Are zynga poker chips the future of gaming? As most poker fans know by now, last week the Department of Justice in conjunction with the FBI seized the domains of 3 of the top real money poker rooms. Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker players were greeted by the chilling screen above when they went to log in to their favorite poker sites. Amongst the charges against the owners of these sites was fraud and money laundering for tricking banks into processing online transactions for online poker games in the US, which is by law illegal. 

 

Without the ability to play real money games, these recent developments have left most of the online poker community in the US without an outlet to get their grind on. This has left some people to speculate that they will eventually make their way to facebook poker games such as Zynga Texas Holdem Poker to get their poker fix. While they'll have to trade their real money accounts for zynga poker chips, depending the game they choose, many are speculating that a good percentage of these now idle casual players won't mind, as long as they can play a few hands of poker every day with their friends.

 

So can we really expect millions of bored poker players to flood into Zynga Poker games now? That might be a little presumptuous, seeing as how facebook poker games involve digital zynga poker chips which hold to real world value. Many real money players simply will not get the rush from knowing they can't cash out a huge pile of money after a big win. Others are day to day grinders and for them playing poker is a full time job with which they pay their bills. It's not likely they'll be able to pay for groceries with zynga poker chips.

 

There are, however, a good number of players who just play real money games because of the competitive challenge of poker from professional players. These players will adjust easily from real money to zynga poker chips because they aren't really playing huge states or seeing much economic benefit from their online poker accounts anyway. It remains to be seen if online poker will ever become legalized in this country, but in the meantime players can take solace in the fact that there are always online games going on social networks like Facebook and Myspace by developers like Zynga, Wsop, Playfish, and Pokerist at all hours of the day.