Category: Online Poker

Bovada Poker The Summer Selection On Now

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summersel

Bovada Poker has just launched a new promotion it’s calling The Summer Selection, in which players get to pick which ticket they’d rather win: a trip to Hawaii, seats to watch the U.S. Open of tennis live in New York, or a trip to Germany celebrate Oktoberfest.

Running between June 3 and 30, 2013, the Bovada Poker Summer Selection rewards players with bonuses of up to $160 per week, along with drawing entries for an additional $500 cash reward and the chance to pick between the three aforementioned getaways, each one valued at $5,000 and including the winner’s round trip air travel to the chosen destination and four nights of hotel accommodations.

Players receive a $10 bonus for earning 50 poker points in a promotional week, a $25 bonus for earning 100 poker points in a promotional week, and a $40 bonus for earning 150 poker points in a promotional week.

Bovada Poker will issue cash bonuses on Mondays following the week for which they were eligible for a bonus. Players can earn a maximum bonus of $40 per week. And with a 4-week promotional period, that makes for a potential $160 in bonuses in The Summer Selection promotion.

Then there’s a weekly draw for $500 in cash. Bovada Poker will give players one entry into this drawing for every 50 poker points they earn at the site’s real money tables. Moreover, the winner of each week’s drawing will be entered into a private tournaments consisting of those 4 players only, with the winner getting to pick their $5K getaway ticket, or opt for a $2,500 cash prize instead.

“Straight Flush” Chronicles the Rise and Fall of Absolute Poker

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Mezrich

Ben Mezrich, the author of the NY Times bestseller The Accidental Billionaire about the rocky genesis of Facebook that was later adapted into the Oscar winning movie “The Social Network” has just release a new book, his 12th book, entitled Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire–and How It All Came Crashing Down.

It’s a provocative title, no doubt, and the “true story” to which it refers is the rise and fall of Absolute Poker. What’s more, it was made with the full cooperation of one of AP’s founders. In fact, the book was his idea, pitched to Mezrich in an email.

In the book, Mezrich lays out how these young guys discovered that The Wire Act of the 1960s that made sports betting and other types of gambling illegal didn’t say anything about poker. It wasn’t until December of 2006, by which point these young smart alecs became the whiz kids of cyberspace with an online poker monolith serving thousands of players and dealing millions of poker hands daily, that the U.S. government enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making sites like Absolute Poker illegal.

Sites were given time to shut down of their own accord, and on April 15, 2010, the feds finally took action against the majority of these sites, including AP, that ignored the order and remained open, seizing their accounts, freezing player funds, and shutting down their URLs.

Ben Mezrich’s latest expose’, this time on the flashbang phenomenon that was online poker in early 21st century, is in stores now.

Play Live Poker At Old Trafford On Party Poker

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poker at old trafford with party poker

Party Poker is giving sports fans a unique opportunity to play poker live in Old Trafford Stadium opposite some legends of the Manchester United Team in a promotion it’s calling the Road to Old Trafford.

The Party Poker Road to Old Trafford begins with a Freeroll tournament that takes place daily and awards the top 50 players seats in a sub qualifier speed rebuy event that also runs daily. That event has a $0.50 buy-in, and there’s a corresponding daily event with no rebuy that has a $1 buy-in. Both of these events award a seat in the next event up the chain for every $9.20 collected in the prize pool.

That’s because $9.20 is the direct buy-in for this next link: the Road to Old Trafford Satellite Qualifier. It runs once daily and two times on Sundays (one of these as a Turbo event), and it awards a seat in the final 1 package guaranteed Road to Old Trafford Satellite for every $85 in the prize pool. Or you can skip all that, pay the $85 buy-in directly and enter this event where a prize package to play live poker in Old Trafford will be awarded for every $1,575 collected in the prize pool.

And that, of course, is because $1,575 is the value of this prize package, which includes the $365 buy-in for the Old Trafford main event, a 3-night stay in Manchester with hospitality included, $550 to spend as you like, and a charitable gift made in your name of $35. The prize package winners will also receive a VIP stadium tour, some official football merchandise, and an invitation to an exclusive VIP Player Party.

These Road to Old Trafford Satellites take place at Party Poker from May 27th to August 4th, 2013.

Win CAPT Seats At Intertops Poker

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casino austria poker tour

From July 12 to 21, 2013, Velden, Austria will be hosting the next stop on the Casino Austria Poker Tour, the CAPT Velden 2013, and right now Intertops Poker is giving away seats in this big event through a series of satellite tournaments.

