For January of 2012, Poker Stars is blasting off its VIP Club with enhanced benefits all month long, including Discount TCOOP Tickets & Merchandise Sale, VIP Ring Game Happy Hours, a Pace Bonus, Special VIP Tournaments and VIP TCOOP Satellites.
Discount TCOOP Tickets & Merchandise Sale offer discounted entries into the upcoming PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker, taking place January 19 – 29. No matter a player’s VIP club level, he or she can find a discounted TCOOP seat in the PokerStars VIP Store. So too are over 100 different items of PokerStars merchandise in the store discounted to up to 60% as of January 4, 2012.
VIP Ring Game Happy Hours take place daily from January 2 – 29, albeit at different times each week. Regardless of the time, however, the benefit is the same: 50% more VIP points earned for all your real money play during those hours.
The Pace Bonus is a special bonus for PlatinumStar and Supernova VIP players only, giving a cash bonus in February for your January performance.
Special VIP Tournaments include Weekly $30,000 VIP tournaments and a Monthly $100,000 VIP tournament. The Weekly $30,000 VIP Tournaments run every Saturday at 2:30 pm ET for a buy-in of 100 FPPs. The Monthly $100,000 VIP tournament takes place Saturday, January 28 at 3:00 pm ET.
VIP TCOOP Satellites are offered solely to Poker Stars SilverStar VIP players and higher, giving extra, exclusive chances to win seats in the first ever TCOOP.
Every Sunday from now until January 15, 2012, Party Poker will be holding a GSOP Salzburg Satellite tournament awarding at least 1 player at each event a prize package worth $3,600 that includes a free seat in the upcoming Grand Series of Poker Live main event in Salzburg, Austria.
The Party Poker GSOP Live Salzburg Satellite has a $240 + $20 buy-in, but players can avoid paying that buy-in by winning their way into the tournament instead. Twice every day plus an extra time on Sundays as a Turbo tourney will be a GSOP Live Salzburg Satellite Qualifier with a $26+$2 buy-in, awarding one seat in the satellite for every $260 in the pot.
Daily sub qualifiers into this event also take place, one of which has a $2.80 + $0.20 buy-in and the other which is a rebuy event with a $1 buy-in. Both of these events are speed events. Also in both of these cases, one player will advance to the satellite qualifier for every $28 in the pot.
Finally, there’s a freeroll route to the GSOP Live Salzburg too, with daily freerolls awarding seats in the $1 rebuy sub qualifier.
One player will win a $3,600 GSOP Live Salzburg prize package for every $3,600 in the satellite prize pool. Each prize package includes, besides the $1,650 entry into the main event, includes your hotel stay and some spending money while you’re there.
The GSOP Live Salzburg main event is scheduled for February 2nd through 5th of 2012.
For a limited time, Carbon Poker is now offering a payout every time a player gets quad 5s (or four-of-a-kind 5s) on the flop. Whether or not that player wins the hand, he or she still wins a cash prize.
Both of your hole cards must be fives in order for you to claim this prize and only hands dealt in Texas Hold’em. If you qualify, copy down the hand number and then email it to the Carbon Poker support team at either quads@carbonpoker.ag or support@carbonpoker.ag.
The amount of the Quad Pyramid Prize a player receives depends on that player’s Tier in the Carbon Poker VIP club. Regular players get $5; Earth players get $10; Wind players get $15; Fire players get $20; Ether players get $30.
To find your winning hand after the fact, look it up in your hand history. Then either email the hand ID to the site or a screenshot of the quad fives on the flop and your hole cards.
Quad fives dealt at play money tables or during freeroll tournaments do not qualify for this bonus.
Also from Carbon Poker, to help players get a Fresh Start to the New Year the site is offering a 10% reload bonus up to a $30 maximum. Just use the bonus code: FRESHSTART when you make your qualifying deposit. This bonus is available until January 15, 2012 at 11:59 pm server time. Players must earn at least 30 times the bonus amount in VIP points in order to receive the bonus.
Black Friday left many online poker players’ money stuck online. Two of the sites that stranded the some of the highest number of players out there were Absolute Poker and UB Poker. Since April 15th it has pretty much looked like any players on these sites were pretty much out of luck when it came to getting their money back, until just this week. It was reported that both sites will be liquidated, which not only spells the end of the sites in the online poker world, but also means that players could potentially be getting repaid soon from these sites.
