World Series of Farmville?

I knew early on that Zynga was gonna be kinda a friggin\’ big deal, with plans to get even bigger. While just about every other online poker entity has struggled with receding revenues of late, Zynga has seen theirs take off. But how? You don\’t even play for real money there (yet) …

In an effort to better understand the secret to Zynga\’s success, I went to the Texas Hold\’em Poker Facebook fan page for preliminary research, and omg, here\’s what I found:

Zynga Poker fans: It\’s a good bet that the majority of commenters and likers here aren\’t familiar with the phrase \”don\’t tap the aquarium\”.

Yeow. Is this what poker has been missing all along? Power Hours and Free Kitties!?!

So simple, so brilliant … how did PokerStars or Full Tilt not think of it? Forget rakeback, black cards, rush poker, final-table patches, re-entry and cashout tournaments … just give away a few cartoon images and let the people play! And that\’s when they rebuy?

OK, maybe I don\’t have the Zynga equation down exactly yet, but that\’s some of what I\’ll be looking into as Zynga\’s inaugural PokerCon comes to Las Vegas, March 18-19, at the Palms. I\’ll be part of a team covering Zynga PokerCon with Michele Lewis and BJ Nemeth.

For Zynga, this is their entrée into the live poker world. And thus, not surprisingly, I\’m not the only person from Vegas checking things out. Poker pros taking part in Zynga Pokercon include Doyle Brunson, Scotty Nguyen, David Williams, Vanessa Rousso, Annie Duke, Gavin Smith, and Antonio Esfandiari.

I know it sounds crazy … only a single tournament, a few cocktail parties and lunches, a Zynga Poker \”university\”, some sit-n-go tables where you can take on the above pros, and of course a nightclub party … all crammed into two days with cards in the air at the very unpokery hour of 9 am. But that is pretty much the bulk of the World Series of Zynga 2011. Somebody send Scotty Nguyen a virtual drink!

Here\’s the official site where you can register to play. It\’s a $125 entry to compete for a share of a $100k prize pool. (And as far as overlays are concerned, it\’s almost like these live-poker rookies aren\’t even worried about making the guarantee.)

Check out Michele\’s blog for more details. When she recruited me for this Zynga thing I moaned a bit, remembering years ago when she tried getting me into MySpace. (It was fun for about a month.) But now that I see the free kitty in play … well, how can I not pay closer attention?