The Intertops Poker CAPT satellite takes place on Sunday, June 30 at 18:45 ET for a $109 direct buy-in. But players can alternatively win their seat in this event through a Intertops CAPT $11 satellite. These take place every Saturday and Sunday at 18:45 ET between June 8th and 29th. Players can win seats in this event too, through an Intertops CAPT $1.10 satellite, running every Monday through Friday at 18:45 ET between June 4th and 28th. There is even an Intertops CAPT Freeroll satellite awarding seats in the $1.10 event, these freerolls running daily at 14:00 and 18:00 ET between June 3rd and 25th.

In addition to all this, there’s an Intertops CAPT $4,500 GTD Deepstack satellite on June 23rd at 18:45 ET with a buy-in of $109 and no way to satellite into the event. This event also awards a $4,500 CAPT prize package.

Still a third $4,500 CAPT Velden prize package will go out to the top finisher on an MTT Leaderboard being kept throughout the month of June 2013 (the 1st through 30th). Participation is automatic, no opt-in required.
Those $4,500 CAPT Velden prize packages each include entry in the CAPT Velden main event, hotel accommodations, airfare and expense money, and attendance at a meet and greet event with the Intertops Poker Team.

Poker 770 $50K Free Festival 770

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freefest

Each month Poker 770 holds a Free Festival 770 full of freeroll tournaments with a total of $50,000 worth of real money prize pools.

The Free Festival 770 features unlimited Sit ‘n’ Go freerolls with $0.10 prize pools and freeroll tournaments every hour: with a $10 prize pool each hour from 2:00 am to 1:00 pm, and with $27.70 prize pools each hour from 2:00 pm to 1:00 am. All Free Festival 770 freeroll tournaments can be found in the Poker 770 software in the Tournaments section, under the Freerolls heading listed as Free Festival770.

Players can also qualify for the next Mega Poker Series (MPS) when they play at any Free Festival $27.70 tourney and land in the top 10. Those players will each get a €2.20 entry into the the daily Mega 1 -1 ticket €21 GTD tourney. There is also a complete schedule of MPS satellites offered in cooperation with Carbon Poker.

Meanwhile, Carbon Poker also regularly offers $50,000 worth of daily freeroll tournaments monthly, on top of its Free Festival 770. These promise at least $1K in cash and tournament token prize pools available each day. The full schedule of these daily freeroll tournaments can be found at the Carbon Poker website.

And in addition to their Free Festival770 Freerolls and regular daily freerolls, Carbon Poker also offers two ongoing tournaments with tiny buy-ins, both Hyper SNGs. One has a $0.05 buy-in and the other has a $0.10 buy-in. Both have an additional $0.01 fee.

Carbon Poker Offers End of May Reload Bonus

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carbon poker bonus

From now until May 31, 2013, Carbon Poker is offering all existing players a reload of 75% on a single deposit up to a maximum bonus of $375. To redeem this bonus, use the code MAYPK, which is valid until 11:59 pm server time on Friday, May 31st.

The Carbon Poker reload bonus will then be released to eligible players in increments of $5 at a time after the player meets the redemption requirements of earning 150 VIP Points per dollar of the bonus. That means a player must earn 750 VIP Points in order to have each $5 increments release. Once a bonus or portion of the bonus is released, it is then withdrawable as cash from the player’s account. However, if there is any portion of the bonus still left to be redeemed when an already released portion of the bonus is withdrawn as cash, the unredeemed remainder of that active bonus would then be forfeited. Any unredeemed portions of the active bonus will also be forfeited in 90 days from being claimed.

New players to Carbon Poker, meanwhile, can get a 200% initial deposit bonus of up to $5,000. The bonus code for this initial deposit bonus is CARBONPK and the minimum eligible deposit is $10. VIP Points earned playing Carbon Poker’s side games like blackjack, roulette, Caribean Stud, video poker, backgammon, and euchre do not count toward meeting the redemption requirements for this bonus.

Whichever bonus you claim, all players new and old making a deposit into their Carbon Poker account in any given month are also rewarded with a seat in the $10,000 Depositors Freeroll taking place on the second Sunday of the subsequent month at 13:00 lobby time.

London Casino Accuses Phil Ivey Of Cheating

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ivey

American poker wunderkind Phil Ivey is now facing a new type of heads-up battle, this one against a UK casino that has accused the proclaimed “Tiger Woods of poker” of cheating at (of all games) baccarat. The dispute involves a two day period in August of 2012 when 9-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Ivey notched up almost $12 million in winnings at the high stakes baccarat tables at Crockford’s Casino.

Crockford’s claims that Ivey, with the assistance of a female accomplice, inspected the backs of the playing cards used at the table for minor imperfections — information which they then allegedly used to track the deal and beat (or cheat) the odds.

The exact amount in dispute: £7.6 million, which equates to approximately $11.9 million USD. At the time of this writing, the casino has still refused to pay Ivey his winnings.

