The Ultimate Zoom Poker Cheat Sheet (2025)

This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.

One of the biggest advantages of online poker is the ability to play multiple tables at once. 

This allows you to put in way more volume than you could at a regular brick-and-mortar casino. 

Zoom poker takes this ability to the new extreme, as the action is lightning fast, and there’s virtually no downtime between the hands you’re dealt. 

Almost all poker sites nowadays offer a zoom variant of poker, and they go by different names (Snap, Fast Forward, Speed Poker etc.)

But they all have the same principle: 

Once you fold your hand, you’re automatically seated to a new table and dealt a new hand.

This article will tell everything you need to know about the key differences between Zoom and regular poker, what to expect, and what adjustments to make to crush the game.

Here is your Zoom poker "cheat sheet" 

Let's jump in!

A) You Can’t Table Select on Zoom Poker

Let's discuss a few general principles of Zoom poker games before we get into the heart of the strategy though.

This way, you will understand the "why" much better behind many of the advanced strategies later on in this Zoom poker cheat sheet.

The biggest drawback of zoom poker is, without a doubt, the inability to table select. 

When playing zoom poker, you are automatically seated to the next table when you fold a hand, and you have no idea who’s going to be seated next to you. 

This is of course a huge detriment, as one of the biggest advantages of online poker is the ability to hop tables and find the most profitable one. 

If you’re seated to the direct left of the recreational players, aka the fish, you are often in the best money making situation, as you can play in position against them. 

This means you can get involved in the hand with them and take their money before anyone else does. 

You can isolate them preflop and take advantage of their mistakes postflop, with a very simple proven winning poker strategy.

What’s more, you don’t have to worry about them stealing your blinds, as fish tend to play pretty passively. 

On zoom tables you don’t have that kind of luxury.

What Hands Should You Play in Zoom?

By the way, if you just want to learn my simple no BS system for exactly what hands to play, when to bet, raise and bluff, I cover this in extensive detail in my brand new training program, Play Fearless Poker.

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B) Zoom Players Are Relatively Anonymous

Zoom tables usually have huge player pools involved, so you’re basically playing against new opponents all the time. 

This makes it much harder to get accurate reads on their playing style and adjust accordingly. 

Even if you use a good free poker HUD, it takes a while to develop a significant sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions about their tendencies. 

Of course, this anonymity goes both ways. 

You can’t get tells on your opponents, but they can’t figure you out, either. 

That’s why it’s best to use this anonymity to your advantage, and try to get away with plays you wouldn’t get away with on regular tables, like bluffing with impunity.

You will see this key principle at play in many of the zoom poker strategies that we discuss below.

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C) Zoom Players Play Tighter Ranges on Average

Another key difference between zoom and regular tables is that players tend to play tighter ranges on average. 

Since you don’t need to wait around for a decent hand as much, you can just spam the fold button until you get something playable. 

Due to the lightning fast speed of zoom poker, even the recreational players will play tighter on average. 

One of the main reasons fish tend to play all sorts of junk hands is boredom. 

They play poker for fun, and don’t want to wait around for hours on end until they get to play. They want action. 

On zoom tables, however, action is just seconds away. 

Even the fish won’t play a crappy hand when pocket Aces are potentially just around the corner.

By the way, I have already written the ultimate guide to crushing tight poker players if you want to learn the strategy to beat them.  

D) Expect a Lower Winrate on Zoom Poker Tables

Zoom tables inherently have more variance built into it than regular tables for the reasons mentioned above. 

More variance means lower winrate, so you should be prepared for this going in. In fact, if you are curious, I have already written an entire article about good Zoom poker winrates.

But a decline in your winrate is just something we must accept in Zoom.

So, if you’re barely breaking even on your current limit on the regular, you should probably think twice about transitioning to zoom tables. 

It's not all bad news though!

Even with the drawbacks of zoom poker, there is an obvious upside, and that is an incomparable amount of volume (i.e. the number of hands you can play).

And this is because zoom poker tables deal hands nearly 3 times as fast as a regular poker table. 

Zoom Poker is Actually More Profitable For Serious Online Players

Say your winrate is 2 big blinds per 100 hands played in Zoom and your winrate is 4 big blinds per 100 hands played at a regular poker table.

Well, even though your winrate is much lower in Zoom, you will actually make more money playing Zoom because as we just mentioned, it deals nearly 3 times faster than a regular poker game.

This is a key point that many people miss these days while obsessing over their online poker winrate so much!

That is, you can actually make more money in Zoom, even with a lower winrate, due to the massively increased volume.

In fact, Nathan has discussed many times that using this volume based approach (which Zoom is literally perfect for), allowed him to quit his job, travel the world, while making a full time living playing online.

Also, it should be noted that if you are a serious online poker grinder, or you want to unlock the poker site bonuses and/or rakeback, zoom poker is also perfect for that as well.

This is why zoom poker is the game of choice for many serious online pros and semi-pros these days.

Alright enough buildup! 

Let's get into the actual zoom poker strategies.

With these key differences in mind, let’s discuss exactly what adjustments you need to make to your strategy to play zoom poker much more profitably.

1. Play a Loose and Aggressive (LAG) Poker Style in Zoom Poker

The single most important adjustment you need to make when playing zoom tables is to adopt a loose and aggressive (LAG) playing style.

This is something that I discussed at length in my hugely popular Zoom poker strategy article. 

The optimal poker strategy is the opposite of the one that most other players are using. 

Since players tend to play significantly tighter on zoom tables (this is true for the regular and recreational players alike), your best bet is to do the exact opposite. 

This is what playing a LAG style in Zoom means in practice:

1. Expand your starting hand selection (play more hands preflop than you would on the regular tables.

2. Steal the blinds liberally (expand your open-raising range from the cutoff, the button, and the small blind.

3. Start light 3-betting and 4-betting light: re-raise more to try to win the pot preflop. 

Also get comfortable with throwing an occasional 4 bet (a raise against another player’s 3-bet).

