Posts Tagged ‘Titan 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.

Poker Backing Industry suffering

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

The once thriving poker backing industry seems to have taken a major hit following Black Friday, where several of the world’s largest poker sites were forced to stop offering services to US players. With this being said, many online poker pros still have lots of money wrapped up on these sites (especially Full Tilt Poker), and they have no way to access the money. All of this leads to the top pros being unable to back other players like they once did.

If you’re unfamiliar with poker backing, the process involves a businessman or poker player paying tournament entry fees, and/or providing a cash game bankroll for promising players. In return, the backed players will split all of their profits with the backer. Unfortunately, these deals have become less and less common since many professional US players are quitting the game because they can’t play at the largest sites, and are looking for new opportunities.

Furthermore, online poker tournaments were a huge part of the backing industry since good players could play multiple tournaments at once, and easily turn a solid profit due to the large tournament volume. But with this option taken away, both backers and the talent they backed are finding it difficult to survive post-Black Friday.

So does this mean the poker backing industry is completely dead? Not at all since there are still many non-US-backed players who can play at PokerStars, Party Poker and Titan Poker. Even in the US, players can still get a decent volume of tournaments in at some of the smaller sites, and there are plenty of big live tournaments left too.

The only thing is that few people expect poker backing to ever return to the same height it was at before Black Friday. However, we could see some new developments depending on how the possible US poker regulation turns out.