We’ve discussed the stupidity behind Zynga Poker in the past, where 38 million people choose to pay real money for fake poker chips that give them nothing in return – except, for say, the satisfaction of knowing you bested a fellow idiot who is too dumb to realize that they could have a shot at winning real money in online poker.
Well apparently, the massive market for foolish wannabe poker players has grown to the point where Zynga saw some potential in acquiring the PokerTableRatings team. If you’re unfamiliar with PokerTableRatings, they track online poker players and show their wins and losses, which is perfect for railbirds who enjoy living their life through their online poker heros.
In any case, Zynga paid an undisclosed (albeit ridiculous) sum of money to have the 16-person team from Austin, Texas work on a ratings site for Zynga. As Zynga said through a press release, “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,”
Now in addition to throwing their money down the drain to play free poker games with other Facebook fanatics, people can also track the top “high stakes” grinders to see who’s crushing the fake poker world. Now I might normally say that the notion of providing poker tracking for play money players is ridiculous, but then again, the whole concept of Zynga Poker is already stupid enough – so why not?
With the tracking system, players can get sucked even further into the world of Zynga Poker, where you pay money for the same service that can be gotten for free at countless other poker sites.
[...] this isn’t the only move that the site has made because they also acquired PokerTableRatings‘ services back in the spring so they could promote further Zynga addiction by offering a [...]