EasyPoker – Poker with Friends - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

I did create websites and webshops in Wordpress, and later ran a marketplace platform developed in Ruby on Rails, but I never saw myself as a developer - at least not a very good one.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

It’s far more difficult than you can imagine to have a live multiplayer service running. Especially keeping it stable during peak hours, as players often use EasyPoker for hours at a time. A small connectivity drop or a user sitting on an unstable network can have a serious impact on the user experience.

We also had to change backend provider as our service shut down (thank you Amazon). This meant we had to rewrite our whole backend without having time to do maintenance on our live game. It was very stressful but we had to make peace with the process as our small team could not do both things at the same time.

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The interviewee, Tobias Eberhard, is the CEO of EasyPoker. He and his two friends, the “pokerneers,” built a new type of poker app based on the social experience, allowing friends to connect through poker.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

It’s a tough question. I use PocketCast, MyDietCoach and TikTok every day. I really like the simplicity yet powerfull UI of PocketCast, the easy of use and clean design of MyDietCoach and the well-developed algorithm of TikTok. I also really like how Zillow’s UI have made it much easier to look at real estate directly from a map.

How long have you been working on this app?

We have been working on EasyPoker on and off since 2019. I’ve been full time as CEO since the beginning of Covid-19. Today we’re 5-6 people working on EasyPoker.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

We want to make spontaneous poker with friends simple and accessible.

I came up with the idea for EasyPoker after some friends and I wanted to play poker on a vacation. We started out badly by not even bringing a poker set, so we had to use matches and folded up pieces of paper as chips. We also only had haft a set of playing cards, so it wasn’t really a good experience. This was the problem I wanted to solve with the EasyPoker app.

It was important for me that the app would be cleanly designed with a simple yet powerfull UI. I was inspired by how Kahoot made it easy to share and access games, as it was so simple that even my grandmother could use it. Mixing all this with a non-gambling focus set the path for how we built EasyPoker.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

EasyPoker has redesigned how a poker app is essentially setup. We were the first poker app to have a horizontal interface, and still the only app that can facilitate a game of poker with friends within seconds. We offer unlimited free games, and never sell digital poker chips or put a time limit on games. Overall we want to create a great social poker experience, and everything we put out is done with this mindset.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We have big plans for EasyPoker, but most of them I can’t talk about just yet. For now we’re currently in the process of re-designing the app and will slowly release it to the public during the next few updates.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

I just want you to enjoy the app and have fun with your friends. You can always feel free to reach out to us if you have ideas for features, partnerships etc. I personally get and read all emails.