Tag: poker

888 Poker Big Deal Offers Just What It Sounds Like

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Want to win an iPad 2. Make a deposit of at least $10 using the promo code IPAD4ME and you’ll earn a seat in a tournament taking place June 10 at wich an iPad 2 will be given away as grand prize, while second and third places will get an iPod Nano 16 GB. Other prizes from this event include a 10,000 points reward voucher and free entry into the $100K First Depositors Challenge.

Poker is a big deal over at 888 Poker, and they’re proving it by offering players a big deal on all sorts of items, events and opportunities.

If you manage to play at 888 Poker any four days in a given week, you’ll earn yourself a seat in a special $3,000 Big Deal freeroll tournament. Weeks run Monday through Sunday and to qualify for a freeroll ticket players must earn at least 5 status points on each of their qualifying days. The $3K Big Deal freeroll is then on Saturdays at 19:00 GMT.

Cash game players who earn at least 20 status points while playing during the Happy Hours time slot of 11:00 – 15:00 GMT will receive a $5 bonus.

And here’s one just for the ladies. Women who play in 100 hands per day on 888 Poker’s new PokerCam tables will win a $100 shopping coupon. Find PokerCam tables by looking for the webcame icon in the 888Poker lobby. Only real money hands played will count toward the prize. Once earned, the coupon will be emailed to you within 72 hours.

2011 WSOP: Week One

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WSOPThe first week of this year’s World Series of Poker has been both exciting and eventful. So far, 8 different bracelets have been awarded, with 6 of them being awarded to residents of the United States and the other two going to Brits from across the pond.

This year’s WSOP really has been an international affair. While the United States has won a majority of the bracelets, players from all over the world are playing. Players from over a dozen different countries have walked away with cash. Event 8: 1k NLH featured players from an astounding fifty different countries!

Numbers overall are up this year, too. Due to the events on Black Friday, most of the poker world expected the Rio to be a ghost town this June and July. However, throughout this first week, the opposite is the case. According to @WSOPRGUY, overall entrants are up 2.5% and prize pools are up 5.6% thus far. While it is still early, this is a good sign with 6 weeks still to go.

While, on paper, this year’s WSOP appears a success, many sources at the Rio have all commented on the same thing: the atmosphere. Most years, players are excited and hungry for yet another opportunity at poker stardom. This year, there is no excitement in the air. All of the players seem bitter and resentful, and understandably so. All are out here trying to get a big break, to take one last chance at making poker a career. Sadly, there can only be so many winners.

Good luck to everyone. Make a run, go deep, and take it down.

2011 WSOP Event 9 Recap

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WSOPEvent 9: $1,500 2-7 Draw Lowball is both our first draw and lowball tournament of this year’s Series. As could be expected with a Draw game, not many entrants registered, but 275 signing up to play is still a respectable number.

These players came out with the hope of besting a small field in order to obtain the bracelet, considering the $370,000 prize pool is the smallest of this year’s World Series thus far. 28 players cashed this event, all of who at least doubled their initial entry.

The story of the tournament is how incredibly tough the final table was. Resident pros Chris Bjorin, Thomas Fuller, Josh Brikis, ever popular Jason Mercier, and ESPN Poker Commentator Bernard Lee all put themselves in position to win as the tournament field was whittled down. Bjorin and Mercier were both trying to add another bracelet to their mantle, while the rest of them were trying to capture their first elusive. Brikis may have had the most drive, having had his opportunity to play heads-up for a bracelet in 2009, but coming up short.

Bjorin had his shot to add have another bracelet clasped around his wrist, going heads-up against Matt Perrins for the title. Perrins, however, proved too much, and prevailed in this battle between young and old. With this victory, Perrins claims the bracelet and the $102,105 for first prize.

Congratz Matt! Way to overcome a stacked final table.

Who Will Be This Month’s Carbon Poker Tourney King

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Every month Carbon Poker holds its Tourney King promotion, and with June of 2011 just getting underway, it’s anybody’s game once again. Throughout the entire month, Carbon Poker keeps track of the performance of all of its tournament players, in both low and high limit games. Carbon Poker tracks this progress on two different leaderboards – a low-limit and a high-limit leader board – each with its own set of prizes with a combined total value between the two leader boards of more than $20,000.

