Category: Online Poker

New Jersey Annual Online Poker Market Estimated Up To $95 Million

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New estimates of New Jersey’s annual online poker market projects earnings of $39 million to $65 million in its first year alone, with annual earnings projections jumping to between $55 million and as high as $95 million in 10 years. The New Jersey online gaming market is officially set to open this November of 2013. These numbers just reflect the online poker segment of the all-encompassing online gaming label.

Preparers of this report, researchers PokerScout and Academicon analyzed more than 4 ½ million poker players between 2009 and 2010, just when unregulated (read: “illegal”) online poker in the United States was in the height of its boom. The researchers found that an average of $765 each year was being spent by 38,100 New Jersey residents playing online poker. That extrapolates to an estimated $29.13 million market. Players in New Jersey account for just over ¾ of one percent of the world online poker market (0.8% to be exact), while they account for 3% of the United States online poker market.

Academicon Partner Dr. Ingo Fiedler and Associate Dr. Kahlil Philander utilized the data on the 4.6 million online poker players to draw a map that’s considered a reasonably accurate representation of the unregulated, illegal online poker industry during the boom and before the events of Black Friday, April 15, 2011 when the U.S. Department of Justice effectively shut down the then-booming U.S. online poker industry. The results of the Academicon researchers analyses have been published over 51 different reports.

Party Poker Holds Mission to WPT Montreal Promo

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Party Poker is now holding a promotion called the WPT Montreal Mission giving players tasks to complete in order to get their chance to win one of 3 WPT Montreal main event entries or the grand prize, a $5,000 WPT Montreal prize package.

As you’ll shortly see, this is a clearly Canada themed promotion, with the country’s history and culture permeating the online poker missions laid out for players. In order to be eligible to win one of these prizes, you must first complete 5 Missions:
1.    Play at least 1,867 hands of online poker at Party Poker, any game type (in honor the year Canda was founded)
2.    Win a hand each with: pocket 9s, pocket 7s, 8-7 suited, pocket 6s, and pocket 3s (in honor of the jersey numbers of some of Canada’s hockey legends)
3.    Play in any 3 MTTs with at least 25 players in each event or more (in honor of the 3 territories of the country)
4.    Play in any 10 Sit ‘n’ Go tourneys with 3 or more players at each (in honor of the 10 provinces in the country)
5.    Play 1 or more hands per day on 6 different days of the month of October 2013 (in honor of the 6 different time zones in Canada)

Players have until October 31, 2013 to complete all of these missions. Those who do so will be automatically entered into the WPT Montreal Freeroll tournament taking place on November 3, 2013 at 4:30 pm ET.

Americas Cardroom Offers Freerolls On Demand

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You can now play freeroll tournaments for real cash rewards whenever you like with Americas Cardroom’s new Freerolls on Demand.

Offered all day, every day, Americas Cardroom’s Freerolls on Demand are multi-table Sit ‘n’ Go tournaments that start as soon as all 270 seats are filled. Additionally, these events all offer late registration for 30 minutes into the event. The moment an On Demand Freeroll starts at ACR, registration opens for the next one.

Each of these ACR On Demand Freerolls offer a $10 guaranteed prize pool, but more than that, each of them award the top 10 finishers points on a biweekly leaderboard running from the 1st to the 15th of each month, and again from the 16th to the last day of each month. The top 10 finishers on each biweekly leaderboard will share a prize pool of $270 worth of tournament entries.

Players get 10 points for finishing first in any ACR On Demand Freeroll; 9 points for 2nd; 8 points for 3rd; 7 points for 4th; 6 points for 5th, 5 points for 6th, 4 points for 7th, 3 points for 8th, 2 points for 9th; and 1 point for 10th place.

First place on the biweekly On Demand Freerolls Leaderboard will get a Beast tournament entry and a $215 Sunday tournament entry. The remaining players in the top 10 will each get a Beast tournament entry.

Players are free to enter as many Americas Cardroom On Demand Freerolls as they desire.

New Jersey’s First Online Gaming Permit Goes To…The Borgata!

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The Borgata Hotel, Casino and Spa owned by Boyd Gaming and MGM has become the proud owner of the first online gaming permit to be issued in the state of New Jersey.

After becoming, in February 2013, the 3rd state in the country to make online gambling legal, following Nevada and Delaware, New Jersey expects online gaming within the state to go live for players sometime in November of this year, likely on November 26, after a trial period to ensure everything runs smoothly.

