Installation of the beta edition of BlazingStars was a very easy process. There’s a DMG file to download and open, which can be done from your desktop. Simply click and drag the BlazingStars icon into the Applications folder and you’re done. From there, you have five areas to look at, Basic Keys, Pot Bets, Open:Close, Setup, and Advanced. The Setup button reveals which theme you run on PokerStars, with three themes supported so far and plans for more. Once that was done, the program was ready to roll.
BlazingStars can calculate bets dependent on a hotkey you set up. We made a pot bet Shift-1, a 70% pot bet Shift-7, and a 50% pot bet Shift-5. To make sure there were not oddball bet sizes, the “Round all pot bets to” box was checked. You can have up to four different percentage of pot bet hotkeys set up, have it automatically click the bet button, and have an all-in shortcut.
The Basic Keys area has many different hotkeys to set up. The “Basic Buttons” handles things like Folding, Check/Call, and Bet/Raise. There are even hotkey areas for sitting out functions. The “Advance Actions” area has hotkeys for Check/Fold, Fold to Any, Check/Call, and Check/Call Any. There’s an area for limit-specific shortcuts and, finally, a Bet Sizing area for hotkeys to increase and decrease bets.
Using BlazingStars while playing on two tables at PokerStars exceeded all expectations. Considering that the beta phase of the software’s life cycle is in its infancy, there was a surprising amount to love about BlazingStars. There was a point for about 15 minutes where there was no need to have a hand on the mouse and the games were being played with more efficiency than ever experienced with PokerStars on a Mac.
There’s little doubt that when BlazingStars reaches a public beta testing phase, there is going to be an overwhelming demand for the software. It doesn’t hog system resources, it works fantastically, and there are more features on the way.
