Message to online poker room Duplicate Poker:

Look out!

Someone is trying to duplicate you!

A gambling software provider, Carlyle Gaming & Entertainment Ltd., announced Wednesday that it will be launching a new online poker room in three months.

The new room will be called Poker Twin and will be a so-called “legal in the USA” online poker room, Carlyle announced.

According to a news release from the company, Poker Twin is “a skill game and legal in most jurisdictions in the United States.”

The release goes on to explain: “Poker Twin is a Texas hold ‘em-based poker game that removes the luck of the draw and lets a poker player rely on their skills to win. Poker Twin players in corresponding seats at two different tables are dealt identical poker hands and prove their skill not by how lucky they are, but how well they play each hand in comparison with the other players who have the same cards.”

By only competing against those with identical hands, the element of luck is completely removed from this version of poker as only skill is used, Carlyle said.

And with no luck inovlved, this type of poker is technically not gambling and therefore is legal for Americans to play, the company said.

What Carlyle didn’t say in the news release was that it ripped off the idea of Poker Twin from another online poker room, Duplicate Poker (www.duplicatepoker.com.)

Duplicate Poker operates exactly the same way Poker Twin says it will be operating, and has been for several years.

In fact, Duplicate Poker was the first online poker room to open using the legal loophole of removing luck by dealing identical hands to more than one player.

If Duplicate Poker has a patent on the concept, Poker Twin could be in for some big legal trouble.

But then, Duplicate Poker didn’t really originate the concept of duplicate card play either.

When it opened, Duplicate Poker freely admitted it got the idea for the concept from the world of duplicate bridge.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)