4. Bluff more postflop

Get comfortable with double and triple barrelling (i.e. firing a second or third shell on the turn and river, respectively, even without a strong value hand). 

Also, float wider in position (call with a wider range and try to take down the pot when your opponent checks to you on later streets).

You could even try this super advanced strategy that only the top 1% of poker players are using, as Nathan discussed in a recent youtube video.

Although, I would be careful of using highly advanced strategies like this too often if you play low stakes Zoom games.

Highly advanced stuff like this works better in mid stakes or high stakes zoom poker games.

2. Steal the Blinds Way More Often in Zoom Poker Games

Since you can expect players to play tighter ranges preflop on average due to the fast paced structure of zoom poker, one of the best adjustments you can make to your game is to steal the blinds way more liberally than you would on regular tables. 

Another reason you can get away with this much easier is the aforementioned relative anonymity of zoom tables. 

When you combine these two factors together, stealing the blinds can become insanely profitable. 

Now, adding 1.5 big blinds to your bottom line doesn’t seem like much, but it’s not the size that’s crucial here. 

It’s the sheer frequency with which something happens that’s really important. 

If you’re playing at a 6-max zoom table, you have the opportunity to potentially steal the blinds 3 times per orbit.

This means that every time you open raise from the cutoff, button and the small blind, you can potentially take down the pot preflop. 

Granted, there are times when this won’t be the case as: 

A) another player will open-raise before you 

and 

B) players will sometimes defend their blinds. 

But remember, they will do that far less often than they would on the regular tables. 

Players don’t usually open-raise from an early position unless they have a strong hand, and they are less likely to open-raise mediocre hands when a potentially stronger hand is just a second away. 

They will also avoid playing from the blinds, because this puts you at a positional disadvantage.

One caveat to mention here is the situation where you are trying to steal the big blind when you are playing from the small blind. 

This can be a tricky position, because you will not have a positional advantage over your opponent. 

Also, you have a worse risk to reward ratio, because you already put 0.5 big blinds into the pot. 

Conversely, your opponent has a better risk to reward ratio, because they already put 1 big blind into the pot AND have positional advantage. 

So in the SB vs BB spots, you shouldn’t try to steal as liberally as you would when you’re trying to steal from the late positions (i.e. the cutoff and the button).

When stealing the blinds, you can use a smaller open-raise size to give you a better risk-to-reward ratio. 

So instead of the usual 3 BB, you can size down your open-raise size to 2.5 BB, or even just 2 BB in some cases.

By the way, for complete bet sizing and starting hand selection charts from all seats at the poker table, just read Modern Small Stakes.

As for what hands you should try to steal the blinds with, you can expand your open-raising range quite a bit, but you shouldn’t just automatically try to steal the blinds with any two cards. 

You’ll still want to use the hands that have at least some sort of playability postflop. 

You should obviously open-raise with all the strong value hands, but you can also add some speculative and/or mediocre hands you wouldn’t open-raise with from earlier positions.

Some examples might include:

• Weak Aces like A♥3♣ offsuit or A♦6♠
• Unsuited gappers and two gappers like T♦8♣ or 9♥6♦
• Small suited connectors like 3♣2♣ or 4♥3♥

These hands could spell trouble when you call with them preflop, but trying to steal the blinds with them is another story, especially when the players in the blinds are tight and won’t fight back as much. 

And even if you get called, your hand still has some sort of playability postflop. 

You also have the range advantage (meaning you are perceived to have a stronger range than your opponent), so you can keep applying the pressure postflop, regardless of how you connected to the board.

This is an extremely important concept that is discussed in almost all good advanced poker training programs these days.

3. 3-Bet Liberally to Pick up Easy Money in Zoom Poker Games

The next adjustment you should make when playing zoom poker is to expand your 3-betting range in order to steal more pots preflop. 

Since a lot of players will (correctly) try to steal the blinds with quite a wide and weak range, you can attack these ranges with light 3-bets.

This is something that I discuss in much more detail in my massively popular step by step guide to playing 3-bet pots article.

(A light 3-bet, or a bluff 3-bet preflop is a raise against another player’s open-raise made in the hopes of getting the open raiser to fold.)

This is different from value 3-bet, where you make a re-raise with a strong hand, hoping your opponent will call. 

Since very strong hands don’t come around often in no-limit Texas hold’em (which is true for zoom and regular tables alike), you can’t just wait around for them all day and hope to be profitable. 

In fact, this is what a lot of players do, much to their own detriment. 

Since the next hand is always a second away in zoom poker, some players just spam the fold button until they get dealt a premium hand. 

The problem with this approach, however is the fact that: 

A) as mentioned, these hands are far and few in between 

and 

B) once you actually do get dealt a premium hand, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to extract a ton of value, because everyone else is just spamming the fold button as well.

This is why learning to light 3-bet is so crucial for your success in zoom poker. 

A lot of players will try to steal the blinds, but will give up quite easily if they encounter some, or any resistance. 

Now, that’s not to say you should just 3-bet with any two cards when you see someone stealing the blinds. 

You want to use the cards that have some sort of playability postflop in the case your 3-bet gets called.

Some good candidates to use could be suited connectors (like 8♦7♦ or J♠T♠) due to their versatility. 

They can make very strong combinations like straights and flushes, and they have a decent chunk of equity against virtually all starting hands. 

But as discussed in The Micro Stakes Playbook, by far the best light 3-betting candidates are the small suited Aces (like A♥5♥ or A♣3♣) for a few reasons.

Suited Aces have a ton of equity when called, due to their nut potential. 

They can make straights and nut flushes. 

Unlike other suited connectors, you don’t have to worry about having only a second best flush, because you’re always drawing to the nuts.

They also have blocker power, meaning they reduce the number of combinations of very strong cards your opponent could have. 

If you hold an Ace in your hand, it’s less likely your opponent could have a hand like pocket Aces or Ace-King (i.e. you’re blocking those combinations).

