Mobile poker apps are mushrooming in the market, becoming more and more popular. Most of them work for a narrow audience of a specific country or even a club, but there are several that are successfully developing on the international market. Among them, City of Poker (COP) stands out, a mobile application created in China open to players from over 20 countries.
To appreciate how comfortable and pleasant COP is for the game, I played MTT in it and watched how the game was going at the cash tables. In this article, you will see my summary with a subjective COP score on three dimensions.
Design and interface
Pros of the COP app
# 1 is a simple lobby. There are a minimum of sections here – Tournaments, Texas (this is the cache, in which PLO is hidden) and Blackjack. Below you can choose what you want to watch – from left to right, this is information about events (Event), some non-card games (Game), card games (Lobby) and account information (Me).
# 2 – fast work. COP does not require large device resources, loads quickly and does not slow down even on a relatively old tablet (Samsung Tab S3 with Android 9).
# 3 – good layout. During a tournament or at a cash table, the application gives you the opportunity to view everything you need in a couple of taps, and at the same time does not display it back to the lobby.
Cons of the COP app
# 1 – Little information about completed tournaments. In the archive, you can see only TOP-3, the number of participants, entrances and prizupul. The list of participants shows only those who got into ITM.
# 2 – Little Omaha. If there are more than enough available limits and tournaments in Hold’em, then the Omaha players in the room actually have nothing to catch – there are no Omaha tournaments in COP, and the cash is represented by three limits, which are not very popular:
- 1 / 2 (4);
- 2 / 4 (8);
- 5 / 10 (20).
Cash traffic in Hold’em
NLH limits are available here from 0.05 / 0.1 to 25/50/100, and the game is active. On January 22 (Friday) at 16:30 Moscow time, I counted the number of 6, 7 and 8-max tables, at which there was a game at different limits, and got the following picture:
|0.05 / 0.1||4||21|
|0.1 / 0.2||5||32|
|0.5 / 1||16||95|
|1/2 and 1/2 (straddl 4)||16||124|
|2/4 and 2/4 (8)||11||88|
|5/10 and 5/10 (20)||7||54|
|10 / 20 (40)||3||24|
|20 / 50 (100)||2||10|
It can be seen from the table that cash tables are most popular at limits 0.5 / 1 – 2 / 4. Moreover, even the highest limit, if translated at the rate of $ 1 = ¥ 6.48, will require players to purchase 100 straddles for only $ 1. 5K. By the way, the rake here ranges from 1% to 3%, depending on the number of players in the hand.
MTT – three buy-ins + freeroll
COP regularly hosts 7 tournaments, all in NLH, three buy-ins – ¥ 6.60, ¥ 11 and ¥ 22 – with the same 10% rake.
The blinds in City of Poker grow quite quickly – from 2 to 6 minutes depending on the type of tournament.
Despite the small number of MTT options, they consistently recruit from 30 people during the day to 500 in the evening.
City of Poker tournament grid for January 2021
|Tournament||Bai-in, ¥ / $||Rake, ¥ / $||Warranty, ¥ / $|
|Free test||0 / 0||0 / 0||500 / 77|
|Micro-level lightning||6.6 / 1||0.60 / 0.09 (10%)||1.5K / 231|
|Midnight Dream Race||11 / 1.70||1 / 0.15 (10%)||2K / 308|
|Lightning Race||11 / 1.70||1 / 0.15 (10%)||1K / 154|
|All-in lottery||11 / 1.70||1 / 0.15 (10%)||500 / 77|
|Dream game||22 / 3.40||2 / 0.31 (10%)||3K / 462|
|Weekly welfare game||22 / 3.40||2 / 0.31 (10%)||100K / 15.4K|
Convenience of play on the example of a tournament for ¥ 22
For the test on my own skin, I chose the ¥ 22 Dream game ¥ 3K Gtd tournament.
At the start, one thing puzzled me – the time “44 min” was indicated in the schedule and the tournament lobby without any marks. I thought it was a countdown to the start of the tournament, but it turned out that this is how COP informs about the remaining late registration time.
Before registering in the lobby, and immediately after – in the Stats section on the table, you can view all the necessary information about the tournament.
I liked the game – the pleasant design of the table, the ergonomic use of space and the absence of excessive animation left an extremely pleasant experience. In addition, the client has a good soundtrack. But the main plus is interesting opponents, among whom there are quite reasonable players, and so creative that it is just right for them to draw and sell their paintings.
Difficulties for the players can be caused only by the betting menu and even then only at the beginning. In the first hand, I frankly lowered myself, not understanding what kind of timer counts on a fold, whether there will be a time bank, fixed raise amounts, or you can set your own and how to choose an action in advance. However, after a couple of hands everything became clear and it turned out to be quite convenient.
I did not win the tournament, having taken off in 40th place out of 117 participants almost two hours after the start.
Why play COP?
# 1 – Lots of recreational players in the app. Both MTT players and cashiers will find here pleasant lineups, good design and the ability to load another tournament or table to the main load in another room.
# 2 – there is a possibility of transfer between accounts.
# 3 – direct checkout available with the possibility of a deposit and cashout in USDT, Alipay and a Chinese bank card (or by another convenient method through a personal Pokeroff manager).
# 4 – improved security system to combat breaches.
A test account, registration instructions and transaction details can be obtained from your personal Pokeroff manager or in Telegram from @draguaLV or @MaximMar.