The idea behind Zoom Poker is that players buy-in to play against a large group of players at a specific limit, and the game type and stakes are both set throughout the length of your play. As soon as you fold your hand though, you will automatically be moved to another table with a new group of players, and you have the option to fold your hand at any time during the play as well. There is the “fast fold” option which allows you to even fold your hand before the action even gets to you, leading to you being dealt into a new hand possibly before it would even be on you to act.

It’s still standard poker with standard games and limits, but the biggest difference is that you are able to see a ton more hands in a much shorter period of time, which means that there is no time in between hands when you fold that you have to sit and watch the play unfold in front of you. You still have the option to be able to see how a hand plays out if you’d like to by pressing the “CTRL” button on your keyboard while pressing fold, and this will let you see what happens in the hand. But in general, you are going to not only get to play more hands, but also earn more rakeback and be able to stay involved in the action rather than having to play hands out of position or play hands that you typically wouldn’t want to play in order to remain involved.

With the new games opening up they have made it so that instead of just offering No Limit Hold’em at the lower stakes, you can instead play in Omaha and Draw games as well, with limits that range quite a bit more as well. There are still the low limits offered such as the $0.01/$0.02, but it will also go all the way up to the $2.50/$5.00 blind levels as well. As far as multi-tabling goes, you also have the option to play up to four tables at one time as well.

All of the different Football Players that you can win are awarded at random times for every time that a player earns 10 points while playing at the cash game tables on the site. Each player will receive their first player after only five points though, so you can start off the promotion in the right way. The players are divided among 16 different teams, and each team is split four different groups of even numbers. The prizes are split and awarded after you earn all the players on one specific team, and also when you get the players from every single team in a specific group as well. If you are able to take down every single one of the 64 Football Players available then you will when a nice grand prize of $100,000 for your efforts. On top of all of this, some of the players will come with freeroll entries and some additional cash prizes as well.

The different groups are broken down into Group A, which features Poland, Greece, Russia, and the Czech Republic, and will pay out a prize of $7k for getting all of the teams. Group B features Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Portugal with a prize of $1k for getting all four teams. Group C features Spain, Italy, Croatia, and the Republic of Ireland with a prize of $3k. Last but not least is Group D that features Sweden, the Ukraine, England, and France with a prize of $2k.

As far as picking up the prizes for getting each player from full teams, you’ll find that these prizes will range between $50 for England, up to $1,200 for Poland with multiple additional prizes in between. There are also the individual Football Player prizes that you can win instantly that range from $1 all the way up to $20 (for the Poland Goalkeeper), and you can also win your way into freerolls as large as $10k for getting the Germany Midfielder.

Players will be able to win as many as 100 Football Players each day during this challenge, and you have to login to your account in order to see which Football Players that you’ve actually won. The players are going to be given through the end of June or until each of the players have been given out, whichever comes first. In total, there were 3.4 million left to give away, so you’ll have some time to earn them.

While the first event was considered to be a “mid level” buy-in at $215, it was still fairly large when taking all things into account on the online poker site. The event was a No Limit Hold’em event that featured a massive 8,240 players. When Day 1 came to an end Blom found himself sitting in a pretty good spot, but it was Day 2 that he took over the action and found himself with the chip lead going into the final table. When the final table kicked off he made an incredible run leading the way and taking down his first major online poker tournament win of his career.

After that tournament came to an end it was only one day later that he found himself in another Day 2 of the Event #3, which was a larger tournament with a $530 buy-in and optional re-buy as well. It was the same story once again on a different Day 2 with Blom being dominant when it mattered most getting to the final table as the chip leader once again. It wasn’t quite as easy for Blom to take down this title though as his opponents were hitting hands and putting pressure back on him much more than in the event from the day before. When he finally got down to heads up play he was behind in chips 3.1 million to 2.3 million, and his opponent, “Ruxandescu” actually built the stack up to 4.2 million to 1.3 before Blom started to run incredibly good. He doubled up twice in a row to get the chip lead, and then sent the knockout punch soon after that.

For the first event he took down a nice pay day of $247,200 for his efforts, and went on to win another $160,000 for his win in the $530 event, which featured quite a few fewer players. It was a nice four day run for Blom who brought home some big profits for these two SCOOP events. Blom has been active in many of the different poker games around the world, not only in high stakes online cash games, but he has also been playing in some of the live poker tournaments in the big series’ as well. It will be interesting to see if Blom is spotted at the 2012 World Series of Poker this year in Las Vegas, but there is a chance that he could make some serious noise if he ends up playing in the events!

Playing Tight but Playing Position

When you are playing fast poker you have the option to see so many different hands, so you should definitely be sticking with playing prime hands pretty often. With that being said though, you should also look to play position and steal the blinds if there is not a raise before you act. If the action folds to you and you have the chance to take down the blinds, then by all means feel free to take advantage of this. Remember, since you can see so many hands so often, it means that your opponents are most likely playing a similar way, and there is actually a good chance that many of them may have already fast folded their hands, leaving you a chance to take the free blinds down and continue to build up your stack.

