Análisis de la app Group Poker para 9 de septiembre

One iPad or iPhone is the table. Everybody else's phone is their hand. Prop the host device in the middle where everyone can see it, and it shows the board, the pot, every stack and the blind clock, exactly as a real table would. Each player scans the QR code, opens the page in whatever browser they already have, and their two cards are dealt privately to their own phone. Nothing to install on the players' side. No accounts, no sign ups, and no chips to hunt for down the back of the sofa. IT DOES NOT NEED THE INTERNET The host device runs the whole game itself, over your own wifi. A hotspot works. A pub with no signal works. Nothing you play leaves the room, because there is nowhere for it to go. FOUR GAMES No limit hold'em, pot limit Omaha, limit hold'em and short deck. Pick one in the lobby and the app deals it properly: Omaha holds you to exactly two cards from your hand, limit offers you the one legal bet size and caps the street at four, and short deck strips the deck to thirty-six and moves the flush above the full house where it belongs. A TOURNAMENT, OR A NIGHT OF CASH Run a tournament with a blind ladder that climbs on a clock, at whichever speed suits how long you have, with an optional rebuy window for anyone who goes out in the first few levels. Or run a cash game: fixed blinds all night, top ups between hands for anyone who runs short, and the host calls time when it is over. Everybody's net for the night is worked out for you, and it always adds up to nothing. A BIGGER NIGHT: TWO OR THREE TABLES Turn on multi-table and one tournament is dealt across two or three tables, up to thirty players, still with one winner. Any spare screen becomes a table: another iPad or iPhone with the app, or just a telly or a laptop with a browser on it. The host device runs the lot. Tables are kept level for you, so when they drift apart the game says who is moving and where to, and nobody has to work out whose turn it is to get up. A night this size wants proper wifi rather than a hotspot. IT KEEPS SCORE Results are saved on the host device, so the leaderboard remembers who has actually been winning. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. THE FIDDLY BITS ARE HANDLED Side pots, split pots, all-in runouts, dead buttons and the odd shape of a heads-up hand are all worked out by the app rather than argued about by the table. Your phone only ever offers you bets that are legal, so a button you can see is a button that will be taken. Lock your phone or wander off mid hand and it picks up exactly where it was when you come back, and a player can be handed over to a different phone without leaving the table. FROM THE MAKER OF GROUP GAMES Group Poker is built on the same proven system as Group Games, the family games night app: one screen everyone gathers round, every phone joining in seconds from a QR code, and a connection that just holds. If your household already plays Group Games, this is its grown-up sibling, and the two sit side by side on the shelf. This is a game for chips that are worth nothing. There is no real money in it, nothing to win, and nothing to buy.