Do you play poker on your mobile device?
Do you sometimes have to stop playing when you don’t want to? Are you annoyed by players who take too long to act?
PokerStars’ brand new poker product “Duel” offers an innovative version of social poker that’s fast, simple, dedicated to recreational players and eliminates stalling.
It’ll give you more independence, it keeps the time a game takes low and you’ll get quick results without getting exploited by sharks.
How “Duel” Works
Duel is a game for two players only and on mobile phones only.
If you already have a regular account at PokerStars you can use that one; if you don’t you can create one the traditional way or through “Duel."
Make friends with an opponent and you can start a game. If you don’t have any friends yet you can also opt to play a random match, then add that player and challenge him again later if he accepts your friend request.
You can play for play money or micro stakes. According to early plans by PS, the maximum buy-in will be $5. This means sharks won’t be interested.
10 or 20 Hands Only
One of the special things about “Duel” is that the number of hands is predetermined. A play-money game lasts for 10 hands and a real-money game for 20 hands.
The next innovation is you don’t play one hand after another. Instead you’ll open half of the hands and your opponent will open the other half.
As soon as you've made your move on your first hand you can move on to the second one, and so on. When you’re done with your first moves you’ll be presented with the hands your opponent opened, one after another.
Each player begins with 500 chips for every hand. The player who has won the majority of chips after the 10 or 20 hands wins the money.
No More Stalling
The third big innovation in “Duel” is there's no shot clock or time bank. There's simply a time limit that, in the first version of the game we saw, was set to three days.
That means that you don’t have to worry if you have enough time to finish a game. It also means you can have multiple duels at the same time without sitting out at any table.
Let’s say you’re on a bus and you only have 15 minutes. You can challenge an opponent, start a game, make your moves, and when you arrive at your stop you can put the game on hold until you have time again.
PokerListings had the chance to test “Duel” at the 2016 PCA. There was only one weakness that became apparent.
If you’ve gained a large chiplead after half of the hands you might just fold all the others and your opponent has no chance to win any chips back.
They did find a way to minimize this issue, though. As soon as there is an all-in situation that hand gets pushed to the end of the line.
You won’t find out how this hand plays out until you’ve finished all the others and you won’t know who won the chips in that hand.
Share Your Results
You can easily share your results and your statistics and you’ll always know how your friends are faring.
PokerStars “Duel” doesn’t reinvent poker but it does make it a more social, fun game.
It gives poker something back that may have been the reason you started playing in the first place – because you like to play games with friends.
PokerStars “Duel” is available for both iOS and Android. Duel is available in Norway from today and will be rolled out to other countries soon
If you don’t have a PokerStars account yet, find out how here.
*Any mention of a bonus or discussion of such terms is not in relation to the province of Ontario.
