Tag: pokerstars

Pokerstars 10th Anniversary Extras

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Yesterday we brought you word of two of the latest additions to the PokerStars 10th Anniversary festivities: Ring Game Leaderboards and the $10K High Roller tournament. But PokerStars has also released several other promotions under the heading of 10th Anniversary Extras. These extras are: $10K Class Freerolls, Ten Cent Trivia Tournaments and special deals on certain VIP Store items.

The $10,000 Class Freerolls take place December 10. There are 10 of them in all, one for each year of PokerStars history. Each boasts a $10,000 prize pool and offers a prize package worth nearly $16,000 into the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Entry into these events is determined by the date each player first signed up for their PokerStars account.

From December 1 – 18, players can enter 100 different $0.10 Trivia Tourneys, so-named because they are password protected by the answer to a PokerStars trivia question in the form of a year. Before players can pay the 10 cent buy-in to register for the event, they must first correctly guess the four digit password to that tourneys trivia question. Each $0.10 Trivia Tourney has a $1,000 prize pool making for a total of $100,000 up for grabs in this promotion.

Finally, as of December 1 players visiting the VIP store will notice an influx of special edition items honoring PokerStars’ 10th Anniversary–caps, t-shirts, card protectors and more–all of which will be on sale for an attractive discount. And all of which are expected to sell out fast. Find these items listed under the category “10th Anniversary”.

Pokerstars Adds Three More Events to 10th Anniversary Schedule

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Pokerstars has just added three more promotions to its 10th Anniversary schedule, among them: Ring Game Leaderboards and a $10K High Roller Tournament.

From November 23 to December 2, PokerStars will be keeping leaderboards for its cash ring game tables. There are four leaderboards in all, covering Micro, Low, Medium and High stakes play. Players in Fixed Limit, Pot Limit and No Limit games are tracked on the same leaderboard with each other according to these stakes ranges, as well as players in Hold’em, Stud and Omaha.

PokerStars is giving away $1 million total in this contest, awarding $50,000 daily to the top VPP earners in each 24-period in each stakes range. The Micro stakes leaderboard has a $5,000 daily prize pool with $500 going to first place. The Low stakes leaderboard has a $10,000 daily prize pool with $1,000 going to first place. Medium stakes players will vie for a $15,000 prize pool daily with $1,500 going to first place. And High stakes players will vie for a daily $20,000 prize pool with first place getting $3,000.

Additionally, players in the top 1,000 of each leaderboard will win a seat in a December 11 freeroll with a $500,000 prize pool. Only one freeroll ticket will be awarded per player, regardless of the player’s number of top 1,000 leaderboard finishes.

Meanwhile, Poker Stars tournament players can sign up for a December 18 high rollers tournament with a guaranteed $500K prize pool and a $10,300 buy-in. There will be no satellites or qualifiers into this event: direct buy-ins only. Although observers from the cyber-rails will be perfectly welcome. The action starts at 3:30 pm ET.

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.

Jason Mercier Still Rides Atop ESPN Poker Rankings

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Each month, the massive sports site ESPN, releases their poker rankings, and it is called “The Nuts”.  The list contains ten total players, and is more than just an overall ranking of best players in the world, but actually the ten players who are playing the best right NOW.  This combines poker tournaments, online games, cash games, and any live games as well.  Basically, it takes anything poker related into account when deciding what ten players should be on this list.  While everything is tracked, the ratings push a bit towards live poker action, but honestly it really takes everything you could imagine into consideration.

You can always expect a few well-known names in the poker rankings, but there are also some players who may not be as well-known out there.  For this month’s rankings, there were quite a few big tournaments to include in the action.  The European Poker Tour featured two events, the World Series of Poker Europe was in the month of October, and there was also the World Series of Poker Circuit events to include.

The group of people who decide on these rankings includes ten total members, and they are the likes of Andrew Feldman, Bernard Lee, and Andrew Feldman, who are all ESPN poker contributors.  It also features the popular magazine’s (“Bluff”) editor-in-chief Lance Bradley and editor Jessica Welman, Nahuel Ponce, who is the editor for the poker section of ESPNdeportes.com, and a few other popular poker writers and editors for sites.

Now on to the rankings, the story here is that well known players Jason Mercier and Erik Seidel remained in the top two spots for these rankings.  The number three and four players were the same as well, with Eugene Katchalov and Ben Lamb falling in those spots.  Mercier pulled in three cashes at the WSOPE, and Seidel pulled in two cashes.

Now comes the surprises.  Shawn Buchanan jumped to the fifth spot, and was unranked before.  His jump came from his four cashes at the World Series of Poker Europe, as well as a second place finish.  He’s playing at the top of his game right now, and could be a name to look out for in the future.  The other movements in the top ten featured Jake Cody jumping from number ten to number seven, Phil Hellmuth falling from fifth place to eighth place, and two players being added in the 9th and 10th spots.  These two players added were Chris Moorman, who finished 2nd at the WSOPE Main Event, and Sam Trickett, who had a final table to add to his stats from the WSOPE and the EPT London as well.

The players who fell out of the top ten this week were three well-known players in John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, and Vanessa Selbst.

