If I was a smart investor (and trust me I'm not saying I am), I'd probably not worry about taking the time to develop a bitcoin poker app and go with something like Cubeia's offering (http://www.cubeia.com/cubeia-poker/). I looked at them a while back and even with 50% margins on your rake it's going to be really hard to grab the market share you need to make your efforts worthwhile.

I see it almost as all or nothing. Seals with Clubs does not report earnings, but I recall seeing an article from Forbes regarding "projected" profits and they were around 20 million US annually (this was a few years ago). That's a nice chunk of change, but like I said it's a market share game. They have/had a number of pro poker players backing their system and regularly playing with their users and a lot of freerolls (back in the day). That builds a lot of loyalty.

There's nothing like brand loyalty, and it's going to be hard to get those kinds of avid players (IMO). Bottom line, I have a pretty extensive marketing background and could have just styled a poker client and had the app already built (using Cubeia) and walked away with 50% of the rake but it would have been an uphill battle to grab that market share. There are a lot of other online casinos offering BTC for chips as well nowadays.

I love hearing new ideas though 

~Minty