Zynga Buys Team At Online Poker Tracker MarketZero

Social game developer Zynga announced its 11th acquisition in as many months, this time purchasing the team at MarketZero, developer of online poker stat tracking portal PokerTableRatings. Launched in 2008, PokerTableRatings tracks career statistics of online poker players, allowing members to look up hand histories, compare their player rating against others on poker leaderboards, and more. Zynga describes Market Zero as a "pioneering force in the online poker world," and said the company raised security standards among poker operators. The FarmVille and CityVille developer emphasizes that this is only a talent acquisition, as it intends to absorb "the knowledge and expertise" of MarketZero's team, not the operations of PokerTableRatings itself. MarketZero says that this purchase should not affect PokerTableRatings or its members. Zynga created the most popular card game on Facebook, Texas HoldEm Poker, which is also the third most popular application on the social network with almost 37 million monthly active users, according to AppData. It has also released the poker game to mobile platforms like iOS and Android. The firm has bought 11 studios in the past 11 months, including Beijing's XPD, Austin's Challenge Games, Tokyo's Unoh Games, Boston's Conduit Labs and Floodgate Entertainment, Frankfurt's Dextrose AG, Dallas' Bonfire Studios, McKinney's (Texas) Newtoy Inc., Redwood City's Flock, and New York City's Area/Code. Two months ago, the San Francisco-headquartered company was reportedly close to completing a $500 million round of financing, which would have increased its total funding to almost $900 million since 2007 and boosted its valuation to as much as $10 billion.