Cheating Spouses on Zynga Poker? Gay Cruising on Zynga Poker?

“There are a lot of cheating wives and husbands on Zynga poker.   Most of it is your ordinary run-of-the-mill flirting, but many times it is really a hook up in progress and sometimes Zynga poker players leave their spouses for another — and sometimes it’s for a person of the same sex.  So yes, I would say that there is not only a lot of marital infidelity going on at the Zynga tables, there is also a lot of gay cruising as well.”   — Dr. Kathy Fowerbok,   Zurich Institute for Sexual Study and Online Infidelity.

If you play Facebook’s lovely game of Zynga poker — you know the one where you are sitting at a make-believe poker table and every player but you is either Asian or a guy named Muhammad?    Yeah, you know the one I’m talking about.

Anyway, sometimes you might notice that you go into a room where there are just two others.  One is a man and the other is a woman and sometimes it’s either two men or two women, but as soon as you sit down, they vanish and leave their hands folded up.  What on earth are they up to?  Why would they leave so strangely? 

TheDamienZone.com spoke with Dr. Kathy Fowerbok, an expert in online infidelity and trysting and the good doctor filled us in on a few things.

“Facebook is public and you can go on there to catch up with old fiends and colleagues,” said Dr. Fowerbok. “Certain apps or games or other aspects of facebook are not so public — games such as Zynga Poker.  It’s very easy for people to make dates on Zynga poker without anyone really knowing because the odds of someone you know or knows your spouse being at the same virtual table are astronomical — but it happens.

“Often these people meet outside of Facebook and make dates to chat while going through the motions of playing poker.  Zynga poker enables people to chat and when a couple goes to a table where they are the only two, they can make plans or talk about anything.  It’s like an online date or tryst, if you will.  The problem is that the tables are then set upon by other people and often in fear, the cheating couple has to make a quick getaway.  This is silly because it seems obvious to the new players that two people just ran off.  Like I said, the odds of anyone finding the table at which their spouse or lover is playing are one in a million.    That’s how many people play.

“There is also a lot of gay cruising on Zynga poker and certain tables are known secretly in the gay community to be for cruising in a selected country and region.  When an unknown person sits at this table, one of the cruisers is the sacrificial player.  He/she keep going “all in” until the outsider gets tired of the absurd betting patterns and leaves.  Mostly, however, the gay cruising tables are full to the rim and other gays stand by in a virtual lobby waiting to get in.  I would say that thousands of hook-ups or sex dates happen each night at Zynga poker, and the reason it is a great vehicle for gay hook-ups is that many people in countries where homosexuality is a crime or frowned upon with threats of violence or job loss, are able to hide there under the guise of playing poker.  We had a patient here not so long ago who was playing at a secret gay table and noticed that his boss at work was playing at the same table as well.    Since the idea is to hook up, many people use their actual photos, and this guy knew it was his boss.  His first inclination was to flee, but instead, he changed his profile picture and arranged for a rendezvous.  He never kept that date of course but he was content to know that his boss was cruising the poker tables.”

So now you know why you sometimes sit at a table and two guys named Ahmad, sitting side by side, suddenly run and hide or why a a Japanese man and woman playing against each other run for the hills when you sit down.  

“I meet so many guys for sex when I play Zynga,” said a Cambodian man known only as Om.  “I see somebody I like and if they are in my area, we make a plan to meet.  We buy a lot of chips (chips are cheap even for a Cambodian) usually play at the 100,000 table so that regular people do not come and try to play with us.  We play at a casino in a virtual city that I can’t say to you right now, but I will tell you that Gay men from Singapore play at the 100K tables in a casino that is labeled as Virginia Beach — and they play at 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Hmmm — so when the chips are down, why not head down to Zynga poker.  Maybe you’ll meet the girl or guy or tranny or pre-op or daddy bear of your dreams.  It doesn’t cost anything really.   And for us regular Zynga Poker players, now we know why people run away from the table as soon as we sit down.