Online poker players in the United Kingdom may want to sit down for this. On Wednesday, the social gaming company Zyngaannounced a partnership with online gambling giant bwin.party that will see the two companies combine to offer real money online poker to players in the U.K. starting in the first half of 2013.

Zynga’s real money poker room will run on bwin.party’s platform. What’s more is that Zynga players will co-mingle with those already on bwin.party’s poker network. The network is dominated by the name everybody knows, PartyPoker, but also includes a few smaller rooms such as WPT Poker. bwin will join the fray later this year.

Thus, not only will current PartyPoker players see an increase in player traffic when Zynga’s new product goes live next year, but conventional wisdom in the poker community says that the average skill level on PartyPoker should decrease, as Zynga is widely known to be full of casual, less skilled players.

There will be no obstacles for Zynga when it comes to licensing, either, as the service will run using bwin.party’s Gibraltar gaming license. Zynga will provide the brand and its players, while bwin.party will bring the software and support.

“Bringing together Zynga’s expertise in social gaming with the top international real money gaming operator is the best way to create the highest quality gaming experiences for our players in the U.K.,” explained Zynga’s Executive Vice President for Corporate and Business Development Barry Cottle in a press release. “Partnering with an established leader like bwin.party is a strategic and prudent way for us to enter a key RMG (real money gaming) market while giving local players the real money games they’ve been asking us for.”

According to PokerScout, the PartyPoker family of rooms is currently the second largest in the industry, with a seven-day average of 2,700 cash game players. It is light-years behind PokerStars, which has 23,000, but holds the narrowest of leads on the iPoker Network, which boasts 2,650 cash game players.

By comparison, PokerScout says that Zynga’s seven-day average of play money players is over 100,000 (pictured). Obviously, not all of those are U.K. gamers, but even having a small share of those move over to real money will allow PartyPoker to establish itself as the clear number two in the online poker space, pending Full Tilt Poker’s imminent re-launch.

“Today’s announcement is another example of our success in leveraging our assets through strategic blue-chip partners,” said bwin.party co-CEOs Jim Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger. “Zynga is the world’s leader in social games, with hundreds of millions of active players worldwide and a significant player base in the U.K. We are delighted to have been selected as their chosen partner for this important step in their evolution and hope to expand our relationship into other products and markets.”

Despite its popularity, Zynga has been struggling. Earlier this month, the general manager of Zynga Poker, Laurence “Lo” Toney, left the firm. In the two months prior to that, six top principals, including four C-level executives and two vice presidents, also departed.

A few weeks ago, Zynga cut its yearly and quarterly forecasts, resulting in deterioration of its stock price, which had already been near all-time lows. The company went public less than a year ago, opening at $11 per share on December 16. On Wednesday, the stock hit a record low closing price of just $2.13. It is currently up to $2.39, a huge jump on a percentage basis, but analysts remain cautious about its future potential.

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