Category: Pokerstars

Player at PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Sets Guinness Record

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A player at this year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure set the new Guinness World Record for most hands of poker played in an 8-hour period of time. The player was Randy Lew, known online as nananoko, and over those 8 hours he played 23,493 hands. He played those hands on Poker Stars in a cordoned off table of his own at the casino hosting the PCA, surrounded by fellow PCA attendees.

In order for the record to count, according to Lew’s own self-imposed criteria, he had to have finished the 8 hours ahead, meaning he had to show a profit. Lucky for him he made it, but only by $7.65. Because he was playing on PokerStars, however, he also earned 22,784 FPPs for his effort. Those points can be used to enter online tournaments at the site or purchase gear at the PokerStars Store.

At one point, a few hands before the 8-hour clock was up, Lew closed down most of the tables he’d been playing–for most of the contest, he was multi-tabling at 40 tables at once–and focused on a single table, where he received pocket Aces. An observer shouted out for him not to play the hand as it was a three-way hand and he was so close to losing the small profit he had edged out. But he stayed in and luck was with him, all the way to Guinness Book of World Records.

Lew was in between days of play in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event, which he returned to the following day. As a point of comparison, whoever would go on to win the $2 million grand prize in that event wouldn’t have played more than 10% of the number of hands Lew played to claim his record.

Pokerstars Makes Changes, Causes Uproar

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Pokerstars caused a bit of an uproar to mark the turning of the calendar when last week (which was also last year) the site announced certain changes to its VIP program and its rake structure.

In a Bank of America style backlash, PokerStars players came out to the online forums by the scores to protest the actions.

One of the two controversial changes was from the former “dealt” method of calculating VIP Player Points (VPPs) to a new “weighted contributed” method. In the dealt method, all players dealt cards in the hand received an even share of the VPPs for that hand. In the weighted contributed method, those same number of VPPs are distributed, instead, according to how much money each player put into the pot. Players who fold before the flop will now receive none of the share. All of this obviously disadvantages tighter players by encouraging lots of action.

The other controversial changes were to Poker Stars’ rake structure. Designed to simplify the process on PokerStars’ end, the changes that include lower rake percentages and new rake caps seem only to reduce the amount of rake most players will be able to get.

By the same token, even a Poker Stars representative admits that the new VPP calculation method will have the effect of reducing the number of VPPs awarded in any given period as well.

PokerStars’ reaction to the protest? Poker Stars is moving forward still with the change to the VPP calculation method but has decided to put its rake structure changes (including the caps) on hold pending further study.

Poker Stars Reveals Last Two 10th Anniversary Promos

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Pokerstars has now revealed all ten of its 10th Anniversary promotions with the last two to be revealed: the Road to the 72 Billionth Hand and Cash Prize Week for the Battle of the Planets Sit & Gos.

The Road to the 72 Billionth Hand is actually the latest Mega Milestone stop of the larger Road to 100 Billion Hands promotion Poker Stars has been running for a while now. Between hands 71.7 billion and 72 billion, every billion hands, Pokerstars will award cash prizes to players dealt into that hand, even if they fold. The winner of each milestone hand wins the biggest prize. The winner of the Mega Milestone 72 billionth hand wins $10,000.

Then there’s Cash Prize Week for the Battle of the Planets Sit and Gos that run regularly at the site. The dates are December 11 – 17, 2011, and here’s how it works. Battle of the Planets is a leaderboard promotion with a low-stakes, or low-orbit, and high-stakes, or high-orbit, leaderboard for eight different Sit and Go tournaments with varying buy-ins and prize pools. Get on the leaderboard by playing in at least 20 of these. Earning a certain Target Score over the course of Cash Prize Week entitles a player to a $10,000 cash prize. For example, in Mercury division, beat 650 points on the low-orbit leaderboard or 2,000 on the high-orbit leaderboard and you win. In addition, the regular prize pools for all Battle of the Planets tournaments will be doubled for all of Cash Prize Week. So for the Jupiter division, for example, the regular $10,000 prize pools will be doubled to $20,000.

Poker Stars Latest World Record Attempt Successful

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Poker Stars has succeeded in once again holding the biggest online poker tournament, based on the number of players registered. There were 200,000 in all, this time, and there would have been more if technical issues hadn’t capped the potential pool at 200,000, the target number to set a new record, according to Ondrej Drebota, Manager of the Czech Republic PokerStars.com. The previous record was set by Poker Stars as well, on December 2009, for 149,196 players.

The ceremony celebrating this latest world record was held at the site of the EPT Prague, which is taking place now. Poker Stars’ WCOOP Radio broadcast the tournament live, which took place at the same time as the world record ceremony, Sunday the 4th of December, 2011.

When the 200,000 player tournament started, it crashed the PokerStars servers, causing all the other tournaments taking place at the site at that time to be held up for 20 minutes.

