PokerStars is expanding the newly trialed webcam feature in its Home Games platform and, for the first time, online poker players in Canada will be able to see their friends’ and opponents’ faces while they play. After an initial beta test in the UK, Ireland, and Germany, the feature is now being expanded to the Canadian market.
PokerStars is available across Canada, including Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta. In Ontario, Canada’s largest province, the operator is believed to have applied for a license and is awaiting authorization from the regulators before it can launch regulated online poker in Ontario.
While online poker has dabbled with webcams for more than a decade, the recent pandemic lockdowns saw a huge rise in video-conferencing as a whole. What used to be seen as the stuff of science fiction for the average person, suddenly became a basic part of the workday and a much-needed lifeline to friends and family.
During the lockdowns, players in Canada and elsewhere scrambled for ways to replicate their live home games while social distancing measures meant gathering in groups was not allowed. Many groups hacked together solutions on their own, combining external video conferencing apps with online Home Games on platforms like PokerStars to at least get a similar experience to the live games they took for granted before the lockdowns.
While the lockdowns are largely over and the pandemic appears to be waning, one lasting effect is that gathering online has become more common and, especially for online home games, the idea of integrated webcam functionality started to gain traction. PokerStars first trialed the webcam feature for its UK players late in 2021 with a web-client only version that it upgraded for desktops in 2022.
Now, the webcam feature is being deployed to Canadian home games as well. While it is still in beta test mode, the new feature now allows Canadians to see the other participants in Home Games, set up to work with the players’ webcams.
Long History with Webcams but Little Traction
Webcams in online poker are not really a new innovation — operators have been trialing the idea for a decade or more. 888poker was the leader in this field, first trialing webcams in private games with its “Play with Friends“ feature in 2010.
partypoker experimented with integrating Google+ Hangouts with its poker software and, while an invite-only version was available for a while, the feature never really got off the ground.
With the global pandemic starting in 2020 however, there was increased interest in the integrations from various industry players. 888poker doubled down on the video chat idea during the lockdowns and added mobile functionality to its Play with Friends feature.
GGPoker also joined the webcam rush during the pandemic, though in a slightly different form — its SnapCam innovation gave players the chance to show short reaction clips during play.
Overall though, webcam functionality had not been fully embraced by the playing community prior to the pandemic. While the lockdowns certainly made video chat more mainstream, as the lockdowns eased, players raced back to the live games they’d missed so much during the lockdowns.
Will Webcams in Online Poker Ever Be Mainstream?
It remains to be seen if webcam poker will ever hit the mainstream — one of the advantages of online poker has always been that physical tells aren’t a relevant part of the online game. Many online players prefer the sanctity of the virtual, more math-based environment, especially with live poker returning in a big way.
However, the one place it seems likely that webcams may well thrive is in the Home Game market. While local home games will almost certainly return to the live format as friends use it as a means to get together for a fun Friday night, one of the side effects of the pandemic was an increase in global poker groups.
In those cases, meeting in person is essentially impossible, since players can be located virtually anywhere in the world. In cases where communities evolved with global members over the pandemic, the idea of integrating webcams may well be seen as the best possible way to get together virtually with friends from around the globe.
That is clearly the market PokerStars is going for with this new addition to the Canadian online poker scene. Especially in a country with such a large landmass and low population like Canada, the idea of being able to play with friends from anywhere in the country — and actually be able to see and interact with your fellow players — could take off big.
While it seems clear that many of the local home games will pick up live where they left off before the pandemic, for communities that have evolved with far-flung players who can’t get together in the real world, innovations like PokerStars’ addition of integrated webcams for Canadians could be a perfect way create a live home game experience virtually.