The Borgata is one of a dozen hotels and casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, currently the only casinos in the state that the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement are permitted to launch online gambling sites. Other casinos looking to get into the game themselves include Caesars Entertainment, Trump Entertainment Resorts, The Golden Nugget, and the Tropicana Casino and Resort. Another, Resorts Hotel, looks to be teamed up with Poker Stars to offer an intrastate version of that site’s offerings to its customers who reside in New Jersey. The Borgata, meanwhile, is teamed up with Bwin.party Digital Entertainment, owners of the Bwin Casino Poker sites and the Party Casino  Poker sites.

Analysts estimate New Jersey’s online gambling revenue will be around $500 million to $1 billion annually, compared with their estimates for Nevada’s, which is only $50 million to $250 million.

The first online gaming site to go live in the country occurred in Nevada, with UltimatePoker.com, offered by Station Casinos.

PokerStars Increases Daily Big, Bigger, Biggest

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One of PokerStars staple tournament offerings are The Daily Bigs: events with big prizes pools for comparatively tiny buy-ins. Between Monday, October 14 and Sunday, October 20, 2013, PokerStars will be increasing the buy-ins even more, by turning them into Big, Bigger, or Biggest tournaments.

The new promotional Big version of The Daily Bigs will run from Monday, October 14 to Friday, October 18, increasing guaranteed prize pools by 50%.

The Bigger version of The Daily Bigs will run on Saturday, October 19, increasing guaranteed prize pools by double.

The Biggest version of The Daily Bigs will run on Sunday, October 20, increasing guaranteed prize pools by triple. This culminates in Tourney Number 800 Million with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool and $100,000 in added prizes.

In addition, at all of these Big, Bigger, and Biggest events – including Tourney Number 800 Million – bubble prizes will be awarded, in the form of free tickets back into the same event, in essence giving all those players who finished on the bubble in a particular The Daily Bigs event a second chance to play in that event again at no cost to them. The number of bubble prizes awarded at each event varies, depending on the event and whether or not it is currently Big, Bigger, or Biggest.

The Daily Bigs run all day each day, from The Big $3.30 at 01:00 ET through to The Big $2.20 at 20:30 ET.

The increased Daily Bigs are being offered as part of PokerStars larger 800 Million Celebration, being held in honor of the site’s 800 millionth tournament held.

PokerStars Holds $500K Giveaway

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PokerStars is holding a $500,000 giveaway promotion for all its sit and go tournament players called $500K Golden Sit & Gos – one small part of the site’s upcoming 800 Million Celebration.

Running from Sunday, October 13 to Saturday, October 19, 2013, the PokerStars $500K Golden Sit & Gos promotion promises boosted cash back on buy-ins and boosted prize pools. Randomly, PokerStars will declare various real money sit and go tournaments held during this promotional period to be $500K Golden Sit & Go Tournaments, which come in three types: Big, Bigger, or Biggest.

Big events award all participants twice their buy-in back plus boosts the guaranteed prize pool of the event by double.
Bigger events award all participants three times their buy-in back plus boosts the guaranteed prize pool of the event by triple.
Biggest events award all participants five times their buy-in back plus boosts the guaranteed prize pool of the event by five times.

PokerStars estimates that throughout the week-long promotional period, such prizes will be awarded, on average, every 3 minutes.

The $500K Golden Sit & Gos promotion is just one part of PokerStars larger 800 Million Celebration, honoring the holding of its 800 millionth tournament, which will cap off this multi-promotional event on Sunday, October 20, 2013.

Stay tuned here for more details on other events making up PokerStars 800 Million Celebration, including more details on the culminating tournament itself as well as the Big, Bigger, Biggest tournaments temporarily replacing the site’s popular The Daily Big tournament events.

Runner Runner Poker Movie Releases Friday

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Today, Friday, October 4, 2013, a new poker movie hits theaters. It’s called “Runner Runner” and it stars Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake as opposite sides of a dispute about one man’s (Justin Timberlakes) loss of a great sum of money to an online poker site.

Calling it a thriller that set against a backdrop of online poker (actually it’s set in Costa Rica, although more of the film was shot in Puerto Rico) the movie is the most recent from the team of writers/producers Brian Koppleman and David Levien. The movie follows a ruthless offshore online poker site operator played by Affleck, lending to rumors that the film will shed a bad light on online poker and hurt the industry’s efforts to legalize in more states and then the whole U.S.. The producers’ answer to that is to look at the 1998 film “Rounders” (which was written, incidentally by the same dynamic duo) that rallied that same complaints, yet only served to bolster the game of real money high stakes poker, if anything. The writers/producers also swear that they were already working on the film before the 2011 Black Friday debacle hitting sites like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Poker took place, with those events merely serving as validation that they indeed had themselves an urgent and relevant story worth telling.

