PokerStars officially launched Zoom Poker Tuesday, making the popular game a formal offering for the world’s largest online poker room after two months in public beta testing mode. There was plenty of testing done during that period; more than 300 million Zoom Poker hands have been dealt since mid-March.
Zoom Poker is PokerStars’ fast-paced ring game format, virtually identical to Full Tilt Poker’s Rush Poker, which is obviously no longer available. In Zoom Poker, players compete against a pool of players at a selected game type and stakes, seeing a new batch of players at the table every hand. Players can fold at any point during the hand; as soon as a player’s turn ends, whether it is after a fold or winning the pot, he is whisked away to a new table with a new set of opponents. For the speediest movement from hand to hand, the “Fast Fold” button is available to allow players to fold their hand and move on before it is even their turn to act.
Essentially, the mechanics are the same as any other poker game. Someone who knows how to play poker knows how to play Zoom Poker. It’s just a lot faster, without all that boring time spent waiting for the hand to finish. That’s not to say that you can’t see what happened in the hand you just left. Holding down the “CTRL” button while clicking “Fold” will allow players to watch the end of the hand.
When the public beta began, the types of games and stakes offered were very limited for Zoom Poker, starting with No-Limit Hold’em and micro-stakes. Omaha and Draw Zoom Poker games are now available and the stakes range from $0.01/$0.02 to $2.50/$5.00. Players can also play on up to four Zoom Poker tables simultaneously.
In March, cash game traffic watchdog PokerScout.com estimated that 25 percent of all cash game players on PokerStars were playing Zoom Poker. But that’s just players, not hands. PokerScout added that because Zoom Poker hands are almost three times as fast as regular hands, almost half of the cash game hands on the site take place at the Zoom Poker tables. At the time of the calculation, which was just days after the public beta launch, PokerScout estimated that PokerStars’ cash game traffic had jumped 50 percent because of Zoom Poker, based on the idea that one Zoom Poker player equals three regular cash game players.
PokerStars also released Zoom Poker for Mobile on Android devices Tuesday, with plans to make it available for Apple’s iOS within a few weeks. Mobile players will be playing at the very same tables as those on their home computers – it is the same game, just on a smaller device.
