Poker has swept the globe in the recent years, becoming more common on our television, in our movies and of course on our computers. The explosion of online poker has been the most noticeable effect, as more and more players have enjoyed the luxury of not having to travel to a casino to play the game they love. Now, thanks to recently developments by SwitchPoker.com, players won’t even have to be in their homes to play, and can instead enjoy real money poker on the go using their iPhone or iPad.

There’s a lot of downtime in most people’s lives, whether it’s waiting for a train or bus, in the doctor’s waiting room or simply getting from A to B for your morning and evening commutes, and people are constantly searching for ways to fill this time. One of the most popular, of course, is keeping up to date on the latest events or playing the latest games on an iPhone or iPad, as these fantastic pieces of technology become more functional and, most importantly, more affordable.

The iPhone is by no means new, but real money poker on the iPhone sure is. Apple has held a strict policy which prohibited real money gambling programs in their App store, which is the only official way to purchase and download software for your iPhone. While there are some known workarounds for getting forbidden software on your device, it’s common sense to want to be careful and above board when dealing with real money, and so players have simply been forced to go without, or settle for play money games which soon grow boring.

Players were forced to settle until now, that is, as SwitchPoker.com has announced the release of the world’s first real money poker site which is compatible with the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Rather than develop an app which would just get rejected, the cunning company decided to work within the realms of Apple’s restrictions and build a poker site which would run on the iPhone’s browser. Just as Mac and Linux users have been playing in-browser poker out of necessity for years, so too can iPhone users now get around the prohibition.

The good news is that they’re doing it, and that this is just the beginning. The bad news is that it’s a fairly slow beginning, with players from the United States being left entirely out in the cold, and the only tables spread are 6max No Limit Hold’Em ring games. However the company is looking into moving into the US market, and the limited game selection seems to just be a way of testing the concept, with sit’n’gos, tournaments, full-ring and heads-up cash tables, Limit Holdem and Pot Limit Omaha all expected in the not-too-distant future.

Poker’s ever-growing popularity and the rapid advances in this area of technology have been racing along side-by-side over the past few years, and it’s great that we’re finally starting to see a fusion. Players have a great way to play poker on the go as of right now, and this kind of innovation is sure to open up doors that could result in a truly exciting new image of how, where and when we play poker.