Teen Patti: Indian Youth Gambling Online?

“Teen Patti” refers to several things in India. First and foremost it is a card game, very similar to 3-card poker in both rules and strategy. Teen Patti is perhaps the most popular card game in the entire country.
Secondly, Teen Patti is a major Bollywood movie starring Ben Kingsley, who plays a mathematician who discovers a formula to predict the outcome of the popular card game, earning quite a lot of money in the process. Both the game and the movie are proving to be extremely popular in India, especially among teens.  

For teens, the primary source for online Teen Patti fun is a social networking site called ibibo. Visitors to this website will see Teen Patti right on the front page, before they have even logged in. The game is primarily social in nature, letting players chat with one another as they play. 

“The game is built with the vision of getting people connected and network via this live multiplayer gaming format,” says ibibo CEO Ashish Kashyap.  

Naturally, Indian teenagers are not gambling for money while playing Teen Patti online, though the game certainly gives young people a taste of what internet gambling in India is like.  

“India has also recently opened up its online gambling license,” Keshyap notes, “and the Internet has some top international operators trying to secure India’s first ever online gambling license.”  

The popularity of Teen Patti across many different audiences in India suggests that online poker sites in India could be extremely popular. The legal status of internet gambling in the country, however, is still not very clear. Outside of the Goa region, most forms of gambling are considered illegal. There have been rumors circulating for many months that the country may soon open up to legalize online gambling, which would let adults play Teen Patty for real money online, but whether internet gambling is really in India’s future still remains to be seen.