By the way, I discuss this in much more detail in my new Elite Poker University training. 

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If you have an Ace in your hand, you decrease the number of combinations of pocket Aces in your opponents range from 6 combinations to only 3 combinations, and you decrease the number of Ace-King combinations from 16 to only 12 possible combinations.

In other words, by having a blocker, you increase the chances of your light 3-bet being successful.

Example Zoom Poker Hand:

You are dealt A♥5♥ in the SB.

An unknown player open-raises from the BU (button) to 2.5 BB.

You: ???

You should 3-bet to 10 BB.

This is a textbook spot where light 3-betting can be profitable. 

You have a decent speculative hand, but you don’t want to call from the small blind in this position. 

You will be playing the whole hand out of position, without range advantage, with an easily dominated hand. 

This is the exact opposite of a profitable situation. 

What’s more, you leave yourself vulnerable to getting squeezed (3-bet when there is one or more callers) from the player in the big blind. 

By 3-betting here instead, you can win the pot outright, and even if you get called, you will go to the flop with a range advantage with a hand that can make very strong combinations. 

It should be noted that using a good poker HUD can also really help you know which players to 3-bet in Zoom poker games in particular.

4. Learn to Double Barrel Bluff in Zoom

Double barreling is another great weapon to have in your poker arsenal when playing zoom tables.

A double barrel by the way, is when you raise preflop, make a continuation bet on the flop and then make another bet on the turn.

This is a very strong play that applies a lot of pressure and I have already written an entire double barrelling the turn cheat sheet for you.

When used properly, it can help you win more than your fair share of pots in Zoom.

A lot of players these days will make a standard continuation bet (a bet made by the previous streets’ aggressor) on the flop, but will give up if they keep getting pressured on the turn. 

Conversely, a lot of players will call wide on the flop, but will give up if they keep getting barreled on the turn. 

This is why double barrel bluffing is so effective. 

Simply put, a double barrel bluff is a spot where you make a continuation bet on the turn without a strong value hand. 

Knowing when, and when not to double barrel is a complex question, and you obviously don’t want to double barrel with a 100 percent of your range. 

When we’re talking about double barrel bluffing, your goal is to get your opponent to fold. 

So you should only do it if you think there is a reasonable chance of your opponent giving up. You also want to use the appropriate bet size. 

As a general rule, you want your bluff to look like a value bet, so you should size it accordingly. 

Example Zoom Poker Hand: 

You are dealt T♦9♦ in the CO (Cutoff)

You open-raise to 3x

An unknown player calls from the BB

Pot: 6.5 BB

Flop: J♣5♠2♥ rainbow

Villain checks. You bet 3.5 BB. Villain calls

Pot: 13.5 BB

Turn: K♦

Villain checks. You: ???

You should double-barrel.

You have a standard open-raise preflop. Nothing much to be said here.

You missed the flop, but since the board texture is bone-dry, you can expect your light c-bet to work more often than not. You bet.

On the turn, villain checks again. This is a great spot for a double barrel bluff for a few reasons. 

First of all, you picked up some equity, as you now have an inside straight draw. 

Secondly, the King is a scare card, meaning the board got scarier, and the number of hands the villain called with on the flop got relatively weaker. 

If they had a pair of Jacks on the flop, now they only have a second pair, and will have a harder time calling you down. 

On the other hand, you can credibly represent a number of strong hands. 

In other words, your bluff tells a believable story, plus you got some additional hand equity to fall back on if you get called.

Hero bets 7 BB.

If you want a step by step example of an extremely high level triple barrel bluff, check out this recent video Nathan made.

Although once again, I would caution against using advanced plays like this too much in super low stakes Zoom poker games.

And the reason why is because highly advanced zoom poker strategies like this will often go right over their heads (i.e. they will just call you down anyways!)

5. Get Comfortable With Playing Deepstacked Poker in Zoom

If you want to maximize your winrate when playing zoom poker, you’ll need to get comfortable with playing deepstacked poker. 

A deepstacked poker refers to the situations where the effective stack sizes are significantly bigger than 100 big blinds, say 150, 200 blinds or more. 

 

This drastically changes your optimal poker strategy. 

When the stacks are very deep, you should be more careful with stacking off, because players won’t be inclined to put all of their money in the middle with mediocre hands, as they have much more to lose than when their stack is shallow. 

Another thing to keep in mind is how the stack sizes affect your starting hand selection. 

The deeper the stack sizes, the less valuable one pair hands become, as they get vulnerable to getting outdrawn on later streets. 

Also, one pair hands usually aren’t strong enough to comfortably stack off against your opponent if the stacks are deep. 

If you do get action in such a scenario, it’s quite likely your opponent has a very strong hand, like sets, straights, flushes and so on. 

So if you have a top pair hand with a deep stack behind, you should practice pot control, instead of blowing up the pot, because chances are your hand just isn’t going to be strong enough by showdown.

Conversely, speculative hands (i.e. hands that aren’t strong enough in and of themselves, but have the potential to make very strong combinations), go up in value significantly. 

That’s because they are getting better implied odds.

Check out my wildly popular poker odds cheat sheet by the way for much more on poker implied odds, hand odds and pot odds.  

If you have a speculative hand, you want the stack size to be as deep as possible, because you want to get paid off if you do complete your draw. 

For this reason, hands like small pairs and suited connectors are great to have when the stacks are deep. 

Pocket pairs can make full houses easier than unpaired hands, and have the added benefit so far that your opponent will have a hard time putting you on your exact hand. 

Suited connectors are great because of their versatility, as they can connect with the board in multiple ways. 

They can make straights and flushes, so they have a huge upside potential if they hit.

As you grind the zoom tables, always be aware of the effective stack sizes, and think about how they affect your overall strategy. 

Playing with a hundred big blinds and three hundred big blings is an entirely different sport. 

The decisions get more complex, and you often have to play all three streets post flop. 

