Real Gaming, an online poker site backed by South Point Hotel Casino and Spa, is one of the two online poker sites operating in Nevada at the moment. Co-founder Lawrence Vaughan tells Rebecca Liggero how the site’s proprietary HTML5 platform gives them an advantage in the online poker market.
Talk about breathing a new life into the game of iPoker.
Real Gaming started out in 2011 as SouthPointPoker.com. The site, backed by South Point Hotel Casino and Spa, is now one of the two online poker rooms that have fully operational licenses in Nevada. Co-founder Lawrence Vaughan said the site’s proprietary HTML5 platform gives them the edge over competition.
“If you look at the platforms that have been released across the U.S.—regulated or not—they’re all based on code and thought processes from roughly 10 years ago and what work 10 years ago,” Vaughan told CalvinAyre.com. “And what you see happening now, you know 888 is a good example of this, where you’re just taking a platform that is relatively old now—you know how quickly things change in technology—and they’re just putting different logo on it in different states.”
Vaughan, a self-taught computer programmer, said they decided to start Real Gaming from scratch so the site can be made available on all platforms.
“We have to be on mobile in two ways. We have to do it in the browser in case the App Store change their opinion at any point. We have to do mobile app, we have to do desktop, we have to do desktop client so these are thing we need to do, but we also need to keep releasing different features for the different environment we’re going into,” he explained.
Still, Vaughan said there’s nothing wrong with sticking to what’s been tried and tested.
“(It’s) good to a certain degree because it allows operators to turn on something that is tested and works and they can immediately play. The downside is they can’t build a product overtime for their customers. (Operators) get to market quickly, which works, but they can’t accelerate over time,” Vaughan said.
On the issue of the anti-online gambling Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA), which has been reintroduced in both the U.S. Senate and Congress for 2015, Vaughan doesn’t see it going far because the popular vote is against it.
“Not everyone around Sheldon (Adelson) agrees with Sheldon, so once Sheldon is not in the picture, it’ll be less of an issue,” he said. “I don’t see (RAWA) getting much traction because the popular vote is against it. We all know that there’s demand for it so a regulated environment for poker is a good thing. If he’s successful in blocking it, we’re going back to non-regulated poker again, and some people aren’t going to stop playing just like they’re not going to stop pirating music.”
