Can online poker become a mainstay in the metaverse?

Online poker has evolved substantially over the past decade, with a flurry of new formats and platforms being launched on a monthly basis.

The crossover between poker and cryptocurrencies has been clear for all to see recently, with the likes of Phil Ivey backing Virtue Poker, which allows some US residents to play poker online with crypto as a deposit option.

But one area that has been relatively untapped is the combination of online poker within the metaverse.

The metaverse is an efficiently scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds, it has attracted interest from the likes of Facebook, which renamed itself as Meta last year, as well as Microsoft.

Yesterday, Microsoft acquired Call of Duty publisher Activision in a deal worth $70 billion in a bold attempt to take control of the metaverse.

The theory is that, eventually, gamers will be able to interact with others within the metaverse, regardless of which specific game they are playing.

The gamification of online poker has been evident over the past few years with providers like GG Poker, partypoker and Pokerstars all launching new game types that focus on more visual aspects for a retail audience.

Eventually, it is conceivable that a gamer could use a unique character in a multiplayer game and play against another player in a bespoke poker room within the metaverse.

The key of the metaverse is that it is all based a blockchain, which means that each player will digitally own their character.

This means that, if someone has earned a Mike Tyson playable character in a game like Fight Night, they can play poker against a character from a fantasy game like World of Warcraft.

The missing piece to the jigsaw is an online poker provider spending development hours on building a secure platform within the metaverse that can safely and efficiently interact with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

It may be a few years until it’s completely functional, but a bustling online poker platform within the metaverse seems to be a formality.

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