Poker News

On July 22, during National Poker Week, the Poker Players Alliance will present this petition to President Obama, asking his support to exempt poker from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), and for the legalization and regulation of online poker.

PokerStars now provides RSA Security Tokens to users who are interested in adding a layer of security to their poker accounts.

Paramount has signed Leonardo DiCaprio to star in a movie about online casinos in Costa Rica.

The U.S. Federal government has frozen over $30 million in payments owed to 27.000 online poker players

A swedish court ruled a Texas Hold'em poker tournament to be a game of skill rather than chance.

As of yesterday Absolute Poker now has a downloadable poker client for Mac users. This is the first Mac compatible poker client for the CEREUS poker network.

The 2009 World Series of Poker will be broadcast live by PKR this year.

Harrah’s Entertainment, announced on friday that it has formed a subsidiary company, called Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, Inc.

President Barack Obama asked Americans on his Change.gov transitional website to send him their policy priorities, and online poker received most votes in technology group.

"The Prince of Poker", Scotty Nguyen, has signed a contract with Expek as their exclusive poker ambassador.

Full Tilt Poker now synchronizes multi-table tournament breaks, which helps you take a real 5 minute break when playing more than one tournament.

Full Tilt Poker has lowered their minimum deposit amount from $50 to $10. This change will also lower the 60 day real money policy requirement from $25 to $10.

Adding to the recent speculation that some land-based casino's are looking into entering the profitable online gambling market, a recent look at stock market prices for land based casino companies shows an interesting rising trend in the past few months.

Barney Frank's recently introduced Internet Gambling Regulation Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act is getting the support of a major Las Vegas casino operator Harrah's, who spent over $400,000 as a registered lobbyist on getting support for it.

WSOP has revised it's rules considering behaviour on poker tables. Phil Hellmuth's outburst in last year's tournament, may have been a factor in this revision.

Professional poker player Annie Duke was fired by Donald Trump in the finale of television show The Celebrity Apprentice, in favor of Joan Rivers.

U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank introduced new legislation H.R. 2267 to overturn the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006) that would enable Americans to bet online.

Hansen loses 1.1 M$ to Tom "durrrr" Dwanin HU PLO in one session

Off the wall: Russian and Italian press claim Chelsea owner Abramovich lost his luxury yacht in poker. Didn't get saved by the river, did he?

U.S. Representative Barney Frank has been fighting back the UIGEA legislation, and Reuters reported today on Tuesday that he will unveil legislation to roll back the ban on Wednesday.

Betfair Poker offers their uppgraded Rakeback deal with 40% rakeback as standard; available to all players who generate 30,000 Betfair Poker points (£1,500) monthly.

The 21 year old Yevgeniy Timoshenko came in as chip leader to the final day of the WPT World Championship at Bellagio on Saturday, April 25th. He mastered staying on top of the final table with Scotty Nguyen, Shannon Shorr, Bertrand Grospellier, Christian Harder and Ran Azor.

62 players returned for Day 4 at the 2009 World Poker Tour Championship at Las Vegas Bellagio. Steve Billirakis was forced to hand the lead over to Eugene Katchalov.

Steve Billirakis took over the chip lead after Day 3 with 1,722,000 chips in the 2009 World Championship Event. Top Ten is overflowing with poker talents like Mark Seif, David Singer and Phil Ivey; they all have collected over one million chips and are in good position for Day 4.

The WPT Championship Day 2 is done with a new man leading the way; the runner-up on 2009 European Poker Tour Highroller Event Jean-Noel Thorel. Other top survivors were Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Steve Billirakis, Dan Heimiller and Justin Young, all with a great day behind them manning the top of the leaderboard.

The official number of participants in the Bellagio WPT World Championship has been announced as 337 players with 301 remaining in the battle after Day 1. The first prize is worth $2,143,655 and the top 50 players will share the rest of the $8,172,250 prize pool.

Five Star World Poker Classic is already in full swing at the Bellagio; the series is played from March 31 thru April 25. The Five Star is highlighted by the $25K buy-in World Poker Tour Championship starting on April 18. The Season VII champion will be crowned seven days later on Saturday, April 25th with the action aired on Fox Sports Net.

Tom Dwan's Million Dollar Challenge crossed the 10,000 hand milestone on April 9, when Dwan and Antonius played another 890 hands of Pot Limit Omaha on Full Tilt. Latest update on the match is from April 14; Patrik Antonius is up $84,000 with 12,100 hands played.

Full Tilt Poker has released the details for Full Tilt Online Poker Series, the FTOPS XII. For this series a new MiniFTOPS has been added offering 25 events with a one tenth of a buy-in. Defeating your opponents on Satellite Challenge or the FTOPS Challenge might get you into these tournaments with extra cash for the leaderboard winners.

