If you frequent PokerStars, you may have recently noticed a new tab in amongst the usual sitngo, tournament and Hold'em tabs with Zoom Beta on it.
It's very similar to Rush Poker that used to be available on Full Tilt Poker. There is a pretty cool feature that Zoom Poker has which I will talk about further down.
The games available are Holdem, Omaha and 5 Card Draw; these are all ring games. You can play with real cash or your play money and the smallest real money stakes are 1c/2c. These rise up to the largest stakes of $2.50/$5.00. For the play money tables, these are 5/10 and 100/200.
When you join the game, you will be seated at the table and the first thing you will notice when the cards are dealt, is the large Quick Fold button in the middle bottom of the table. If you click that, you will be moved off to the next table to play the next hand. The new set of players will appear at the table and the next hand will begin.
You will be small blind and big blind in turn (or as much as you can be) and when you are quick folding, you will still take your turn at being SB and BB.
With Zoom Poker, you can choose to watch the entire hand even if you fold and unlike Rush Poker on Full Tilt, you don't have to "sit out" to do this. When you decide to fold rather than quick fold i.e. the action is on you at the time you fold, if you hold down the CTRL buton on your keyboard and click fold, your hand will be folded but you will remain at the table. This is a great feature and will enable you to watch the current hand if you wish to. A large button will appear at the bottom and middle of the table with "New Hand" on it. If you click tha button, you will be zoomed off to the next table to play your next hand.
You have the choice to change the table animations by clicking Options from the main lobby > table display options > Zoom Animations (Beta). From here you can select how your opponents appear on the next table you join. They can either fade in, flip over or slide in to the table. Alternatively you can disable it completely and your opponents on your next table, will just appear.
This game is fast and furious but I would add that the play is quite fishy as a lot of players will be trying to steal those blinds. Use the CTRL button when you click Fold to give you time to make player notes if you need to.
It is good fun and is proving to be very popular.
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