Online Poker Game Ideas

It seems that exciting new poker variants will play a major role in the future of online poker. Full Tilt Poker's "Rush Poker" has been out for nearly a year and has proved wildly popular. Party Poker's new game, Double Hold'em, is aiming to be the second new online poker variant released this year to revolutionize the game. The sky is truly the limit in terms of the direction online poker can take. A game like Rush Poker is impossible to play live but works wonderfully online. There are, theoretically, dozens of other ways to reinvent online poker and it seems that the online poker rooms are just getting started. online poker 468x60 This week, we came up with a few different ideas for new online poker games. Any online poker room is free to steal any of the following ideas. We merely ask for 5% of the rake from those games. After all, we have server costs to think of! Dealer's Choice Poker had hardly been invented before dealer's choice games were all the rage on riverboats and in saloons. Yet, the timeless model has never been applied to online poker. It seems that it would be easy for a site to have a dealer's choice game. Each dealer's choice table is equipped with a list of games for players to choose from. When it is the player's big blind, they are prompted to select which game they want to play when it is their button. If a player fails to make a selection, no-limit hold'em can be the default game. There are already plenty of mixed games on the internet, so the idea of transitioning from a limit betting game to a no-limit betting game shouldn't be too hard for players to adapt to. Team Poker Events Online poker rooms understandably have a tricky line to toe when it comes to collusion. The idea of playing poker as a 'team" generally has bad connotations in the online poker world. But it doesn't have to. It would be cool to see team events added to poker tournament schedules, especially for prestigious series of events like WCOOP or the European Championships of Online Poker at myBet. This idea could be taken in a lot of different directions, but here's an example: players organize teams of four. Every fifteen minutes in the tournament, the game changes as do the players at the table. Four games are played: no-limit hold'em, limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, and pot-limit Omaha Hi-Lo. Each member of a team has a specific game that they are designated to play meaning they only play for 15 minutes per hour. Once it's time for the game to change, the stack is passed off to the next teammate. This same model could be applied to ultra deep stacked tournaments. Imagine a mixed game tournament with a structure so good and so deep that luck is nearly removed as an element from the game. The tournament could run continuously for a couple of weeks with teammates having to decide sleep schedules amongst themselves. Immediately In The Money Tournaments Imagine a $20+$2 online tournament where instead of having to grind your way into the money, all players are forced by the software to move all-in on the first hand. This process is repeated as many times as necessary (though once will usually be all that is needed) to dump all of the chips at the table to one player. Once this process has been completed at every table, all remaining players are in the money and play out the tournament like a regular MTT. Crapshoot Cash Games Cash games are fun, but they can also be a grind. How about a cash game where every 100 hands, everyone at the table automatically contributes the minimum table buy-in into the center of the pot and cards are dealt to determine who wins that pot? Grinders would hate it but that's precisely why it's a good idea. Online poker rooms should cater to fish and fish should definitely like the idea of a cash game where some pile of money is up for grabs at random every 100 hands. If the poker room was smart, they wouldn't charge rake for the jackpot hands. Players may be apt to play longer sessions. Think: "oh just another hundred hands and then I'll quit after the jackpot hand." This model would also encourage more money being brought to the table resulting in larger pots, more action, and more rake.