Probability signed a deal at the beginning of January with Hasbro, which is effectively a licencing deal to use some of the hasbro brands and game on mobile, and one of the first, and potentially one of the most lucrative is a version of Hasbro’s head to head poker.

Based upon their board game of the same name, this is essentially a 2 player poker game, with texas holdem style rules. Not exactly a true multiplayer poker game but it should give you the thrill of betting and raising against a real opponent, and one presumes, the opportunity to make some money whilst you are at it. Probability will take their cut of the revenue in a traditional style - i.e. by taking a small rake from each hand.

Future games in the pipeline are expected to be based upon Battleship, Subbuteo, Trivial Pursuits, and Connect4.

Once again this proves that Probability are one of the most dynamic mobile operators out there and look well placed, through their focus on the soft gaming end of the market, to ride out the economic downturn.

I’ve mentioned before, probably ad nauseam, about the parallels between online and mobile when it comes to gambling, and one of the features of the early days of online gambling which persists to this day, is the existance of white labelled gambling sites, also commonly known as “skins”.

A white label site, is a rebranded version of an operators site, sharing the same software, licence, payment facilities etc, usually with an arrangement to split the revenues between the brand owner, and the gambling operator.

The advantage for the brand owner is that its gives them a way to leverage their brand/marketing resources without having to take on the payment processing/crm/licence requirements of a full blown gambling site, and it also give the gambling company a way of expanding rapidly at a relatively low risk by tapping into the expertise and resources of third parties.

This is particularly prevalent in the case of multiplayer gambling products, where liquidity can be quickly built up using this strategy, and 2 very good examples of this are UK Bingo and UK Poker, whitelabels on bingo and poker networks that are a good example of the potential power of this tactic.

So can this work on mobile, and why dont we see more?

The answer to the first question is of course yes, but the second question is perhaps more nuanced…. I suspect that due to the cost of rolling out mobile sites and the associated support services, no one has mastered the cost effective production of cookie cutter site yet, but am sure it is only a matter of time, and the first movers will probably garner a great deal of success by being ahead of the curve…..

After hearing Cellectivity’s CEO talk at the Mobile Gambling Conference, and having thought that mobile would be an ideal platform for a odds comparison site, I thought i would check out Bet2Go, which is pretty much just that - although limited to 6 bookmakers at the moment.

First things first, the download installs neatly and quickly and works without glitches on my phone - a rare occurence indeed as I’m using a windows mobile powered HTC Touch.

The app itself is a pretty simple, mainly text based affair (with the bookie logos being the exception), and the menus are simple and logical to navigate.

Account creation was a little clunky, but no worse than most….

Am yet to start using the service in earnest - I havent deposited yet - and although it looks a decent app, there is probably too narrow a spread of bookies at the moment to make it genuinely a must have tool - one of the biggest gaping holes is the absence of betfair…

However given that alot of the chatter in the industry is that betting and sportsbooks are going to drive the growth of mobile gambling, Bet2Go looks well positioned to take advantage. Being able to bet, whilst at an event - i.e. a football match - could well be a killer app. Indeed you could well speculate that event based betting on mobile phone, may well sound the death knell for betting booths/stands….

As i mentioned in my last post, one of the conlusions we drew from the Mobile Gambling confererence, was that the network operators were becoming more amenable to the idea of mobile gambling. Indeed the recently released Juniper research report makes this one of their headlines - as they put it “[there has been] a sea change in operator attitude towards mobile gambling services”.

The network operators that spoke at the conference had a mix of on portal gambling services that they offered via partners, and advertising for off portal sites.

They all seemed to have slightly differing approaches to policing this - including watersheds, and onlyfeaturing  ”whitelisted” gambling operators - and if the truth be told did seem to be a little prudish, but you can’t help but feel their restrictions will loosen as revenues fall in the recession. Interestingly enough my network operator offers on portal “adult pictures” at any time of the day…..

It reminded me in many ways of the early day of online gambling, where the ISPs were desperate to protect “their” users, and their brands, before bowing to the inevitable and jumping on the band wagon.

The fact still remains that most people access the mobile web via the operator portals, but it is surely only a matter of time, when off portal sites and services become the dominant force in mobile, helped by Google’s mobile search product and android, (their mobile device operating system). Then i suspect the network “walled garden” will be no more.

Last week, we were invited to take part in the 5th annual mobile gambling conference held here in london. We were talking from an affiliate point of view, but the majority of speakers, were either software providers, casino operators or indeed both. So what were the major conclusions we drew?

