Table Of Contents

Swap Hold'em coming to PokerStars In a rare instance this writer has beat pokerfuse to the punch in spotting a potential new format from PokerStars, as the tournament lobby is showing a filter for a yet announced game. Play online poker games with the world’s largest community of poker players. Join the biggest - and best - online poker games including Texas Hold’em tournaments. Enjoy promotions you won’t find anywhere else. From Texas Hold’em to Omaha, PokerStars offers the widest selection of games anywhere online. How to enjoy our poker games. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.

PokerStars Swap Hold’em Swap Hold'em is a great twist on the world’s favorite poker game, Texas Hold’em. On their turn to act, at any point in the hand, any player may swap one or both. Jan 03, 2021 Swap Hold’em is a new cash game variant currently offered in limited markets and at PokerStars.net. The game is the same as standard NL Hold’em game, but with one difference. At any point during a hand, a player has the option to swap one or both of their hole cards before electing to check, raise, or fold.

PokerStars posted some of its weakest revenue numbers in years in its most recent quarterly report, with revenues dipping 12 percent year over year, according to Poker Industry PRO ($).

It's at least the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline for PokerStars, with total revenue dipping to $191.5 million. According to graphs provided by PRO, it's the first time PokerStars has failed to pull in $200 million in revenue since 2016.

Numbers Trending Down

On a constant currency basis, the decline was a little less severe, checking in at 7%. However, the numbers and graphs provided by PRO paint a clear picture of recent stumbles for the worldwide leader in online poker.

In Q3 of 2018, PokerStars pulled in $212.8 million, which was already a year-over-year decline of 3.9%. The next quarter, revenues fell to $210.9 million, a year-over-year plunge of 10%. Another year-over-year drop of 12.9% followed, but at least total revenues remained at $214.1 million.

The recent dip to $191.5 million was the lowest recorded in the five-year trend provided by PRO.

Numbers for the year are on pace to barely crack $800 million after the past two years saw the company push toward the $900 million mark.

Investors have taken notice as well, according to OnlinePokerReport. Value of a share of parent company The Stars Groupfell from $16 at the close of last week to around $13 after the Monday release of the quarterly numbers. That's a drop of almost 20 percent, although it has recovered some to $13.95 at the time of writing.

Swap Holdem Pokerstars Games

Decline in Poker's Importance

The 2018 acquisition of Sky Betting & Gaming has positioned The Stars Group as a major player in the online sports betting market. As a result, the importance of poker to the company has taken a tumble.

For the first time, poker has been surpassed by sports in terms of share of company revenue produced. Not only that, but casino also surpassed poker, with poker accounting for 30.4% of revenue while casino checked in at 30.8% and sports at 35.7%.

As The Stars Group makes further moves into the expanding U.S. sports betting market — such as a recent partnership with Penn National gaming — that trend may only continue.

Latest Moves

PokerStars remains the unquestioned top dog in the online poker market. PokerScout has their numbers at more than triple the nearest competitor, but that's actually less dominant than the company's position a year ago, when it boasted more than four times the traffic of the second-place site.

There have been some recent moves made by the red spade as the operator attempts to reverse some of the concerning trends.

For example, Spin & Gos are being dropped from the fenced Indian market ($) in response to low customer demand. Other games such as knockout formats and traditional sit-n-gos will be taking their place. The change takes effect Friday, with PokerStars hoping to gain ground on local rooms that have the lead in market share.

More significantly for a wider swath of the customer base, PRO has revealed that another new game may soon be hitting the dot-com client. A new option called 'Swap Hold'em' has been added to the list of games, but no selectable tables or tournaments have appeared under the filter.

Swap Hold'em may be the latest in a line of inventive, non-traditional games spread by the operator, the most recent of which was the growing high roller special, short deck hold'em. Reached for comment by PokerNews, a representative of PokerStars said she was unable to offer comment on Swap Hold'em.

In any case, PokerStars — and its shareholders — will undoubtedly hope that the company can turn things around and reverse the recent trends.

_{The Stars Group owns a majority shareholding in iBus Media.}

• Tags

  PokerStarsOnline Poker

Leading online poker room PokerStars has added yet another new innovative cash game variant to its game offerings dubbed Swap Hold’em.

The game follows the long list of innovative limited-time cash game variants that the operator has been developing over the last three years in an attempt to keep players engaged.

It is currently available as a cash game with its own lobby, sitting right next to 6+ Hold’em and Tempest in the main lobby. The game is played 6-handed and is available at nearly a dozen stakes starting from the micro stakes $0.02/$0.05 and going up to $10/$20.

How Swap Hold’em is Played?

Swap Hold’em plays exactly like regular Texas Hold’em but with a twist that lets players swap one or both of their hole cards for new ones from the deck. Players must swap at least one hole card before they can fold.

Swap Holdem Pokerstars Game

Swapping of hole cards can be done once per hand and at any point during the hand, be it pre-flop, or post-flop at turn, or even at the river. However, once a player goes all-in, he or she loses the ability to swap cards.

As soon as a player swaps, their opponents will immediately know how many hole cards have been swapped. There is no obligation to swap cards as players can proceed with the hand by either checking, calling a bet or making a bet.

Some of the key points of Swap Hold’em:

• Players can swap either one or both of their hole cards for free
• Swapping of cards is only allowed once per hand
• Players must swap their cards before they can fold
• Swapping can be done at any stage of the hand (either pre- or post-flop) except when a player is all-in

Swap Hold’em Takes Inspirations from PokerStars’ Power Up

The novelty of swapping hole cards is seemingly inspired by PokerStars’ esports poker title Power Up—a game no longer available that allowed players to influence their hand by using special powers. One of the powers of the game was “reload” that allowed players to replace one or both hole cards with a new one from the deck.

Power Up was withdrawn from PokerStars’ game offerings in November last year after running for two years.

Another free-play esports title Hands of Victory, which dates back to early 2015, has a swap ability option.

Swap Hold’em Follows PokerStars’ Tradition of Launching Limited-time Cash Games

Swap Hold’em is PokerStars’ eighth novelty variant that has been launched in the last three years.

From Split Hold’em to Showtime, from Unfold to Fusion, the operator has been releasing these new game titles consistently since 2018.

In November last year, PokerStars launched another two action-packed new cash game variants in tandem, Deep Water Hold’em and Tempest Hold’em.

Most of these lasted just a couple of months except for 6+ Hold’em and Tempest Hold’em—the operator’s first-ever Push or Fold game—both of them continue to run even today.

Deep Water Hold’em was withdrawn from the lobby in January only to be replaced with Fusion which returned after over a year. In February, PokerStars added 6-Card Omaha cash game tables. However, unlike other games, 6-Card Omaha, in contrast, is listed in the regular lobby along with other Omaha variants. This suggests that the game is a permanent addition to their game offerings.

Swap Hold'em Pokerstars Play

PokerStars Cash Game Novelties

Swap Hold’em was first spotted by Poker Industry PRO, premium news and data analytics platform for poker industry insiders, six months ago after the game made its appearance in the “tournament” filter of the PokerStars’ main lobby.

The game was launched for real money earlier today in the international dot-com and dot-eu clients. It is also available to UK, Belgium, Estonian, Russian clients which have their own dedicated PokerStars platform. The game is also accessible in the play money (dot-net) platform.

However, the game is only visible to players that have enabled PokerStars’ new game engine called Aurora.