Inside Asian Gaming

IAG OCT 2021年10月 亞博匯 83 日本 SK: Please tell us about the growing popularity of the “m” Hold’em poker app. YI: When creating the app, we really paid special attention to a design that could be enjoyed by new Texas Hold’em players. We designed the user interface so that anyone used to using apps could play intuitively and also hired a popular illustrator and voice artists to gain more interest in the app. According to Ito, the poker population in Japan is between 800,000 and 1 million. The potential for greater popularity is apparent with the 600,000 subscribers to a YouTube channel run by a popular Japanese poker player. The “m” Hold’em app boasts 500,000 downloads already, far exceeding the original target. Yasukatsu Ito, Manager of Sammy’s DX Promotion Division. 颯美DX推廣部經理伊藤保勝 “m” Hold’em is free to play and holds qualifiers for live events such as the recently completed World Poker Tour Japan (WPTJ) and the First Spo-Nichi Poker Tournament Japan Series. The WPTJ main event, cosponsored by Sammy, has a main event prize pool of JPY 10 million and the winner wins sponsorship to a live, overseas WPT event. That means winning WPTJ could eventually lead to a multi-million dollar payday. For the latest WPTJ in September there were 110,000 entries to qualifiers held on “m” Hold’em. But in order to increase the number of players in Japan and send a steady stream to the world stage, it is necessary to expand the poker range. “We plan to continue holding exciting events and collaborating with appealing IP,” Sakino offers. Although poker is known worldwide as a form of gambling, playing for real money remains illegal in