1) All the major players in the industry are very excited about growth prospects (although you would hope that they were!).

2) The most successful mobile games are not simply poor approximations of online games, but developed specifically for mobile.

3) The major challenge to the industry is letting your average punter know he/she can gamble on their mobile phone.

4) The network operators are softening their attitudes towards gambling (more of this later).

Mfortune have launched a new mobile bingo site. They have both a 80 and 90 ball bingo game, with full multiplayer features - the most important being the chat….

First impressions are pretty good, the site looks fun, the download and install worked pretty seamlessly, and I deposited easily enough by using the phone billing option.

The site isnt packed with users…. yet… but am sure it will start filling up soon enough. Its early days but this looks like a worthy competitor to the likes of LadyLucks.

So Mecca Bingo have launched a multiplayer mobile bingo site……. Potentially big news for the industry, here’s why:

1) Mecca Bingo is a behemoth - owned by Rank Group - and they have massive resources (they turned over £500 million in 2007).

2) Typically they have not been the first movers in any new market/technology and this must therefore be taken as an indication they have serious ambitions for mobile bingo.

3) This is a multiplayer, chat enabled bingo site. Rather than the single player, poor approximation of bingo style games we have seen in the past.

4) It is integrated with the online site, with a unified account structure and provides the sort of convergence model the industry have been talking about for a while.

Ladylucks have some serious competition and I suspect it is about to get interesting!

The industry has been talking about mobile poker for some time now, in fact, pretty much at the beginning of the poker boom, software companies were beginning to mention the possibility of extending to mobile devices in their prospectuses.

In reality however, they have faced a few issues, and it is only now that we are beginning to see a groundswell in the number of “true” multiplayer mobile poker sites - in layman’ terms poker rooms that allow players to connect via mobile phones.

Part of the problem has been the particularly time consuming nature of building software that has to be support 100’s of different phones, often running different platforms/versions of java etc etc etc, but probably as important, as least in the view of your average punter, is the connection issue. To put it simply, what happens if you are betting the river, and suddenly the train you are on goes through a tunnel, your phone signal drops (atually you don’t need to be going through a tunnel for that to happen) and whammo someone called “da boss” walks off with your chips.

So whats the solution?

Well in fairness, thanks in part to the various 3rd and 4th generation networks being rolled out, and a more general improvement in coverage the networks can now offer much more stable “sessions” - i.e. connections.

Secondly many of the bits of software I have seen (not restricted to poker as it happens) now require intermittant connections, rather than an “always on” approach. I.e. they package the data up into small parcels that have only a small data payload and can be transmitted relatively quickly. I presume this is also handy for avoiding large data charges from the network operators….

Thirdly there are various mechanism, that will effectively play your hand for you. Pokerroom (will allow you 30 secs to reconnect) will either check or fold you hand. Probably not ideal, whereas Bwin have a slightly more subtle approach (no less controversial in certain circumstances) to quote from their website:

“In case of a disconnection, the game instantly tries to reconnect. If a reconnect cannot be performed due to bad coverage, the player has All-In protection on fixed limit games. All-In protection means that if the player is disconnected while playing a hand, the bets made before the disconnection are placed in a side pot. All-In protection can be invoked up to three times a day. bwin does not accept any responsibility for a player getting disconnected, except in the case of a server crash.”

Even to a novice poker player like me that sounds like a bit of a compromise, but i guess the next step will be to download the poker clients and give them a go.

Watch this space.

Quite simply this is a mobile gambling blog. Along with our review site online at www.gamblemob.com and “onmobile” at www.gamblemob.mobi (coming soon) I will be posting periodically about the world of mobile gambling and gaming.

I’ve been involved with marketing online gambling of various sorts (mainly bingo and poker) since 2008 and think that mobile gambling is possibly one of the most exciting things that is about to happen to the industry.

Without teaching my grandmother to suck eggs - here is a quick summary of what exactly i mean by mobile gambling:

To cut a long story (and a plethora of different options) very short, mobile gambling is simply gambling applications on your mobile phone, or mobile device (technically the designation for a blackberry). So poker, bingo, casino, betting, lotteries etc - where you can actually perform the gambling activity when you are out and about (at least if you have a signal).

So what will i be doing here? In brief, writing about all the new developments in the industry, and giving my opinion (biased or otherwise) on said developments.