Tag: lock poker

Lock Poker Adds Melanie Weisner

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Lock PokerLock Poker is one of the more popular online poker sites for players in the United States currently, and this is for quite a few reasons.  Lock Poker is a part of the Merge Network, which also has Carbon Poker, and is one of the few networks who still allow online poker players from the US to play!  Currently, Lock Poker features one of the stronger lists of poker pros outside of the biggest sites out there like PokerStars.  Their current roster consists of a combination of well-known players, and also just some excellent players including Chris Moorman, Leo Margets, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Bryan “PrimordialAA” Pellegrino, and Brett Jungblut.

We can now add one more name to the team LockPRO Elite as of yesterday, since they have decided to add another well-known poker pro in Melanie Weisner.  Weisner has been incredible in the online poker tournament world over the past few years, and is considered one of the top heads-up Sit-and-Go players out there.  Weisner was a pro on the well-known site Full Tilt Poker, so she definitely had her choice of many different games to choose from, and she ranked near the top in all types of different categories for Sit-and-Go’s in 2010.  Her overall rankings for any stakes in any games featured her as 20th overall out of any player out there.  As far as her heads up game goes, she was 9th in the rankings for heads-up Hold’em games between $301 and $1,000, and in overall heads-up games she was 14th overall when it came to Hold’em.

When you really take into the account the total number of players that these numbers include, the fact that she was consistently in the top 20 is very impressive.  She hasn’t been on the live poker tournament circuit much until this past year, but when she got on it, she brought in results.  In total she has won over $388,002 on the live poker tournament circuit, which included a 33rd place finish at the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, a third place finish at an event at the European Poker Tour London, and a fourth place finish at the EPT London in another event.  She has also won two events in her career as well.

She’ll be a fun player to watch on Lock Poker in 2012, and hopefully in the coming years after that as well.

Lock Poker Offers 100 Seats to Weekly $100k

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Lock Poker is now offering its players 100 free seats each week to its weekly $100k tournament. The seats will be doled out in a freeroll tournament called the 100 Seats to the $100k Freeroll tournament that takes place every Saturday at 15:00 Poker Time (aka Lock Poker’s server time). The top 100 finishers at each of these events will win a $109 coupon which the players can then use to register for the following day’s or any subsequent Sunday’s $100k tournament.

To enter Lock Poker’s 100 Seats to the $100k Freeroll you must earn at least 250 VIP points over the course of the week from Sunday at 00:01 to the following Saturday at 15:00 and then register for the freeroll (registration is not automatic). You can only enter a 100 Seats to the $100k Freeroll with VIP points earned that same week leading up to the event. Points earned but unused can still be used for other benefits at Lock Poker, like purchases in the Lock Poker Store, but they cannot be used for future week’s freerolls.

The Lock Poker Sunday $100,000 Guaranteed tournament is a freezeout event with a buy-in of $109, or a $109 coupon, such as is the prize won for finishing in the top 100 of the weekly freeroll. Players can also buy into the Sunday $100k GTD tournament with 10,900 VIP points. Additionally, Lock Poker holds regular satellite tournaments throughout each week awarding even more seats in the Sunday $100k GTD Freezeout Tournament.

Merge Poker Network Allowing New US Sign-Ups

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The Merge Poker Network had quite an increase in terms of their poker traffic in the month after Black Friday hit the United States poker population.  To put this statement into numbers, you can look at the 79 percent increase in their cash game poker traffic in just that month after April 15th.  While the three biggest online poker sites out there found themselves in quite a bit of trouble, Full Tilt Poker is no longer running, Absolute Poker shut down, and PokerStars is the only one of the big three to be able to make it past the fall out.  When online poker players in the United States were searching for places to go, the Merge Network offered them a few great options.

The Merge Network has a few well-known poker rooms under it, including Lock Poker and RPM Poker.  The only issue with the fact that these sites allowed US sign-ups after Black Friday, is that they were overwhelmed with new sign-ups, and couldn’t keep up with processing the incredibly high number of payments that were coming on the site.  Merge was on a two week back log of cash out requests, and found themselves having to make a decision.  They decided to stop allowing new US sign-ups at this point, in order to catch up on payouts, and hopefully be able to re-open in the near future.

It seems that the Merge Network has finally caught up on their payouts, and is now accepting new US players onto most their skins.  It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this will have on the poker rankings for the Merge Network, as they are currently sitting at 12th in the overall cash game traffic rankings.  Their current ranking though, actually puts them at the top of all online poker sites who accept US players currently, with Bodog sitting in 13th, and the Cake Poker Network in 20th.  Bodog is actually heading OUT of the US market at the end of this year, which could potentially send even more traffic to the Merge Network.

