Online poker games have obviously caught on in a big way, as we all have seen in the past 5-6 years. They are, in fact, so popular that a company offering live dealers would potentially have to make a hard choice between exclusivity of their games and mass market access for all players.

The concept of live dealers is not a new one, as live dealer feeds have already been attempted with mixed results.  While real casinos absorb the overhead of cycling fresh dealers in and out of real poker games all day long, the enormous number of games that could simultaneously be played online would create a staggering amount of overhead (operational and financial) towards maintaining a tireless, 24-7 group of dealers, all of equal caliber, and this is as good as any reason for pause.

It is worth mentioning that I am envisioning the use of "genuine Las Vegas" dealers to establish the baseline product quality and playing experience, and I am using entertainment software's MMO model as the vehicle through which the playing experience would occur.

A company may be making such incredible profits from its online poker products that investing in such a literal army of on-call live dealers is ultimately a drop in the bucket. On the other hand, for some of the more pioneering online poker game developers, live dealers may represent an opportunity for live banter or more live banter among players, in which case, a moderator may become necessary. This may require consideration of a few additional items: supportive enhancements to the game code base, or the addition of a live moderator to partner with the live dealer. The training of a live dealer to become a proficient moderator may be a non-starter, as the dealer needs to be focused on the game during the chatter . . . rather than in-between the chatter.

Regarding visual quality, until an Internet standard has been established, at least here in the U.S. where there is unfortunately still a steady mix of broadband and dial-up (unlike in Japan where everyone has ultra-high speed connectivity), the visual quality will have to remain lean and mean so that the quantity of players, visual quality, and functional bandwidth speed of the game can be maintained. The last thing a poker player (casual or professional) wants is to be distracted by the dealer for anything other than the necessary calls and card turns.

While everyone prefers the best visual quality for a digital product attempting to replicate reality, society has played all types of games with varying degrees of fidelity for centuries, and as long the fidelity did not take away from the core playing experience, everyone remained happy. Online poker players, for now, can more than survive without seeing the fuzzy grain of the felt playing surface.

If you have the necessary funding to pursue live dealers within your online poker game products, then, the necessary infrastructure planning, resource management, and development efforts I described will combine to be the biggest challenge but not an insurmountable one. The metamorphosis of online poker should be very interesting to watch in the coming years.