The game lasted seven hours and change. First place went to a player going by “sokoluk1991”, who, for his $1 buy-in, took down a $40,258.83 first prize. Runner-up, for $34,000, was “Kaitz20”.

This event also marked the start of the 10th Anniversary festivities taking place at PokerStars throughout the rest of the year. It features ten promotions in all, eight of which have already been detailed earlier in these pages. The last two 10th Anniversary promotions – special cash prizes for the Battle of the Planets Sit ‘n’ Gos and a 72 Billionth Hand bonus – will be featured tomorrow.

Three More Poker Stars 10th Anniversary Offers Revealed

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At the start of this month of November, 2011 we announced Pokerstars upcoming 10th Anniversary and the promotion to honor it, make up of 10 smaller promotions to be revealed a little at a time as the actual anniversary in December nears. At the time, the only two of these promotions revealed was a giveaway for 2012 PCA seats and a special Sunday Storm with a $10 million prize pool, $2 million of which is going to first place. Now, Poker Stars has revealed three more of its 10th Anniversary offers: a World Record Tournament, an Easy $10 Reload Bonus and a Sunday Storm Special.

The World Record Tournament is a $250K guaranteed event taking place December 4 at 12:30 ET. For only a $1 buy -in players can enter the event and vie for the top prize of $50,000. Already, Poker Stars holds the Guinness World Record for the biggest online poker tournament playing field, with 149,196 participants in 2009. Now the site is trying to top itself with a 150,000 playing field.

Meanwhile, between November 14 and 30, players can get a 10% reload bonus on deposits of up to $1,000 for up to a $10 bonus. Just use the bonus code “10” when making your deposit to be credited the bonus. What makes this reload bonus so easy is that to clear those funds for withdrawal you only need to earn 1 VIP Player Point, or VPP for each dollar.

And the Poker Stars Sunday Storm taking place on December 11 will be a special $1 Million Guaranteed Special Edition with a buy-in of $11, a prize pool of $150,000, and an additional set of $100 bounties for eliminating many pro members of Team PokerStars.

Join Pokerstars Women Live at 2012 PCA

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In addition to the satellite series for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2012 that are open to all its players, Poker Stars is also hosting a special, separate satellite tournament series strictly for its female players.

Held as part of the larger 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the PokerStars Women Live Caribbean Adventure is a separate event from the main event running from January 12 – 14, 2012. Unlike the PCA main event, the PokerStars Women Live Caribbean Adventure is a ladies only event. Satellite qualifier tournaments are on now at Poker Stars for this event, offering up prize packages worth $3,250 to the most successful.

These prize packages include the main event buy-in, hotel accommodations and $1K in spending cash. The 2012 PCA and PokerStars Women Live Caribbean Adventure takes place on Paradise Island in the exotic Bahamas. Prize packages will be awarded at weekly satellite finals taking place every Saturday between now and December 31, 2011 for a direct buy-in of $215. Each weekly final starts at 2:30 pm ET and awards one PCA Womens Live package for each $3,250 in the pot. Instead of paying the $215 buy-in, ladies can win seats in one of the weekly finals via lower-cost qualifier tournaments. There are even freeroll qualifier tournaments that can ultimately land you a PokerStars Women Live Caribbean Adventure weekly final qualifier ticket for nothing.

The 2012 PokerStars Women Live Caribbean Adventure will the be the latest in the string of ladies-only special events held around the world. Previous such events have including European Poker Tour (EPT) main events taking place in London, Monte Carlo and Madrid.

PokerStars Getting Stricter On US Players Concealing Location

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PokerStars has always been one of the most popular online poker sites out there, and this especially includes among United States players as well.  It seems that since Black Friday, many US based players have continued to attempt to find ways to play at the massive site, even though it shut out the United States completely.  Some players moved out of country in order to continue their poker careers, but most players who don’t play for a living could not move out of the country to continue playing poker; so they had to turn to other routes.  This is where the Virtual Private Networks (VPN) came in.

Unfortunately for US players, the VPN’s may have worked for a while, but PokerStars has began to crack down on this, and have frozen the accounts of many US poker players who have been using the private networks.  The players would receive notices stating that their account was suspended “pending further legal review”.

Players can not log in to PokerStars from inside the US borders to play for real money, but with these new connections, their internet connections are then rerouted through different servers that are hosted from outside of the United States.  Essentially, it is like tricking the system into saying that the player is actually in a country that allows online poker player, and saying that their IP address is not from the United States.

The main way that these connections have been detected by PokerStars, is that once a player gets disconnected from the VPN, you can see their actual location.  And of course PokerStars is one of the most in-depth and largest online poker sites out there, so you can bet that they have tracked this quite a bit.

