PokerStars Game Formats: Zoom, Spin & Go, SCOOP, WCOOP and Home Games (2026)

Cash games and the widest list of variants

Ring games run around the clock in No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha, from micro stakes to high stakes, with rake of about 5% and caps that are lower than GGPoker’s from mid stakes upwards. Beyond them, the Stars game list includes five- and six-card Omaha, Courchevel, Hi/Lo versions, Seven Card Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, Five Card Draw, 2-7 Triple Draw and Single Draw, Badugi, HORSE and the 8-Game Mix.

Experimental variants such as Split Hold’em, Showtime Hold’em, Fusion, 6+ Hold’em and Swap Hold’em also appear in the lineup. Rarer games run mostly at European peak hours.

Zoom: fast-fold cash poker

Zoom is PokerStars’ fast-fold version of cash games. The moment you fold — even before your turn, using the Fast Fold button — you are moved to a new table with new opponents and dealt a fresh hand, so you see several times more hands per hour than at a regular table.

Since you cannot pick a table, Zoom rewards solid fundamentals over hunting weak players, and HUD samples build slowly against a rotating pool.

Spin & Go and what happened to Flash

Spin & Go is a three-handed hyper-turbo sit-and-go with a random prize pool: a multiplier is drawn before the first hand, and the top one reaches 10,000 times the buy-in. Lower multipliers are winner-take-all, while big ones share the prize among all three players. Spin & Go Flash used to be a separate lobby with 300-chip stacks and one-minute levels; according to industry reports it has since been merged into the main game, whose speed now depends on the multiplier drawn.

Spins at $0.50 are also the first step of Power Path, which leads to Silver and Gold Passes for EPT and other live PokerStars events. Stars explicitly bans any tool aimed at manipulating opponents in games like Spins where you cannot choose your table.

Tournaments: from the Sunday Million to SCOOP and WCOOP

The weekly calendar peaks on Sunday with the Sunday Million and other Sunday Majors, alongside bounty, turbo and satellite events every day. Twice a year Stars hosts its flagship series: SCOOP, the Spring Championship of Online Poker, which in 2026 was moved forward to March, and WCOOP, the World Championship of Online Poker, whose 25th edition in September 2026 featured around 350 tournaments.

Main events come in several buy-in tiers, and smaller festivals such as MicroMillions fill the gaps between series.

Home Games: setting up a private club

Home Games let you run private real-money or play-money games for friends:

1. 1In the lobby open More → Home Games and choose Create a Poker Club, or Join a Poker Club if you have an invitation.
2. 2Give the club a unique name of 8–30 characters and an invitation code of 8–16 characters that starts with a letter and contains a number.
3. 3Share the club ID from the confirmation email and the invitation code with your friends.
4. 4Approve members in the Club Lobby, then schedule cash games or tournaments in Hold’em, Omaha, Stud or mixed formats such as HORSE.

Home Games rules worth knowing

A club can have up to 501 members; you can create two clubs and join up to ten. Club names are reviewed before they appear, real-money Home Games earn reward points like other games, and players on the same IP address may sit together, but chat is generally not moderated, so invite people you trust.

Whatever the format, choose stakes that fit a bankroll you can afford to lose. Fast formats like Zoom and Spins burn through money quickly, and a buy-in limit in Responsible Gaming keeps that speed under control.