus One, HTC Desire HD, Motorola Droid 2, Motorola Droid Pro / Droid 2 World Edition, Motorola Droid X, and the T-Mobile G2.
On TwoPlusTwo, posters were buzzing about the prospects of playing real money online poker on their cell phones. One player with a background in the mobile phone industry cautioned that signal strength would play a large part in the success or failure of Rush Poker Mobile: “I think going to Rush first is a ballsy move – methinks you’ll need a strong signal to make this work. Even if it sucks in the short-term, bandwidth will improve and phones will improve to the point where mobile will not perform differently from the PC-based Full Tilt Poker.”
Among those test-driving Rush Poker Mobile was Leggo Poker instructor Brian “bw07507” Wilber, who used his HTC Incredible running Droid 2.2 software to play. Wilber was asked to visit a web page to log in; then, the Rush Poker Mobile application launched. No app was stored on his phone and he was only able to open one Rush Poker table at a time.
Despite the limitations, a wealth of high-stakes Rush Poker options were available in the mobile platform and Wilber told Poker News Daily, “Sometimes you have to click the buttons a couple of times to get them to work, but I assume that is just the lag. The ‘Fold’ and ‘Call’ buttons do what they say and the ‘Raise’ to button brings up another prompt with a slider and ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons where you can adjust the bet size and then click ‘Bet.’”
On the program’s performance, Wilber critiqued, “It seemed a little clumsy and often I couldn’t figure out what the bet size was because of the lag. However, it is easy to see everything you would want to know like players’ names, stack sizes, your cards, and the community cards.” Posters on TwoPlusTwo echoed Wilber’s overall enthusiasm for mobile gaming, with “KingKongGrinder” remarking, “Just played this morning on my Droid 2. I love it! FTP always comes out with something to keep me playing there.”
Absent from the testing process was Rush Poker Mobile for the iPhone. With Apple overseeing its App Store closely, the company may not allow real money poker games in the United States until legislation legalizing and regulating the industry is approved. A source close to Full Tilt Poker told Poker News Daily on Tuesday, “I don’t think we’ll see it available for the iPhone any time soon, certainly not this year.” Rush Poker Mobile is written in Flash, which Apple’s iPhone does not support.
Full Tilt plans to make Rush Poker Mobile available to anyone with a compatible phone, including residents of the United States. However, the same Full Tilt Poker source noted that users in France might not be able to take advantage of the site’s latest innovation.
Rush Poker rolled out in January on Full Tilt, the world’s second largest online poker site. Once a player’s action in a Rush Poker hand ends, they are whisked away to a new table with a new set of opponents where a new hand starts. Rush Poker allows for upwards of 300 hands per hour and assures minimum downtime at the tables.
Beta testing for Rush Poker Mobile is only open to Black Card members right now. Depending upon how many Black Card members test-drive it and their overall feedback, Full Tilt may open it up to other players. Our source at Full Tilt revealed, “If all goes well, we might be in open Beta within a month or so.”