Timing for the release – first half of 2013 for countries out of the U.S.

Recent rumors that social gaming giant Zynga is planning to launch real-money online poker have been confirmed and further revealed by the social gaming giant&s chief executive Mark Pincus, who stated that its first real-money online poker game will go live within the first half of 2013.

It appears that initially, the offering will target countries outside of the US. It has been specified by the company that it is looking to mobile as a big growth opportunity in the future.

According to Pincus, “We faced new short-term challenges which led to a sequential decline in bookings. Despite this, we’re optimistic about the long-term growth prospects on mobile where we have a window of opportunity to drive the same kind of social gaming revolution that we enabled on the web.”

He also specified that in just one year, Zynga&s mobile traffic got 5x bigger, reaching 33 million daily active users and making it the largest mobile gaming network.