Social gaming giant Zynga made a big purchase to improve its poker brand this week. The company behind popular Facebook apps like Farmville and Mafia Wars acquired the entire 16-member team behind Austin, Texas-based MarketZero, which operated the online poker tracking site PokerTableRatings.
Among the major players moving over to Zynga include MarketZero founders Gustavo Abdala, Amir Elaguizy, Nir Leibovich, Timothy Sullivan, and Jason Wang. The team will purportedly be in charge of developing new features for the Zynga Poker game, which is the fourth most popular game on the Zynga network. The company said in a press release that the acquisition is about hiring the minds behind PokerTableRatings and not taking over the site itself.
“The team’s experience and deep knowledge of the online poker industry will be invaluable as we work together to build out cutting-edge features and further enhance Zynga Poker,” Zynga said in a statement.
Zynga launched its poker application in September 2007 and has watched it grow into the largest online poker room on the planet through portals like Facebook, MySpace, and Yahoo. According to AppData.com, Zynga Poker attracts nearly seven million daily users and 37 million users per month, annihilating the traffic numbers posted by industry leaders PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. For now, Zynga Poker does not offer real money games, but that could change pending legislation of online poker in the U.S.
The company recently held a two-day PokerCon at the Palms in Las Vegas that saw many of poker’s biggest names in attendance. The San Francisco-based company that had remained out of the media spotlight for so long is suddenly making an effort to increase its profile in the United States.
The purchase of MarketZero was the 11th acquisition by Zynga over the past 12 months and the second of an Austin-based company, as Zynga bought Challenge Games in June 2010. Other past Zynga acquisitions include mobile game development studio Floodgate, social browser Flock, New York’s Area/Code, Texas-based NewToy, XPD in Beijing, Unoh Games in Tokyo, Conduit Labs in Boston, Dextrose AG in Frankfurt, and Bonfire Studios in Texas.
Meanwhile, PokerTableRatings released a statement regarding the purchase, saying, “So what does this mean for PTR and our members? Nada. PTR hasn’t skipped a beat and we’re working hard to make sure PTR continues to be the best place to find stats on every online poker player.”
Members of PokerTableRatings won’t be affected by the acquisition and the company plans to continue improving its service to the online poker community. The tracking site offers several tools to enhance a player’s information about opponents at a poker table, including a Table Finder, Player Research Tool, and WebHUD.
Users can also break down wins and losses by session, opponents played, and pay for hand histories to gain useful statistics on opponents. The site began tracking games on Full Tilt Poker in April 2008 and on PokerStars in September 2008. It also tracks UB.com, Absolute Poker, Bodog, PartyPoker, and the iPoker Network.