Excellent news for players out there, but it unfortunately comes with a catch. While they will be paying players back, it is only look like it will be about 20% at most of the total amount of money in each players’ account. The statement that was released said that it would be around “15 to 20 cents on the dollar” to be exact. These two sites were two of the more popular in the game before Black Friday, but found themselves behind the two other big named sites who were hit by the drama in Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars.
The liquidation situation with the same means that they are completely done in the online poker world, and the reason for them doing this is apparently to appease the United States Department of Justice. Since Black Friday these sites have struggled to get any realistic type of real money poker traffic, which led to this final decision. They have made major layouts among their staff, and while the two sites closing down doesn’t come as a complete shock, it is still an interesting bit of news.
As far as the founders behind the sites, there was also some mention of the two men involved in creating Absolute Poker. One of the two, Brent Beckley, decided to plead guilty to a few different charges relating to their online poker site, and his plea deal will get him between one and 15 years in jail. If Beckley had decided not to agree to this plea deal, he would be looking at a maximum of 30 years of time. Scott Tom is the other co-founder, but no one is quite sure exactly where he is currently.
For its many unique innovations in online poker, like PokerCam tables, 888 Poker has won the EGR Award for Best Poker Operator of the Year for 2011. In celebration of this honor, the site is awarded its players two special gifts of thanks. One is a freeroll tournament with a $3,000 prize pool guaranteed and the other is an instant $10 bonus.
The 888 Poker $3,000 Thank U Freeroll tournament takes place on Thursday, December 29, 2011 (that’s tomorrow) at 19:00 GMT. There are no special registration requirements or conditions, but you may want to register as soon as possible, since the site is capping the player pool for this event at 6,000 players.
There’s a little more time to redeem the $10 instant bonus. For that, you have til January 2, 2012, during which time all you have to do is make a deposit of at least $50 into your real money 888 Poker account using the bonus code: EGR888 and you’ll instantly get your $10 bonus.
The bonus must be played through at least 40 times before it can be withdrawn as cash. And it is only valid for games at 888 Poker, not 888 Casino or 888 Sports.
This bonus is only valid for existing 888 Poker members who have already made at least one deposit into their real money account previously. New members are ineligible for this promotion. New members can, however, participate in the $3,000 Thank U Freeroll tournament. And the current welcome bonus for new 888 Poker members is $400.
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.
Poker Stars is kicking off 2012 with the addition of several new events to its lineup, including three new stops on the European Poker Tour Season 8 schedule and a new online poker championship series, Turbo style.
Let’s start with the new live poker action sponsored by Poker Stars. Season 8 of the site’s European Poker Tour kicks off with the usual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in early January. As Winter progresses, the EPT will head to Deauville, France and Copehagen, Denmark, always normal stops on the EPT schedule. But now is when things get new and interesting, as Poker Stars adds EPT stops in Madrid, Spain March 12-17; Campione in the Lugano-Como-Milan region of Italy March 26-31; and Berlin, Germany April 16-21, all of which will include a €5,000 + €300 main event.
As for new online excitement to start this year off right, just as players will be returning home from the PCA, they’ll be able to sit down at the TCOOP, or the Turbo Championship of Online Poker. Like the World Championship of Online Poker, WCOOP, and the Spring Championship of Online Poker, SCOOP, this is a multiday, multievent series. Specifically it’s a 50-event, 11-day turbo tournament extravaganza with events in all buy-in ranges, all poker types, all tournament types, all table structures and all betting structures. If there’s a way to play poker, there’s a turbo tournament for it in PokerStars’ new TCOOP, running January 19-29 with a $1.5 million guaranteed main event and a total $10 million guaranteed prize pool overall.
PokerStars knows exactly what they are doing in the cash game poker world, and also the online poker tournament circuit. They are the inventors of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), and have decided to expand their horizons a bit, and invent another “Championship of Online Poker” this past week. The event is called the Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP), and it is set to get underway starting on January 19th of the upcoming year. There will be a total of 50 events running over a ten day span. One of the final events that kick off on Sunday, January 29th is the Main Event, which will feature a buy-in of $700 that will cater to all different levels of players.
The idea behind turbo events is that the blind levels will move up much quicker than a standard online poker tournament. This makes it so that players have to be much more careful about their remaining number of blinds. These turbo tournaments have become incredibly popular in the past years, as players love the fact that the tournaments typically don’t last as long as other poker tournaments do.