Online Poker for Players in the US

Also involved in the making of the “Rounders Rounders…” – sorry “Runner Runner” online poker film was live poker pro player Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari.

Poker 770 Free Festival For $50K

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Win a share of a $50,000 guaranteed prize pool at Poker 770 with its Free Festival 770, running through October 31, 2013.

With free unlimited Sit and Go tournaments and at least 1 freeroll per hour between now and Halloween, the Poker 770 Free Festival 770 events are all free to enter and all have guaranteed cash prize pools.

Between 2 am and 1 pm every day of the promotional period are Free Festival $10 tournaments, from 2 pm to 1 am are Free Festival $27.70 tournaments, and all day long are SNG Free Festival tournaments with $0.10 guaranteed prize pools.

Players can also win a free package into the MegaPoker Series through the Free Festival 770 and Poker 770. You can qualify for the next MPS stage by playing in the $27.70 Free Festival event. From each running, the top 10 finishers will get a 2.20 Euro token into the daily “Mega 1” satellite with 1-seat guaranteed with a 2.15 Euros + 0.05 Euros direct buy-in.

Also during this limited time promotional period, Poker 770 is holding Hyper SNG tournaments with extraordinarily low buy-ins. There’s the Hyper SNG $0.05 buy-in event with a $0.05 + $0.01 buy-in, and the Hyper SNG $0.10 buy-in event with a $0.10 + $0.01 buy-in.

And all this is being offered in addition to Poker 770’s usual selection of monthly freerolls: $50,000 worth each month. These include the $30 Daily; $200 Daily Final; $500 Weekly Final; Late Night Poker; Lunch Time Poker; Tea Time Poker; Midnight Poker; and $35K Tokens events.

Bovada Poker $120 Weekly Cash Bonuses

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In celebration of the upcoming WPT Montreal stop on the 2013 World Poker Tour, between Monday, September 30 and Sunday, October 27, Bovada Poker is giving its cash game players the chance to earn $120 in weekly cash bonuses.

That’s up to $30 per week in cash bonuses for 4 weeks, based on earning poker points at the Bovada Poker cash tables. Earn 75 points in a week and get a $10 cash bonus; earn 150 points in a week and get a $20 cash bonus; earn 200 points in a week and get a $30 cash bonus.

All cash bonuses will be released into eligible player accounts on October 28, 2013, with players earning the highest weekly bonus amount for which they are eligible.

In addition, each bonus level that you reach will earn you another ticket in the random drawing for the grand prize: a $6,000 WPT Montreal Prize Package that includes free seats into the WPT Montreal main event. Get 1 draw ticket with every $10 bonus, 2 draw tickets with every $20 bonus, and 3 draw tickets with every $30 bonus. Plus you’ll get an additional draw ticket for every 50 poker points you earn above and beyond the first 200 each week.

And remember, Bovada Poker is also where online tournament players can find satellite tournaments awarding many more of these $6K WPT Montreal prize packages.

To be eligible for these bonuses you must opt in to the promotion and you must be subscribed to Bovada Poker’s promotional email list.

Wynn Resorts Gives Nevada 888 Poker

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Poker players living in Nevada will soon be able to play online poker with other Nevada players through 888 Poker, in partnership with Wynn Resorts.

In the latest legal U.S. online poker partnership of a cascade of them to hit the news desk these past months (and for months to come in the foreseeable future) Wynn Resorts has partnered up with 888 Holdings, owner of 888 Poker among other online gambling sites, to offer its unique brand of online poker to players throughout the state of Nevada, where intrastate online poker has now been legalized and regulated. That makes Wynn Resorts, owned by Steve Wynn, the latest member of the All American Poker Network or AAPN that 888 Holdings set up along with Avenue Capital Group in order to offer legal intrastate online poker in states where it’s legal.

Currently, partnerships with land-based casinos already established in these areas is the only way an online poker site can apparently set up shop in the newly budding intrastate U.S. online poker market. Originally the news was that Wynn Resorts would be partnering with Poker Stars for its intrastate online poker offerings, but after the debacle of Black Friday, 2011, Wynn Resorts backed out of all talks with PokerStars, which is how AAPN and 888 Holdings was able to get a leg in the door.

So far, the states where online poker is now legal are Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware, and 888 Holdings’ Brian Mattingly is already getting in a stake in every one of these markets.