If you play in a tournament with a buy-in under $20, then that performance is tracked on the low-limit leader board. If you play a tournament with a buy-in $20 or higher, you get on the high-limit leader board. At the end of the month, each leader board features a Grand Final tournament for its top 250 players. Each player will get a starting chipstack reflecting their position on the monthly leader board. Players can even play in enough low and high limit tournaments throughout the month to land them in both Grand Final Tournaments.

First place in the high limit leader board grand final gets $3,000 cash; second place gets $1,800; third gets $1,200; fourth gets $600 and fifth gets $450. Sixth through 15th get $100 cash plus an entry into a special $50K freeroll. Sixteenth through fiftieth get either a $50K entry ticket, a $60 satellite ticket into the $50K freeroll or both.

The low limit leader board grand final gives $1,500 to first, $900 to second, $600 to third, $300 to fourth and $225 to fifth, with a similar arrangment of prizes for sixth through 50th, except with the addition of an $11 satellite ticket into the $60 satellite.

Phil Ivey Fed Up: Sues Full Tilt, Boycotts WSOP

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Just a year and a half ago, Phil Ivey was sitting at the final table of the World Series of Poker, one of the esteemed November Nine. This year, he’ll be sitting out the event entirely, in protest to what he sees as Full Tilt Poker’s unfair treatment of its American-based players. On top of all that, he’s suing his former sponsor, Full Tilt Poker for what could amount to $150 million in damages.

Actually to be precise, Phil Ivey is suing Tiltware, Full Tilt Poker’s provider of software and marketing.

When Black Friday first occured, Phil Ivey came out asking players to have patience with the site as it worked out how to get its American players (now former-players) the money back from their Full Tilt Poker real money accounts. But since that missive, Phil Ivey’s own patience has run out. He now says Full Tilt’s actions have “embarrassed” him.

He says the reason he won’t be playing in the WSOP is because he finds it unfair that many other players who might otherwise be there too cannot be because the money they would have spent on travel and buy-in costs is locked up in Full Tilt Poker’s bank accounts.

Full Tilt Poker, meanwhile, is holding no punches either, calling Phil Ivey’s lawsuit against them “sanctimonious” since he stands to gain $150 million off of his fellow players’ misfortune, suing the site for the full amount that it owes all it’s other American former-players combined.

The reaction to Ivey’s actions in the poker playing community is decidedly mixed.

888 Poker Promotions June 2011 – $10,000 in Freerolls

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Big Deal Promotion

888Poker is giving away over $10,000 in Freeroll Prizes, Lots of Apple Goodies, Cash Prizes and More!

888poker is heating things up this summer with amazing offers to players.

Crazy Coupons: 888poker players receive a special offer every day – they’re giving away tons of cash prizes and merchandise.

Fantastic Freerolls: 888poker has ongoing freeroll tournaments at 888poker. This month alone they’re paying out over $10,000!

Apple Product Giveaways:   888poker’s giving away lots of great Apple merchandise including iPad2’s as part of their Beginners Freeroll prize pool.

Loads of Free Cash: This summer is full of free cash bonuses including reload bonuses, cashback bonuses, match bonuses and TONS more.

2011 WSOP Event 7 Recap

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WSOPWe have our first of the 10k championships in Event 7: $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em. Being one of the championships (that isn’t the Main Event), this event brought out only the really good or really rich. Only 249 players registered to play this event, down a hair from last year’s number of 268. This created a prize pool of almost $2.4 million to be split among the top 27 finishers.

As could be expected, most those who finished in the money have their share of past WSOP success, including Nenad Medic, Jen Tilly, Mike ‘the Mouth’ Matusow, and Chris Moorman. Simply making the cash doubled your buyin, with a min-cash being right at $20k.

One player who just missed out on turning a profit from this tournament was Daniel Negreanu. Having once called PLHE one of the hardest games in poker, Negreanu showed just how hard it is by busting out on the bubble in 28th place.

The final table was not as jam-packed with big names as one may have expected for a 10k Championship, with Eric Cloutier and Sam Stein about the most well-known there. However, that in no way reflects the quality of play of the table, as the battle for the bracelet was hotly contested. Prevailing in this battle was Amir Lehavot. Along with the bracelet, Lehavot took home $573,456 in prize money. Not a bad return on a $10k investment, eh?

