There has been a lot of buzz around Zynga lately. They went public on the stock market, which seems mainly to have made the stocks folks scratch their head and wonder who Zynga was. They seem to be an undervalued stock right now and I wonder if part of the reason is just because most Wall Street types aren’t likely to hang out on Facebook and become addicted to Farmville.
Yes, Zynga is the company behind the infamously popular and addictive Facebook game Farmville. They’re also behind a number of other games including Zynga Poker. Now, Zynga Poker is not a real money poker game. It’s played with virtual coins that players receive daily and then work to win from other players. Not being available for real money play has kept Zynga from running into any trouble with the federal authorities when it comes to offering gambling in the US. When it comes to gambling, fake coins on Facebook just don’t count.
But if Zynga is going to move their stock price up, many people are saying that they’ve got to take Zynga Poker into the real money poker arena. The application already has millions of users and many of them would probably make the switch to real money games. I’m making this guess based on the information that many of the fake money players are actually purchasing fake coins to play with win they run out of coins. You can even find Zynga poker coins for sale on ebay. So, if people will pay real money to play a fake money game, it seems like they’d be better off just playing for real money.
But how does Zynga move into the real money poker world in the US when online poker is still largely frowned upon? Well, Nevada is the first state to license online poker and it looks like Wynn Resorts is in talks with Zynga. This could provide Zynga an entry into the Vegas real money gambling market while providing Wynn with someone to run their online poker games.