The deeper the effective stack size, the more you stand to gain, but the opposite is also true. You can lose a lot more, too. 

And since there’s also more variance on zoom tables than regular tables, losing double or even triple your initial buyin can really hurt your overall profitability.

However, there are plenty of really good poker software tools available these days though that can help you quickly improve your overall Zoom poker winnings.

6. Don’t Forget to Take Breaks When Playing Zoom

One last thing to take note of doesn’t really have to do with the poker strategy as such, but it’s crucial nonetheless, is the fact that zoom poker plays significantly faster than regular tables. 

This means you will have to make a lot more decisions in a shorter time span. 

This is fairly obvious, but it’s important to realize how this affects your decision making process.  

Your brain has limited processing capabilities, and after a prolonged period of decision making, the quality of those decisions tends to deteriorate. 

In psychology, this is known as decision fatigue. 

This can cause the so-called irrational trade-offs, or to put it in poker terms, making negative EV (expected value) plays. 

If you ever had the feeling that your poker sessions start off great, but it all starts going downhill at some point, the poker gods aren’t necessarily to blame. 

It just might be that your attention starts wandering off, you get impatient, possibly tilted, and start making plays you know aren’t the most +EV. 

If that’s the case, you might be suffering from decision fatigue.

What’s dangerous about it is the fact that it’s often subtle, and you don’t even notice it. 

But it can affect you negatively nonetheless.

This is especially important in zoom poker, as you’re likely to experience it sooner than you would at a regular table. 

Due to the sheer amount of decisions you need to make every few seconds, it’s far easier to get overwhelmed and start playing sub-optimally. 

And since the margins are razor thin in zoom poker anyway, you can’t afford anything to take away from your profitability. 

The mental game of poker gets overlooked anyway, which is bad in and of itself, but disregarding it in zoom poker is outright catastrophic.

So if you plan to play zoom poker, don’t forget to take more breaks every now and then. 

This is easy to forget because you can get so caught up in the action, so being aware of it will go a long way.

Bottom Line: 

Learn to manage your play schedule like a professional Zoom poker player, and you will have a lot more success.

Ultimate Zoom Poker Cheat Sheet (Summary)

Zoom poker is wildly popular these days and you don't need to study tons of advanced poker strategy in order to beat these games.

However, there are some important differences with Zoom poker that you should know.

Some of the biggest drawbacks of zoom poker are: 

• the inability to table select
• the relative anonymity of the player pool
• the overall tendency of players to play tighter ranges than they would on regular tables 

For these reasons, you can expect lower winrate on zoom tables. But the sheer volume you can put in can more than make up for it.

Zoom poker tables deal 3 times as many hands as a regular poker table!

But if you don’t want your winrate to suffer dramatically, you will need to make some adjustments to your poker strategy.

The best adjustment you can make is to adopt a loose and aggressive (LAG) poker style.

And I actually wrote an entire step by step how to play LAG poker strategy article just recently.  

This means expanding your open-raising ranges, especially from the late positions (cutoff and button).

You should also start 3-betting and 4-betting more preflop to pick up some easy money, as the edges are usually going to be smaller postflop.

As for the postflop play, try bluffing more by adopting double (or triple) barreling into your arsenal. 

A lot of players will often stick around on the flop, but will give up if they encounter serious resistance on later streets.

Conversely, try floating more (calling with the intention of taking the pot away on later streets) to counteract the aggression from other players.

If you really want to improve your winrate, getting comfortable with playing deepstacked poker is a must. 

Decisions get a lot more complex the deeper the effective stack sizes, and this is where your skill edge can fully manifest.

One last thing to keep in mind doesn’t really have to do with the strategy aspect, but is important nonetheless, is the fact that zoom poker can be a lot more mentally straining than playing regular tables due to the insane pace of action.

For this reason, don’t forget to take breaks here and then. Decision fatigue is a thing, and it can be an insidious killer of your poker results.

The edges in poker are small, and especially so in zoom poker. So looking for edges in your mental game, as well as technical game is a must.

Lastly, if you want to know the complete strategy I use to make $5000+ per month in small stakes games, get a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

How to Quickly Increase Your Zoom Poker Winrate (2025)

This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.

Fast fold poker (aka Zoom) can be quite appealing due to its lightning fast action. Less waiting and more playing, what could be better?

However, it does have considerable disadvantages to regular games, namely the inability to seat select and difficulty in getting reliable reads due to the player's anonymity.

This means that you’re expected to have a lower winrate in zoom games than you would on the regular tables.

Nonetheless, Zoom poker can still be profitable, because the sheer amount of volume can more than make up for the lower winrate. But it’s only the case if you’re actually beating your current limit.

This article will teach you 8 simple but highly effective ways to increase your Zoom poker winrate so you can have the best of both worlds. 

More volume and a better bottom line!

1. Loose and Aggressive is The Way To Go

Zoom games play significantly tighter than regular games. It’s inherent to the game format, so even the recreational players will play tighter on average. 

One of the reasons they play looser than they should is because they primarily play for fun, and often don’t feel like waiting for a good hand.

They get impatient and frustrated quickly, which causes them to play hands they shouldn’t be playing, chasing draws they shouldn’t be chasing and so on. 

That’s not really the case in zoom games, as you can just spam the fold button until you get a decent hand. 

That’s true for the regulars as well, of course. This means players are a lot more selective with their starting hands. 

In poker, the best strategy is the opposite of the one your opponents are playing. So if everyone nits it up, the way to exploit it is loosen up your starting hands selection, and up your aggression. 

You can do this with suited connectors for example as I discussed in my brand new advanced suited connector strategy video.

These are the kind of hands that can really increase your Zoom poker winrate if you play them effectively in these games.

By the way, if you just want to learn my simple no BS system for exactly what hands to play, when to bet, raise and bluff, I cover this in extensive detail in my brand new training program, Play Fearless Poker.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

My new Play Fearless Poker training program includes 12+ hours of advanced poker lessons, 100+ step by step example hands and "cheat sheets" below every single video.

