Poker News

Blackjack Tournaments at Rushmore Casino

I don’t play online casino games all that often due to the house edge that takes away all of the chances of making any money when playing games like online slots, video poker and blackjack. Even though the house edge when playing blackjack is minimal it’s still there and it will prevent you from making any money from it in the long run.

But when I logged on to my account at Rushmore Casino today I was pleasantly surprised to see that they are now offering live blackjack tournaments, something that I have been looking for but never found before. The blackjack tournaments at RushmoreOnline.com are hosted by Rushmore, that’s all. They don’t have any house edge as you are not playing against the dealer but rather against other players in the tournament. These tournaments are comparable to Sit and Go tournaments if you would put it in poker terms. You can play heads-up, single table tournaments or multi table tournaments depending on what you would prefer.

When you enter a blackjack tournament at Rushmore you will be participating in 10 hands of play, the player with the most money after those 10 hands is the winner and will take down the price pool of the tournament.

If you haven’t tried these tournaments yet then we really suggest you head over to the Rushmore Casino to try them out as they are very entertaining and profitable if you apply correct blackjack strategy.

PokerBonusSource.com Offers More Languages

PokerBonusSource.com have been offering information of poker bonuses and poker room promotions since early 2004. Since then the website has grown a lot and a number of new languages has been added to cater for the ever growing poker community. The latest addition at is the PokerBonusSource.com Latvia version and PokerBonusSource.com Czech Republic version that was added to the site just last week.

When adding new languages the people at PokerBonusSource are looking at what poker rooms are hot on that specific market and posts reviews on those poker rooms with detailed information about their poker bonuses and other cool promotions. In some cases they also offer special bonuses and freerolls that are only available to players signing up through their website.

The best poker room for players looking to players looking to play online poker in their own language is without a doubt PokerStars.com where you can set to software to a lot of languages that are not available at other poker rooms. At PokerBonusSource you can find a PokerStars Czech review and a PokerStars Latvian review that was just added together with the other language pages. In these reviews you will be able to read about all the promotions available at Pokerstars in your own language.

In the coming weeks we have been promised that another couple of languages are going to be added to the website, mainly Estonian and Lithuanian. Hopefully they will be up and running on the site sooner rather than later.

We will keep you updated on the progress.

Online Poker Tells

Even though you are not able to see the players you are up against in real live when playing online there are still a couple of tells that you will be able to use to your advantage when you play online poker.

1. Fast Bet
2. Fast Check
3. Betting Patterns
4. Wait and Bet
5. Telling Their Hand

Fast Bet
You can almost always be certain that when someone is betting fast they are trying to scare you away from the pot. When you want someone to fold you should bet fast since it looks scary to your opponents as it makes you look strong.

Fast Check
This is a really good tell in online poker. When a player has a weak hand he will sometimes click the check/fold button which means that he will instantly check if it is checked to him. When you see a player instantly checking like this you can be fairly sure that he is not sitting on a huge hand. If you bet here you will be able to take down the pot 9 times out of 10. But be aware that some players use this tactic to fool you and make them look weak when in fact they are holding the nuts. So you need to get the feel for the player before you try to make a move against him.

Betting Patterns
It is very important to pay attention to the betting patterns of your opponents at the table as this will give you a good idea of what kind of hand they have. Some players are raising their aces a lot harder pre flop than is they would be holding a hand like AK as they don’t want too many callers. It is always a good idea to notice these betting patterns and to take notes of how the different players are betting with different hands.

Wait and Bet
When you see a player at the table who is waiting longer than normal to make his bet is safe to make the assumption that he is holding a decent hand and trying to decide how much to bet into the pot. If you pay attention to the time each of the players at the table take to bet in their hands you will get a good idea of when they are holding a good hand and when they are not. If the player takes a lot of time to think and then just checks then he is most likely just out to scary you and make you think that he holds a big hand.