PokerStars Introduces Red Spade Open Online Poker Event

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PokerStars is now offering another $1 million guaranteed tournament in the form of the Red Spade Open Online Poker Event. Taking place in the form of a $55 buy-in NL Holdem event, the Red Spade Open

The reason the event is called the Red Spade Open is because it’s also a bounty tournament, with bounties of $100 a piece on the seats of certain members of PokerStars pro and online teams demarcated by a red spade symbol beside their name. Cash in from bounties independent of whether you cash in the actual event.

The PokerStars Red Spade Open Online Poker Event takes place on Sunday, November 20 at 3:00 pm ET. This will take the time slot of the weekly PokerStars Bigger $55 Tourney that normally happens at this time slot and will return as of the Sunday of the week following, November 27. The Red Spade Open boasts a $1 million guaranteed prize pool with a guaranteed first prize of at least $200,000.

Besides paying the $55 direct buy-in, there are several other ways to get a seat in the Red Spade Open. You can enter satellites for the event running around the clock for buy-ins as low as $1.10. Or you can purchase your seat with Frequent Player Points from the VIP Store. Cost depends on your status in the PokerStars VIP Club, but you could land yourself a seat in the event for as little as 3,100 FPP.

You can find the Red Spade Open registration button in both the Special and Tourney tabs of your PokerStars software.

Poker Stars Announces 10th Anniversary Celebration

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Even as PokerStars gets ready to deal its 70 billionth hand and award $750,000 to players for the thrill of being present in the lead-up to this milestone, the site announces that it’s also gearing up for its 10th Anniversary celebration.

Poker Stars is turning ten, and that means more bonus prizes for its loyal players. This special 10th anniversary sees Poker Stars putting out no less than 10 new special offers in celebration, revealed incrementally as time goes on. At present, only two of these 10 special offers have been anounced.

The first is a chance to win a trip to the Bahamas for the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. To get a ticket in this special satellite event, make a deposit between November 1 and December 11, 2011 using the promo code: PCA100.

The second 10th anniversary offer revealed is a special $10 million Sunday Million, taking place on December 18, 2011 and promising a $2 million guaranteed first prize.

Stay tuned here as time goes on for updated information on the remaining eight special offers Poker Stars is churning out for its 10th anniversary celebration.

The upcoming 70 billionth hand to be dealt at Poker Stars, expected this November 2011, is also the most number of hands dealt at any poker site. But this isn’t the only world record Poker Stars has snagged in its ten years in operation. The site also boasts the most number of players online at the same time, in 2009 at over 300,000, and the biggest player field for a tournament, also in 2009 at 149,196.

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 Road to 100 Billion Nears 70 Billion Milestone

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The Poker Stars Road to 100 Billion continues, with the site fast approaching its 70 billionth poker hand dealt and $750,000 in cash prizes to help celebrate this milestone.

As in previous milestone celebrations in this long Road to 100 Billion hands, Poker Stars will be awarding cash prizes to the players lucky enough to be participating in every millionth hand between 69.7 billion and 70 billion hands. All players participating in milestone hands win a cash prize, although the winners of the hands stand to win even more. And the winner of 70 billionth hand stands to win $70,000 guaranteed or more.

When triggered, cash prizes are distributed according to how many VPPs, or VIP Player Points, each player has accumulated while sitting in at that table. VPPs are earned according to the amount of rake a player has payed by playing in raked hands at that table.

To increase your chances of being dealt into one of these rewarding milestone hands, Poker Stars recommends multi-tabling, playing longer sessions and to play game types that tend to generate higher, faster action, like Pot Limit Omaha or Limit Hold’em.

Only play at Poker Stars cash ring game tables are eligible for this promotion. Tournament and Sit & Go play does not qualify.

Poker Stars says the 70 billionth hand will be dealt in November 2011. After it’s done with, and $750,000 has been given away, the next Road to 100 Billion milestone hand celebration will come 5 billion hands later, when Poker Stars nears its 75 billionth hand.

New PokerStars Time Tourneys Pick Up the Pace

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PokerStars welcomes a new type of tournament to its roster. They’re calling them Time Tourneys and they’re just what they sound like: online poker tournaments with a time limit. Instead of playing to the last player and awarding prizes according, Time Tourneys play until the set clock runs out. Then, all the players still left in the game split the prize pool according to their proportionate share of the chips.

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospelier, a Team Poker Stars pro, shows great excitement for the new format as he often desires to sit down at a tournament online but can’t commit to it because he doesn’t have enough hours to spare. Apparently, ElkY’s sentiments echo those of many PokerStars players.

Buy-ins for these Time Tourneys starts at only $1 and time limits can be 15 minutes or 180 minutes or somewhere in between. In any case, the time limit is shown in the lobby as part of the tournament stats so players can tell before sitting in whether or not they’ll actually be able to see the entire event through.

To celebrate the launch of this new style of online poker tournament, Poker Stars is giving away free entries into one such event to all players making a deposit of at least $30 into their account using the promo code TIME. The deadline for this is October 28.
This weekend, on Saturday, October 22, 2011, Poker Stars also adds the Saturday Countdown, with a $10K guaranteed prize pool for only a $22 buy-in.