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App Store Compliance

This document is a checklist the engineer (and any future contributor) reads before adding a feature. The goal: ship a clean educational training app, not a gambling-adjacent app.

Positioning (must remain true at all times)

  • The app is positioned as educational training, in the description, in onboarding copy, in Settings, and on the range-detail sheet.
  • A persistent disclaimer is present in three independent surfaces: Onboarding, Settings, Range Detail sheet:

    Educational poker training only. No real-money gambling. Demo ranges are approximate and not solver-verified.

What the app does NOT do (and must never do without product/legal review)

  • ❌ Real-money play or wagering of any kind
  • ❌ Play-money "chips" used to gate features or buy in
  • ❌ Deposits, withdrawals, top-ups, cashout, or virtual currency purchase
  • ❌ Real-player multiplayer or live seating
  • ❌ Live-hand assistance (in-play HUD, in-play range suggestion, in-play coach)
  • ❌ Card counting tools
  • ❌ Loot boxes, scratch-cards, or any randomized reward-with-monetary-value mechanic
  • ❌ Tournament leaderboards tied to monetary prizes
  • ❌ Casino-style visuals: slot pulls, jackpot meters, gold coins flying, dollar-sign neon

What the app DOES do (and how to keep those features defensible)

  • ✅ Drills preflop decisions on demo ranges
  • ✅ Teaches stack-depth intuition through bite-sized cards
  • ✅ Reviews user's own mistakes against demo correct answers
  • ✅ Lets the user adjust an in-app notional tournament profile (25,000 chips, 100/200 blinds, 9-max — these are not playable chips, they're just labels used by the training math)

Apple App Review Guidelines — relevant sections (engineer's reading)

The numbers below reference the App Store Review Guidelines at the time of writing. Always consult the current published version before submission.

5.3 — Gambling, Contests, and Lotteries

We are not a gambling app and must clearly look like an educational/training app. Mitigations in place:

  • No real-money or virtual currency anywhere.
  • No "win/loss" framing on outcomes — outcomes are "Correct", "Close", or "Mistake".
  • Persistent educational disclaimer (see above).
  • The app does not enable or facilitate any real-money or virtual-currency gambling.

5.2 — Intellectual Property

We must not copy:

  • The reference app's UI, icons, screenshots, logo, or asset library.
  • Paid solver charts (GTO Wizard, DTO, Upswing, Run It Once).
  • Any third-party trademarked term ("WSOP", "WPT", brand names of casinos, etc.).
  • Copyrighted course material from training sites.

Practical rule: every visual element in this repo is system-provided (SF Symbols, system fonts) or original work. Every range JSON is hand-authored.

4.0 — Design / 4.2 Minimum Functionality

The app must do more than show a range chart. MVP scope includes drills, scoring, leak detection, stack-depth lessons, push/fold trainer — collectively meaningful interactive functionality.

1.4.3 — Medical / 1.4 Physical Harm

Not applicable, but: we make no claims about real-money outcomes. We are not a betting tipster. The Review tab uses helpful, non-judgemental language and does not push the user toward real-money poker.

Privacy (App Privacy report at submission)

The MVP collects no user-identifying data:

  • No analytics SDKs.
  • No crash reporters that collect PII.
  • No account creation.
  • No advertising identifier.
  • No location, contacts, photos, microphone, or camera access.
  • TournamentConfig and QuizResult are stored locally only.

In the App Privacy form, expected answer: "Data Not Collected". If we add a crash reporter post-MVP, it must be one that doesn't tie crashes to a user ID and must be disclosed appropriately.

Marketing copy guardrails

Avoid in screenshots, App Store description, keywords:

  • "Bet", "wager", "win money", "real money", "live", "casino", "play for real", "free chips".

Prefer:

  • "Train", "drill", "practice", "study", "preflop", "tournament", "MTT".

Submission risk register

Risk Likelihood Mitigation
Reviewer assumes gambling app from name Low–Medium Title says "Trainer"; first-screen disclaimer; no chips/casino visuals
Reviewer questions chart data source Low All ranges labeled "demo, not solver-verified"; provenance doc shipped
Reviewer flags copycat of reference app Low Original visual identity; no copied assets; design system documented
Reviewer queries IAP that doesn't exist None No IAP in MVP

Engineer's pre-submission checklist

  • Disclaimer string present in Onboarding, Settings, Range Detail sheet — verified at runtime.
  • No real or virtual currency UI anywhere — grep "$", "USD", "€", "buy", "deposit", "cashout".
  • No casino visuals in Assets.xcassets — manual review.
  • All range JSONs in Resources/Ranges/ have source.type == "demo" — verified by RangeLoaderTests.
  • App icon does not include coins, jackpots, dollar signs, or slot reels — manual review.
  • Privacy nutrition label set to "Data Not Collected".
  • App description does not contain forbidden marketing words.