Telling Their Hand
A lot of players will tell you their hand in the chat after the hand is over and they have mucked a winning or losing hand. When they do this they are lying 99% of the time. Just think about it, why would they first muck their hand and then 5 seconds later tell you their hand. The only reason they are doing this is to play with your head and make you think that you made the wrong decision, don’t let them get to you and don’t fall for this trick.

Adjusting to a loose game

Adjusting to a loose game is a whole lot easier than adjusting to a tight game. Since most of the loose players at the table are poor and losing players all you need to do when finding yourself at a really loose table is to sit and wait for premium hands and try to trap your aggressive opponent.

Another good thing to keep in mind is to only play when you are in position against the aggressive players to make your edge even bigger since you don’t have to worry about him three betting you.

When playing against a loose and aggressive player you can afford to be the passive player and just wait for the big hands to bring down some big pots, it is important that you narrow down the hand selection a lot when you are up against this type of players.

The best way to try this strategy out is to get a no deposit poker bonus at Full Tilt Poker and try it out for free without risking any of your own money.

Adjusting to a tight game

In order to become a successful poker player you need to be a master of the ability to change gears. In this article we will go over some of the strategies that can be applied to a tight game.

Many poker players make the assumption that they will not be able to make any money playing at tight tables, they are wrong. A good poker player will be able to adjust his game to make him a winning player even at tight tables.

A tight player will always be making the mistake of folding way to many hands, this is something that you can take advantage of and take down a lot of small pots. As they will be folding a lot more than a loose player you can raise with a wider range of hands then normal and in this way you will be taking down a lot of small pots. Eventually the tight player will pick up a good hand and call your bets but by then you will be playing with the money that you have been winning in all the small pots and not having to risk the money you initially brought to the table.

Try out this strategy without risking any of your own money by getting a no deposit poker bonus to your favourite online poker room.

Win Big with a $500 Bonus at SunPoker

Right now you have the chance to win big at Sun Poker with their special Sun Poker coupon code that was just released to the public. When entering the coupon code  PBSBONUS during the signup process you will get a free $500 bonus that is instantly credited to your pending bonus account. On top of this bonus you will also get access to all of the cool freerolls that are offered to new players at Sun Poker.

You will also be able to play a lot of qualifiers for this years World Series of Poker at Sun Poker. These tournaments are starting at as little as $1 so if you are really good you might be able to pull a Chris Moneymaker and win the WSOP Main event after winning your spot in a satellite. You never know until you try!

Winner of the $25K Heads-Up Championship at FullTilt Crowned

“theASHMAN103” is the winner of the $25K Heads Up Championship that is held once a year at Full Tilt Poker. In the final he managed the beat David Benefield and cashed in the first prize of $551.250. There were a total of 63 players participating in this tournament from the start and a lot of these were really big names in the poker world.

The results of the 2009 $25K Heads-up Championship at Full Tilt Poker

1. theASHMAN103 $551.250
2. David Benefield $315.000
3. WinnerFish $165.375
4. Yogiblair $165.375
5. Past $94.500
6. Kadabra $94.500
7. IvanLendL $94.500
8. Vaga_Lion $94.500

PKR.com broadcasting live from the 2009 WSOP

The 3D online poker room PKR.com have just announced in a press release that they have made a deal with Bluff Media which entitles them to broadcast a live stream of the 2009 WSOP on their website. This deal was made with Bluff Media who has an exclusive deal with Harrah’s Entertainment.

At the same time a new 3D online casino has opened up their doors to the public after getting through their beta testing stage. At the Buzzluck Casino it is not only about gambling, it is also about entertaining the players.

Phil Hellmuth’s New Book: Deal Me In

Phil Hellmuth’s own book company are now releasing a book called “Deal Me In” which tells the story about 20 poker stars and their road to sucess. Amongst the people participating by telling their life story we find players like; Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey and Howard Lederer.

