When you take a seat at a poker table, there's nothing more intimidating than a grizzled looking gambling veteran staring you down through mirrored shades while doing weird and wonderful things with the poker chips in front of him. It says - no make that shouts - "don't mess with me". If you're in any doubt as to the role chip tricks play in developing table image, just watch any episode of the World Poker Tour or World Series of Poker, where you'll see every player constantly play with their chips, regardless of whether they're a poker pro or internet qualifier. And as in so many walks of life, what people see on TV they replicate in real life. Play in any home game or at any casino these days and you can't help but notice players riffling, rolling and flipping their chips during and between hands. Making poker chip tricks work online "Every poker player, regardless of experience, loves chip tricks" says Leon Walters, Chief Operating Officer of PKR.com. Walters goes on to explain that "PKR's key challenge was to get these tricks into the game so that the animation works within a three-dimensional environment". And how they work. Players at PKR will be able to perform a wide-range of chip tricks including chip shuffling, knuckle rolls, chip spreads and chip balances. What's more, PKR's team of artists and animators are working on new chip trick additions so that the range of poker chip tricks offered are ever-expanding. As Walter's says, "If you can do it in real life, you'll be able to do it in the game." Making the poker chip tricks relevant to the game "One thing we didn't want to do was just include poker chip tricks in the game for the sake of it" continues Walters. "So we tried to replicate the role that poker chip tricks play in real life and import it into our virtual environment." PKR's innovative solution has been to apply a loyalty point value to chip tricks, with complex tricks carrying a greater loyalty point tariff than simpler ones. As Walter's explains, "Just in real life, the more you play poker the more chip tricks you can perform. By having to 'learn' how to perform chip tricks, we've managed to combine the fun of performing them with the serious idea of why players value them." |