If you're serious about taking your poker game to the next level, enroll today.

Enroll in Play Fearless Poker

Get $100 OFF Use Code: 100OFF

Aggression is Vitally Important to Increasing Your Zoom Poker Winrate

Why?

It's because it's actually really rare to have a strong hand in no-limit Texas hold’em, so a lot of players will fold far more often than would be optimal. 

After all, why would you fight back with mediocre hands when pocket Aces could be seconds away?

The problem with that kind of thinking, of course, is everyone else is doing it. This would make poker a zero-sum game. Everyone is trading money back and forth, minus the rake. 

The way out of that predicament is adapting successfully to the player pool’s overall tendencies. 

And those tendencies would be being very selective with their starting hand selection preflop, giving up postflop with all but the strongest holdings, and rarely bluffing out of fear villains only continue with the nuts, or close to it.

A successful counter-strategy would then be loosening up with your starting hand selection, fighting back postflop with a wider range, and bluffing more. 

While a sound TAG strategy could give you decent results in zoom poker, a LAG strategy can have you absolutely crush it.

This is something that is discussed at length in BlackRain79's massive Zoom poker strategy guide, and in all his poker books as well.

So how does that LAG strategy look like in practice? Let’s take a closer look. 

2. Steal The Blinds A Lot in Zoom

Zoom poker games play significantly tighter than standard tables, and that’s true for recreational players and regulars alike.

By the way, make sure you are using a good poker HUD while playing Zoom so you will be able to quickly and easily tell the difference between these player types. 

But anyways, this is why you should get into the habit of stealing the blinds much more often than you would usually be inclined.

If you are holding anything even remotely playable, you should be open-raising from the cutoff and the button. Even if you get called, you will still see the flop in position and with the range advantage.



Then you can simply fire off a standard c-bet on all but the most unfavourable boards. Most hands miss most flops, and it’s true in zoom games as much as on regular tables.

If you open-raise to 2.5 BB on the button with any two cards, for example, your opponents have to fold only about 63% of the time in order to render your steal outright profitable. And if you raise to 2 BB, only 57%. 

The way you calculate these percentages is by using a simple formula dividing risk by risk and reward. 

So if you raise to 2.5 BB, that’s your risk, and the reward is that risk plus reward (i.e. the small blind and the big blind, or 1.5 BB).

So the formula would look like this: 2.5 / (2.5+1.5) = 0.625, which equates to 62.5%.

In plain English, this means that your opponents need to fold about two out of three times in order to render your steal attempt profitable. 

The more they fold, the more you can expand your stealing range. If somebody is folding 80% of the time, for example, you can profitably try to steal their blinds with basically any two cards. 

And a great number of players will, in fact, fold their blinds that often, for the fear of playing out of position. 

And that’s especially true in anonymous Zoom games, where they aren’t overly concerned with optimally defending their blinds.

3. Learn to 3-bet Light

Any decent player knows that the cornerstone of winning poker is playing in position as a preflop raiser. 

So when you see someone open-raise in the late position (the cutoff and the button), you can assume their range is far wider than if they open-raised in earlier positions. 

This means they are probably trying to steal the blinds a decent percentage of time. 

Most of the hands that open-raise from late position won’t be able to stand the pressure of a 3-bet, so whenever you see someone open-raising on the button or the cutoff, consider 3-betting light to re-steal. 

The best hands to do this with would be the ones that have some playability postflop if your 3-bet gets called.

Suited connectors are once again a strong candidate for light 3betting as BlackRain79 discusses in another recent video, re-raising preflop with 8♦7♦ and then making a huge bluff after the flop.

  

But hands like suited Aces or suited Kings are even better candidates for a couple of reasons. 

First, they have blocking power, meaning they reduce the number of strong holdings your opponent can theoretically have, like Aces, Kings, Ace-King or Ace-Queen. 

If you hold an Ace, for example, you reduce the number of combos of Aces in your opponent’s range from 6 to only 3, and the number of combos of AK from 16 to 12. 

(It might be useful to remember that there are 6 possible combinations of any pocket pair, and 16 combinations of unpaired hands - 4 suited and 12 offsuit combinations). 

What this means in practice is that blockers reduce the chances of your opponent having really strong hands, so it makes it more profitable for you to bluff them.

This is a fairly sophisticated part of modern poker theory that most of the best advanced poker training sites are now teaching you these days.

The second reason to use suited Aces and Kings for light 3-bets is they have decent playability postflop if your 3-bet gets called, because they can make flop strong flushes and flush draws. 

So if you hit the flop, you’re going to hit it hard, and you’ll be able to play for a huge pot. One advantage of 3-bet pots is they have shallower SPR (stack-to-pot ratio), so they basically play themselves. 

If you connect with the flop, the rest of the hand should be pretty straightforward, and if you miss, you can just give up without risking the rest of your stack.

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4. Float The Flop Often

It’s easier to float the flop (call with the intention of stealing the pot on consecutive streets) in position than out of position, but either way it can be profitable because a lot of players will give up way too often on the turn. 

The reason for this is basically everyone already knows these days that you should c-bet the flop with quite a broad range (70% or so is the default). 

And mathematically speaking, you are bound to hit the flop in any meaningful way only about 33% of the time (2 out of every 3 hands miss the flop completely).



This means that a lot of players will c-bet the flop not because they’ve hit, and not because they believe the flop doesn’t interact well with the caller’s range, but simply because “it’s standard.”

By the way, there is tons of good poker software you can use these days to identify these types of player straight away...and ultimately exploit the heck out of them!

Because when they get called on the flop, they often don’t know how to proceed on consecutive streets, and they simply give up if they don’t have a strong hand (which they don’t most of the time). 

So when the villain checks to you on the turn, it can be outright profitable to simply fire off a half-pot bet and try to steal the pot then and there, regardless of what you’re actually holding. 

