Tag: pokerstars

PokerStars to Meet With Players

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PokerstarsOnline poker site PokerStars has officially decided to schedule meetings with poker players at their headquarters in the Isle of Man.  There will be different representatives from poker forums who will be coming forward to meet with the higher-ups who work at the poker site, and the meetings are set to run from April 11th to April 13th.  The general idea behind the meeting is to talk with players about why PokerStars does what it does, and also to get feedback from their players to help continually grow in the right direction throughout 2012.  The information that will be talked about is said to be “confidential” making these meetings even more interesting.

This all began from a forum moderator with the Two Plus Two forum named Mike Haven, who was contacted by the site.  The representative from Stars asked Haven to be a part of organizing the meetings and the selection process for who would be attending the meetings.  Haven stated that the two reasons why PokerStars wants to meet with players are to simply get feedback and hear from players, and also to help players better understand how PokerStars runs and what makes them decide to do specific things.  A lot of this is stemming from the sit-out that occurred on the first of the year, and Stars promised that they would meet with players to talk about the changes.

The sit-out that we are talking about occurred after PokerStars decided to change both their rake structure and also their VIP program as well.  Players were infuriated by this, as it was going to lose them quite a bit of money, and as one Supernova Elite level player said, he would lose “about $41,200 in rewards”.  The general idea behind the changes are that instead of every player involved in a hand getting VPPs split up, that players would get more VPPs based on how much money that they put into the pot.

It will definitely be interesting to see what type of response that the players who are selected come back from the PokerStars headquarters with.  We’ll keep you updated as more news is released from both sides here.

Pokerstars Now Holding 100k Depositor Freerolls

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For a limited time only, Poker Stars will be holding $100,000 worth of freeroll tournaments with the only entry requirement being a deposit into a new or existing Pokerstars real money player account. Not just that, but you’ll be entered to play in 31 of these daily freeroll tournaments, and when that 31 days runs out, you can make a deposit for the next batch of days. The 100K Depositor Freeroll series runs through May 20, which means all deposits made before that time will be eligible for at least part of this bonus reward, with April 19 designated as the last day to receive the maximum 31 freeroll entries.

Just remember to use the appropriate bonus code when you make your deposit in order to be credited your 31 freeroll entries. If you’re a new player making your first deposit into your PokerStars account, then use the code STARS600. That will ensure that you also receive the 100% match bonus Poker Stars gives on first deposits up to $600, in addition to your 100k Depositor Freeroll tickets. If you’ve already made deposits into your PokerStars account in the past, then use the code 100K when you make this deposit in order to qualify for the freeroll entries.

Each daily 100k Depositor Freeroll will have a $1,000 guaranteed prize pool. Although they are free to enter, they will all also have rebuys: 3 allowed per player total, all within the first hour of play, each rebuy costing 30 cents.

Pokerstars Announces New MicroMillions Series

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Pokerstars has announced a new series dedicated to micro-stakes poker players like Team Pokerstars Pro Lex Veldhuis who himself started out in poker playing the penny and micro-stakes games. The new series is named the PokerStars MicroMillions and starts March 15 and runs for 11 days through March 25 when a $1 million guaranteed main event will take place for a meager $22 buy in. The first place winner of the inaugural PokerStars MicroMillions main event will win $150k guaranteed.

Also up for grabs is the rest of the event’s $5 million guaranteed prize pool, as well as a prize package to the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure next January to the top Player of the Series. PokerStars will keep a Player of the Series Leader Board throughout the series and pay out the top 100 finishers.

The 100 events constituting this inauguaral running of the PokerStars MicroMillions covers the gamut in poker variants and structures. The series will not just feature No Limit Hold’em either. There will also be events in Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha High/Low, Holdem/Omaha Mix, 8 Game Mix, Draw Poker, Stud Poker, Triple Stud, HORSE, and Badugi, as well as tournaments with rebuys, add-ons, turbo,4-max, 6-max, double chance, triple turbo, knockout, shootout and high-ante structures. Buy-ins start as small as $0.11 and never go above the main event’s $22 buy-in. There are nearly 10 events scheduled each day of this $5 million series with start times at all hours of the day to suit players living in all corners of the globe.

Poker Stars Celebrates 6th Anniversary of Sunday Million with $6 Million Guaranteed

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Poker Stars is celebrating the coming 6th anniversary of its revered Sunday Million tournament with a special installment of the event this Sunday, March 11, 2012 featuring a $6 million guaranteed prize pool and a $1 million guaranteed first prize.

The 6th Anniversary Sunday Million starts at 2:30 pm ET this Sunday. The buy-in is $215 if you just want to secure your seat directly. But you could opt to play in the satellite series running now at PokerStars and perhaps win yourself a $215 seat in the big anniversary tournament. There are literally hundreds of these satellites running now at PokerStars, including a special event at which 1,000 seats in the 6th Anniversary of the PokerStars Sunday Million will be awarded. That one takes place just before the action starts in the $6 million Sunday Million, while feeder satellites are running now for buy-ins as low as $1.

