Cake Poker is now qualifying players for the World Poker Tour event coming up in Paris this September. Qualifiers for the WPT Grand Prix de Paris start on the 4th of July and go through August 28, 2011. On two of the dates in that period – July 31 and August 28, Cake Poker will give away at least one prize package valued at $12,500 into the WPT Paris main event.
These WPT Paris $12,500 Final satellites have a direct buy-in of $268 and will give out one prize package for every $268 in the pot. Each prize package includes the €7,500 seat in the WPT Grand Prix de Paris main event along with some expense money to spend as you like.
Instead of paying the $268 direct buy-in into the Final, you could win your seat there through a WPT Paris Semi-Final costing only $30 to buy-in. These take place thrice daily and award one final seat for every $268 in the pot. Alternatively, you can win your seat in the Semi-Final through a WPT Paris Satellite, costing only $5.50 to buy-in. These take place six times daily and give out one Semi-Final seat for every $30 in the pot.
Or you can win your seat in the Satellite through a WPT Paris Super Satellite costing only $1 to enter. These take place every four hours and give out one Satellite seat for every $5.50 in the pot. Lastly, you can win your seat in the Super Satellite through a WPT Paris Super Super Satellite costing only $0.20 to enter. These take place every two hours and give away one Super Satellite seat for every $1 in the pot.
In the midst of all the political hullabaloo happening at Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars, both sites are still doing all they can to continue improving the player experience at their tables, as evidenced by the recent release of new player software for both sites.
Full Tilt Poker has added a color-coding feature that allows you to tag different players with any of 15 different color codes for conveniently recalling at a glance each player’s playing style and personal weaknesses or tells.
There are a whole bunch of new poker variants in the FullTilt repertoire with this new update as well, including Cap variants of 7-Game through 10-Game mixed game tables. There are also Pot Limit tables available on 2-7 Triple Draw, with antes. And there’s now mixed limit versions of all HA games.
Both Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars have introduced new automatically table closing features; at FullTilt it’s on sit and go tables and at PokerStars it’s at cash game tables after your next big blind passes.
Other additions to the player experience over at Poker Stars include a completely redesigned sit and go lobby including new Hyper-Turbo Cash Sit & Go tables. It’s now easier at Poker Stars to change your table layouts on the fly. And for easier reference while in the throes of a game, especially helpful when multi-tabling, Poker Stars now posts the name of the tournament and blind info in the title bar.
Poker Stars has also introduced a feature that allows you to subversively type in the chat or take down player notes without “stealing notice”.
Like most poker sites, Cake Poker offers new players a matching bonus on their first deposit into a new real money player account. But going one step further, CakePoker also entices new players to join the site with a $500 Freeroll open exclusively to first-timers to the site.
The Cake Poker first deposit bonus currently stands at 110%, which is 10% higher than your average first deposit bonus. The maximum bonus amount currently stands at $600. Then, for an additional shot at some free money, Cake Poker gives all first depositors a ticket into an upcoming New Depositor $500 Freeroll with, just as it sounds, a $500 guaranteed prize pool. This ticket can be used at any New Depositor $500 Freeroll tournament coming up, with these tournaments taking place every Saturday at 2 pm ET.
In order to cash out any money won in a New Depositor Freeroll, Cake Poker requires you earn at least two Gold Chips first. You can earn those chips before the freeroll takes place, however, and that will allow you to cash out winnings from that event as soon as it finishes are your account is credited for your winnings.
As for the 110% First Timers Deposit Bonus, as with all other Cake Poker bonuses, when first earned it is credited to your account as a pending bonus that you are allowed to use for play on the site but not allowed to cash out any of until after you’ve earned 83.33 FPPs (Frequent Player Points) per $5 in bonus money to cash.
888 Poker is sending players to the upcoming World Poker Tour event in Paris, France, and you could be one of those lucky players going.
Players have two different ways to win WPT Grand Prix de Paris seats. One is the Work Your Way To The Top satellites running every 2 hours for buy-ins as small as $1.20. Winners of these satellites land seats in one of the Qualifiers being held every other Sunday starting on July 3, 2011. Players who don’t feel like going through all these steps to get to the 888 Poker WPT Grand Prix de Paris Qualifier can get Straight to the Point at pay the $500 + $25 direct buy-in into the event. Registrations for the first of these qualifier events starts today, Monday, June 20, 2011.
Each WPT Grand Prix de Paris prize package from 888 Poker is worth $14,000 and includes the €7,600 buy-in into the main event as well as 6 nights of accommodations from September 4 – 10, 2011, $1,000 in travel expenses paid directly into your 888Poker account and an 888Poker live merchandise kit.
