Category: Online Poker

Sheldon Adelson Decries Online Poker; Players Plan Boycott

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The CEO of the world’s biggest gambling company, Sheldon Adelson of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, published in an op-ed piece in Forbes Magazine said that online gambling, including online poker, is both “immoral” and “dangerous”. In response, online poker players and online casino gambling fans numbering in the thousands have begun planning to boycott The Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, owned by Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp.

The Venetian is a 14,000 square foot facility with 59 tables. After online poker and online gambling legislation has passed for intrastate gambling within Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada, the next states to be considering legalizing online gambling are California and Pennsylvania, prompting Adelson to pen and publish his blistering opinion piece.

In Adelson’s letter, he says both that online gambling can be a “societal train wreck waiting to happen”, losing people their houses and having dangerous effects on children and teens, and that it threatens the jobs in land-based casinos. He cites a 20% drop in land-based casino visitation in Europe ever since the legalization of online poker and online gambling there.

Others, like California attorney Martin D. Owens who specializes in Internet and interactive gaming describes Adelson’s concerns as “preposterous”. Owens co-authored the Internet Gaming Law. He cites online horse betting as one way the Internet gaming has already been legal without such societal repercussions for years. Worldwide, Internet gaming is a $30 billion industry with a good half of that attributed to online poker alone.

Bovada Poker Already Qualifying Players For Next Year’s 2014 WSOP

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The 2013 World Series of Poker is barely underway and already Bovada Poker is giving players a way to win seats in next year’s WSOP – that’s the 2014 event! And the way to win it is through what Bovada Poker is calling Poker’s Mini Series.

Qualify for a seat in Bovada Poker’s Mini Series and you’ll win a $4,000 prize package that includes entry into a WSOP 2014 side event. Only two such prize packages are on offer. Third through 9th places in the Poker’s Mini Series Finale will each receive a $162 entry into the next Bovada Poker $100K Guaranteed.

To stake your claim on one of those two $4K prize packages, play in Daily Qualifiers and Last Chance Qualifiers running from June 24 through July 14, 2013 when the site will holds its $40K Guaranteed Main Event.

Meanwhile, between June 24 and July 18, Bovada Poker will hold 35 Poker Mini Series tournament events featuring more than $150,000 in guaranteed prize pools. Every day will feature a minimum of two Poker Mini Series tournament events. Either buy-in directly to these events or win your seats through those aforementioned qualifiers.

Buy-ins for daily qualifiers start at just $0.55 and at each award between 1 and 2 seats guaranteed in the corresponding Poker’s Mini Series event. The series events themselves have direct buy-ins starting at $5.50. At each event the top 3 finishers will land seats in the finale where the two WSOP 2014 prize packages will be awarded, while the fourth through 9th place players win seats in the semifinal at which the top 50 players will qualify for the finale as well.

New Jersey Deadline Poses Problem For PokerStars

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New Jersey is one of the few states where online poker is legal and Poker Stars, like many of its competitors, is trying to plant roots in the Garden State just as it is in every other legal online poker state in the U.S.. The only problem is, new rules set out by the New Jersey Gaming Enforcement Commission are going to make it hard for PokerStars to follow through on that wish, while many of those competitors have already had their wishes granted. To explain:

Any land-based casino already operating in Atlantic City, NJ has until June 30th, 2013 to apply for a license to operate an intrastate online casino. Right now all the land-based casinos in Atlantic City are owned by three parent companies: Boyd Gaming, Caesar’s Entertainment, and Borgata. The June 30th deadline also applies to any online gaming partners of those casinos, which includes 888 Holdings and Bwin.Party. It notably does not include Poker Stars, which has been struggling to purchase the Atlantic Club in Atlantic City in the hopes that that will give it a foot in the door, so to speak, and the advantage of the June 30th deadline. Without such a scheme, Poker Stars is beholden to the deadline set for offshore enterprises and out of state enterprises (including would-be online casino partners with no partnerships, a la PokerStars) of June 29th. This gives PokerStars a double disadvantage in the struggle to stake a claim in the New Jersey online gambling game as it has to have its act together a whole day sooner and it has no land-based partner to walk in on the heels of.

Lock Poker Battle of the Nexus Leaderboard

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Yesterday we brought you word of Lock Poker’s latest rake race: The Battle of the Nexus, including Nexus tables where you can earn even more indivdiual prizes, up to over $45,000 per player. We also hinted at a leaderboard promotion taking place as part of Lock Poker’s Battle of the Nexus.

Offering a separate set of prizes, the Lock Poker Battle of the Nexus leaderboard promotion is made up of two separate leaderboards: one for cash game players and one for sit and go tournament players (sorry, scheduled MTT players; seems there’s none for you).