Many of the Team PokerStars pros can be expected to turn out for this event, including very likely, Liv Boeree, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Johnny Lodden, Jason Mercier and Lex Veldhuis.

Since the Sunday Million’s inception in 2006 when the first ever winner was the USA’s own aaaaaaaa (before the USA locked its players out of such excitement), Poker Stars has held 278 installments of the event, with a total playing field of 2,116,513 vying for a total prize pool given away of $444,149,600.

You can find the registration buttons for both the $6 million Sunday Million 6th Anniversary and the satellites into that event by going to Tourneys in your PokerStars software and then clicking Special.

PokerStars Ups Their Game for 6th Anniversary of Sunday Million

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PokerstarsPokerStars is one of the best online poker sites for their many promotions and guaranteed tournaments as well.  Some of the biggest professional poker players who focus on tournaments play on Stars, mainly for their excellent guarantees and huge tournaments almost every day of the week.  The biggest day is of course Sunday though, which is widely considered as the most popular day for online poker as well.  This March though, they have decided to run another special tournament which will be the 6th Anniversary Sunday Million Tournament, and it’s an event that should draw an incredible sized field as well.

The tournament is set to run on March 11, 2012 and starts at the standard time of the Sunday Million, which is 2:30pm EST.  The thing that is most intriguing to the players on this massive online poker site, is that they have decided to raise the guarantee on the event for the players.  Instead of a $1 million guaranteed prize pool, PokerStars has upped it to $6 million for the anniversary, and the buy-in will still be the same.  The Sunday Million costs $215 to play in for players.

Last year, PokerStars ran a similar promotion for the 5th Anniversary Sunday Million, but this was indeed before Black Friday hit the United States market.  The prize pool last year was $10 million guaranteed, but the field was so massive that the total buy-in’s actually went past that guarantee, and the total prize pool ended up being $11,825,600 when all was said and done.  Last year’s total number of entrants were 59,128, and the prize pool ended up being one of the largest in history as well.  We don’t assume that this year’s event will be nearly as big, since Black Friday put a hit on everyone in the online poker world, but it’s definitely interesting to see what type of results the site will get in terms of total entrants.

A bit of background on the Sunday Million, as it was first ran back in 2006 on March 6th, and the player who took down the event was Daryl Jace.  Interestingly, Jace’s online poker name at that point was “aaaaaaaa”, and his win was the first in a Sunday Million that has featured 278 total events.

Pokerstars Up Guarantees

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Poker Stars has upped the guarantees on its current stock of guaranteed tournaments.

Among the highlights in PokerStars’ new guaranteed tournament schedule are the Sunday Majors, with the $$75k Sunday Kickoff now paying out $100k, the $200k Sunday Rebuy now paying out $225k, the $200k Sunday Storm now paying out $300k, the $250k Sunday 500 now paying out $300k as well, the $125k Sunday Second Chance now paying out $175k, the $60k Sunday 6-Max now paying out $100k and the $40k Sunday Supersonic now paying out $125k.

Next is the Saturday Line-up, with the $30k Saturday 6-Max now paying out $35k, the $30k Saturday Micro now paying out $35k as well, the $40k Saturday Eliminator now paying out $75k, the $50k Saturday Splash now paying out $100k, the $10k Saturday Countdown now paying out $15k and the $50k Saturday Speedway now paying out $65k.

Then are the Daily Bigs, with the $5k Big $3.30 now paying out $6k, the $10k Big $16.50 now paying out $$15k, the $15k Big $33 and Big $5.50 now each paying out $20k, the $16k Big $8.80 now paying out $25k, the $25k Big $22 now paying out $50k, the $50k Big $109 now paying out $100k, the $50k Big $11 now paying out $75k, the $100k Big $55 now paying out $125k, the $50k Big $162 now paying out $75k, the $8k Big $4.40 now paying out $15k, and the $7.5k Big $27.50 now paying out $15k.

These are just some of the highlights. Visit your Pokerstars software to see the increases in the guaranteed prize pools in some of your favorite tournaments.

Pokerstars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker 2012 Coming Up

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Coming February 23rd and running through March 4th, Pokerstars is holding the 2012 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker, or WBCOOP for short, which awards prizes in the form of cash, Spring Championship of Online Poker tickets, or SCOOP for short, and live event tickets, to name a few, all by simply blogging about poker.

Here’s how it works: Simply publish a post on your own blog explaining what you’d do with $5k if you were named the WBCOOP 2012 Best Blogger. Posts must be approximately 500 words. After it’s live on your blog, submit the permalink to Poker Stars. There’s also a checkbox to tick if you want your post shared with co-sponsor Poker News.