Satellites start out with two options, both known as WPT Step 1. One is a $1.20 + $0.15 buy-in rebuy/addon event awarding 1 player for every $25 in the prize pool a seat in WPT Step 2. The other is a $5 + $0.50 buy-in event awarding half of the player pool seats in WPT Step 2. Both of these options run every two hours at the site. WPT Step 2 then runs once daily for a $25 direct buy-in and WPT Step 3 runs three times weekly for a $115 direct buy-in.
By now it’s no big news that Phil Ivey is boycotting the 2011 World Series of Poker. Nor are there many poker fans who haven’t yet heard that Ivey is suing Tiltware, the company responsible for Full Tilt Poker’s failure to refund to its locked-out U.S. players their unused funds and gains. That’s because it’s been all over the press of late, enough so to catch the attention and interest of some of Ivey’s fellow poker professionals, some of whom – like Daniel Negreanu – support his actions and some of whom – like Mike Matusow – don’t.
Let’s start with the pro-Ivey camp, currently headlined by Daniel Negreanu (by simple virtue of him being most vocal about his support.) Of course, Negreanu is sponsored not by Team Full Tilt, from which Ivey also resigned in protest, but Team Poker Stars, a company that already paid back its dislodged U.S. consitutency. Nevertheless, Negreanu has come out in favor of Ivey’s standing up for his values, as has another poker pro, Eric Froehlich.
On the nay side of the debate is Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, who called Ivey self-centered, along with some other epithets we couldn’t repeat in this forum. Agreeing that Ivey’s actions were self-serving is another poker pro Andrew Robl, who said that if Ivey felt so bad for players affected by the situation, he shouldn’t sue the company for the $150 million they owe the players. He should take the example of his fellow former Team Full Tilt pro Tom Dwan who said that if Full Tilt fails to pay back U.S. players the money it owes them, he will do so out of his own pocket.
Party Poker is now holding satellite tournaments into the World Poker Tour main event happening in the Slovenian city of Portoroz, known for its bustling nightlife and relaxing beachside resorts. The WPT Slovenia main event takes place July 17th through 23rd, 2011 at the Grand Casino Portoroz and costs €3000 + €300 to buy-in.
Satellites and qualifiers into this event run from June 13th through July 3rd, 2011. You can win seats in the WPT Slovenia main event for as little an investment as nothing at all, with freeroll qualifiers running daily, each leading into the $1 WPT Slovenia Sub Qualifier Speed Rebuy events. There are also regular Speed Sub Qualifiers for $6 buy-ins. These lead to the daily Satellite Qualifiers with direct buy-ins of their own of $42 which in turn lead to the actual WPT Slovenia Satellite, held every Sunday for a $390 buy-in, where at least one seat in the Portoroz main event will be awarded.
Each Party Poker prize package for the WPT Slovenia main event is worth $7,700 and includes hotel stay and some expense money on top of the buy-in into the event.
This marks Season 10 of the World Poker Tour, with Party Poker regularly running satellites and qualifiers into many of the series’ main events. Coming up after the WPT Slovenia is the Legends of Poker at the The Bicycle Casino in Las Vegas, held August 25th through 30th, 2011, followed by the WPT Grand Prix de Paris and its High Rollers counterpart, both at the Aviation Club de France, Septemer 5th through 11th, 2011.
888 Poker is offering players a chance to win extra for their efforts every day of the week. With the Daily Challenge Series, 888 Poker invites players of all types of action and all sizes of bankroll to participate in 7 weekly tournaments, one on each day of the week, with a total weekly guaranteed prize pool of $210,000. What’s more, there are two Daily Challenge tournaments on Mondays, known as the Monday Twins, worth $10,000 each, and three Daily Challenge tournaments on Sundays, offering $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000 guaranteed respectively.
Every Daily Challenge tournament has a trio of low buy-in satellites leading up to it, awarding free seats in the day’s big event. Two satellites are Sit and Go tournaments, one of which is always a rebuy/addon event, both of which run every two hours. The third satellite is always a 15-seat guaranteed event starting at 17:35 GMT. All Daily Challenge Tournaments start at 19:35. Direct buy-ins vary depending on the prize pool.
The Tuesday Challenge and Thursday Challenge each have a $12,500 guaranteed prize pool; the Wednesday Challenge has a $10,000 prize pool; the Friday Challenge has a $15,000 prize pool; and the Saturday Challenge has a $25,000 prize pool.
The Monday Twins is a special kick-start to the weekly series, with a pair of $10K tournaments each preceded by its own three satellites (the third satellite for the “second” Monday Twin event starts at 17:55 GMT).
Winding up the week with a bang is the $100,000 Sunday Challenge and its satellites, as well as two Sunday Challenge Starters scheduled prior to it with staggered start times so 888 Poker players can enjoy all three Daily Challenge events that day.
While much of poker world is wrapped in the World Series of Poker 2011, Bodog Poker is running its Mini Poker Series and setting eyes on the 2012 WSOP.
