EVENBET GAMING All in on instant play:
Why the next big bet in iGaming is a two-minute poker session
T
he average human attention span is now measured in seconds. Eight of them, according to widely cited research: shorter than a goldfish, shorter than a pre-roll ad, shorter than the time it takes a new user to navigate a traditional poker lobby and find a seat at a table.
This is not a curiosity. For iGaming operators, it is a structural problem. The industry’s dominant response is to keep building longer, more complex poker products and then wonder why acquisition converts, but retention collapses. It is the wrong answer. There is a better one. But it requires operators to fundamentally change how they think about poker: not as a destination product for enthusiasts, but as a micro-moment engine for the mainstream.
THE LOBBY PROBLEM NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT Traditional poker carries enormous baggage. It demands patience. It requires a player to navigate a lobby, choose a game type, select stakes, wait for a seat, and then commit to a session that could last an hour or more. For the cohort who already love poker, this is a feature. For the much larger cohort who might play poker (or who already play other products on your platform), it is a barrier so high that most of them never clear it.
The numbers are stark. Multi-vertical players (those who engage with more than one product on a platform) show roughly 35 to 45 per cent higher retention than single-vertical players. Poker, done right, is one of the most powerful cross-sell tools in the operator’s arsenal. But “done right” no longer means a fully featured cardroom. It means meeting the player where they already are, in the moment they are already in.
By Dmitry Starostenkov, CEO, EvenBet Gaming, a global iGaming software provider with over 20 years of specialised expertise in delivering B2B poker platforms for regulated and emerging markets worldwide. Published following EvenBet Gaming’s keynote address at the Casino Leaders Summit 2026, London.
8 JULY 2026 GIO
The majority of iGaming sessions today happen on mobile, between other activities, during short windows of time. A sports bettor watching a live match has thirty seconds between plays. A player waiting for a bonus round to resolve has ninety seconds of dead air. That time is leaving your platform unless you have something to fill it, and that something does not have to be a slot.
WHAT AN ‘INSTANT-IN’ SESSION ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE The concept of instant-play poker is not new. What is new is the sophistication with which the best implementations approach it, and the
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