This book tells the story of how Phil Ivey went from a telphone marketer to becoming one of the best poker players in the world. Today he has generated over $10 Million in profit from poker tournaments alone, which means that you can surely add a couple of Millions to that figure if you include cash game winnings.

The book doesnt really follow any storyline and is just bringing up stories about 20 poker professionals and their road to fame and fortune.

The players participating in this book are; Peter Estgate, Allen Cunningham, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Carlos Mortensen, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Tom Dwan, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot, Chad Brown, Annette Obrestad, Erik Seidel, Layne Flack, Jennifer Harman and Chau Giang.

Vanessa Rousso wins the EPT High Roller Championship

After a really long heads-up marathon match Vanessa Rousso managed to win over the second place finisher Randy Dorfman in the EPT High Roller Championship. Vanessa, who is a Team PokerStars member and a GoDaddy Girl is sure take down some nice tournaments this year.

In the final hand Vanessa made a straight on the turn holding 67 and when the river gave Dorfan two pair the all-in situation was hard to avoid and Vanessa Rousso took down the tournament and the €570 000 first price.

When the tournament was down to three players there was a deal made on the final table which left the second and third place finisher with €420 000 and the winner would get an additional €150K.

Here are the final results from the 2009 EPT High Roller Championship:

1. Vanessa Rousso - €570.000
2. Randy Dorfman - €420.000
3. Tony G - €420.000
4. Florian Langmann - €188.000
5. David Eldar – 138.000
6. William Thorson - €99.000
7. Andrew Feldman - €79.000
8. David Steicke - €60.000

PokerStars Lifts Ban on Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo

Once banned from PokerStars, Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, is apparently back at the popular online poker room. A few years back, Bonomo was first exposed at PartyPoker for registering as many as six online poker accounts and registering all six names in the same tournament. Shortly after, PokerStars revealed that he had done the same on their site. Consequently, both big-name online poker sites restricted him from playing at their online poker rooms.

But Bonomo’s dishonesty was not all that it was cracked up to be. He’s actually a great poker player, both online and off, and has since worked hard to smooth over his bad reputation and show the poker community that he’s not such a bad guy. In the past three years, Bonomo has steered clear of any misconduct and focused on overcoming the stigma that was attached to his name and re-establishing his career in professional poker.

After his exclusion at PartyPoker and PokerStars, Bonomo turned his attention to live tournaments, many of which he has gone on to win or cash big. In 2007 he placed 4th at the WSOP $2,000 No-Limit event and 2nd in the $3,000 HORSE WSOP Circuit. He went on to place 2nd in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 Mixed Hold ‘em event and has been around the block, placing at other big events such as the WPT Doyle Brunson North American Poker Classic in 2007. Bodog Poker saw the potential in Bonomo as a poker player and eventually signed him as a Team Bodog Pro.

What makes it clear that Bonomo is that he started his poker career at the mere age of 16 after emerging from the strategy game, “Magic: The Gathering,” like many other professional poker players (e.g. David Williams). He placed 4th in the 2005 French Open at only 19 years of age and had made hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time he reached 21. By 23, he was poker millionaire. The irresponsible kid that once tried to cheat the online poker system has grown into a diligent and respectable professional, so much so that PokerStars saw fit to lift the ban on his online poker presence.

Online Poker Continues to Grow in 2009

Even though the current recession is affecting the land based casinos it seems that the online poker rooms are not being affected, at least not in a negative way. According to the numbers at PokerScout.com online poker is continuing to grow by about 30% per year. Not all of the poker rooms on the internet are doing great though, there are a couple of big rooms that are starting to see their numbers drop but this is most probably not due to the recession.

The biggest poker room is still PokerStars who recently celebrated getting their 20th Millionth customer and they are growing more and more for each day. They are now also allowed to accept players coming from Italy on their Italian site PokerStars.it.

