All about Mobile Gambling.

Mobile gambling is set to explode in 2008. According to various sources Mobile Gambling will be worth several billions £s worldwide over the next couple of year, not suprising when you take into account the fact that more people own a mobile phone than have access to an internet enabled computer.

So what is mobile gambling all about?

Well it is largely exactly what is says on the tin - i.e. Gambling style applications on your mobile phone. Obviously though this falls into several different categories.

Firstly mobile casinos - quite simply this is casino style games, that run on various Java platforms and will thus work on your phone. They (usually) only need to connect intermittantly, and the graphics can be very impressive. Roulette, blackjack etc also work really well on a small phone screen. In this category you can also count instant win /scratchcard/slots type games, which although "softer" operate under the casino umbrella.

Secondly mobile poker sites. These fall neatly into 2 groups - those that offer poker style fixed odds games (like the video poker you often see on machines in pubs) and those, with much more complexity that are multiplayer poker sites which much like their online cousins offer all the features of a poker room (sit and go tables, tournaments etc). Obviously these sites require a pretty good connection, but as the phone networks increase capacity this is less frequently a problem.

Thirdly there are various mobile bingo sites, which like poker, are split between bingo style games (keno) and the more complicated multiplayer bingo sites - that offer live chat etc. Given the explosion in online bingo in recent months we expect many more fully featured mobile bingo rooms to be available soon.

Fourthly, and this is what is expected to drive the mobile gambling market, there are mobile lottery sites. The UK national lottery currently offers the ability to "play by text", whereby you send in your lottery numbers via sms, and there are a number of more involved lottery applications being developed for mobiles which will be available in the near future - watch this space!

Last but not least are the mobile betting sites. These tend to be either stand alone mobile bookmakers, or mobile access to online bookmakers' sites. All the high street firms (william hill, ladbrokes etc) offer mobile access to their online services in this way.