Each leaderboard comes with its own set of prizes for the top 200 placers, with the prizes for the top 5 being the following:
1.    For 1st place: a WSOP Europe $5,000 buy-in
2.    For 2nd place: 4x SuperStack tickets (or cash alternative) along with two hours of coaching from a poker pro
3.    For 3rd place: 2x SuperStack tickets (or cash alternative)
4.    $100K GTD entry and a Lock Poker hooded sweatshirt
5.    $100K GTD entry and a Lock Poker t-shirt

Players can feasibly earn prizes on both leaderboards by playing in both types of online poker games at Lock Poker.

And remember, all the while that you’re climbing the Battle of the Nexus leaderboard, you’ll also, for the same play, be climbing levels in the Battle of the Nexus promotion. That’s two sets of prizes you can win a share of with the same online poker dollar. You don’t find pot odds like that every day.

Lock Poker Battle of the Nexus Rake Race

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This month Lock Poker kicked off its Battle of the Nexus rake race, with the potential to win $45,244 in individual cash prizes, plus leaderboard prizes, and it runs until all the prizes have been given out.

The Lock Poker Battle of the Nexus rake race takes place at all real money cash game and tournament tables at the site, including the promotional Nexus tables. At both the regular tables and Nexus tables, players are tracked on how much they pay in cash game rake and tournament fees. As a player’s total contribution to rake and fees climbs, so too does the player climb through promotional prize levels, with a cash prize waiting on each level. The higher you climb, the bigger the prize, and more, these prizes are cumulative. But there are also only a limited number of prizes at each level, and when a level is out of prizes, players must climb to the next level before they receive a prize (and hope that those haven’t all been given out too).

As you can see, it pays to play soon and often at Lock Poker if you want to collect as many Battle of the Nexus prizes as you can. And keep in mind that at the Nexus tables there is an extra booty of prizes available that may not all have been given out, even if that same level is cleared of prizes for regular cash game and tournament play.

And as mentioned in the intro to this post, there is also a Battle of the Nexus leaderboard promotion where you can earn extra prizes. Return here tomorrow to learn all about this part of the promotion.

Runner Runner, Online Poker Movie Trailer Released

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The trailer has just been released for the latest poker movie to hit the big screen, and this time it’s an online poker movie. The movie, “Runner Runner” stars Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake and is slated for a September 27, 2013 release in theaters everywhere.

“Runner Runner” is about Richie Furst (Timberlake) a Princeton college student who goes off on a quest to a remote island to confront Ivan Block, the owner of the poker website (Affleck) who he believes cheated him out of his tuition money in an online poker scam. Ivan turns out to take Furst under his wing, becoming protege and go-to guy, until the FBI ropes him into participating in a scheme to bring Block down.

See Also: Online Poker Sites

One of the movie’s stars, Affleck, is also known off-screen as an avid high-stakes poker player. And in fact, in an interesting twist on life imitating art (or the other way around) this movie trailer evokes vivid recollections of Affleck’s admitted involvement in the recent Ultimate Bet Poker scandal in which the owners admitted to using special software to peek at players’ hole cards and thus defraud them from millions of dollars. Affleck was one of the thusly defrauded, in his case out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While Affleck’s friend and writing partner, fellow Hollywood star, Matt Damon was in a gambling movie once before (the 1998 cult hit “Rounders”) this will be Affleck’s first appearance in a gambling related film.

“Runner, Runner” was written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who also wrote “Rounders”. And the film was directed by Brad Furman, who also directed”The Lincoln Lawyer”.

Party Poker World Poker Tour Qualifiers On Now

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Party Poker is now holding satellite tournaments into the World Poker Tour Cyprus main event. Running between June 10th and August 4th, ’13, the WPT Cyprus satellite tournament series at Party Poker awards prize packages worth $6.5K.

Each $6.5K Party Poker World Poker Tour prize package includes the $4.4K buy-in for the WPT Cyprus main event, $800 in spending cash, and accommodations for the 6-nights August 15th – 21st, 2013 in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

The Party Poker WPT Cyprus Satellite takes place every Sunday at 15:20 ET for a direct buy-in of $325 + $25 and awards 1 WPT Cyprus prize package guaranteed, and 1 for every 20 players registered for the tournament.

Players can win their seats in this event through a Satellite Qualifier, taking place twice daily, at 15:20 and 20:45 ET, and again as a Turbo event on Sundays, for a direct buy-in of $35 + $3, and awards a seat in the WPT Cyprus Satellite for every $350 in the prize pool.