The $700 TCOOP Main Event actually won’t be the final event of the tournament, as it will be followed up by a Hyper-Turbo event, which is a $215 tournament called the “Wrap Party”. But what really makes this tournament series a huge draw for players is the fact that the buy-in’s will range anywhere from $5 all the way to $2,100, which is the High Roller event. Over the ten day span, there is a minimum of four events running each day. It will all kick off on Thursday the 19th with a $22 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event. Stars has done their best to make it so that the event series will offer buy-in’s that are better for recreational players (smaller buy-in’s), and also have larger buy-in’s for the high stakes players; but have them mixed throughout the day so that everyone can get in on the action.
Overall, it seems that PokerStars has put out another hit with the TCOOP, and it will be interesting to see the types of prize pools that these tournaments generate.
The United States Department of Justice (“DoJ”) has given the online gaming community a big, big present, made public two days before Christmas. President Barack Obama’s administration has just declared, perhaps unintentionally, that almost every form of intra-state Internet gambling is legal under federal law, and so may be games played interstate and even internationally.
Technically, the only question being decided was “Whether proposals by Illinois and New York to use the Internet and out-of-state transaction processors to sell lottery tickets to in-state adults violate the Wire Act.” But the conclusion by the DoJ that the Wire Act’s “prohibitions relate solely to sport-related gambling activities in interstate and foreign commerce,” eliminates almost every federal anti-gambling law that could apply to gaming that is legal under state laws.
If the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events and races, what other federal anti-gambling statutes are left? There are prohibitions on interstate lotteries, but Powerball and the other multi-state lotteries show how easily these can be gotten around, even before Congress passed an express exemption for state lotteries. And poker is not a lottery under federal law.
So, all that are left are the federal laws designed to go after organized crime. These all require that there first be a violation of another law, like the Wire Act, the federal anti-lottery statutes, or a state anti-gambling law. If a state has expressly legalized intra-state games like poker, as Nevada and the District of Columbia have done, there is simply no federal law that could apply.
If the bettors and operator are all in the same state, and the gambling does not involve a sports event or race, the Wire Act cannot be used against the operator, even if phone wires happen to cross into another state. And if the state legislature has made the online game legal, it does not violate any other federal anti-gambling law.
I suppose it is possible that the DoJ could argue that poker is a “sporting event or contest.” But the language of the Wire Act prohibits “information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers ON any sporting event or contest.” If poker is a contest, it is one where players bet IN the contest, not on it. Anyway, the DoJ held that the Wire Act was designed to go after bookies taking bets on horse races and football games, etc., not other forms of gambling. And even the DoJ would not argue that a game like blackjack is a sporting event or contest.
In a footnote, the DoJ expressed no opinion about the provision in the Wire Act that allows prosecutors to shut down phone lines where true interstate or foreign gambling is taking place. But, since the DoJ has now concluded that every other section of the Wire Act applies only to races and sports events, it would be truly bizarre to believe that Congress intended only this one section to apply to other forms of gambling.
This means there may be nothing preventing states from making compacts with other states, and even foreign nations, once they have legalized an online game, like poker. If Nevada and the District of Columbia want to take Internet poker players from each other, what federal law would they be violating? And, if they agreed that their residents could bet with licensed poker operators in, say, Antigua and England, while residents of those nations could bet with poker operators in Nevada and Washington, we know they would not be violating the Wire Act, or the anti-lottery laws, or any of the federal prohibitions which require that the gambling be illegal under a state’s laws.
The immediate beneficiaries will be the D.C. Lottery and Nevada-licensed private operators, since those jurisdictions are the furthest ahead. The state lotteries in Illinois, New York and New Hampshire will also initiate or expand their online games. After all, most of the provincial lotteries in Canada are already operating Internet poker.
I believe this will be a major incentive for the other states looking at legalizing intra-state poker and other games. First will probably be Iowa. The State Legislature mandated a report, which has already been submitted, concluding that intra-state poker can be operated safely and will raise money. The Iowa Legislature meets for a short period at the beginning of the year, so it has to act quickly, or it will be passed by other states in 2012.
