The pandemic upended the poker world over the past two years, with live poker shuttering due to restrictions and the result was a huge move to the virtual felt. While the live poker world is returning to normal now with the restrictions being lifted in much of the world, online poker operators like PokerStars are implementing improvements they first developed as a response to the unprecedented situation of the past couple of years.

pokerfuse had previously reported that the operator rolled out WebCam tables on its web app late last year. This feature has now been expanded to desktop and mobile apps and is currently only available in the UK market.

The big new feature is an integrated video chat feature that lets players interact with their friends in real-time while they play.

The optional webcam feature is a big step in bringing the online poker world closer to the live game with direct face-to-face interaction now baked into the client from the start. While many players hacked together solutions during the pandemic using existing video conferencing software that many players were already using for work, solutions like the new video chat integrated with Home Games make that a seamless operation.

Face-to-Face Poker

One of the things the pandemic showed the industry was that live poker matters in a lot of ways. The mass shutdown initiated by the pandemic was devastating for brick and mortar casino revenue and players lost the chance to play the cash games and tournaments they love, but perhaps more importantly, thousands of live home games became impossible, leaving players hungering for the interaction with their friends they had become used to.

When COVID-19 restrictions turned the lights out on the live poker scene around the world, many of those players scrambled online to find some way to keep playing the game they love. While many operators like PokerStars already had Home Game-style platforms for players to create their own games and others rushed to create them, what was missing from their familiar live home games was the real-world interaction with friends.

Many players were already using video conferencing platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams for remote work, or to keep in touch with friends and family. Many of those players hacked together solutions combined with their favorite online poker provider to try and recreate the atmosphere of the games they lost.

A few operators stepped into the gap before this latest move from PokerStars. Poker Industry PRO detailed the history of operators trialing video chat options but, aside from 888poker’s little-used webcam tables, this marks the first move to integrated video-chat from a major online poker operator.