The baccarat variant Ivey was playing at the time is called punto banco, a game in which the player draws between two and three cards aiming to reach closer to the number nine than the dealer (similarly to how the player and dealer compete to reach closest to 21 in blackjack).

Before 10 security cameras Ivey and an unidentified woman played against the dealer in the Mayfair, London casino, starting with a bet of £50,000 (or $77K) per hand, raising it later at the casino’s approval to £150,000 (or $230K) per hand.

Right now all Ivey has is a receipt for his winnings that Crockford’s refuses to pay out. It is likely the final hand in this game will play out in court.

America’s Cardroom Announces $100,000 Guaranteed

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America’s Cardroom Poker has announced that it will be holding a $100,000 guaranteed tournament on June 9, 2013 at 7:00 pm ET. This is a doubling of the guaranteed prize pool of its usual $50K guaranteed tournament.

The direct buy-in for this event is $200 + $15 but players can win their seat instead through a satellite tournament. $100K GTD satellites are being held daily at the site, with the stage 1 satellites taking place hourly at 35 minutes after each hour for a $0.90 + $0.10 buy-in and awarding 1 seat into the stage 2 nightly satellite at each running of the event. Then, that stage 2 satellite, takes place once nightly at 6:35 pm for a $22 + $2 buy-in. This event awards the top two finishers seats in the June 9th $100K guaranteed tournament.

The America’s Cardroom $100,000 guaranteed starts all players out with a starting stack of 10,000 chips and raises the blinds every 15 minutes.

This event is scheduled in place of the $50,000 guaranteed event that normally takes place in this time slot on Sundays. The regular America’s Cardroom $50K GTD event will resume as of the subsequent Sunday.

Remember, this tournament may boast the biggest guaranteed prize pool that the site offers, but it’s hardly the only guaranteed tournament on the schedule, which also features the following ongoing tournaments:
•    $1,500 guaranteed
•    $1,000 guaranteed
•    $2,500 guaranteed
•    $3,500 guaranteed
•    $7,500 guaranteed
•    $10,000 guaranteed
•    $15,000 guaranteed
•    $50,000 guaranteed

California Releases New Draft of Poker Bill

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California

A new draft of a bill to legalize online poker in the state of California, written in collaboration between the sate’s Native American tribes, has just been released. The bill is called the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act of 2013 and eight tribes in all have shown their support by signing onto the bill.

This is a poker only bill that does not include other forms of online gambling, like online casino gambling. The aim is to protect the revenue-generating interests of the land-based casinos that these tribes own and operate. The bill also omits the possibility of allowing international or even interstate online poker, which means that states like New Jersey and Nevada, which have already passed legal intrastate poker and are looking to partner with other such states to allow each other’s residents to play on their respective legal poker sites, would not be able to benefit from the immense online poker playing pool in the great big state of California.

Online Poker in the USA

In addition, the bill has what’s called a “bad actor” clauses, which means that any company operating online poker illegally before implementation of this bill would be forbidden from offering online poker legally in the state after the bill has passed.

Poker players around the country are decrying this bill as terrible for players as it restricts the entire California player pool to California sites only, and only sites other than those popular ones that most players elsewhere in the legal poker universe are playing.

Bovada Poker Holds $1K Blackjack Draw

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vvp

On the heels of the successful $15K Blackjack WSOP Draw that wrapped up earlier this month at Bovada Poker, the site is now offering $1K Blackjack Draws every week. Just play the blackjack game made available in the Bovada Poker software (not the Bovada Casino blackjack game) at stakes of at least $5 per hand and gain entry into that week’s $1,000 grand prize draw. For every hand you play of blackjack in the Bovada Poker software you will get an additional ticket in that week’s drawing.

The $1K Blackjack Draw itself happens each Monday, and players can earn unlimited tickets into each one of them. The promotional week for the Bovada Poker $1K Blackjack Draw is from Monday at 00:00:00 ET through the following Sunday at 11:59:59 ET.

Remember, blackjack play at Bovada Casino does not count for this promotion. Only the blackjack you can play through the Bovada Poker software.

There is no rollover requirement (aka playthrough) for this cash award. Other standard Bovada Poker terms and conditions apply.

Meanwhile, in other Bovada Poker news, keep in mind you still have until June 2, 2013 to earn a VIP Vegas Vacation to play in the World Series of Poker. In addition to the $5K Vegas VIP Weekend prize package being awarded as the grand prize, players can also each earn $300 worth of bonuses, just by earning a requisite number of poker points in a given promotional week. Plus you get an entry into the drawing for the Vegas VIP Vacation grand prize.

And be sure to opt in to the promotion with the red Enter Now button on the Vegas VIP Vacation page at the Bovada website so that your poker points earnings will count toward cash bonuses and $5K grand prize package drawing.