Real-money gaming is now reality in the U.S. with Skillz, a first-of-its-kind multiplayer tournament platform, whivh gives players the chance to compete for real money and virtual currency in mobile games of skill. The platform launched today in beta for Android.

“We’re bringing real-money gaming to the U.S. right now, and we’re the first people to do that,” Andrew Paradise, co-founder and CEO of Skillz, tells Inside Mobile Apps.

Skillz enables games of skill to be played in cash tournaments in 36 states — such as California, New York, Texas and more — as well as virtual currency tournaments in any game worldwide. All a mobile developer has to do to enable cash and free multiplayer tournaments is integrate Skillz’s SDK, which can be implemented in as short as an hour to three work days.

Skillz has come out of stealth with 10 developers with 10 games on board, including Gnarly Games with GnarBike Trials, Spooky House Studios with Bubble Explode, Rocketmind with Big Sport Fishing 3D Lite and more. The first batch of titles run the gamut genre-wise, with genres like endless runners, bubble shooters, mini golf and more.

The obvious question to ask is how did Skillz make real-money gaming legal in the U.S.? The easiest answer is that real-money gaming via a skills competition has been legal for years in most states. First, it’s important to define the difference between a skill versus a chance game. On one end of the spectrum is a skill game like chess and on the other end is a chance game like roulette. The legal definition of a skilled game is if a skilled player predominantly beats an unskilled player about 75 percent of the time. Examples of games of skill where a cash competition is legal include chess tournaments, running marathons, golf tournaments, fishing tournaments, esports tournaments for games like StarCraft 2 and Call of Duty, even the arcade game Golden Tee, and more.

“One of the things we created is a way to statistically verify the level of skill versus chance in a game, and so one of the things we do is plug in these virtual currency tournaments into a given game and then we’ll run virtual currency tournaments and gather data,” Paradise says. “Basically, we can look at how often skilled players beat unskilled players and then determine if a game is skill versus chance.” (more…)

Social-mobile gaming developer Digital Chocolate today launched its first real-money gaming title Slots! Pocket UK for iOS in the U.K.

Powered by real-money gaming platform Betable, Slots! Pocket UK is a slots game that allows U.K. users the option to wager either real money or virtual currency and chips on pulls of the slot machine. Betable first announced its partnership with Digital Chocolate back in November 2012. Digital Chocolate is one of 10 developers so far to partner with Betable for its real-money gaming platform, which is still a private beta program. Betable handles all the real-money aspects of the game on the backend, including compliance, fraud prevention, identity checks, wagering, and gambling results, while Digital Chocolate can focus on the development of the actual game. In order for players to gamble with real money, they must be authenticated with Betable by signing up, depositing money, and more.

“[Betable] helped us leapfrog the whole race into real-money gaming by allowing us to partner with them on their platform, and of course, they have the license in the U.K. to do real-money gaming,” Jason Loia, chief operating officer of Digital Chocolate, told Inside Mobile Apps.

Bee Cave Games today revealed that it has closed an initial seed investment round of over $1.4 million from from employees, select private investors and a strategic investment from Glu Mobile.

The Company’s first title, Blackjack Casino, is now in private beta on Facebook, with mobile and tablet versions in development as well.

Bee Cave Games is a social and mobile games developer founded in late 2012 by former Zynga employees Erik Bethke, Nimai Malle, and Jeremy Strauser, all former employees at Zynga’s Austin office, which was significantly downsized last year. Members of the development team have worked on both social and AAA console and PC titles including Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker, EA’s NFL games, and Blizzard’s Diablo series.

Fresh Deck Poker is a cross-platform poker game that has been available on Facebook for a while, and more recently received an iOS version. Said iOS version was recently updated to be fully optimized for iPad, iPhone 5 and iPad mini play, and an Android version is reported to be in the works for release very soon. The game is the product of Idle Games, last seen with the visually-impressive but ultimately disappointing Facebook title Idle Worship, and makes use of the massively multiplayer platform developed for that game.

This review is based on the iOS version, tested on an iPhone 4S running iOS 6.0.

Players may begin playing Fresh Deck Poker either as a guest or by connecting to Facebook. If the latter option is chosen, this allows the player to sync their progress between play on the social network and play on the go. Players may not customize the name displayed for themselves, though since the game does not display their Facebook profile picture and only displays their first name and last initial, there is little chance of them being personally identified. They may, however, select an avatar to represent themselves in the game. A selection of these are unlocked from the outset of the game, with others becoming available either through the expenditure of hard currency or by gaining experience levels through normal play.

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Bookie Mania is a new Facebook game from Bookie Mania Ltd. It’s a “social betting game” designed to encourage its players to bet on various events against the house, other players or their Facebook friends.

Upon starting Bookie Mania for the first time, players are presented with a menu of options. From here, it’s possible to make a bet against the house, against other “bookies” (players) around the world, or against friends.

Betting against the house is the simplest option. This takes players to a screen where they can choose a category of bet, ranging from various sports to the financial markets. From here, players drill down until they get to a specific category, at which point they will be presented with a range of possible things to bet on in the category, along with the odds for each. For those unfamiliar with betting, a handy popup tooltip tells players exactly what the odds readout means they will win if their bet is successful. A default amount to bet is given, but players may choose to bet more if they desire — though there is a maximum bet of 50,000 currency units if betting against the house. (more…)

Zynga announced a partnership with real money games operator bwin.party today to support real money poker and casino games in the United Kingdom.

A press release detailing the partnership explains that Zynga’s U.K.-based real money gaming service will launch both a poker game and a suite of 180 casino games in the first half of 2013 with bwin.party’s help. Many have touted the revenue potential of real money gaming as a means to “save” Zynga from a total collapse of its social games business. Others, though — including Inside Social Games — have expressed skepticism that Zynga’s current non-real money audience could be converted to real-money gamers.

