Move over, gaming companies, Zynga, the publicly-traded company that brought you such gaming biggies as CastleVille and FarmVille, to name just two, now wants to jump into online gambling to see where the money is.

Zynga says it currently has some 7 million poker players who sign on through such vehicles as Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.

On Friday, the company said that if online poker playing becomes legal in the U.S. it wants to be part of the action. The company said it was seeking out partners – reportedly such existing gambling operators such as Betfair, 888 and bwin.party – to jump onto the online gaming opportunity.

In a statement last week, Zynga said, "We know from listening to our players that there’s an interest in the real-money gambling market. We’re in active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity."

The company’s interest grew stronger following the announcement recently that the U.S. Justice Department had eased its views toward Internet gambling, specifically suggesting that current laws prohibit gambling on sports.

This view followed months of congressional activity in Washington that encouraged supporters to feel that some form of Internet gambling would be forthcoming. Also, it appeared that if a federal law doesn’t surface soon, a number of states including California and Nevada would authorize intrastate Internet gambling.

Even an intrastate law in California would benefit Zynga since so many of its current online poker players reside in the state.

Also looking to benefit from a liberalization of the Internet gambling laws are MGM Resorts International (MGM) and Boyd Gaming Corp. (BYD), who have partnered with bwin.party, a leader in European online gambling, and Caesars Entertainment Corp., formerly Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., the company behind the World Series of Poker.

Just last week, International Game Technology (IGT) announced it was acquiring Double Down, a company that runs a casino-style gambling game on Facebook.

Zynga (ZNGA) went public last December with an initial public offering price of $10. It since has had trouble maintaining that share value with the price on Monday being as low as $8.76 per share.