After 2 long months of testing, Zoom Poker is finally out of its beta testing mode and available on the largest online poker room in the world. PokerStars introduced it on Tuesday after everything was carefully tested since the mid of March; over three million hands were dealt in Zoom Poker Beta and the public was expecting it to be released by the end of this month. Seeing it finally available has made it quite the news article in the poker community. It brings something new to PokerStars that is meant to offer users a different experience when playing online poker.
The Zoom Poker game is something similar to the Rush Poker game used by Full Tilt Poker; one of the online competitors that has been shut down for quite some time now. Although Rush Poker is no longer available, the users at PokerStars seem to enjoy playing Zoom Poker. It is a fast paced ring game in which you compete against a number of players. There are options for game types as well as stakes but the tables rotate around so that the user faces different players every hand. The “Zoom” element refers to a fast changing game, the player can easily fold their hand which will automatically move them to a new table where they will start a new hand. This means that players don’t have to wait around the table for others to finish and they can just choose to have a new hand dealt to them against new players. There is even an option for “Fast Fold” which makes things go even faster as players don’t have to wait for their turn to fold.
Overall, it is the same game only faster. The same rules apply as in a regular game and anyone that is familiar with poker will be able to play Zoom Poker. The whole concept is to make things go a bit faster in order for players to not get bored while the table finishes a hand. If however a player would like to see what happens to a hand he folds, he can simply hold down the “Ctrl” key while pressing “Fold” and this will allow him to see the end of that hand. Everything is very easy to use and playing can be very fun with no boring moments that can ruin your game.
Despite the beta period when just a few games or stakes were available, there is now a wider range that can be enjoyed. Omaha as well as Draw Zoom Poker games are available which come on top of the Hold’em stakes that were possible in the beta testing. The available stakes are from two cents for the big blind to five dollars. The played stakes on this type of games aren’t very big but the range does cover most of the players that would be interested in a fast-paced poker game. For those players that enjoy playing on several tables at the same time, Zoom Poker allows users to have a maximum of four tables at any given time, making Zoom Poker and even faster playing experience.
Although it hasn’t been enough time for a statistic of how Zoom Poker affects the traffic on PokerStars, it is important to note that when the public beta testing period began in March, a quarter of all the cash games players were playing it. This only reflects the amount of players and not the number of hands played as Zoom Poker is roughly three times faster than regular poker. Also on Tuesday, PokerStars introduced the apps for Android devices that allow users to play Zoom Poker on their mobile phones. The option for Apple products is said to be released over the next few weeks.