This is the second social games partnership for bwin.party following its deal with sports social game developer Nordeus announced in September. Zynga’s third quarter 2012 financial results are being reported today following yesterday’s layoffs and a studio closure.

UPDATE: During the Q&A portion of today’s earnings call, CFO Dave Wehner reigned in investor expectations, saying that the deal “is a first step, so we’re not talking any details around the economics at this time.”

Social Casino Intellegence is reporting that Zynga has hired online gambling firm 888’s former senior vice president of corporate and regulated markets Maytal Ginsburg Olsha.

The hire shows that Zynga is gearing up for real-money social gaming overseas, and perhaps here in the U.S. should the company succeed in changing the legislation that currently forbids it. We recently reported that Zynga is spending a lot of cash on lobbying for real-money gaming. The company spent $75,000 in lobbying fees in the last quarter both in Washington and California, centering around a bill that would let companies offer online poker in the state.

Although real-money gaming is still illegal in the United States because of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, it’s very much a part of U.K. culture. As a result, several companies are starting to double down and create social casino games that allow players to gamble with actual cash.

The news also follows casual game developer Big Fish’s announcement two weeks ago that it is joining with Betable to bring real-money gambling to the United Kingdom with Big Fish Casino, a re-branded version of the social mobile casino game Card Ace: Casino. Prior to that announcement, Gamesys launched the first such app on Facebook with Bingo Friendzy.

Real-money gaming has officially arrived on Facebook, albeit in the United Kingdom instead of the U.S. Online gambling company Gamesys today launched Bingo Friendzy for Facebook, the first casino title to incorporate real-money play on the social network.

Gamesys operates the popular Bingo and slots website jackpotjoy in the U.K. As with jackpotjoy, users need to be above the age of 18 years old and verify their age and identity in order to play Bingo Friendzy. The app itself contains 90 different Bell Bingo and slots games, and The Telegraph reports players need credit cards to play instead of soft/hard currency.

As opposed to many other countries, including the United States, gambling is a part of the U.K. culture and it’s comparatively easy to operate an online gambling site/app on a global scale. Last month, Christopher Griffin told us his real-money gaming platform Betable is able to operate worldwide because the company’s servers are in the U.K. and the country’s laws allow them to operate anywhere in the world, except in those nations where online gambling is explicitly forbidden.

At the moment, real-money gaming is still illegal in the United States because of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (although there are exceptions in the states of Nevada and New Jersey), but the law is expected to be overturned within the next few years. That said, more and more studios are launching social casino apps on Facebook because they tend to have stronger monetization and retention rates than standard arcade titles. Developers like Zynga and Idle Games have recently gone on record  to say they’re positioned to take advantage of real-money gaming when it’s legalized in North America, and it also seems likely that casino groups like IGT Interactive, Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts are poised to do so as well.

Betable today revealed its real-money games platform, a private developer beta test and an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

Founder and CEO Christopher Griffin says social game developers’ biggest challenge with monetization lies with only a small percentage of players monetizing, meaning social titles usually require enormous player scale in order to be solvent. Creating a casino game or adding in gambling mechanics to a larger title, though, means developers could see much better monetization on social and mobile platforms. As we learned at April’s Global iGaming Summit and Expo in San Francisco, casino games on Facebook see higher engagement and average revenue per user than typical farm or simulation titles; online gambling sites see even greater revenues and conversion rates as high as approximately 70 to 80 percent.

Betable’s platform allows game developers to legally provide real-money gaming on titles on any platform or mobile device with a minimal amount of effort on the developer’s part.  A game using its system only displays the results of the real-money mechanics, without the developer having to deal with any of the backend gambling mechanics. After the front end of a game is completed, a developer would go into Betable’s engine, configure the gambling logic on their servers and the front end of the game will ping Betable’s servers. From here, Betable does all the work behind the scenes: it produces the results, moves the money around,  deals with fraud, security and support.

Betable’s servers sit in the United Kingdom. As such, the company’s real-money gaming falls under U.K. jurisdiction and the country’s laws allow them to operate anywhere in the world, with the exception of nations that explicitly forbid online gambling (like the United States, where gambling is only legal in limited form in Nevada and New Jersey). Although it’s expected that Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 will be overturned and online gambling will be legalized in the country within the next few years, the lack of a definite date means the company is focused on international audiences.

Signing up for Betable takes about an hour from start to finish, as opposed to the multiple years of legal issues with international gambling laws and millions of dollars in licensing fees it would take for a developer operating independently. An analogy for gambling law is that it’s like drinking ages, which vary from country to country: While a 19-year-old wouldn’t be old enough to drink in the United States, they can do so in France because they’re old enough under that country’s jurisdiction.

Griffin knows what it’s like to deal with these frustrations, as he tells us it took over two years for Betable to get the necessary licenses for the platform to operate on a global scale, even with a savvy legal team working on the project. “If I could do it all over again, knew exactly what I was doing and did everything perfectly,” he says, “the process would take around 18 months.”

The platform can be used in any type of game, not just social/mobile gambling titles. We were shown two examples of how this could work via screenshot mockups: With Zynga Slots, players could simply click on a title screen button to play for real money, while another option would allow users to bet on the outcome of player-versus-player titles like Hero Academy.

Details about the funding are being kept quiet for competitive reasons but the more-than-25 investors are led by Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave Morin and Yuri Milner. Griffin also says Betable will try to close a Series A round of funding by the end of 2012, but is keeping quiet on any further details. There are currently over 30 developers in Betable’s private alpha test, but the company is now accepting a limited number of other partners for the beta version. Interested developers can visit the Betable’s official site to apply.