Lock Poker Starts Double Trouble

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If you’re looking for some trouble, you might find what you’re looking for over at Lock Poker, where the site has launched Double Trouble Fridays, giving players double the points going into the weekend.

From now on, Lock Poker will kick off each weekend with Double Trouble Fridays, in which every VIP player on the site will automatically earn twice the player points they normally would playing at Lock Poker’s cash games. What’s more, so that players can take instant advantage of these new influxes of points, Lock Poker will be releasing the double points directly into player’s accounts every quarter hour.

Lock Poker has four different VIP levels, all of which are eligible for Double Trouble Fridays. You gain access to the first level, White VIP, as soon as you earn at least 1,000 VIP Points in a calender month. White VIP players enjoy a $1K Monthly Freeroll and 10% cash back daily. Silver VIP is next, for players earning at least 5,000 points per month. Silver players get access to a $2,000 monthly freeroll and 20% cash back. Rewards increase similarly from there for Black VIP, for 10,000 points per month, and Black VIP, for 50,000 points per month.

All VIP players also get VIP Vault Access and a cash redemption rate of $10 for every 1,000 VIP points.

You must keep up with your monthly minimum points earnings to maintain your VIP status level. Players can go down status levels or lose VIP status altogether for missing a month’s minimum points requirement.

Lock Poker Drops Poker Cheat

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After Portuguese poker pro José “Girah” Macedo admitted to what amounted to $30,000 poker cheating scam, Lock Poker did the only thing it could do in good consciense–drop Macedo from its esteemed list of sponsored poker pros.

18-year-old Jose Macedo came into the public eye back in March of 2011 when he posted on an online poker forum that he had won $2 million with only a $30 deposit at a poker site (not Lock Poker). He posted the results of how he accomplished that achievement along with a detailed blow-by-blow of how it came to pass. This was followed shortly thereafter by a sponsorship arrangement with Lock Poker.

Macedo then used his newly won status to scam players who trusted him out of $30,000. It went like this: Macedo courted players on a Skype discussion group, telling them he’d sit on the rails while they played in order to give them advice. Well it seems Macedo was advising his players to pit themselves repeatedly against a player by the username Sauron1989 who turned out to be luckier (or simply better) than Macedo had judged him to be. At this point it should come as no surprise that Sauron1989 was Macedo himself, making his moves based on his knowledge of the hole cards in his opponents’ hands.

Lock Poker’s administration made a statement that they were “horrified” by Macedo’s actions and that “within 10 minutes” of learning of his behavior had dropped his LockPRO sponsorship. Macedo is also banned from playing at Lock Poker ever again, under any username.

Lock Poker is one of the last remaining poker sites still serving U.S. players. As such it also currently boasts one of the largest American player pools in all of online poker.

Lock Poker Adds Two New Players to Pro Team

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Two English poker pros are the latest players to be signed to the Lock Poker team: LockPRO ELITE. Chris Moorman and Nicky Evans join Brett Jungblut, Eric Lynch and Jose Macedo as representatives of the site reputed of late to unseat the now defunct Full Tilt Poker as one of the biggest and most popular poker sites in the world.

You might recognize Chris Moornman, aka “moorman1” of Essex, as a former member of the Brunson 10 representing the now-defunct Doyles Room Poker site. More recently, Moorman cashed out $1,051,466 in this year’s World Series of Poker, including a second place win in the 6-handed $10K NL Hold’em event, worth $716,282, and a third place finish in the 6-handed $2.5K NL Hold’em event, worth $271,800. His online poker performance is even more impressive, with career winnings of around $7.5 million. Moorman is currently in the top 5 players on the 2011 World Series of Poker Player of the Year leader board.

At 19 years old, Nicky Evans, aka “Cod Meharly”, is early into his professional poker career, and already touts over $1.1 million in online winnings and another $175K plus in live play. Recent wins include three near $30K wins between December 2010 and May 2011, across two Poker Stars events and one Full Tilt Poker event, two of which were first place wins. On his online profile, Evans lists Moorman as one of the players he admires most. He cashed in two 2011 WSOP events, including a $2,343 cash in the main event.

Lock Poker Holds Monthly Sit & Go Leaderboard Contests

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Every month, all month long, Lock Poker keeps SnG Leaderboards with cash prizes for the highest performers. All Sit and Go tournaments at Lock Poker qualify for placement on the SnG Leaderboard, including Bounty SnG tournaments and satellite SnG tournaments. Leaderboard points are determined using a formula that takes into account the disparity in tournament stakes and other factors.