A 53 year stay at home dad Blandino Gines will be competing in NBC's Heads Up Poker Chapionship along  after qualifying online. He will be facing a tough field of 64 elite poker players.

The World Poker Tour announced on Wednesday that it is coming to the African continent, bringing the game to Marrakech, Morocco in October.

2009 National Heads-Up Poker Championship match-up draws are now complete for the 64 players; the tournament starts March 6th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas with Johnny Chan vs Eli Elezra.

The Merge Gaming Network is expanding with new rooms added. On Tuesday the network announced  Big Bet Poker as the newest addition. Active sites on the Merge network include Poker Nordica, Aced, Iron Duke, Carbon Poker, Reefer Poker and Spin 32. The network accepts players from the United States.

Milwaukee’s Best Light has opted to continue its relationship with the ever popular World Series of Poker as the official beer sponsor of the world’s biggest poker tournament.

The Million Dollar Challenge got back under way once again on Sunday between Tom “durrr” Dwan and Patrik Antonius. The players racked up 226 hands after a six day break in which they played a 1,000 hand session on Monday.

The final six players of the 2009 LA Poker Classic took their places at the table ready to vie for their chance to be the winner of the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship Event.

For today’s professional poker player,there aren’t many options out there for steady, reliable income. One of the most popular ways to achieve this is by signing on to be a spokesperson or sponsored player for one of the many online poker sites.

The lineup of 64 players participating in this year’s NBC National Heads up Poker Championship has recently been released and it is an impressive list made up of some of poker’s most well known players.

The Poker Stars European Poker Tour Scandinavian Open finished up in much like the previous five days of play, in a fast, aggressive style.  An impressive 462 players turned out for the tournament, all hoping they would be taking home the €878,057 top prize.

This week World Poker Tour Enterprises reported that its net loss during the fourth quarter totaled $3.2 million which brought their total loss for 2008 to $12.5 million. The World Poker Tour Enterprise's end of year report was "a result of a decrease in domestic television license fees, lower product licensing revenue and lower domestic sponsorship fees.

The Durrr Challenge has officially begun on Full Tilt Poker. Tom Dwan is offering to pay $1.5 million as an incentive to any player who could beat him over a span of 50,000 hands at four simultaneous heads up online tables at minimum stakes of $200-$400 in the players' choice of either Pot Limit Omaha or No Limit Texas Hold'em. The player who accepts Dwan's challenge would only be expected to ante in for $500,000.

The World Poker Tour has announced that cable station Fox Sports Net which broadcasted the WPT's seventh season, will also plans to air Season VIII. The new season is supposed to begin filming sometime during the middle of this year. The timeslot and schedule will be released at a later date.

Last weekend saw several historical tournaments held during the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS). The $535 buy-in Main Event was taken down by csimmsux and girlyhurly took home $144,000 for winning the $129 No Limit Hold’em Knockout Event, the largest FTOPS tourney ever held with 9,061 entrants.

PokerStars recently dealt its 25th billionth hand, and they were running the traditional promotion awarding money to players at tables with even numbers leading up to the landmark hand. The 25th billionth hand of PokerStars was going to dish out $200,000 prize money to the lucky players in that table, and that chase obviously showed up in PokerStars traffic numbers. As it turns out, the high traffic caused a server glitch that folded one player's cards when the paused hand was restarted.

It was one of the biggest poker nights ever held at Rafferty's in Greeley, Colorado. Suddenly though, police officers swarmed the bar and were everywhere. Mary Paiz, one of the organizers of the game had a sinking feeling of dread, "When the police came in, I knew exactly what was going to happen."

25 Billion Bash - a series of events that gives all PokerStars players win massive cash prizes and bonuses. The Sunday Million guarantee will be boosted to $2,500,000; the Sunday Warm-Up prize pool has an increased guarantee of $1,250,000. Reload Bonus of 25% up to $250.

In a major fete, after fighting his way through what was the largest one flight field in the history of the organization on Monday morning, an unemployed factory worker from Arkansas captured the first championship of the 2009 season of the Heartland Poker Tour at the Downstream Casino in Quapaw, OK.

Mike Sexton, the World Poker Tour announcer and poker pro who has more
than $3 million in lifetime tournament winnings is scheduled to appear in a
Charleston, South Carolina courtroom Friday morning.

The second week of preliminary events of the LA Poker Classic held at Commerce Casino featured a $300 no limit hold'em rebuy event.  The tourney brought in an impressive 623 entrants who between them purchased 933 rebuys and 356 add ons.

The Full Tilt Online Poker Series XI has kicked off again and the Event#1 has been battled to a finish: Winner of $200+$16 NL Hold'em $1 Million Guaranteed is "muckducks" after playing for 12 hours and 43 minutes; muckducks receives the hefty $216,512.60 as prize money.