Chillingo and Aspyr Media’s Poker Pals has been one of the best asynchronous multiplayer games of the last year on iOS. I have played it on a nearly-daily basis since first getting to play it. This mixture of a turn-based game like Words With Friends and poker has proven to be extremely compelling over time, and I still have 8 or 9 games going at a time.

Luck is important, but so is skill, finding ways to use the hands. Maybe one move would score more, but another might set up a higher scoring play on the next hand. Playing four cards at once in order to clear out the hand is a great strategy. Is it worth making the first move on the edge of the board to open up the jokers? I’ve played one game where neither of us played a move on the outer edge until the center of the board was a 5×5 block of cards. Weird things can happen in this game, and that’s part of the fun of it, because one move can change the complexion of the board entirely.

Starting today, Poker Pals for the iPhone is going free. That’s the full version for the iPhone and iPod touch, available at no cost, allowing for those limited to the free version’s three game limit to expand out and find more players. As well, a recent update added iCloud support, so iPad owners with the HD version of the game can now synchronize their games across all iOS devices.

While the game allows for friends to be found via Crystal or Game Center, and to start up games against random opponents, to help get our readers started out, here’s a list of some of 148Apps staff’s usernames:

Carter Dotson: carter.dotson
Jeff Scott: jeff148apps
Rob LeFebvre: roblef

Feel free to add us to play a game. Stay tuned as well, because we’ve heard about something coming to the game that could be best described as… epic.

FREE!

Poker Pals

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-11-03 :: Category: Games