If you bet half the pot on the turn, the villain only needs to fold more than 33% of the time (or one out of three times) in order for your play to be +EV, and they’re bound to fold a lot more often than that, especially if you’re playing in position.

And even if you get called, you still have one more street to try to outplay them.

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This play works best when you pick up some equity on the turn (additional hand equity never hurts), but again, this play works so well often enough regardless of your hand strength.

If you are playing out of position, however, and the turn goes check-check after villain’s flop c-bet, you can also try to take the pot away on the river with a probe bet. 

A probe bet is a bet made out of position when your opponent missed the opportunity to c-bet on the previous street. 

If the turn checks through, it’s more than likely the villain just gave up the pot, so probing the river can also be profitable even if you’re holding total air. 

It also needs to work only slightly more than 33% of the time to be +EV.

For more on floating the flop in Zoom poker games, this is covered in much more detail in The Micro Stakes Playbook.

5. Check-raise When You Pick Up Equity on The Turn

A great counter strategy against players who’ve learned you should float the flop widely is check-raising the turn. 

Playing with a positional disadvantage is hard to do profitably, so this is one way with which you can counteract it successfully.

BlackRain79 shows you exactly how to use this turn check-raise strategy (and get ALL of their money) in another recent video.

  

The best situation to do so is when you are playing out of position against an opponent's wide ranges. For example, small blind against a big blind, or a cutoff open against the button’s flat call. 

In these situations, you will fire off a standard c-bet fairly often, and you will get called quite often and quite wide as well. So when the turn comes, you might be inclined to just give up and check-fold. 

But you can consider check-raising instead, as this will signify incredible strength. 

Your opponent will have a hard time continuing, because he’ll often assume you just gave up because you didn’t continue barreling, so he’ll try to steal the pot away from you, often with total air.

Check-raising the turn out of position like this could be more profitable than the standard double barrel (i.e. c-betting the turn) because if you c-bet the turn, you will either:  

A) force your opponent to fold all air in his range and

B) only get action from hands that have you beat or have a significant amount of equity against you.

And since in this particular situation your opponent will in fact have a significant amount of total air in his range, you’ll be able to extract more value with a check-raise.

The best hands to do this with are the ones that pick up some sort of equity on the turn, like a straight or a flush draw, for example. That way you still have something to fall back on if your check raise gets called.

For much more on playing the turn effectively check out my recent complete strategy guide on how to play the turn much more profitably.

6. Learn to Play Deepstacked Zoom Poker Games

One of the biggest edges you can get in poker in general (but in zoom particularly) is knowing how to play deepstacked. 

If no-limit Texas hold’em is the Cadillac of poker, then deepstacked no-limit Texas hold’em is a Ferrari (pardon the clunky analogy). 

A deep stack is a stack with 200 big blinds or more, and this is where the skill edge is most pronounced. That’s because you are usually forced to play all three streets with a significant portion of the stack behind, so the decisions get more complex, and mistakes get more costly. 

In most tournaments, for example, the stacks are considerably shallower, so most of the decisions are made preflop and on the flop. When the flop comes, you are either pot-committed or not, and the hands basically play themselves. 

By the way, for a deep dive on tournament strategy check out BlackRain79's ultimate guide to small stakes mtt strategy.

That’s not the case with deepstacked poker. Here hand values change dramatically, so your strategy has to change as well. 

With shorter effective stack sizes, top pair hands go up, while speculative hands (like middle pairs and suited connectors) go down in relative value. With deep stacks, it’s exactly the opposite. 

Top pair hands go down in value because of their vulnerability. They can get outdrawn and get relatively weaker by the river, and it’s hard for them to get action by weaker hands. 

Speculative hands, on the other hand, go up in value, and the deeper the stacks, the more valuable they become. 

The reason for this, of course is the implied odds. The bigger the stack left behind, the better the potential payoff if they improve on consecutive streets.

This is something to keep in mind when selecting hands preflop. If the effective stack size is very deep, you might consider playing speculative hands you wouldn’t play with an effective stack size of 100 big blinds or less. 

You should also be very careful with playing vulnerable hands that could potentially cost you more than you could theoretically earn. 

If you have a top pair hand for example, you should exercise caution and try to pot control instead of blowing up the pot disproportionately to your relative hand strength.

While there might be nothing wrong with 4-bet shoving AKs preflop with an effective stack size of 80 BB, like a lot of poker training sites teach you these days, doing it with an effective stack size of 200 BB can be an outright catastrophe.

The best case scenario is you’re coin flipping against Queens or Jacks, and worst (and far more likely) is you’re a 3 to 1 dog against Aces and Kings. 

7. Be Prepared For Some Wild Variance in Zoom

One of the crucial things to keep in mind is that while zoom games can be insanely profitable with the sheer amount of volume you’re able to put in, it does come at a price, namely the lower winrate. 

Lower winrate means more variance. 

So in order not to be negatively affected by it, it pays to prepare in advance for it. This means having a bankroll that can sustain prolonged periods of bad variance without you being negatively affected by it. 

If dealing with variance is a potential issue for you, and prolonged periods of bad luck tends to push you off the rails, you might start making mistakes that can be absolutely detrimental to your winrate, and your bottom line.



What’s more, due to the unbelievable speed of zoom poker, you might spew off your chips in a quick succession, and before you know it, you’re down 5 buyins. 

String a couple of sessions like that in a row and it’s a recipe for a disaster.

Think of it this way: 

Every chip you don’t lose to tilt is a chip you don’t have to earn back by playing your absolute best. A penny saved is a penny earned.

If on average you lose one big blind per hundred hands because of an avoidable mistake, that’s one big blind too many.

Poker is a business of razor-thin margins, and zoom poker especially so. You should try to look for every edge you can, however small or insignificant it might seem to you.

This is something that BlackRain79 discusses in far more detail in Modern Small Stakes.

And having a peace of mind is a huge edge to have, relatively speaking, especially in such a competitive environment. So do yourself, and your winrate a favour, and get a big fat bankroll. 

