Tonybet added poker to its Irish platform on Oct. 6, expanding an existing offering of sports betting, live casino and slots. Irish customers can enter the new vertical using the account they already hold, without downloading a separate app or opening another account.
The launch offers cash tables, scheduled tournaments and Spins. Cash-game players can join and leave tables at any time; tournaments have buy-ins and prize pools; and Spins use smaller fields in a faster tournament format. The poker product runs within the Tonybet website, which publishes rules for each available format.
The service uses a single account and wallet across desktop and mobile, and poker is offered as a player-versus-player product alongside the sportsbook and casino. Tonybet’s responsible-gaming controls are built in across its markets and include deposit limits, session reminders, cooling-off periods and self-exclusion.
EvenBet Gaming provides the poker technology. The supplier has worked on more than 200 poker projects across 20 countries, according to Casino News Daily.
The addition broadens a platform whose sportsbook covers more than 100 sports, including pre-match and in-play betting, cashout and Bet Builder. Its racing section covers Irish, UK and international meetings. Tonybet’s casino lists more than 9,000 titles from over 1,000 providers, including Pragmatic Play, Play’n GO, BGaming and Hacksaw, across slots, live-dealer games and jackpots.
Tony Cascarino, a former Republic of Ireland striker and Tonybet ambassador, backed the launch. Cascarino earned 88 international caps before moving into poker, where he won two Grosvenor UK Poker Tour titles and more than $600,000 in live tournament winnings. “Poker gave me a second sporting life,” he said, citing its pressure and need to read opponents while saying it can be played into old age.
The Irish launch comes more than half a century after the World Series of Poker gave the game a major stage in Las Vegas from 1970. In 2003, Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million after qualifying through an $86 online satellite, defeating a then-record field of 839 players.
