It’s a fascinating tale, I swear, how the WSOP and their new mobile online poker app won over my free-time play … and actually got me to pony up cash for playable chips — a conversion the game-greats at Zynga Texas Hold’em could never achieve with me. (Though Scramble with Friends did get a few of my bucks once.)

Zynga Poker, apparently recognizing a decrease in my “Texas Hold’em” play, buzzes me mid-Omaha in a failed effort to win me back to their handheld digital tables.

The story gets even better when you look into the lawsuit between Zynga and WSOP app-maker Electronic Arts … particularly as Zynga gets ready to do battle on Facebook for real-money gambling in partnership with BwinParty.

Zynga’s stock may be continuing to tank, but I still tend to believe the company is likely to be a major player in the future of online gaming — if only because of the number of poker media with whom I regularly play Scramble with Friends.

But while still reserving my right to make a complete 180 on the above assessment, I’ve been seeing some new pimpage lately (by the #1 purveyors of digital gaming for anyone age 13 or older) that suggests we may have been on to something when passing off a cheap joke about the convergence of online poker and virtual farming.

What do you think? Is Zynga more interested in redistributing poker monies to Farmville in an effort to keep their once glorious game of agribusiness alive and well, or vice versa — more interested in using their newest Farmville release to grow a new generation of future gamblers real-money social gaming players?