Introducing Word Poker: Scrabble Meets Poker

For individuals who enjoy fast-paced competition and wish to play for the fun of learning, Synqua Games has introduced Word Poker. Gone are the numbered cards, clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. In their place are "letter cards" similar to the tiles you would draw while playing Scrabble. But Word Poker goes far beyond what any other letter-scrambling game has done to date.

With Word Poker, you are seated with three computer programmed "bots" and dealt "hole cards" that contain only letters of the alphabet. With the knowledge of the strength of your hand, you wager against the three computer opponents and then attempt to form as many words as possible with the letters available to you in a specific amount of time. The result is fast-paced action that challenges your brain and encourages learning of new words.

Word Poker is a free downloadable application for mobile devices and is compatible with the iPhone, iPhone Touch, and iPad. The software requires iOS 3.2 or later in order to function properly and is not available for Android. Word Poker was originally released on March 2nd, 2012 and is currently in its first version with a download file size of 8 MB. It is marketed to all individuals regardless of age and is available in the English language only.

The great thing about this game is that it tests your word-making abilities and incorporates aspects from poker as you and your opponents bet, raise, and fold in order to jockey for position and face off in a word-creating contest that results in the conclusion of a hand and the raking of a pot.

For now, Word Poker is only a single-player game in which one person must compete against programmed opponents, but it could potentially be improved to provide competition between humans. No real money is involved at this time, so the chips you risk are not considered to be any form of gambling. When your chips are gone, you lose the game, but you can reload at any time by restarting the application.

One customer review called the Word Poker concept "fun" and alluded to how great it is to play word games with a poker twist for free with no real money obligation. Another reviewer stated that after a while, he has noticed that the same combination of letters begin to show up in a player's hand and the game gets repetitive. It could be possible that this game will be updated in the future with more letter combination possibilities based on technology that mimics Random Number Generators.

Synqua Games has been around the mobile app gaming market for a while and has other releases such as Hoops of Glory and Chillingham Manor, but this is the first time the company has released a game with poker aspects for mobile devices.

Although it is unlikely that real money poker players will hand in their chance at major tournament dough and become obsessed with Word Poker, the application provides a challenging and fun experience for almost anyone who enjoys poker or word games.

Varying values are given to different letters (similar to Scrabble) in order to balance the field, so you will receive more credit for building words with difficult letters than with common ones. Word Poker has a built-in dictionary, but may not recognize all words, especially those that are shortened or related to social media or texting. Still, Word Poker can be a lot of fun and is definitely worth a try considering it's 100% free.