Party Poker Launches Double Hold'em Poker

Party Poker officially announced the launch of Double Hold’em, a new poker variant offered exclusively on their site. Though the game has been live on Party Poker for several weeks, it was only today that the site announced the game’s availability for both play money and real money play.

The new addition to the site comes at a time when many online poker rooms are looking for ways to distinguish themselves from the pack by offering unique games or features to their players. For example, Full Tilt Poker recently launched Rush Poker, which allows players to play hands much more quickly than at a normal poker table by eliminating downtime between hands.

In Double Hold’em Poker, the player is given three cards at the start of each hand instead of two. The player much designate one of these cards as the “point” card, which will be identified on-screen by being moved to the middle of the player’s hand and being raised slightly. After this, the game is played similarly to a standard game of Texas Hold’em. However, at showdown, the player makes their hand by using their point card and either of the other two cards, depending on which will give them the stronger hand.

Double Hold’em Poker was conceived by E. Mark Gross and Zvi Lando of TableBrain. The game was originally designed in 2006, but required some tweaking before the game was deemed both playable and fun. According to a blog post by Gross, Double Hold’em was made to give players “more playable hands, more action, and bigger pots.”

Currently, Party Poker stands as the third largest online poker room in the world in terms of average real money traffic, trailing only Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. However, both of these sites accept American players on their sites, while Party Poker does not. Party Poker is owned and operated by PartyGaming Plc, which also owns Party Casino, Party Bingo, Party Gammon and Party Bets.