THE BEST LEGAL US MOBILE POKER SITES
Even though North American is the birth place of modern poker, its citizens have had very little to cheer about over the past few years. Successive US governments have adopted a very restrictive stance when it comes to any form of online gambling. Poker rooms were initially powerless because both Apple and Google banned all types of sports betting, casino and poker games from their app markets. Thankfully the tide has begun to change with the arrival of browser based poker sites that can be played in any country or on any type of smartphone or tablet computer. Finally US citizen can enjoy playing real money Texas Hold'em and Sit & Go tournaments on their iPhone 5S, Nokia Lumia, BlackBerry Z10 or Samsung Galaxy Note.
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NITROGEN USA BITCOIN POKER APPNitrogen Sports now offer an excellent browser based bitcoin poker app that is compatible with any Windows Phone device. Take a seat at the cash tables (both Texas Hold'em or Omaha) or try your lucky with any of their Sit & Go, freerolls or scheduled tournaments. US players can easily buy bitcoin at Coinbase.
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mBIT BITCOIN-ONLY POKER ROOMmBIT HAVE STOPPED OFFERING ONLINE POKER
Bitcoin poker sites are becoming increasingly popular because of the lower transactions frees, instant withdrawals and anonymous games in the USA. mBit offers U.S. players the ability to play ring games, MTT's and Sit & Go tournaments on any Nokia or Microsoft Lumia smartphone. |
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CARBON POKER APP - INSTANT PLAY
PLAYERS AT CARBON POKER ARE EXPERIENCING LONG DELAYS WITHDRAWING THEIR FUNDS SO WE HAVE SUSPENDED THIS ROOM.
Carbon Poker are part of the US facing Merge Poker Network Their new mobile poker client offers United States players the chance to enjoy real-money Texas Hold'em cash games, Sit & Go tournaments and fast fold speed poker on their tablets and smartphones. You don't need to download or install any software. |
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PLAYING REAL MONEY WINDOWS POKER IN THE USA
The ongoing saga of the regulation of online poker in the US has many confused over whether it’s possible to play the game in the country at all. Whilst we aren’t going to go into all the fine details in this article, we will run through some basics in which you need to understand in order to play poker via your Windows Phone mobile device in the United States of America.
Online poker is legal….sort of!
Many people are confused about whether they can legally play real-money poker apps in the US, and rightly so! The reality is a lot of states fall under a grey area where there aren’t any laws to say either way.
The flip side of this is that there are states that have both banned and regulated online poker. What you must understand is that the game of poker itself is widely regarded as being legal to play in the USA, but the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) have banned – or at least made it very difficult- for poker rooms to process any payments via a US banking institutions.
The outlook for online and mobile poker is actually pretty positive. There are a number of states that are applying for licenses to operate mobile gambling rooms to go along with those that have already been approved. Unfortunately this is a long drawn out process and whilst 2025 will likely yield at least a handful of fully licensed states, it might not be for a few more years until we see it shift back to the billion dollar industry it once was.
Where can I play mobile poker cash games on my Nokia Lumia?
Carbon Poker is the only legal poker sites that is welcoming US based players to play Texas Hold'em on Microsoft Windows Phone devices. Granted this isn’t ideal for Windows users, but we are pretty confident that this will change and develop over the coming months.
That being said, if it’s only going to be one choice of poker room to play on, Carbon wouldn’t actually be too far from our top pick. Since the withdrawal of both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker from the US market, there has been a massive void created that has yet to be filled. Whether Carbon Poker can be that poker room we don’t know, but they are definitely one of, if not the best poker room for Windows Mobile players.
Instant Poker games can be played legally anywhere in the US
With the laws on playing poker in the United States of America being a little out of date, the question that may arise is how the mobile market will be policed. As you know already, some states allow you to play poker within their state borders, whilst others strictly prohibit it. Online poker players in the US that play at off shore poker sites are able to play regardless of which state they are based in. Before gambling companies can be legally certified in the USA, law makers and poker rooms needed to first find a way to limit their apps to certain parts of the country.
For those of you that don’t know what geo-location is, basically it works like GPS which sends a signal to a satellite service to mark your exact whereabouts. If you’ve ever used your Windows Phone, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or any mobile device for that matter, then you will probably have come across apps where you are asked allow geo-location before the application will activate on your phone. Google maps, Facebook, Twitter and many other sites use this sort of feature to determine the location of the user.
Mobile poker will essentially use this exact feature to make sure legal US players are within a licensed state. You will basically have to open the mobile poker site and before you can access it the geo-location service will determine where you are and if you are eligible to play. If it can’t determine your location or you are in a state which isn’t regulated, then the poker room will not load.