Running from Saturday June 11 to Sunday July 10, the Bodog Mini Poker Series is made up of 30 events in all different NL Holdem game structures, each for a $10 + $1 buy-in, most with a guaranteed prize pool of $2,000. In addition, Bodog is hosting a semifinal and final event on July 12 and 14, respectively, for the most successful players in the series.
The top 3 finishers at each of events 1 – 30 will automatically win seats in the July 14 final. The 4th – 9th place finishers will win seats in the July 12 semifinal. You can also earn a seat in the semifinal by participating in at least 15 different Mini Poker Series tournaments. The top 50 players at the semifinal will then win seats in the final.
Starting June 6, 2011, Bodog Poker has been running Mini Poker Series Event Qualifiers several times each day for $2 + $0.20 buy-ins with 5 seats guaranteed to be awarded at each event. And starting June 11, Bodog adds 5 more daily qualifiers, called Last Chance Qualifiers, for $3 + $0.30 buy-ins with 3 seats guaranteed at each.
The first place winner of the Bodog Mini Poker Series Final will win a $12,000 World Series of Poker prize package that includes a free seat in the 2012 WSOP Main Event.
Since Black Friday, much of the poker world has been closely following the dramatic, divergent stories of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, the three sites targeted by the Department of Justice’s indictment and civil complaint. However, there has been significant drama over recent months involving three other sites, too — DoylesRoom, Victory Poker, and the Cake Poker network. Targeted them selves, by a later Department of Homeland Security action (unsealed on May 23), DoylesRoom has seen its dot-com domain seized. However, prior to that action deals between DoylesRoom and Cake Poker left the latter in severe financial straits, with one consequence being the hastened demise of another, prominent site on the Cake network, Victory Poker.
The DoylesRoom-Cake Partnership — Two Years, Four Million +
Founded in 2004, DoylesRoom originally resided on the Tribeca Network before moving to Microgaming in 2007. Then in late January 2009, DoylesRoom moved once again to the Cake Poker network. At the time of that move, DoylesRoom borrowed $15 million from Cake Poker in order to settle its debts to Microgaming as well as to fund marketing campaigns going forward. (Note: Figures associated with the DoylesRoom-Cake partnership are close estimates of amounts given to us by several associates close to DoylesRoom, Cake, and Victory Poker.)
DoylesRoom remained part of the Cake Poker network for two years before moving once again, this time joining the Yatahay network in late January 2011. At the time of that move, DoylesRoom still owed significant money to Cake Poker.
Incidentally, while the exact nature Doyle Brunson’s previous involvement with the site that bears his name is unknown, a Twitter message from @TexDolly sent on January 10, 2011 noted he was “off to Cosra Rica for three days” (sic), suggesting a trip to DoylesRoom’s headquarters in Costa Rica. On May 13, 2011, a week-and-a-half before the DOJ domain seizure of doylesroom.com, Brunson announced he was terminating his endorsement contract with DoylesRoom.
Of that original loan of $15 million from Cake Poker to DoylesRoom, $2.5 million had been kept on deposit by Cake. Meanwhile, DoylesRoom had paid back approximately $9 million, with about $6.8 million still being owed. Minus the amount kept on deposit, DoylesRoom still owed Cake Poker about $4.3 million at the time of the move to Yatahay. Of that amount, DoylesRoom paid back 10 cents on the dollar to Cake, or about $430,000.
In other words, Cake Poker’s two-year relationship with DoylesRoom cost the network about $4 million plus altogether, a big hit for a relatively modest-sized network. To their credit players were always paid on time and the network continued to function as always. But there have been consequences.
As Cake Crumbles, Victory Suffers
Some of those consequences affected Cake Poker’s internal operations. According to a former Cake Poker employee, almost half of Cake’s staff were laid off. While the network’s operating budget was severely affected, it should be noted that at no point have player funds on deposit been at risk, although that situation remained tenuous for a couple of months.
Another consequence of the DoylesRoom-Cake Poker separation concerned Victory Poker, the site headed by 28-year-old CEO Dan Fleyshman. Launched in February 2010, Victory Poker began as part of the Everleaf Network before moving to the Cake Poker Network (CPN) in August. While never a large site in terms of player traffic, Victory did manage to earn a lot of attention thanks to the availability of CEO Fleyshman and the signing of high-profile pros like Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl, Jonathan Little, and others.
Soon after joining Cake, Fleyshman recognized the network was potentially heading toward some financial difficulty and thus arranged a meeting between individuals who had invested in Victory Poker and Cake Poker brass in an attempt to find backing for the struggling network.
That meeting took place in London on January 5, 2011. Before the meeting Fleyshman posted on his Facebook page that he was “Walking into one of the top 5 biggest meetings of my life with ‘Big Boy’ executives who flew in from 6 countries.” However, despite such excitement, the meeting did not meet with the success Fleyshman or Cake envisioned.