2011 WSOP Event 6 Recap

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WSOPEvent 6 of this year’s World Series of Poker, $1,500 Limit Hold’em, is our first LHE event this year. Limit events rarely bring out large fields, but with it still being a Hold’em tournament, 675 players registered to play.

A very interesting story developed in what would have otherwise been an event that flew under the radar. On the final day of play, defending champion Matt Matros was still in the field when the final 15 players came back. If winning a WSOP bracelet is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most people, what would winning the same one twice in a row be?

Sadly, though, he was not able to successfully do so. Exiting in 11th place, Matros, a published poker author, went to the cage, picked up his $12k, and went to find another game to play. There’s always next year, right?

With a prize pool set at just above $900,000, almost $3,000 went to anyone who finished among the final 63. With it being a limit event, many of those who turned a profit are unknown to the mainstream poker media. However, many popular pros still represented, including Dutch Boyd, JJ Liu, and a man with a shot at winning his 3rd WSOP bracelet, Scott Clements.

None of them had enough, however, to overtake eventual champion Harrison Wilder. Taking home the bracelet and $205,065, Wilder made sure not to be one of those unknown names any longer. With many limit events still on the schedule this year, I would not be surprised to be writing about him again over the next couple months.

2011 WSOP Event 5 Recap

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WSOPThis year’s first event without community cards being dealt, Event #5: $1,500 Seven Card Stud, brought a slew of top name pros. Non-Hold’em events traditionally have fewer players than the NLHE games, a point that held true in this event, with only 357 runners registering to play.

Your recreational players don’t tend to play stud events, so it is no surprise that those who cashed this event are mostly household names. Scott Seiver, Chad Brown, Shaun Deeb, and Ylon Schwartz all cashed, only to fall short of final table appearances. They all made at least the min-cash of $2,600 for finishing among the top forty finishers.

The final table also featured many players that have been featured on ESPN in the past, including Ali Eslami, November Niner Eric Buchman, and the eventual champion, who has also been on quite a tear the past year, Eugene Katchalov.

Katchalov went into heads-up play against Alessio Isaia at a 5-1 chip disadvantage. Isaia, who was at his third WSOP final table (with both of the others also coming from Stud events), looked as though he would simply waltz to his first WSOP bracelet.

However, Katchalov had his own agenda, wanting a new piece of jewelry. An early double up helped tremendously, and, after that, the PCA High-Roller champion kept marching until he had every chip in the tournament stacked in front of him. Winning the event earned him $122,909, a mere pittance when compared to the $1.5 million he won earlier this year.

Congratulations Eugene on getting your name off the infamous “best players without a bracelet” list!

2011 WSOP Event 4 Recap

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WSOPThe first No Limit Hold’em tournament at this year’s WSOP that Joe Everyman could enter, costing just $5,000 to enter, brought 865 players to the Rio for their chance at winning a WSOP event. Creating a $4 million prize pool to be distributed among 81 players, these $5k NLHE events are well-known to be among the hardest to beat in Vegas. Not as cheap as the $1,000 “Stimulus Surplus” events, nor as prestigious as the $10k championships, the number of players willing to play these events range within those who look at poker as more of a profession than a hobby.

As could be expected, the field was loaded with well-known pros. Scott Montgomery, Kevin Saul, John Dolan, and Carlos Mortensen, along with many others, all finished in the money, making at least $10k for their efforts. However, the story of this event is not about these men in the field. No, when we talk about Event 4 of this year’s WSOP, we will be talking about one person: Maria Ho.

On day 2, Maria was the last woman remaining in the tournament (something she has done before at the World Series, with her 38th place finish at 2007’s Main Event). She carried this all the way to heads-up play against Allen Bari, who has an impressive poker resume of his own. If she wanted to win, she had a steep mountain to climb, for Bari held almost 80% of the chips in play when play between the two began.

She came out firing, with an early double up to close the distance, leaving Bari with just a 2-1 chip advantage. Alas, it just wasn’t enough, and Bari dispatched of Ho shortly thereafter, winning the bracelet, $874,116, and the pride of knowing he topped one of the best fields of the World Series.