Those other states are California and New Jersey. California is desperate for any source of revenue, and it has so much legal gambling that the only question is which operators are going to be the big winners. The Democratic-controlled Legislature in New Jersey approved intra-state online gaming, but the bill was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie (R.-NJ). Christie understands his state need the money, so he will probably help put the issue on the ballot in November. Last month, the voters of New Jersey approved sports betting. There is no reason they would not also approve Internet casinos. It will be interesting to see if the main author, state senator Ray Lesniak (D.-Union), will limit online patrons to New Jersey, as his original bill stated, or, if he will accept players from any other state and nation where Internet gambling is legal.
Once these jurisdictions open their online games, even if limited to players who are physically within the state, operators will push for compacts to allows interstate Internet poker among the legal states. And other states, like Florida, will jump on the bandwagon.
What impact will all this have on proposed federal laws? Proponents are trying to spin the DoJ opinion. The Poker Players Alliance stated, “However, this ruling makes it even more important that Congress act now to clarify federal law, and to create a licensing and regulation regime for Internet poker, coupled with clear laws and strong enforcement against other forms of gambling deemed to be illegal.” But the reality is that Congressional advocates, like Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R.-Tx.), have had some of the wind knocked out of their sails. Since states are now clearly free to legalize intra-state online poker, and perhaps even interstate, there is not as much reason to even bother with a federal law. Only the major operators, like Caesars Entertainment, need a federal law, because they don’t want to be competing with politically connected local gaming companies for limited numbers of licenses in 50 states.
Opponents, like Jon Kyl (R.-AZ) and Frank Wolf (R.-VA), might get some leverage for their attempts to expand the Wire Act to cover all forms of gambling. But, as I have pointed out (to the consternation of some who have donated money hoping for a federal Internet gambling law), Congress has passed literally no substantive laws since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2009. There is as little chance of this Congress passing a new Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act as there is its passing a repeal of the UIGEA.
The interesting question is what the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid (D.-NV) and Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, will do. They had sent a letter asking the DoJ for clarification of its position on Internet gambling. They now have their answer, though it may not have been what they had wanted.
My bet is that they, and Congress, will continue to do nothing, while Internet gambling explodes across the nation, made legal under state laws.
Last Tuesday, December 20, 2011, the co-founder of Absolute Poker, Brent Buckley, pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud.
Absolute Poker was one of the three poker sites, along with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, that was shut down on April 15 of this year for operating illegally within the United States, where it is still against the law to play poker online.
Buckley, 31, entered his guilty plea as part of a deal that limited his prison sentence for the crime to 1 – 1 /12 years. He said he knew when he did it that it was not legal to accept credit card payments from U.S. residents for Internet gambling when he entered his plea before Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The bank fraud was perpetrated by disguising the funds and tricking the banks in the U.S. into believing that the money taken in for gambling was actually going to merchants who didn’t really exist selling random merchandise like golf balls and jewelry that didn’t exist either.
Co-founder of Absolute Poker, Buckley was listed in the court paperwork as the Director of Payments for the company. His criminal activity began, Buckley stated, in Autumn 2006, which is apt since October of 2006 is when the U.S. enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making such activities an enforceable crime.
Fortunately for the U.S. players affected by the sudden closure of Absolute Poker, prosecutors said back in May of 2006 that would allow for players to reclaim their unused funds tied up in Absolute Poker’s seized bank assets.
Black Friday left many online poker players’ money stuck online. Two of the sites that stranded the some of the highest number of players out there were Absolute Poker and UB Poker. Since April 15th it has pretty much looked like any players on these sites were pretty much out of luck when it came to getting their money back, until just this week. It was reported that both sites will be liquidated, which not only spells the end of the sites in the online poker world, but also means that players could potentially be getting repaid soon from these sites.
PokerStars knows exactly what they are doing in the cash game poker world, and also the online poker tournament circuit. They are the inventors of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), and have decided to expand their horizons a bit, and invent another “Championship of Online Poker” this past week. The event is called the Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP), and it is set to get underway starting on January 19th of the upcoming year. There will be a total of 50 events running over a ten day span. One of the final events that kick off on Sunday, January 29th is the Main Event, which will feature a buy-in of $700 that will cater to all different levels of players.
The United States Department of Justice (“DoJ”) has given the online gaming community a big, big present, made public two days before Christmas. President Barack Obama’s administration has just declared, perhaps unintentionally, that almost every form of intra-state Internet gambling is legal under federal law, and so may be games played interstate and even internationally.