Posts Tagged ‘Speed Poker’

Why is Zoom Poker so Tough?

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

If you’ve ever played Zoom Poker at Stars – or any of the other fast poker variants like Speed Poker (Titan), Fast Forward (Party Poker) or Fast Poker (Unibet) – you have probably noticed that these games are tough to beat. In fact, most people find that they’re far less profitable playing quicker poker variations than they are in regular cash games. This being said, it’s worth diving a little deeper into why Zoom Poker is tougher than normal cash play.

Tight is Right

Fast poker variants are much tighter than what many people are used to. One of the big reasons why is because players don’t have much information on opponents since they’re constantly being whisked away to new tables. So players tend to rely heavily on their cards/table position, rather than reads on opponents.

Because of the tighter play, high unsuited connectors like AK and KQ lose some value since you’ll be running up against big pocket pairs quite frequently. So anybody who’s keen on playing drawing hands will need to scale this back some in Zoom.

More Blinds

Another tough part about fast poker games is that you’ll be dealing with the blinds far more often. Action happens quicker in Zoom Poker, so the orbits come around more frequently.

Now this might not be such a big deal if you’re a skilled player who commonly makes profits. However, if you’re somebody who’s still learning the intricacies of poker, the increased blinds rate just compounds problems. Taking this into account, we highly suggest that you do your training elsewhere and save fast poker games for more experienced grinders.

Bigger Swings

One more point worth mentioning about the difficulty of Zoom Poker is that big swings occur more often. Again, these games move faster and so your up and downswings are amplified. Of course, anybody who’s used to multi-tabling will probably feel more comfortable with the wild swings.

All in all, fast cash game variants can be fun to play since you’re always getting action and never sitting around. But do be aware that Zoom and similar games seem quite tough in the beginning.

PokerStars looking to monopolize Speed Poker

Friday, October 12th, 2012

Over the past few months, the speed poker genre has really heated up with a number of sites launching their own fast variant. In fact, this trend inspired us to write tips about playing faster poker games a few weeks ago.

Getting to the point, it now looks as if PokerStars is fighting to make sure they’re the only site where you can enjoy speed poker. This version of the game – which sees players whisked away to another table when their action in a hand is completed – was first introduced by Full Tilt when they rolled out Rush Poker. However, their demise from April to June of 2011 left the door wide open for other competitors to copy Rush.

PokerStars was actually the first room to mimic the idea after rolling out Zoom Poker. This highly-successful speed poker variant eventually drew the ire of former Full Tilt management, which attempted to patent their invention despite an inability to run games (license was taken away). Stars of course argued that fast poker wasn’t something which could actually be patented.

It’s funny how things come around because now it’s Stars which is trying to patent the genre since they purchased Full Tilt from the US DOJ. More specifically, they want Relax Gaming (Fast Poker), Microgaming (Blaze Poker), Party Poker (FastForward) and Titan Poker (Speed Hold’em) to cease their speed operations.

Of course, this all seems a bit hypocritical since it wasn’t too long ago when Stars was stealing the concept. Instadeal Network CEO Per Hildebrand spoke about this when he said, “The funny part is that their lawyers once must have concluded that the product is not patent-able. They launched Zoom and now want to argue it is.”

Obviously Hildebrand has a point here since he and other companies are merely doing exactly what PokerStars did. Of course, these things still have a funny way of playing out in court.