Since power up poker was released for real money play today, I thought it would be useful to create a thread on how it works and ways to exploit player tendencies so far.

I'm definitely very curious on how this gametype will pan out, I won't say I'm completely sold on the game as yet. But I think it's worth a look.

Power up poker so far, is a 3 handed sng that is in a hyper turbo format blind scale wise that plays similarly to no limit holdem, but with the addition of (so far,) 9 different ability cards, of which each player can hold a maximum of 3, and a mana pool which makes sure you cannot use power up cards every turn.

These power up cards have different mana costs ranging from 2 points all the way up to 5. I presume this is meant to relate to the overall strength of the power card.

Rake so far is at 8% (quite high given the speed of the games imo.)

my notes from the first 20 games I've played.

The mana cost of the power cards are not equal to the level of power they can generate. Is this because they will introduce hero powers in the future? or is this for another reason I have yet to figure out.

It often makes sense to put all but 1 chip in the middle rather than going all-in. This is due to the fact that once a player is all-in, they are unable to use anymore powers. It therefore makes a lot of sense to leave a small (as little as 1 chip,) behind so that you can either attempt to improve your hand if you were bluffing or to exploit the next cards to come with your other power ups.

Timing tells seem to be more of a thing here than on normal holdem. you can often tell after a player has used their power if it has improved their hand or not (quick decisions) This is something I will definitely look out for in recreational players.

Their is a large element of skill in getting other players to invest a lot of their power cards and mana in small pots. This will create a larger edge for you in later hands.

I'm enjoying the game so far and would suggest it is beatable even with 8% rake. I think an average game lasts 1.5x as long as a spin and go, so I guess that is why they settled on 8% rake.

Not launched here (stakes?)

but if higher than 5$, then prolly not worth looking into it with that rake

seems like a fun game tho

They said they will release up to $15 games but at the moment the highest i've seen is $3. I agree the rake looks a bit ****ty.

I got this message from the pokerstars discord chat.

Earlier today we were alerted to a bug which, in some situations, caused our mobile lobby to show
no games other than PokerStars Power Up when using the search and filter functions. All other
games were directly accessible at all times.

As a result, we have removed Power Up from our desktop and mobile platforms in order to ensure
players continue to have a high quality experience. It is important to note that the Power Up real
money experience was not impacted and performed as we had expected.

PokerStars takes player enjoyment very seriously and, particularly during launches of this scale, we
take steps to minimise disruption of the player overall experience. We anticipate bugs of this kind at
beta stage, which is why we commonly execute staggered product and service launches, as we have
been doing here.

We apologise to our players, who we know were excited to play Power Up, and reassure them that
this had no effect on games that were live at the time, or funds in circulation. An email will shortly
be sent to every player affected. We are currently working on a fix and expect Power Up to be back
up and running early next week.

you can now import PU into Pokertracker 4 v. 4.14.27

just to see the results and a somewhat inaccurate version of all-in adjusted
(not accounting properly for board modifications with Scanner / Engineer)
But of course it's rather useless otherwise because it doesn't track the use of powers

Rake so far is in line with Spins, the newly added $7s are 7% (and $3 spin and below are also 8%). For unknown reasons deployment of the $15s was delayed, hopefully they are 6%.

Looks like the 15's will be delayed for a while.

"the focus for now is mainly on tech issues, other additions/changes will have to wait. The first priority is that everyone can play without suffering issues"

Hello everyone,
I have been in touch with the Power Up developers, they are now working to resolve all the bugs and problems that appear in the game. If you have any insights or comments regarding the performance of the game you are encouraged to get in touch and let them know about it on powerup@pokerstars.com. Only when this is resolved they will be able to start actively promoting the game, add $15 stakes and be able to add promotions.
The game on Android has been fixed on the last release and now they are working on iOS.