It won't excite players who prefer their poker playing to be slow and methodically as they grind out the cents over twenty tables at once, or owners of Android-based smartphones and tablets, but PartyPoker have released into Beta a new version of the mobile “fastforward” app for iPhone and iPad. The app features a new-style interface which aims to speed up your play at the virtual table by saving you the bother of pressing buttons and sliding sliders.

Fastforward is PartyPoker's version of “fast fold” poker, a fast poker variation of Texas Hold'em that has been around for a couple of years or so now, and is offered under various names by all the major poker rooms, such as the iPoker network's “Twister” poker, and Poker Stars “Zoom Poker”.

If you're new to the concept of fast fold poker, then where have you been? Fast fold poker works as any normal poker game with one crucial difference – as soon as you fold your cards at one table, you are re-seated at a different one. As soon as your new table fills up, the deal commences.

Fast fold poker has been created for poker players who are too impatient to sit around at a poker table waiting for a decent pair of hole cards to appear in front of them. Fast fold allows you to play many more hands (or at least see many more hole cards) than you would if you were playing at a ring game table or tournament. The downside of Fast fold poker is you are never guaranteed your position in two consecutive hands. You could find yourself in early position for a dozen hands a row, or, on the other side of the coin, in late position for the same number of deals.

PartyPoker's Special Edition of fastforward trials a new interface that has been designed so you can play poker one handed, which is ideal, we guess, if you like to combine poker and table tennis, or you're eating a sandwich with the other. By gripping your phone so you thumb is free, you should be able to perform everything as necessary in order to be able to play.

For example, to fold, all you need to do is swipe your cards onto the table, as perhaps you would if you were playing in a real poker game. To call, bet or raise you swipe your chips onto the table, and a double tap indicates a check. Actually selecting the size of your bet sees things become a little trickier. There's a slider in the bottom left hand corner of the screen that you use to set your bet amount. Once you're happy, you swipe those chips onto the table.

For larger bets, you can tap on the pot to open the potbet menu. This will give you a range of bets based on the size of the pot, such as 1x, 2x, 3x … you get the picture. You swipe along the menu until you find the bet you like, and then pull it onto the table.

The result is an interface that's slightly easier to use than the normal type of interface for mobiles and tablets, although we do have to admit after twenty minutes of “thumbing” our way around the app, our thumbs were beginning to cramp up a little.

The vast majority of mobile poker apps for Android and Apple devices doesn’t allow you to play on multiple tables at once, which makes it very hard for serious players to maximize the number of hands they play. Even if you’re capable of reacting extremely fast and your decisions are absolutely spot-on, you’ll often find yourself waiting for slower players to act. Playing fast-fold poker is a perfect solution to this problem, as it allows you to approach the number of hands per hour you’d reach while multi-tabling with a single desktop display.

The rules of most fast-fold games are simple: you are dealt a new hand every time you fold, as the site transfer you to a new table. Consequently, experienced players can roll through the tables at ridiculous speed while simultaneously being able to be extra careful about the hands that they actually want to play through. Fast-fold poker is super-fast, aggressive and arguably more addictive than the standard cash game variation of the game, so even if you’re not a dedicated grinder you should definitely consider giving it a try. Below, you will find some of the best mobile poker sites that offer fast-fold games.

Party Poker’s brand of fast-fold poker has been appropriately dubbed Fast Forward Poker – once you start playing in this mode, you’ll quickly realize that the entire app has been designed with this style of playing Texas Hold’em in mind. The entire user interface has been obviously built around enabling you to make split-second decisions and helping you to avoid potentially costly mistakes, which is quite important since the level of competition on Party Poker is fairly high.

The Party Poker mobile app is currently available as a downloadable package for iOS and Android devices like the Motorola DROID X, HTC One or Samsung Galaxy Tab – whether the company opts to release a browser-based version remains to be seen. Fortunately, the entire package is relatively small, so you shouldn’t worry about being able to install it even if your SD card is almost full. New Party Poker customers are welcome to take advantage of a fairly standard $50 welcome bonus, which is a 100% match on the first payment that you make.

>> Read our full PartyPoker mobile review

Carbon Poker are an online and mobile poker site that also welcome real money poker players from the United States.  Their web app is browser based so it should work on any iPhone, HTC Evo, iPad, Nokia or Samsung Galaxy.  Carbon offer regular Texas Hold'em ring games and fast fold Sit & Go tournaments that can be played at a variety of different speeds.

>> Read our full Carbon USA poker review