As PokerStars’ push to attract and retain recreational players forges ahead, it has launched a new promotion, featuring, for the first time, a celebrity-branded poker table. Just days after retiring from his legendary sprinting career, Usain Bolt has lent his name to the – appropriately – Zoom Poker tables with the “PokerStars Zoom Usain Bolt Edition.”

The new Usain Bolt tables are the same as any other Zoom Poker table, but with the addition of Bolt’s name and likeness. PokerStars has also added the cute feature of turning the table’s traditional padded rail into a race track.

For those of you who are new to Zoom Poker, the rules of the game itself are the same as always. The mechanics, though, are different. Rather than sitting down with a set group of players at a single table, players select the game type and stakes and are then placed into a much larger player pool. Players are seated and contest a hand, but when a player folds, he or she is immediately whisked away to another table with a new group of players to begin the next hand.

The benefit of this for the player is that the action is constant; there is no more twiddling thumbs while waiting for a hand to finish. The downside is that it is much harder to get reads on opponents, as the opponents keep changing every hand. It is also, naturally, easier to bust more quickly, as the hands are completed more quickly (at the same time, one can win faster).

With these Usain Bolt tables, PokerStars is offering Zoom Challenges every day and every week from now through September 24th. There are daily challenges, allowing players to win up to $5,000, and those players who complete the required number of challenges (per the player’s Challenge window) will see their reward tripled for the weekly challenge.

It appears that the challenges vary based on the player. For example, some people on Monday have been given the challenge to win 9 cash game hands (interestingly, they don’t have to be Zoom Poker hands) in 15 minutes with minimum stakes of $0.01/$0.02 (so really any stakes), while some just need to win 6 hands. In the examples I have seen, players have up to 20 chances to complete the challenge before a new one is issued.

If everyone’s possible rewards are the same, they are paltry, but still more than zero. There is a 68.499 percent chance to win 50 whole cents for hitting the daily challenge, a 30 percent chance to win $1, a 1 percent chance to win $2, a 0.5 percent chance to win $10, and a 0.001 percent chance to win $5,000.

As challenges vary person to person, it is possible that the prizes do, too, but my guess is that they are the same across the board, as PokerStars has explicitly stated that the top prize is $5,000. And again, the weekly prizes triple if a player completes enough daily challenges.

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