PokerStars Launches Boom Hand Replayer

Introduced in recent weeks on the world's largest online poker room, PokerStars, is the Boom Hand Replayer. We know it's a hand replayer, but what makes it special? Text found on PokerStars' website shares a few of the highlights: "You know that moment - the great bluff, the one-outer on the river, the massive pot that changed the game... BOOM! Well now you can share it on video with the BOOM! hand replayer. With just the click of a button, you can instantly upload your unforgettable hands in video form."

There are two ways to utilize the new hand replayer from PokerStars. First, once the technical glitches are worked out and Boom is made fully available, you'll notice a little star next to the summary of a hand in a table's chat box. If you click it, you can share the hand via the replayer. Alternately, you can open a hand history on PokerStars and then select the red "Boom" option at the bottom of the screen. Hands are uploaded by default to BoomPlayer.com.

On Boom's official website, several hand superlatives like "Great Play," "Nice Bluff," "Huge Pot," and "Bad Beat" are showcased front and center for all the poker world to see. "Hands of the Week" and "Featured Hands" are also given, as are hands sent via Boom from members of Team PokerStars Pro like Eugene Katchalov, Daniel Negreanu, and Victor Ramdin.

The replayer itself is pretty slick and, at the same time, very simple. The table looks exactly like one you'll find on PokerStars and the interface includes options to play, pause, fast-forward, and rewind. You can also share any hand to a variety of social networking sites like Twitter and Google's Orkut. A narrative of the hand is shown so you can keep track of the action.

Viewers are given the option to "Like" any hand they see and comment on it. As a press release sent by PokerStars explained, "At BoomPlayer.com, players can also interact with the PokerStars community by voting on other players' hands, watching those posted by Team PokerStars pros, and even emailing their own hands or posting to other social websites."

Some of the most popular Boom replayer hands have over 20,000 views and include one by PokerStars pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier.

As of May 20, posters on TwoPlusTwo reported that the Boom replayer was only available to PokerStars players in France and Italy, although players from all countries can view hands uploaded to the site. On May 22, a PokerStars representative posted in the forums, "We ran into scalability issues due to the very high initial demand of the feature, so we are tweaking the backend before we open again." When the replayer will be fully available to all PokerStars customers is not clear.

Players have plenty of options when it comes to selecting hands to send to Boom, as the site recently rolled Zoom Poker out of beta. In Mid-May, PokerStars released Zoom Mobile for Android-enabled devices, extending its reach even further. Seemingly the entire poker community has embraced Zoom, including PokerNews, which wrote, "Zoom Poker allows players to play hundreds of hands per hour, potentially massively increase profits, and make climbing up the superb VIP scheme easier than ever."

Check out other hand converters and replayers we've reviewed right here on PokerSoftware.