The next step is to share the link for each post with all your friends. Every blogger’s entry earns them 10 tickets into exclusive WBCOOP online poker tournament events. There are 31 events in all in the 2012 WBCOOP, with 3 events per day, running at 10:00, 14:00 and 18:00, except on the last day, March 4, when the final, Main Event is scheduled. The WBCOOP 2012 schedule includes events in No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Stud and Triple Stud, 8-Game Mix, HORSE and more. There is an equally wide variety in tournament structure as well, including 6-max, turbo, big ante, hi/lo, deepstack, heads-up and more.

Poker Stars will also be keeping a leader board for WBCOOP with big cash prizes up for grabs for the highest finishers. There are also large cash rewards for the series’ Best Live Tweeter and Best Blogger overall.

Poker Stars Celebrates 75th Billionth Hand

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For about a year now, Pokerstars has been on the Road to 100 Billion hands dealt, celebrating the imminent approach of that major milestone with several smaller, incremental milestones, each with a $1 million prize pool up for grabs.

For every millionth hand dealt at the Poker Stars cash game tables between 74.7 billionth and the mega milestone 75 billionth hands, the site will award cash prizes of up to thousands of dollars to the players in that hand. The winner of each milestone hand will win the largest portion of the milestone’s prize pool while the rest is split evenly amongst the other players in the hand.

Of course the 75 billionth mega milestone hand offers the largest prize, with that hand’s winner getting $20,000 minimum.

Poker Stars even offers its players a number of tips on how to increase their chances of being in one (or more) of the milestone hands and how to maximize the prize amount you receive at those times. The best way to increase your shot at being dealt into a milestone hand is to multi-table, that is to play on more than one table at a time.

One way to increase your prize amount is to make the sessions you play longer. This is because the more you play, the more VPP (or VIP Player Points) you earn. The prize amounts you receive for participating in milestone hands is based on this number. Therefore, earning as many VPPs as you can before you hit a milestone hand means your prizes are bigger. Another way to do this is playing in higher action games like Limit Texas Holdem and PL Omaha.

European Poker Award 2011 Winners Include Team PokerStars Pros

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The winners of the 2011 European Poker Awards have been announced and they include two big names in poker, and members of PokerStars team of poker pros, Pius Heinz and Bertrand Grospellier (aka ElkY). They also included fellow poker celebrity Sam Trickett.

The awards ceremony was held in Paris, France on Wednesday, January 25, 2012. The award for Poker Personality of 2011 went to France’s own ElkY. This award is for more than just success in poker (he earned $2,296,620 over the year, including a WSOP bracelet); it’s for improving the experience of European poker with such acts as publishing “The Raiser’s Edge” Grospellier’s first book, and participating with buddy Lex Veldhius in a kick-boxing match.

Pius Heinz was the favorite for Best Tournament Performance for being the first German player ever to win the WSOP Main Event (claiming $8,715,638 for his accomplishment), and sure enough he took home the predicted award.

In other awards, Rookie of the Year was Andrey Pateychuk who, after cashing in his first live tournament in 2010, went on to earn $2,085,014 in 2011. Online Player of the Year was Ilari Sahamies after best the PokerStars Cash Game leaderboard after winning $2,183,832 over the year.

Player of the Year for 2011 went to the U.K.’s Sam Trickett, who earned $4,598,038 over the year, including first place in the Aussie Millions $100k Championship and second place in the Aussie Millions $250k Super High Roller event as well as winning the Big Game in Macau and the Partouche Poker Tour €8,500 Main Event.

James Akenhead Wins Pokerstars Sunday Million

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Final tabler from the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, UK poker pro James Akenhead, has just shown once again that his success in poker is not a fluke, as he has just taken down the Pokerstars Sunday Million.

It hasn’t been a winning year for Akenhead, with a series of tough losses after going deep in big money tourneys. But persistence paid off last Sunday, January 22, 2011.

For this particular win, playing under the username Asprin1, Akenhead started out the 9-seated final table with the third highest chip stack, holding 9,600,000.

One of the most exciting hands of this tournament saw Akenhead accidentally raising a bet to over 8 million when he meant to raise it to just over 800,000. His opponent, holding pocket Queens, called. Fortunately for Akenhead, the flop paired his King which was enough to hold out for him on the turn and river.

To quote Akenhead’s Facebook status after the event was over: “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!”

28-year-old UK native James Akenhead claimed $213,750 for his win, adding it to his $2,994,779 career winnings in live poker since 2005. That includes a $1,263,602 cash at the 2009 WSOP for his ninth place finish.

Runner-up pnp23 took the $157,277.25 second prize. Ansgar2000 rounded out the top third, claiming $114,000.

The PokerStars Sunday Million takes place every Sunday for a $215 buy-in and promises a guaranteed $1 million prize pool. Throughout the week leading up to each Sunday Million, Poker Stars holds daily satellite tournaments awarding free seats in the event.