Three Betting From Blinds or in Position

Three betting is a huge part of fast poker, mainly because it gives you the chance to pretty up pretty good sized pots without ever having to see the flop. If a player from later position raises and you are in one of the blinds or on the button/cut-off, making a three-bet over that opponent can be a very smart move that can be profitable pretty often. You have to remember that these players could be playing their position, meaning that if you put the pressure back on them that they are likely to lay down their hand because they can simply fold and see another hand quickly. This will lead to you winning even more than just the blinds as you also get their original raise. If you three-bet and the opponent calls, you then need to see how dry the board is and you could potentially put out a continuation bet to take down the pot from there as well!

Raises Before You

When you want to raise a player’s blind who is tight, the entire idea behind it sort of goes down the drain if you have a raiser before you get to the point of being able to make that raise. While typically you may raise from the button or the cut-off with a pretty weak hand in an attempt to pick up those free chips, if there is a raiser then you need to cut down your range massively and play your standard game. Don’t look to mix it up with other players unless you have a strong hand or have a good read on an opponents range. With this being said, you definitely shouldn’t be raising the players’ blinds every single time that they are in them, because that is the fastest way to get the opponent to pick up on what you are doing and fire back at you.

When Player Calls or Three-Bets

If you make the raise on the players blind and they make a call, then you have to play the hand very carefully from there on. Remember that these players are going to play a very small range typically because they are such tight players, which means that they typically have a pretty strong hand. If you don’t have a strong hand then you should see what happens on the flop, but if you don’t get it, then consider slowing down your betting, and potentially not even fire out a continuation bet unless the board is dry or you have a read. Now, if the opponent makes a three-bet pre-flop, then there are two ways that you can look at it. The first is that they are picking up on your raising on the blinds and could potentially just be putting pressure back on you. If you are trying to go with this angle then you must have a good read on the player, because the most common reason why is because they have a strong hand. Don’t get crazy and attempt to four bet a tight player in these situations as more times than not it could end badly.

While most of the talk has still been shut down at the tables, they have decided to make modifications to this rule in order to give players more room for talking. The new rule is that you are now allowed to say anything about your hand at any time EXCEPT if another player at the table has a decision to make. This is a pretty good change from last year, when we remember seeing Daniel Negreanu get talked to about three or four times for talking and him arguing back that the “no table talk” rule is probably one of the most absurd rules in all of poker (and I agree).

Obviously Negreanu made sure to state how upset he was about the situation of the “no table talk” last year during the live broadcasts, and also through his blog as well, which probably played a role in the decision to change the rule. The officials from the World Series of Poker essentially admitted that they were too tight with the enforcement of these rules last year, and the Executive Director of the WSOP, Ty Stewart, stated that how they change dthings actually made it so that players were “afraid to use verbal strategy to out-man their opponents, which was been integral to poker.”

This was not the only rule change that was implemented though, as they also decided to create a rule change relating to the celebrations that occur at the poker table. If you remember back when Hevad Khan used to get incredibly crazy excited at the table, which resulted in the officials making it so players couldn’t celebrate in the same way after winning big hands. This policy has changed though, allowing players to celebrate more and show emotion, but they do have to keep it within reason to some extent and make sure that it isn’t too over the top.

Overall, it looks like these rule changes will be good for the 2012 World Series of Poker. Not only do they benefit players and allow them to remain involved in the game more, but it also makes it so that players who are watching the broadcasts will get a bit more enjoyment out of things as well. While we all love watching good poker, the table talk and hearing players thoughts is a huge part of the game.

The Big One for ONE DROP is one of the most intriguing tournaments in years, mainly because of the level of player that it will most likely be drawing in with its massive buy-in. The field is capped at 30 players, and $111,111 of each player’s buy-in will be going to the charity ONE DROP, which helps provide clean, drinkable water to different locations all over the world. Currently the prize pool for this event is already up to $26,666,670, and that would send the first place winner home with over $12.2 million. That means that the all time record for a first place pay day would be broken, as the old record went to Jamie Gold, who took down the 2006 WSOP Main Event. This series will run over a three day span and is going to be televised starting on the 3rd, but it will actually begin on the first of the month with ESPN airing the final day of the tournament with just a 15 minute delay.

From there, the next tournament action that we will see will not come until the 31st of July when ESPN will begin showing the edited versions of the shows starting with the Big One for ONE DROP. The other two events that are going to be televised will be the WSOP National Championship, which will take the 100 qualifiers who made it from the Circuit tour, and this will begin on August 7th. After that it will be televised coverage of the WSOP Main Event all the way until October 30th. This will be shown every Tuesday night on ESPN. The final table will be the last televised event, and it will be shown almost live with just a slight delay once again.

It has now been since back in 2008 when ESPN slowed down their coverage of the other events, and instead focused on just showing the big events. They showed seven events back in 2008, then three in 2009, two in 2010 and last year there were three events shown once again, but they have decided to keep the number low once again for this year’s events.

