Full Tilt Poker made history back in November 2010 by releasing the world's first real money poker app for Android smartphones. The mobile poker app was based on the poker rooms popular Rush Poker format, which was designed to minimize players waiting times between hands, making it perfectly suited to a few quick hands of poker on the go.
At the time many suspected that this would lead to a golden era of real money mobile poker apps with many other online poker rooms, such as PokerStars, rushing out to release their own Android poker apps to get in on the action. Unfortunately, the euphoria surrounding the first Android poker app was short lived.
In the first week of December 2010, just 2 weeks after the Rush Poker Mobile app was released to much fanfare, Google decided to tighten their policy on gambling apps and removed all real money betting apps from their Android Market. This meant that the Rush Poker Android app was removed before most mobile poker players even had a chance to download it.
Luckily the Android OS is an open platform so Android owners are not restricted to downloading their apps from one source, like iPhone users are with the Apple App Store. Within a couple of days Full Tilt Poker had made the Rush Poker Mobile app available for download again, except this time from their own website.
Full Tilt Poker also released a Flash version of the Rush Poker app that would be played via the browser of any Android device that supported flash. The benefit of launching a web version was that you didn't need to download or install any poker software onto your smartphone. Instead, all you needed to do was browse to the Rush Poker mobile website and you could begin playing straight away.
Unfortunately, in April 2011 Full Tilt Poker were forced to withdraw from the U.S. market which left Android owners in the United States without any way to play real money poker on their smartphone. Surprisingly, in the six months following the launch of the Rush Poker Mobile app, no other online poker room released a real money Android poker app.
Thankfully this looks all set to change as Microgaming, one of the world's largest poker networks, plans to launch a real money Android poker app in early 2011. The new mobile betting apps will run on any Android device running Android Froyo 2.2 or later. The Microgaming network is made up of almost 40 different poker rooms including Ladbrokes Poker, Mansion88 and 32Red Poker.
At the time many suspected that this would lead to a golden era of real money mobile poker apps with many other online poker rooms, such as PokerStars, rushing out to release their own Android poker apps to get in on the action. Unfortunately, the euphoria surrounding the first Android poker app was short lived.
In the first week of December 2010, just 2 weeks after the Rush Poker Mobile app was released to much fanfare, Google decided to tighten their policy on gambling apps and removed all real money betting apps from their Android Market. This meant that the Rush Poker Android app was removed before most mobile poker players even had a chance to download it.
Luckily the Android OS is an open platform so Android owners are not restricted to downloading their apps from one source, like iPhone users are with the Apple App Store. Within a couple of days Full Tilt Poker had made the Rush Poker Mobile app available for download again, except this time from their own website.
Full Tilt Poker also released a Flash version of the Rush Poker app that would be played via the browser of any Android device that supported flash. The benefit of launching a web version was that you didn't need to download or install any poker software onto your smartphone. Instead, all you needed to do was browse to the Rush Poker mobile website and you could begin playing straight away.
Unfortunately, in April 2011 Full Tilt Poker were forced to withdraw from the U.S. market which left Android owners in the United States without any way to play real money poker on their smartphone. Surprisingly, in the six months following the launch of the Rush Poker Mobile app, no other online poker room released a real money Android poker app.
Thankfully this looks all set to change as Microgaming, one of the world's largest poker networks, plans to launch a real money Android poker app in early 2011. The new mobile betting apps will run on any Android device running Android Froyo 2.2 or later. The Microgaming network is made up of almost 40 different poker rooms including Ladbrokes Poker, Mansion88 and 32Red Poker.
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