That way you can dispense with fretting about your winrate altogether, and focus on playing every hand to the best of your abilities. 

8. Avoid Decision Fatigue

This one doesn’t really have to do with the strategy element, but is crucial nonetheless, particularly for zoom games. 

Zoom poker plays significantly faster than regular tables, so what this means in practice is an increased number of decisions you have to make in a short time span.

This is why it is so important to use a good free poker HUD in order to get fast reads on your opponents and increase your Zoom poker winrate.

But the speed of Zoom can also quickly lead to decision fatigue, i.e. the deteriorating quality of decisions made after a long session of decision making. 

If you know the proven winning strategy intimately and can make optimal decisions without using up a lot of mental energy, decision fatigue will be less of a concern for you. 

Compare this to someone who still has to ask themselves about basic preflop starting hand decisions for example, and this will lead to a lot of mental decision fatigue for them.

Poker is extremely intellectually challenging, unless you’re just playing it for fun to unwind with a beer in hand after a long week. But if you’re playing to win, then it will definitely take a toll on your mental resources. 

Think about the following scenario: you sit down to play, you’re totally tuned in to the action, you’re making great reads, pulling off huge bluffs in marginal spots and overall playing your A+ game.

You’re up three buyins, you’re dealt Aces, you 4-bet shove them all-in against a fish, and you lose to K3s. It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. You’re still up in a session, the games are good, and you’re killing it. 

The session continues, you start missing your draws, your bluffs don’t pull through, and the deck has gone cold. You haven’t had a decent hand in half an hour, and you’re finally dealt Ace King. 

You 3-bet preflop, hit an Ace on the flop, and fire off three barrels on the flop, turn and river, and you get snapped by a set of Jacks. 

You completely lose your marbles and the session is ruined. You can’t get back to your A game, and you quit in frustration.

You might be suffering from decision fatigue. 

Somewhere along the way, you started playing on autopilot to conserve mental energy. You get a good hand, you bet, you get a bad hand, you fold. 

You don’t think through your opponent’s range, your perceived range, the board runout, pot odds and implied odds, you don’t take future streets into account. You’re just going through the motions. 

This can be absolutely detrimental to your winrate, because unlike tilt, which you’re hopefully able to recognize on time and take a breather, this is far more insidious, because you don’t even realize how it’s affecting your play. 

So ask yourself consciously how you’re doing throughout the session. Are you completely tuned in, paying attention and thinking through your decisions, or are you just going through the motions and waiting around for the nuts? 

If it’s the latter, a break might be in order.

Can Anyone Quickly Improve Their Zoom Poker Winnings These Days?

Zoom poker has an inherently lower winrate due to the lack of ability to table select and seat select, but the sheer amount of volume can more than make up for it, so if you know what you are doing, it can be more profitable overall. 

You just need to know the right strategy and adapt successfully and use the game format to your advantage.

And luckily, you don't really have to know a ton of super advanced poker strategy these days to beat these games consistently.

Successful adaptation is playing the opposite style of the majority of the player pool you are up against. 

Since zoom games play significantly tighter than regular games, the most profitable strategy is therefore a loose and aggressive (LAG) style. This means playing more hands preflop, upping your aggression and bluffing more.

One easy way to instantly boost your Zoom winrate is stealing more blinds. Since a lot of players will refrain from playing out of position and Aces are just around the corner, they don’t defend their blinds nearly as often they should. 

They fold their big blind 80% of the time, and some of them even more than that. If someone is folding their blinds so often, it can be outright profitable to try and steal blinds with basically any two cards. 

You can use a smaller open-raise size (even as little as 2x) to decrease the required fold equity. The bigger your open-raise size, the more often your opponents need to fold to render your steal attempt profitable.

Conversely, if you are the one in the blinds and see someone open-raising in the late position (the cutoff and the button), you can assume they are trying to steal the blinds fairly often, so you can 3-bet light to resteal. 

The best hands to do this with are the ones that have some sort of playability post flop if your 3-bet gets called. 

Once again, you can just use a good poker tracking program like PokerTracker in order to see all the data for yourself (which hands you are winning with, and which ones you are losing with).



Suited Aces and Kings are ideal candidates, as not only can they make monster hands post flop, but also have blocker power, which reduces the number of potential strong combos in your opponent’s range (like Aces, Kings, and Ace King).

If you decide to flat call preflop instead, you should float the flop wider than you would usually be inclined and try to steal the pot on consecutive streets if your opponent gives up.

Most players know they should c-bet the flop fairly often, and they will c-bet far more often than they’re mathematically expected to connect with the flop in any significant way. 

Most hands miss most flops, and that’s true in zoom as well. A lot of players will fire off a “standard” c-bet, but won’t have the heart to keep barreling on later streets without a good hand (which they won’t have most of the time). 

You can therefore float in position and simply fire a half-pot bet when they check the turn to you, or probe the river out of position if the turn goes check-check.

Another power move you should look to incorporate in your arsenal is the counter-strategy to the previous point. Instead of double barreling on the turn, you can consider check-raising as a bluff instead. 

A standard turn c-bet might not always be the most +EV play because you will often only get called by better hands, and you force all the worse hands to fold. By check-raising instead you can get more value out of all the air in your opponent’s range. 

This play is best employed when you pick up some equity on the turn, like with a straight or a flush draw. That way you’re giving yourself more ways to win the pot if your bluff doesn’t pull through.

If you opt for the zoom format, learning to play deepstacked is a must, as this is where you allow your skill edge to manifest itself the most.

If you want to learn more, I cover deep-stacked poker strategy for Zoom poker games in my brand new BlackRain79 Elite Poker University.

Deepstacked poker is an entirely different beast than standard 100 big blinds stacks, because you have to play all the streets.  

Decisions get more complex, and mistakes more costly, but the potential upside more than makes up for it. 

Deepstacked play will influence your starting hand selection. Top pair hands go down in value because of their vulnerability, and speculative hands go up because of the bigger implied odds.

