Zoom Poker, a high-speed variant of online poker created by PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker room, has been launched on PokerStars.fr after ARJEL, the French gambling regulator, approved it.
This means that French poker players can now play Zoom Poker for real money in a secure, licensed, and regulated environment.
Zoom Poker for real money went live at around a couple of days ago and French poker players can choose from three no-limit micro-stake pools—NL10, NL5, and NL2. France is the latest market to get Zoom Poker for real money.
PokerStars.com first introduced Zoom Poker to the online poker community early in 2012. The variant became immensely popular and was launched on PokerStars.it late in 2012 after AAMS, the gambling regulator of Italy, approved it. Later, Zoom Poker was launched along with PokerStars.es for Spanish poker players.
Last week, ARJEL launched its annual review, in which it stated that it was concerned about the lack of player interest in online poker and decided to permit operators to launch “legal new variants of poker” to attract larger volumes of player traffic.
Zoom Poker in France is a bit different as a French player can enter a Zoom Poker player pool only once. Usually, players are allowed up to four entries per player pool, enabling them to multi-table and making it easier for the online poker room to maintain liquidity. Clubpoker.net, a representative of PokerStars, said that ARJEL has imposed this restriction and that PokerStars is mulling over getting over this restriction by maintaining two player pools for each stake level.
PokerStars has always launched its Zoom Poker product at the micro-stakes level. This has enabled it to test the waters and track liquidity effects. In Italy, Zoom Poker is available up to NL100, and at PokerStars.com, it is available up to NL500.
It looks like French poker players will have to wait for a long time for high-stakes Zoom Poker. In Spain, Zoom Poker was launched six months back, but it is available only up to NL50 and the player pool is quite disappointing although, according to PokerScout.com, PokerStars.es is around 20 percent bigger than PokerStars.fr in terms of poker cash game traffic. Moreover, the number of entries per pool is not restricted to one in Spain.
Having launched Zoom Poker, PokerStars hopes to catch up with Winamax, which beat PokerStars.fr and became the biggest French online poker room in late 2012.
