If you're looking for a real-money social poker experience, you might want to stop and take a look at the Pokio app. One of the best online apps for poker clubs, Pokio has been on the scene for over six years and are one of the leaders in club-based online poker apps. Pokio has the distinction of being the very first real-money mobile poker app to be licensed out of Malta by the MGA, the Malta Gambling Authority, and we were excited to sit down with them and chat more about their awesome app.  

How did Pokio start? What was the thought process behind it?

We started with groups of players from local live clubs, most players got to know each other in their real life already, which created an extremely friendly and entertaining environment. Our thoughts behind the development of Pokio were to improve the communication between players and operators, which we noticed was often not enough, so there wasn't always a guarantee for a better gameplay experience.

Therefore, we came up with this business model, where the players can have a much closer dialogue with the poker operator, in our case, the club owners.

Pokio is a club model based poker app, holding a Maltese gaming license (MGA), our games are organized in EUR with an automated payment system.

Considering your club-style business model, what makes your app better than others? Do you have any particular benefits?

We have players, clubs and circles (unions of several clubs). This is a more flexible and convenient system for players.

The owner of the club has all the necessary tools to create tournaments, cash tables, and leaderboards. The Pokio team has made a special service for them - partner.pokio.com. This is a unique tool for promoting and launching your online poker club, as well as ongoing monitoring of your club operation with comprehensive analytical tools.

It's also free and open to all of our club owners.

Another advantage of this model is that club owners will automatically receive the rake generated from the gameplay, such funds can be used as the operation and advertising budget, able to independently distribute it according to the players’ preference.

Anyone can create their own club for friends or for subscribers and website visitors. So it's very easy to start a poker club with Pokio.

Tell us about the different formats of poker that you offer. Besides Texas Holdem and Omaha, what else is popular/gaining popularity?

Pokio offers our players popular types of poker such as NLH, PLO4, PLO5, PLO6, as well as some unique and fun game types like OFC, Drawmaha and Mixed games.

Tell us a bit about how you cater to both recreational players and professionals. Does your platform support both, and how?

We believe that Poker is a game of fun. Pokio is designed to focus on the recreational experience where all players can enjoy the fun of Poker. Grinding is not friendly on Pokio, since only two tables can be played at the same time and any kind of HUD is not allowed.

We do have players with better skills that enjoy our recreational experience. Meanwhile, Poker beginners always have the chance to play with better players and practice their skills.

Do you cooperate with live casino partners?

Online poker players can enjoy a wider variety of games and stakes, and also have access to a number of features such as hand history and tracking tools. However, online poker lacks the social interaction and physical aspects of playing in a live environment.

Live poker, on the other hand, is played in person at a physical location, such as a casino or a poker club. It offers a deeper immersion into a game and social experience, as players can interact with each other, read body language, and get a feel for the game.

For our team, online poker and live poker are like yin and yang. We love to offer our players the best experience from both worlds, which is why we cooperate with live casinos and poker clubs. Online satellites are an incredibly powerful tool for attracting players to live poker tournaments. Our partner casinos have experienced the power of promoting their live events through online satellites and special packages promo campaigns in our application.

For a casino partner, there is nothing easier than creating an online poker club and launching a series of satellites on Pokio to promote their upcoming event(s). Just pop us a message and our team will be happy to advise and help to set the satellites in the best way to attract a number of players whom, without these satellites, would never have participated in these live tournaments.

Let’s say someone is new to the world of poker apps and clubs, can you explain the concept in simple terms and also give a recommendation of where to start?

Perhaps, any poker player has thought about opening their own poker club. But a lot of questions immediately pop up: the cost of developing a site or an application, how to get a license, how to make payments, what to do with user verification. In essence, creating a club in our application is like creating an Amazon store. Everything is simple and safe.

When registering a club in Pokio, you only need to think about attracting players. All the other issues are completely covered by our team. You just need to create a club, think over the schedule of tournaments, generate an invitation link and post it on social networks or send it to your friends.

Also, our team is ready 24/7 to help you create a club, work out its promotions and develop an effective tournament plan and cash tables.

What are some of your most popular clubs? What kind of players can you expect to find in them?

There are a few popular clubs for recreational players to enjoy. At the moment, Premier League (club ID 100275), Star Platinum (club ID 101087), and Golden Kitty (club ID 100274) are good choices, and we would recommend trying them out.

The beauty of the club model is that each club or circle has its own special tournaments. Each of them has his own special vision of promotion. Those who have a lot of freerolls, while others focus on leaderboards.

Recently, more and more clubs offer first deposit bonuses. One of the most effective ways to activate players is, of course, satellites to live tournaments. If an online player has been to a live poker event at least once in his life, then they would definitely want to repeat that experience.

What are your plans going forward? Any big ideas or promotions we can look forward to?

Increasing the number of players in our app is driving us to get better and better results. We can safely say that our application gives players complete freedom in creating and organising their poker business.

We regularly organise online poker festivals with high-value prizes in different aspects for both tournaments and cash game players, such as Leaderboards, deposit bonuses, treasure hunts, big GTD tournaments, partner rewards, login bonuses, and referral bonuses.

Furthermore, to maximise our recreational poker experience, we are developing a closer connection between the online and live poker scene. New game types and more attractive poker promotions and features are coming soon, so join the Pokio community and stay tuned for it.