There is, however, a flip side to geo-location! HTML5 is one of the latest innovations in how we not only browse the internet, but also how designers can go about making new mobile sites without limitations. It essentially gives more flexibility to designers to make browser based apps that run smoother than the majority of standalone apps, without losing anything in terms of design or functionality.
This means that a poker room would essentially be able to design a HTML5 based site which looks just like a native poker apps you downloaded from an app marketplace. Great, I hear you cry, but what has that got to do with the price of cheese? Well, one thing that HTML5 does not require is geo-location or geo-targeting. It’s often used with mobile browsers to determine if a page is being viewed on a mobile device or not, but does not have to clear the location of that user before functioning.
It all results in a loophole that U.S. based poker players can use in a way to play poker in a state that is not fully licensed. Note that we state fully licensed and not illegal! Where a state has no bias one way or another, it’s UNLIKELY any single player will get prosecuted for playing mobile poker on their Windows Phone 8 device. In face, no individual player has every been prosecuted in the U.S.A.
Just for the record, we aren’t condoning playing Windows mobile poker rooms in illegal states, just merely pointing out that there are loopholes for poker rooms to still design highly desirable mobile poker rooms and not have to use the geo-location services.
Many people are confused about whether they can legally play real-money poker apps in the US, and rightly so! The reality is a lot of states fall under a grey area where there aren’t any laws to say either way.
The flip side of this is that there are states that have both banned and regulated online poker. What you must understand is that the game of poker itself is widely regarded as being legal to play in the USA, but the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) have banned – or at least made it very difficult- for poker rooms to process any payments via a US banking institutions.
The outlook for online and mobile poker is actually pretty positive. There are a number of states that are applying for licenses to operate mobile gambling rooms to go along with those that have already been approved. Unfortunately this is a long drawn out process and whilst 2025 will likely yield at least a handful of fully licensed states, it might not be for a few more years until we see it shift back to the billion dollar industry it once was.
Where can I play mobile poker cash games on my Nokia Lumia?
Carbon Poker is the only legal poker sites that is welcoming US based players to play Texas Hold'em on Microsoft Windows Phone devices. Granted this isn’t ideal for Windows users, but we are pretty confident that this will change and develop over the coming months.
That being said, if it’s only going to be one choice of poker room to play on, Carbon wouldn’t actually be too far from our top pick. Since the withdrawal of both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker from the US market, there has been a massive void created that has yet to be filled. Whether Carbon Poker can be that poker room we don’t know, but they are definitely one of, if not the best poker room for Windows Mobile players.
Instant Poker games can be played legally anywhere in the US
With the laws on playing poker in the United States of America being a little out of date, the question that may arise is how the mobile market will be policed. As you know already, some states allow you to play poker within their state borders, whilst others strictly prohibit it. Online poker players in the US that play at off shore poker sites are able to play regardless of which state they are based in. Before gambling companies can be legally certified in the USA, law makers and poker rooms needed to first find a way to limit their apps to certain parts of the country.
For those of you that don’t know what geo-location is, basically it works like GPS which sends a signal to a satellite service to mark your exact whereabouts. If you’ve ever used your Windows Phone, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or any mobile device for that matter, then you will probably have come across apps where you are asked allow geo-location before the application will activate on your phone. Google maps, Facebook, Twitter and many other sites use this sort of feature to determine the location of the user.
Mobile poker will essentially use this exact feature to make sure legal US players are within a licensed state. You will basically have to open the mobile poker site and before you can access it the geo-location service will determine where you are and if you are eligible to play. If it can’t determine your location or you are in a state which isn’t regulated, then the poker room will not load.
There is, however, a flip side to geo-location! HTML5 is one of the latest innovations in how we not only browse the internet, but also how designers can go about making new mobile sites without limitations. It essentially gives more flexibility to designers to make browser based apps that run smoother than the majority of standalone apps, without losing anything in terms of design or functionality.
This means that a poker room would essentially be able to design a HTML5 based site which looks just like a native poker apps you downloaded from an app marketplace. Great, I hear you cry, but what has that got to do with the price of cheese? Well, one thing that HTML5 does not require is geo-location or geo-targeting. It’s often used with mobile browsers to determine if a page is being viewed on a mobile device or not, but does not have to clear the location of that user before functioning.
It all results in a loophole that U.S. based poker players can use in a way to play poker in a state that is not fully licensed. Note that we state fully licensed and not illegal! Where a state has no bias one way or another, it’s UNLIKELY any single player will get prosecuted for playing mobile poker on their Windows Phone 8 device. In face, no individual player has every been prosecuted in the U.S.A.
Just for the record, we aren’t condoning playing Windows mobile poker rooms in illegal states, just merely pointing out that there are loopholes for poker rooms to still design highly desirable mobile poker rooms and not have to use the geo-location services.
