For the last four Fridays, PocketFives has brought you strategy content about Open Face Chinese Poker sponsored by a popular app that you can download here. This week, we wanted to talk about the growth of OFC with Joseph Michael and Martin Tyson of Open Face Chinese Poker App to see how they've capitalized on this up-and-coming game.PocketFives: Talk about the growth and overall popularity of OFC. It has come a long way in recent months.
Martin Tyson: It was brought to our poker community in May 2012. We were playing regular Chinese Poker while we were waiting for a game to get going. Someone showed us OFC and it took off for us right away. It has a lot of excitement because of all of the royalties and swings that are in the game.
That’s the most exciting thing for people who like to gamble it up – you have big swings and points. That aspect of it is really what made it so attractive. It's also a new game. It's something that hasn't been around for very long. You can play heads-up or with three or four people. You don’t need a lot of people to play.
PocketFives: Are the swings and action comparable to what you'd find in Omaha, for example?
Joseph Michael: Even with Omaha where you start with four cards, more often than not, you're not going to flop anything. A lot of times, the hand will be kind of boring. In OFC, you'll always be able to make hands and will always have decisions to make. There is no folding.
Martin Tyson: The excitement of a big hand is what makes OFC more interesting. A middle hand royalty is doubled, so you can really crush someone. But, because the risk-reward is so high, you're getting punished if you don’t make it. You can go from crushing your opponent for 20 points to losing 20 points in one hand.
I find it interesting that people who don't play poker like to play this game. My daughter likes to play this game. It lends itself to games like spades, hearts, and other traditional card games that people who don’t play cards play. It's a relatively simple game, but you can make it more complicated if you want to.
PocketFives: Speaking of house rules, talk about some of the unique ones you've seen.
Joseph Michael: This is a very new game and I don’t know of anyone who has played it for more than a year. I'd imagine that in a couple of years, there will be set rules that everyone uses. Right now, it's a brand new game, so people are figuring out what rules they enjoy the most. It's interesting to see a game being created before our eyes. That’s a reason our app has become so popular: you can change the scoring and completely customize it. We have 10 different rules you can turn on or off.
Martin Tyson: The poker community has settled into the rule of all royalties paying out. I think that helped the first OFC tournament in the Bahamas because it helped standardize the scoring a bit. There's also an OFC tournament going on at LAPC.
We like Fantasyland, which is another huge risk-reward thing. You'll have a huge scoring hand to get to Fantasyland. Then, you get to play the Fantasyland hand and get 16 or 18 or 20 points on that hand because you get to set it perfectly. The rule I don’t like is what they did at the PCA, which was trips up top. I've never seen that before. It seems like the most difficult hand to make.Joseph Michael: That’s a common way people score, which I think is ridiculous, where trip deuces are 11, trip threes are 12, all the way up to aces. It's so rare to get any trips up top at all. None of the people I know have ever gotten it, and that's a lot of hands. In our app, we have it where you can change how much trips up top are worth.
PocketFives: Where did the idea to create the app come from?
Joseph Michael: When Martin brought the idea to me about making the app, to be honest we didn’t think we were going to make any money. The conversation was that we love playing this game, so it would be awesome to play OFC on our iPhones without dealing cards. It would be even better if we could play it at a regular poker table during down time. We just decided that we enjoyed playing the game and all of our poker friends liked playing it; if everyone in the country bought it, we might be able to make our money back.
Martin Tyson: I saw how popular regular Chinese Poker was. I have a software development and high-tech background, so I knew where to go to find the guys to get the job done. I looked at that market to see how many poker players there were, how many Chinese Poker players there were, and how many we would be able to convert.
Being able to say that we made the app is another reason we wanted to do it. It has turned out to be a lot more complicated than we initially expected, but being such a big market, if it did catch on, it's one of those things that will spread virally. To get your friends to play, they need to download the app as well, so that can help grow it even more. We also thought that by making the app, it would create more buzz for the game in general.
Joseph Michael: When we decided to make the app, which was late September or October, between then and now, the popularity of OFC has gone through the roof. At that time, there were still a lot of people who didn’t know what it was. It has made me excited to go to big live tournaments again to find people to play OFC with. I'm going to the LAPC to see if the rumors are true about how many people are playing this game.
PocketFives: What countries have downloaded your app the most?
Joseph Michael: We have had a ton of Russian people download the app. There are people playing the game all over the world. U.S. is #1 and then the U.K. has just passed Russia. Then, Canada, France, and Australia.
PocketFives: Address Barry Greenstein's security concerns surrounding your OFC app.
Joseph Michael: Barry Greenstein has a longstanding reputation for acting with the highest levels of integrity. We appreciate him bringing this security threat to the poker community's attention so that it could be eliminated. The security of our app is of the utmost importance and our company is committed to ensuring that our players can enjoy OFC without the risk of their opponent having an unfair advantage.
Check out the app here.