There are two sets of prizes awarded at the end of each month’s SnG Leaderboard competition. One distributes a $10,000 prize among the top 25 finishers on the monthly leaderboard. The first place finisher gets $2,000; second gets $1,250; third gets $1,000 and down from there, to the 25th place finisher who gets $100. The other leaderboard distributes a $2,000 prize among those who had the best winning streaks of the month, with the top finisher getting $750; second place getting $500; third getting $350; fourth $250; and fifth $150.

Besides the buy-in, also used to help determine leaderboard points are the number of entrants in a SnG and a player’s final position, with an additional bonus called the Final Placing Bonus applied for the top finishers of each qualifying SnG. Ordinarily, in MTTs (multi-table tournaments), a final table bonus would go out to all the players who made the final table. In the case of SnGs, this has been altered to apply a scaled bonus to the players in a 6-seater or 10-seater SnG based on when they bust out of the event.

Lock Poker leaderboard rules forbid Team Play under a single account.

Merge Poker adds Weekly 100k Guaranteed

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Lock PokerThe Merge Poker Network has announced that $100,000 will now be the guaranteed prize pool for the Sunday Deepstack every week, including this one. Take your seat this Sunday with a $109 entrance coupon, by buying in for $100 + $9, or by qualifying through the 100 Seats to $100K Freeroll. There are several online poker sites that we highly recommend on the Merge network with Lock Poker being the most popular one.

The Merge Poker Network has become the place to play since Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars pulled out of the US. Look for their daily and weekly guaranteed tournaments to continue to grow as the network grows. More USA Accepted Poker Sites.

$100,000 Sunday Guaranteed

When: Sunday, May 15th @ 15:00 Merge Poker Time (16:00 EST)
How: $100 + $9, $109 Deepstack Coupon, 10,900 VIP Points
Prizes: $100,000 Guaranteed
Where: Tournaments >> Scheduled >> Special

In addition to the usual buy-ins, players can now qualify for this major tourney via the 100 Seats to $100K Freeroll. Earn 250 VIP points in the week before the 100 Seats freeroll, then finish in the top 100 to win a $109 Coupon for Sunday’s showdown.

100 Seats to $100K Freeroll

When: Saturday, May 14th @ 15:00 Merge Poker Time (16:00 EST)
How: Earn 250 VIP pts before the freeroll starts
Prizes: 100 free seats for $100k Guaranteed
Where: Tournaments >> Scheduled >> Special

Lock Poker Set to Become Largest US Online Poker Site

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Lock PokerIn the matter of just three weeks Lock Poker has become a giant in the online poker arena. It’s estimated that they have already signed roughly 20% of US online poker players that were affected by Black Friday.  They have gone from an irrelevant online poker site to the biggest thanks to the US Government and an aggressive marketing plan.

As Lock Poker spokesperson recently said in an interview,  “Someone around the office commented today that it was like Lock Poker executives hitting the lottery, but it’s more along the lines of them winning every lottery drawing held in the United States so far this year.”

“Overnight this company has gone from an unknown to a household name like Sony or Coca Cola, and they haven’t spent a single penny in advertising dollars to do it. It may be the greatest business success story ever…and there’s been some big ones in our time.”

The main reasons for their rapid growth can be attributed to a massive 200% up to $1200 first deposit bonus as well as unique promotions like the Battle of the Ronin and the Bluff Pro Challenge.

Lock Poker has also been busy signing up the world’s best young poker pros like Jose”Girah” Macedo, Eric Lynch, Brett Jungblut, Wesley “Aumnicient” Clark and John “Reraz0r” Law.

Lock Poker is on the Merge Poker Network and is 100% Mac Compatible. For more information read our Lock Poker Review.

Battle of the Ronin at Lock Poker Now for $500K & WSOP Seat

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Lock Poker is currently running a promotion called the Battle of Ronin in which $500,000 in cash prizes are up for grabs, along with seats in the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event.

The full name of this competition is the Battle of the Ronin Rake Chase, which sheds a bit more light on its structure. This is a rake race, meaning that throughout the month of May, Lock Poker will track the number of VIP points you earn and award you prizes as you surpass certain milestones. Prizes are cumulative, so as you climb higher through the points levels, earning ever-greater prizes, you get to keep all the prizes you won previously on the way there. You get your first prize of $1.50 after earning just 100 VIP points.

There are more than 1,400 individual prizes up for grabs worth $500K total. There are 35 levels in all and each player can earn $45,000 cash for him or herself by clearing all 35 levels.

The great thing about this kind of race is that you’re racing only yourself and the clock for these prizes. Every player will get the prizes associated with each level as they surpass the milestone for that level.

In addition, you will also be competing with all other Lock Poker players for a coveted seat in the 2011 WSOP Main Event, a prize worth over $10,000 for an event with a first prize of $10 million. Only one of those prizes will be awarded, and it will go to the player who has earned the most VIP points between the start of May 1 and the end of May 31, 2011.