It will be interesting to see what PokerStars decides to do about the players who have been using these Virtual Private Networks.  You can assume that they will almost definitely be taking action against the accounts that have been using them.  Part of this reason is due to the fact that PokerStars has been huge in following the Department of Justice’s online poker rules since Black Friday.

Poker Stars Comes Under Legal Fire Too

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Full Tilt Poker isn’t the only online poker site facing trouble post-Black Friday 2011. PokerStars is also coming under fire, and from more sides than one.

Unlike Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars has at least paid back its U.S. players the funds sitting in their seized accounts after the D.O.J. closed down U.S. operations. But that hasn’t gotten them completely out of the woods with all of its member base (or former member base, as the case may be.)

Now the plaintiff is the software maker Cardroom International who has filed a claim against both Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars for, as best this writer can interpret the claim, failing to agree with written agreements regarding purchase of software for use on play money sites linked with TV networks like ESPN, Fox and NBC by interfering with the network’s ability to promote that software. How? By buying up the airtime itself to promote its own software. What’s more, the complaint alleges, Poker Stars used money that was obtained illegally from U.S. players to pay for this airtime.

Complex, no doubt. But the end result is time and money in legal wranglings and the public relations nightmare that follows such a spectacle.

Meanwhile, in other sinister Poker Stars news, two Team PokerStars members, Leonardo Fernandez and Veronica Dabul, have been named in a lawsuit filed by Wynn Las Vegas for allegedly cheating at craps to the tune of some $700K. Talk about a public relations nightmare. Veronica Dabul has since been removed from the Team PokerStars roster, although Leonardo Fernandez is still a member.

Poker Stars Starts Canada Cup I Qualifiers

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Poker players in the United States may have been locked out of Poker Stars but not all of North America has suffered such a fate. Players in Canada are now being invited to try and win a free seat in Poker Stars’ first ever Canada Cup, featuring a main event with a guaranteed prize pool of $250,000.

The PokerStars Canada Cup I will take place at next year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in the Bahamas, on January 9, 2012. Qualifiers for this event started on PokerStars on September 26, 2011.

Qualifier winners will meet up on Sunday, October 23 at 5:30 pm ET for the PokerStars.net Canada Cup Final. This event will play out until the player pool dwindles to a final table of 9 players. These 9 players will then finish out the competition live in person at the 2012 PCA. Poker Stars will cover all travel and luxury accommodation expenses for the 9 final table players with extra expense cash to boot.

The final table will be recorded for televised broadcast during which the $250,000 prize pool will be distributed and the PokerStars.net Canada Cup trophy will be awarded to the winner. In addition to the lions share of that quarter-million dollar prize pool, the winner of the Canada Cup I will receive free entry into an additional tournament, a PCA High Rollers event with a $25,000 direct buy-in.

This promotion is only open to players from Canada. Visit Poker Stars to see what other regional-based tournament and promotions they currently have running.

Daniel Negreanu Dominates at the PokerStars’ WCOOP

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Daniel Negreanu is one of the best live poker players out there today, but after his recent Pokerstars World Championship of Online Poker, he’s shown that he has more than the ability to be one of the best online poker players as well.  Negreanu has won four World Series of Poker gold bracelets, two World Poker Tour titles, and has a total of 26 final table appearances at the WSOP.  He now has quite an impressive 2011 PokerStars’ WCOOP to put on his resume as well.

Negreanu had one of the best WCOOP’s out of any player, and also in recent history as well.  Negreanu decided to participate in 52 out of the 62 total events, and pulled in an impressive 15 cashes; which makes for a very strong 28.8% cash rate.  Overall, those fifteen cashes were good for a $119,193 payday at the end of the WCOOP.  Negreanu said that his biggest reason for the strong play was his level of preparation.  He also ran a stats program on his computer, and took notes on his opponents’ play during the events.

Another story that is interesting about Negreanu’s strong play, is the fact that he actually played the events from four different countries.  He started out in Barcelona, and moved to Montenegro, Budapest, and London, which tells a major story about how well-focused he was throughout.

Negreanu’s 15 cashes made up the second most out of any player who played the event, and his 28.8% cash rate is nearly double what the other 91 PokerStars Team Pro’s were able to finish at.  Another impressive stat about Negreanu’s 2011 WCOOP was the fact that his two highest finishes came from the two highest buy-in events that he bought into.  Negreanu bought into multiple different events, ranging from No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Triple Stud, and an 8 game event as well.  His two highest finishes came in Event #41, which was a $10,300 No Limit Hold’em Event, that he finished in 4th place and took home $48,000; and the other was Event #61, which was a $10,300 buy-in 8 game event, that he finished in 5th place in and took home $52,500.

Negreanu will look to build on this strong WCOOP performance as events like the World Poker Tour continue to host events all around the world.