Zone Poker: Hold’em with Horsepower

Whether you’re on the track or at the poker table, faster is better. That’s why Ignition Casino is proud to be sponsoring the latest Gumball 3000 rally from Toronto to Miami. You’ll find our tricked-out Lamborghini on this year’s list of Gumball 3000 cars, and the fastest poker games on the web when you play Zone Poker at Ignition.

What is Zone Poker?

Glad you asked. Ignition Zone Poker is a “fast-fold” variant that allows you to play No-Limit Texas Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, and Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo much more quickly than you would at the regular cash tables. With Zone Poker, you can easily get in three times as many hands per hour. It’s like a Bugatti Bolide racing against a Porsche 911; both are fun to drive, but there’s no comparison when it comes to sheer velocity. Maybe we should call it ‘Gumball 3000 Poker’ instead.

How Does the Game Speed Things Up?

Zone Poker works by eliminating the time spent waiting in between hands after you fold. Instead of having everyone sit around their virtual tables without changing seats, Zone Poker pools all of the players together. When you enter the pool, you’ll be randomly placed at an open seat for your first hand. Once your participation in the hand is over – either when you fold, when all your opponents have folded, or after you’ve gone to showdown – you’ll be instantly transported to a new seat and given a new set of hole cards. This one simple trick allows you to play roughly 300 hands per hour at a Zone table, as opposed to around 100 hands at a standard cash table.

Why Zone Poker Is the New Way to Play

It’s easy to see why Zone Poker is the go-to game for many of our players at Ignition. Not only is it more fun and more exciting to play, Zone Poker also lets you put in a lot more volume during a session. This lets you increase your win rate in terms of raw dollars per hour, and helps you smooth out your variance as well. This is especially important if you aspire to be a “professional” poker player with a relatively stable income.

That’s not the only benefit Zone Poker players enjoy. Ignition already features anonymous tables, where you don’t log in with a static username. The seats around the table are numbered instead. Combined with our ban on heads-up displays (HUDs) and tracking software in general, this makes it harder for top-level players to run wild over the competition. Playing Zone Poker is made even more difficult by assigning you different seats for each hand. It’s a much fairer game overall the – kind that’s fun for players at every level from beginner to expert.

Zone Poker on the Go

To make Zone Poker even better, we’ve made all of our games at Ignition Poker available to play on your mobile device as well as your desktop. You can log into our poker lobby using your tablet or smartphone and start playing right away, without having to download any software. Our industry-leading web app will take care of everything for you.

Zone Poker and mobile devices are a match made in heaven. If you’re in between stops (say, somewhere between Toronto and Miami) and you’ve got a few minutes to spare, that’s a perfect opportunity to get in some hands. All you need is a working device and a stable cellular or Wi-Fi connection, along with your free Ignition Poker account.

Limits, Blinds, and More

The Zone Poker games at Ignition are available across a wide variety of stakes, provided there are other players in the pool when you log in. Texas Hold’em is the most popular and therefore has the most variety, starting at 5NL (that’s two cents for the small blind, and five cents for the big blind) and working up to 500NL ($2.50/$5). Omaha games between 25PLO and 150PLO are also on the menu, along with 10PLO/8 through 50PLO/8.

Speaking of the blinds, Zone Poker is set up so that you’ll be in the small and big blinds just as often as you will in a regular cash game, on average. There will be times when you will play consecutive hands from the same position, whether it’s one of the blinds or anywhere else at the table, but these will even out in the long run.

There are also some differences when it comes to multi-tabling Zone Poker. With regular cash games at Ignition, you’re limited to a maximum of four open tables at the same time. Zone Poker only allows up to two tables, however, you can also add two standard cash tables to those two Zone tables if you want to achieve peak volume. This is common practice for many of our higher-end players.

Let’s say you’re a Gumball 3000 fan who’s somewhat familiar with poker, but hasn’t had the chance to try Zone Poker yet. What kind of strategies should you bring to the table? The format of Zone Poker makes it very difficult for your opponents to get a read off you – and vice versa – so a more “balanced” strategy that uses the right blend of value bets and bluffs would be prudent. The one difference to the GTO (Game-Theory Optimal) approach is that you should place more emphasis on stealing the blinds than you would at a standard cash game.

Those are the fundamentals of Zone Poker at Ignition Casino. You can always learn more by reading our FAQ, as well as the other articles in our vault. There’s valuable information there for players of all levels, whether you’re in it for fun or trying to build a serious bankroll. We’ll see you at the Zone tables while you’re on the road to Miami.