So practice pot control with your top pair hands, and look to get involved with speculative hands to potentially take down a huge pot. Nothing better for your winrate than a huge pot.

While Zoom poker games aren't always the easiest to beat these days, with the right Zoom poker strategy, most people can quickly increase their winnings in these games.

By the way, if you are curious, here are the best Zoom poker winrates these days that you should be shooting for.

Final Thoughts

So Zoom poker strategy aside, one thing to mentally prepare yourself for is more variance. Poker is a game of razor-thin margins, and zoom poker especially so. 

If the never-ending swing of ups and downs is a problem for you, do yourself and your winrate a favour and get a big fat bankroll.

Like they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. Worrying about losing a considerable chunk of your bankroll, even through no particular fault of your own can be debilitating. 

Losing some money is inevitable, but playing sub-optimally because of it is not. 

Every big blind you don’t lose to tilt is one you don’t need to earn back by reading advanced poker strategy on how to increase your winrate. 

Finally, don’t forget to take a break from time to time. 

We poker players often disregard the stress of having to make so many decisions for so much money in a short timespan, and it does take a toll, whether we realize it or not. 

Decision fatigue is a real thing. Bigger volume is only an advantage if you’re playing your best. If not, you’re just losing money quicker.

Lastly, if you want to know my complete strategy for crushing Zoom poker games, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

The Difference Between Zoom and Regular Poker Tables

One of the most common questions that I get asked about is the adjustments that need to be made for Zoom on Pokerstars.

I also see this all the time on poker forums with some people even wondering when somebody is going to write a book on the topic.

Well, it won't be me that writes it. That much I can assure you! I am pretty sure that nobody else will either though.

The reason why is because the strategic differences between Zoom and the regular games just aren't large enough to warrant it.

Pokerstars has done a great job marketing Zoom and it is still wildly popular with recreational players and grinders alike over two years since its release in May of 2012.

However, at the end of the day it is still just the same game of poker. There are a couple of key differences between Zoom and regular poker games though that I will go into here.

By the way, if you're new to poker and you just want to know exactly what hands to play, grab my free poker cheat sheet.

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The Speed of Zoom Poker

The most obvious difference that anyone will notice right away is the speed of Zoom when compared to a regular table.

Because of the fast fold button (which allows you to simply fold hands that you don't want to play instead of waiting for the action to be on you) Zoom tables deal somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4 times as many hands per hour as a regular table.

Or if you are a live player it might be 10 or 12 times as fast as you are used to. 

Obviously this doesn't change anything about the actual game. It just speeds up the action considerably and allows you to get to the interesting hands that you want to play a lot faster. It is a brilliant idea and obviously great for grinders because they can get an incredible amount of hands in.

It is also great for recreational players because they don't have to wait for some 24 tabler who is timing out on a simple preflop decision.

They don't even have to wait to get dealt in. They can sit down and start splashing the virtual chips around immediately which is exactly what they want. 

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Lack of Information in Zoom

The second most obvious difference with regards to Zoom is the big lack of information. With player pools on Pokerstars regularly in the hundreds of people at the micro and small stake levels you might only see the same person once every 20 hands or so.

It is obviously therefore a lot harder to build up a reasonable sample on someone when compared to the regular tables where you collect data on them every single hand. 

This creates a different dynamic to the game. You can't take a sophisticated line against a reg based off of a mountain of data that you have collected on him. However it is also a two way street. They don't have much information on you either.

In a way it is more like "real poker" as some live players might argue. But the important point is that you simply have to play more ABC by the book poker in many situations due to this lack of information. 

This isn't always a bad thing. I have discussed many ways to abuse this information gap in my training videos by simply getting more aggressive than normal in a lot of common spots.

Most of the mass multi-tabling nits won't have much information on you and they will just "wait for a better spot." 

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Lack of Table Selection in Zoom

Lastly (and this is the real kicker for a lot of people including me) is that in Zoom you are stuck with the pool that you are in.

You can't really table select and you certainly can't seat select at all. This is why winrates will simply always be higher in the regular games. 

I would actually argue that the fish play better in Zoom games as well because of the fact that they can just fast fold their way to a reasonably good hand.

One of the main reasons that they play so many ridiculous hands in the regular games and in live games as well is because they get bored and don't want to wait.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons actually why I was able to create some of the highest winnings in online poker history at the micros.

It was mostly by playing regular tables and most of my winnings came from fish playing bad hands because they were bored. 

The Verdict

So in closing you can probably already guess which games that I prefer to play in. I am not much of a big time rakeback grinder anymore though so 4 tabling Zoom for the next bonus doesn't interest me very much.

In fact I barely even play on Pokerstars anymore as there are far better games on other poker sites.

I am more interested in maintaining a higher winrate by chasing fish around and also being able to get position on them every single hand. This is more or less the whole point of the game in my opinion - consistently playing with much weaker players.   

With that said, at the very lowest limits (NL2 and NL5) I don't think it really matters which games you play in, Zoom or regular.

There are huge whales and terrible regs everywhere (yes even in today's games). The Zoom tables get pretty reg infested at higher limits though. Most people are grinding out very small winrates.

I think that overall Zoom is a very good thing for poker as it is a new and exciting take on the game for many recreational players.

This is why I also wrote the #1 Zoom poker strategy guide available today on the internet, which has been wildly popular (totally free also).

It is also a marketing dream for Pokerstars. And it is also great if you are a prolific rakeback grinder. 

Listen, at the end of the day if you love playing Zoom then keep playing it, don't listen to me. The Zoom games are harder but the difference is not massive. And what they might lose in terms of game quality they certainly make up for in terms of fun.

However, if maximizing your winrate and moving up quickly are your goals in poker, then I would suggest that the regular tables are probably a better bet for you.

Lastly, if you want to know how to consistently make $1000+ per month in low stakes poker games, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

Go ahead and share your experiences with Zoom or the regular poker tables in the comments below as well.