Aren't there enough poker and card games in the Apple app store? That was my question for Treemo founder Brent Brookler, a Seattle mobile veteran whose company this week unveiled a $1.99 game for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Tic-A-Tac Poker.  

After all, my rough count in the app store turned up no fewer than 150 applications under the search "poker" -- from "Zone Out Poker 3D" to "6-in-1 Casino."  Still, despite the competition, Brookler is marching on.  

He thinks Tic-A-Tac Poker -- which like the name suggests combines Tic Tac Toe and Draw Poker -- will resonate because of its patented game play and community features.

"We think our community features are best of breed and represent some of the most advanced features relative to other mobile games," he says.

Tic-A-Tac Poker marks the third iPhone app for Treemo, which also recently unveiled Seelebrity and CBS EyeMobile citizen journalism apps.

For Brookler, who previously co-founded mobile gaming startup Mobliss, the new iPhone app brings him full circle. Things certainly have changed from the early days of mobile game development, with Brookler saying he likes what he sees in the iPhone.

"The buzz is with merit," he says. "I have been in the mobile business since 1999 and no phone has delivered the experience that this phone does. The AppStore and iPhone SDK are amazing and very open relative to other platforms in the past. Android has a lot of promise, but right now the iPhone is very far ahead in terms of billing integration, features and numbers of users."

Because of that, Brookler has shifted resources to the iPhone.  "The market is bigger and growing faster than any single device we targeted in the past," he says.

No wonder he wanted to roll the dice with a new poker game.