In fact, once the potential backers got a look at the status of Cake Poker’s balance sheet and the unpaid debt from the DoylesRoom loan they not only declined to invest in Cake, they allegedly pulled their backing from Victory Poker as well. Fleyshman returned to his Facebook page to express his frustration: “I rarely curse,,. But today I calmly cursed 3 dozen times… Negativity & rudeness makes me :#€£¥%*•~# Grrrrrrrrr.”
Victory Nearly Turns Cereus, Then Folds
Left in a somewhat desperate situation in their own right Victory Poker made a decision to leave the Cake Poker Network and join the Cereus Network. Reactions in late March of this year to news regarding that impending move were mixed, with many wondering why Victory would choose to join embattled Cereus. At the time, Fleyshman spoke of the opportunity to join to the third-largest network as a primary incentive, although other factors — including the need to separate from Cake — were likely in play as well.
Then came Black Friday, two days after which Victory Poker announced it was no longer accepting U.S. players. In fact, on April 15 representatives of Victory Poker already had plane tickets in hand, ready to fly to Costa Rica to meet with Cereus, sign contracts, and finalize their deal. Given what the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint alleged regarding the Cereus network’s operations, one could say that Victory Poker’s having been prevented from completing its deal to join Cereus is a silver lining of sorts amid an otherwise dark scenario for the site.
While no longer serving U.S. customers, Victory Poker remained open as part of the Cake Poker Network until June 1 when it announced it was ceasing its poker operations altogether and that all of its players would be transferred to the Cake site. Victory Poker now plans to continue as an affiliate site offering news and strategy, but no games.
Cake in the Wake
While Victory Poker’s poker room has gone silent, DoylesRoom has moved its operations over to a new domain, doylesroom.ag, where it continues as part of the Yatahay network. Meanwhile, the Cake Poker network has survived.
A “strategic partnership” between PokerListings and the Cake Poker Network was announced in March of this year, essentially a partial selling of a majority stake in the Cake Poker Network to PokerListings, which has ensured Cake is at present and going forward financially secure. Previously — before Victory Poker’s involvement with CPN and well before Black Friday — attempts were made by Cake to sell the network in whole or in part to both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker according to our sources, though both of those major sites turned down the offer.
Cake now appears to be adopting a strategy whereby it maintains a lower profile in the U.S. than it had previously as far as advertising and promotion is concerned. Such an approach may well be recommended, given the attention being paid other sites that are seeking a more conspicuous U.S. presence.
Several attempts were made to contact representatives of Cake Poker and DoylesRoom for comment on this story. Neither site responded.
According to a post on QuadJacks.com the person who has been keeping the poker community informed of what’s going on with US player cash-outs from Full Tilt Poker is none other than Full Tilt Poker PR representative Michelle Clayborne posing as “FTPDoug” on the 2+2 Poker Forums. As source close to Full Tilt Poker claims that “the real FTPDoug left the company a long time ago and they just use the name since he had some credibility on 2+2.”
According to the same source claiming to be very close to Full Tilt Poker, “Ms. Clayborne is/was the personal assistant to Howard Lederer, among other Full Tilt pros. Another source reported in late May that she had also worked closely with Phil Ivey, but that he had since terminated their professional relationship.”
Most US online poker players have lost faith in Full Tilt’s ability to pay and as time passes players from other countries are beginning to as well. According to Pokerscout.com Full Tilt’s traffic is now down over 52% since April 15th, 2011.
Now that the “FTPDoug” account has been outed, we have no idea how Full Tilt will try and get a message out to players but we’ll keep an eye out for the next puppet show.
By now it’s no big news that Phil Ivey is boycotting the 2011 World Series of Poker. Nor are there many poker fans who haven’t yet heard that Ivey is suing Tiltware, the company responsible for Full Tilt Poker’s failure to refund to its locked-out U.S. players their unused funds and gains. That’s because it’s been all over the press of late, enough so to catch the attention and interest of some of Ivey’s fellow poker professionals, some of whom – like Daniel Negreanu – support his actions and some of whom – like Mike Matusow – don’t.
Since Black Friday, much of the poker world has been closely following the dramatic, divergent stories of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, the three sites targeted by the Department of Justice’s indictment and civil complaint. However, there has been significant drama over recent months involving three other sites, too — DoylesRoom, Victory Poker, and the 
According to a post on QuadJacks.com the person who has been keeping the poker community informed of what’s going on with US player cash-outs from Full Tilt Poker is none other than Full Tilt Poker PR representative Michelle Clayborne posing as “FTPDoug” on the 2+2 Poker Forums. As source close to Full Tilt Poker claims that “the real FTPDoug left the company a long time ago and they just use the name since he had some credibility on 2+2.”