DraftKings Electric Poker is available to players in Pennsylvania following an apparently successful first run in Michigan. The fast-paced, three-player tournament format is DraftKings’ first foray into online poker, perhaps rekindling players’ curiosity about whether DraftKings ever plans to launch a full-scale poker room.
Electric Poker is DraftKings take on what’s known in the industry as the lottery sit-and-go (LSNG) format. LSNGs follow the same rules as conventional sit-and-go tournaments but with only three seats, a small number of starting chips, and short blind levels. These features all contribute to a much shorter playtime, often only a few minutes. That creates a much more casino-like experience compared to traditional tournament poker, where even a single-table tournament often takes an hour.
The “secret sauce” for casino-style gambling is high volatility, which LSNGs add by randomizing the payouts. Typically, a three-player tournament would pay out three times the buy-in, minus rake. Instead, LSNGs usually pay out only twice the buy-in but with a chance of bigger prizes. Matching the strategy of most established poker rooms, DraftKings has set Electric Poker’s paytable to max out at 10,000 times the buy-in.
Discussing the release of the game in a second state, DraftKings Vice President of iGaming Marketing & Operations, Jason March, said:
Electric Poker is one of many innovative games on DraftKings Casino, which houses exclusive products that players can’t get anywhere else. After positive feedback from our players in Michigan, we are thrilled to expand our Electric Poker offerings to our customers in Pennsylvania, delivering them a best-in-class online poker experience.
- Read More: DraftKings Electric Poker Debuts in Michigan
A New Take on an Internationally Popular Genre
The LSNG concept was pioneered by the French poker site Winamax in 2013 with a game called Expresso. PokerStars followed suit the following year with Spin & Go, taking the international online poker world by storm. It wasn’t long before virtually every international operator was offering an LSNG product of some sort: SPINS at Partypoker, BLAST at 888poker, and Spin & Gold at GGPoker, to name a few.
The format’s popularity is so high that in-person versions sometimes crop up in live poker rooms. PokerStars has even decided to host a live Spin & Go World Championship at the European Poker Tour stop in Prague this December.
By contrast, the format isn’t as common in US regulated markets. Neither WSOP nor BetMGM Poker offers it. Until DraftKings Electric Poker arrived, PokerStars Spin & Go was the only option at a real-money poker site. The sweeps poker site Global Poker also offers what it calls Jackpot Sit and Go, another name for the same thing.
What makes Electric Poker unique is that it is available from within DraftKings Casino rather than as part of a standalone online poker product. That’s convenient and might also make the game appealing to players hunting for soft competition: The lack of other poker games at DraftKings might mean the games attract more recreational casino users than other poker sharks.
Pennsylvania Online Poker Set for Rapid Expansion
The arrival of DraftKings Electric Poker in Pennsylvania is the third piece of exciting news for Pennsylvania online poker players in just a few weeks.
In fact, it’s starting to look like we could call this the second wave of Pennsylvania online poker expansion. The first came in 2019 when the state legalized online gambling in general. PokerStars was the first poker operator to launch there that November and, for a time, the state’s only operator. BetMGM Poker and WSOP followed in 2021.
The slow arrival of PokerStars’ competitors may have been because Pennsylvania isn’t a member of the Multistate Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA). That compact allows states to pool their online poker traffic, meaning more tables, more formats, and bigger tournament prize pools.
However, late last week, it emerged that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had instructed the regulator to begin the process of signing onto the MSIGA. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has also given the green light to another new poker product, BetRivers Poker.
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