PokAR: Facilitating Poker Play Through Augmented Reality

TL;DR

PokAR is a mobile augmented reality application that enhances poker gameplay by reducing physical and rule complexity, tested through user studies showing positive reception and slight pace increase.

Contribution

This paper presents the first AR poker app on mobile devices using a Snapchat Lens, demonstrating AR's potential to augment traditional card games without extra hardware.

Findings

Most features were positively received

AR did not significantly affect socialization

Slight increase in game pace

Abstract

We introduce PokAR, an augmented reality (AR) application to facilitate poker play. PokAR aims to alleviate three difficulties of traditional poker by leveraging AR technology: (1) need to have physical poker chips, (2) complex rules of poker, (3) slow game pace caused by laborious tasks. Despite the potential benefits of AR in poker, not much research has been done in the field. In fact, PokAR is the first application to enable AR poker on a mobile device without requiring extra costly equipment. This has been done by creating a Snapchat Lens which can be used on most mobile devices. We evaluated this application by instructing 4 participant dyads to use PokAR to engage in poker play and respond to survey questions about their experience. We found that most PokAR features were positively received, AR did not significantly improve nor hinder socialization, PokAR slightly increased the game pace, and participants had an overall enjoyable experience with the Lens. These findings led to three major conclusions: (1) AR has the potential to augment and simplify traditional table games, (2) AR should not be used to replace traditional experiences, only augment them, (3) Future work includes additional features like increased tactility and statistical annotations.