We’re excited for the 2012 World Series of Poker as it should feature some excellent poker, and we’ll keep you updated as the gold bracelets are awarded all throughout the Summer!

The general idea that was released in the press release stated that the idea in the combination of the Cake Network and Lock Poker is that they are going to create more player rewards, and also make larger poker tournaments and a “richer tournament schedule.” According to the reports all of the players on the LockPRO team will be a big part of these changes The new gaming network is going to stick with the Cake Poker software as well, and their new team of developers are going to get on working on the improvements for the site starting now. Anyone who plays under the Merge software on Lock Poker will all automatically be switched over to the new software at the end of this month, and everyone’s login information will remain the same.

Another great bit of news for the players on the site is that things are going to remain similar as far as how the withdrawals and such are processed, so players are going to continue to get paid out quickly. With the combination of the Cake Poker Network they are also going to see the VIP rewards increase, and they are changing over rakeback to the increased percentage on the new network.

I’m interested to see what happens with the combination of the two sites as the Merge Gaming Network is currently the 8th largest online poker network, while the Cake Poker Network is 22nd overall in terms of cash game players over a seven day average. The fact that Lock Poker is leaving the network could potentially be a big hit to the Merge Network because it was reported that the site made up 40 percent of the traffic on Merge. If this is right then it would be a huge drop for the network, but it would boost the new Revolution Network above the Merge Network actually.

This new network will be one to watch for, because it has the makings of being heavy for the tournament poker players out there, so keep your eyes on the opening of the network on May 31st to see what types of games and limits that they offer. If the drop seriously affects Merge then it could see many of their players make the move to the Revolution Network.

This new network is owned by a company that is based out of Costa Rica called CMK Interactive. One thing that is very interesting about the layout of the new sites on this network is that all of the sites actually look almost the same in terms of color schemes and such, but each site does different things. There will be quite a few of the promotions that are ran that all of the sites will be included in, and most of them will use the same software as well, but each site’s differences will probably shock you quite a bit.

When looking at the new sites we’ll give you a few examples of what you can expect if you download the each specific one. For ManiacalPoker.com you’ll find that the games can be a bit crazy including tournaments that have million chip starting stacks and are purely all-in tournaments. The blinds will increase every minute, and you get the chance to win some cool prizes that you wouldn’t typically have the option as well. You’ll find that they also have “Maniacs” that come to the tables sometimes and will play crazy, but also give away different prizes and some money to different players as well!

And then you’ll find the site NoTiltPoker.eu which features different satellites into big time events like the $1k Seniors World Championship at the 2012 World Series of Poker, and also has different satellites into the $10k World Series Main Event as well it seems. CheapSeatsPoker.com is another site under the new network, and they are going to offer mainly low stakes games for players ranging from $0.01/$0.02 limits to $0.25/$0.50, and their tournaments will be between $0.05 and $4. The freerolls with have small prize pools as well for players, ranging from $1 to $5. For those interested, the other sites on the network are LoungeLizardPoker.com, PPNLiveDealers.com, PokerRoomUSA.com, and PPNPoker.eu. They will also be launching a site with live dealers called PPNLiveDealers this summer.

The reviews of the Poker Pros Network have been good so far, but it is still fairly new so they are building their traffic currently. The cashouts have been said to be very reliable, which is one of the biggest and most important things to a lot of online poker players in the United States for obvious reasons these days.

The exact quote that came from Trickett was as follows, “Me an Titan have decided to party ways. I have enjoyed representing them and they was a absolute pleasure to work with. Thanks again Titan…”. This means that Trickett is on the “free agent” market in the online poker game, and based on his popularity it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see him sign on with another popular online poker site in the very near future. Trickett is probably one of the most marketable players in the game today, and a large part of his popularity comes with the fact that he plays both tournaments and cash games, and the cash games that he plays are very high stakes games as well. You can find him constantly at the Ultra High Stakes games that are played in Macau. As far as the tournaments go he typically plays Super High Roller events and the different major tournament series that are out there as well.

Trickett has brought in some serious results over the past two years, and you can bet that some of the massive online poker sites like PokerStars will definitely have some interest in Trickett. Now, it’s uncertain as to if Trickett is even going to sign with another site in the near future though, so anything from here forward is really just speculation about him. Over the past two years it was reported that Trickett has brought in over £1 million in profits while playing in Macau in each year, a number that is pretty astonishing for the live cash games that are played anywhere.

As far as some of his big time tournament scores go, he won the $100k Super High Roller event at the 2011 Aussie Millions for $1.5 million, then took second place in the $250k Super High Roller event that same year for $1.4 million. He won another nice €1 million score at the 2011 Partouche Tour when he won the Main Event. At the 2010 WSOP he took 2nd place in a No Limit Hold’em event with a $5k buy-in to win $500k, and also had a 4th place finish in the same event at the 2008 WSOP for $245k.

It’s tough to imagine that Trickett doesn’t sign with a big named site like PokerStars just before the 2012 World Series of Poker kicks off, so keep an eye on this over the next few weeks to see where the well-known poker pro ends up landing!