Players can win seats in the Satellite Qualifier in one of two Sub Qualifier Speed tournaments: one with a $2.70 + $0.30 buy-in and the other with a $1 rebuy buy-in. Both events take place daily and award a seat in the Satellite Qualifier for every $38 in the prize pool.

And finally, players can win seats in the $1 daily WPT Cyprus Sub Qualifier Speed Rebuy tournament by finishing in the top 25 of a daily Party Poker WPT Cyprus Freeroll tournament.

Americas Cardroom Hosts LSOP Chile Satellites

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Win seats to the Latin Series of Poker stop in Chile through satellite tournaments now running at Americas Cardroom Poker.

The Americas Cardroom LSOP Chile Seat-Only Tourney takes place every Thursday evening at 6:30 pm ET for a direct buy-in of $60 + $6. At each of these events, one seat in the LSOP Chile main event worth $1,000 + $100 will be awarded, along with $400 in cash to use for travel expenses.

Players can win seats in these satellites through $16 + $1 LSOP Chile Satellites taking place at 6:00 pm ET every night and awarded at each running 1 seat in the LSOP Chile Seat-Only Tourney. Players can win seats in this satellite as well through hourly LSOP Chile Super Satellites costing just $0.25 + $0.02 to buy-in and starting a 5 minutes past the hour every hour. Awarded at each of these events will be one seat in the LSOP Chile Satellite.

The LSOP Chile Main Event takes place this year from August 21 to 25 at Dreams Casino in Puerto Varras, Chile. If you’re planning on attending and wish to receive a discounted rate on hotel booking, Americas Cardroom has arranged special rates with various establishments, starting a $90 a room (+ taxes).

Winners of these ticket-only grand prizes will recieve a $400 stipend to apply toward expenses, but are responsible for arranging all accommodations and travel on their own. This prize is nontransferrable and it is not redeemable for an alternative cash prize, voucher, or refund.

Jakob Michalak Wins ISPT 2013

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You may recall the ISPT satellite promotions at Lock Poker that we reported on now and again. Well that main event has now come and gone, taking place live in London, England at Wembley Stadium, and at the end of it all, the championship title went to Polish player Jakub Michalak.

This after a smaller than expected player pool (761 players to be exact) led to a massive overlay (€589,000 to be exact), meaning that every participant’s pot odds improved in direct proportion to that overlay. What’s more, the final 6 players didn’t play out the tournament to its natural finish, but rather came to a deal based on chip stack size at the time of deal-making. This guaranteed the short stack player at the time, Xavier El Fassey, would still walk away with at least €204,000.

Jakub Michalak is a participant in The Hendon Mob poker database, with the following accolades to his credit:

•    11th place in the £200 NL Holdem 2011 Grosvenor UK Poker TOur Grand Final, London
•    30th place in the €700 NL Hold’em Main Event at the UK & Ireland Poker Tour – Galway
•    3rd place in the €2,000 NL Hold’em Main Event at the IPT San Remo
•    5th place in the €200 NL Holdem Turbo event at the EPT/Estrellas Poker Tour – Barcelona
•    5th place in the €1,000 NL Hold’em 30m Levels event at the EPT Prague
•    20th place in the €1,000 NL Hold’em event at the EPT Berlin
•    14th place in the €1,000 NL Turbo, Six-Handed event at the EPT Berlin

Americas Cardroom Punta Cana Satellites Start

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Americas Cardroom Poker has started its 2013 Punta Cana Poker Classic satellite tournament series, promising to award ten $4,100 prize packages to the tournament in one big satellite taking place on Sunday, June 9 at 6 pm ET, for a $50 + $5 direct buy-in.

This is the 4th annual incarnation of the Punta Cana Poker Classic, which takes place in the exotic Caribbean at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. This year the event takes place from November 11 to 17, 2013 for a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool.

Each $4,100 prize package into the 2013 Punta Cana Poker Classic includes the $1,500 + $150 buy-in to the Punta Cana $500K main event, a 6-night stay at the Hard Rock, up to $800 round trip air fare, ground transportation to and from airport and hotel, all-inclusive food and beverage premium service, 24-hour premium room service, a $1,500 resort credit to use on your choice of golf, tours, and spa, a 24/7 VIP support line, and a welcome gift bag.

Satellites into the Americas Cardroom Punta Cana Poker Classic satellite start with $0.25 + $0.02 events running hourly each day at 30 minutes past each hour and awarding 1 seat into a 6:35 pm ET daily event with its own $7 + $0.70 buy-in, each awarding a seat in the 10-seat guaranteed main satellite.

Be aware that participation in this promotion presumes that you will be able to accept the prize package if won, as Americas Cardroom will not offer any cash alternative or transfer of this prize to another player.