FullTilt Poker is the second largest poker room and they are also growing on a daily basis just like the Cake Poker Network and the Entraction Network. Entraction has grown a lot lately and this is mainly due to the fact that the poker rooms that were banned from the iPoker Network, NoIQPoker.com and CarlosPoker.com moved over to Entraction. Cake Poker is growing a lot since they have taken over all the poker rooms from the old Gold Chip Network that is no longer around. But it has to be said that Cake Poker are probably also growing due to the fact that they are offering some really innovative promotions with their Gold Card system at Cake Poker and Gold Chip Rewards.

On the losing side of things we find poker rooms like Bodog Poker, Everest Poker and Betfair Poker. Bodog Poker is the biggest loser on the list and this is probably due to the fact that they have been having a lot of problems paying their US customers as they have had their bank accounts in the US confiscated several times. It also didn’t help that they lost a law suit involving their domain name and had to change it from Bodog.com to NewBodog.com and finally to BodogLife.com which is their current name.

If you take a look at the list of winners from the last week FullTilt Poker is the biggest winner when it comes to player traffic. Last Sunday they broke their own record when they hit 18.565 players sitting at the cash game tables at the same time. Even the IPN Network (Boss Media) had a good week and managed to break their old record when they had 4509 players playing at the same time at the cash game tables.

It will be interesting to see if the recession will ever get to online poker or if it will keep on going strong. It has been a couple of years now that people have been saying that the interest for online poker will die out but it has yet to happen.

Trump Gets Rid of Automatic Poker Tables

The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City are one of the casinos who have tried to install automatic poker tables for instead of running the traditional tables with a live dealer. The experiment was considered to be a failure so they are now throwing out these electronic tables and getting the old classic table back.

The new tables that were installed were completely automatic and no dealer was needed. A large screen in the middle of the table is showing the community cards and each of the players on the table have their own little screen where they can see their cards and check, raise or fold their hand.

The advantage with this new automatic poker system was that it would eliminate most kinds of cheating and also avoid dealer mistakes. The fact that it does not need a dealer is obviously a huge plus for the casino as they will save a lot of money from not having to pay any wages to people running the tables. On the downside though is the fact that you don’t really get the same feel for the game as you do when you have real cards and a live dealer. With the new automatic poker tables people just tend to sit down and stare at their screen and the social part of the game is nowhere to be found. Then there is obviously the problem with people thinking that the game is rigged since it is a machine dealing the cards instead of a person. There are a lot of people who think online poker is rigged and these people would most likely feel the same way about these automatic tables.

The Trump Plaza had 14 of these automatic poker tables and their hopes when they acquired the tables were that it would attract the younger audience. The younger audience was not so impressed with the new system though and the older clientele at the casinos were not happy with this change at all. A real dealer was considered to be a lot more personal and added the important social factor to the games creating a better atmosphere.

Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov Signs with Team PokerStars

PokerStars.com has signed a long term contract with Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov which means that they are now officially a part of Team PokerStars. These are the two players who battled heads-up for the 2008 WSOP title.

Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov where amongst the final nine players that had to come back to play the televised final table of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event. When it was time for the final table these two players were guaranteed to walk away with at least $990.670. These two players had stacks around $20 Million and were not going to be happy walking away with only $990K.

After a couple of hours of play there only two remaining players were Eastgate from Denmark and Demidov from Russia. After a long heads up battle it was Peter Eastgate who ended up winning the title and the first prize of over $9 Million. Demidov was awarded with $5.8 Million for his second place finish.

After this event took place we have seen a lot more of these players at the different poker tours and Peter Eastgate is also playing in the TV Show High Stakes Poker.

During all of the events these two players have been seen wearing the PokerStars.com logo but until now they have not had a real sponsorship contract.

Last week it was announced that PokerStars had negotiated a deal with the two players and that they were now a part of the prestigious Team PokerStars.

Andrew Feldman Joins Team FullTilt

Andrew Feldman, a 21 year old paperboy from Watford has just signed a contract to join Team FullTilt Poker. Feldman have won over $4 million playing online poker at Full Tilt Poker.

About two weeks ago the British newspaper “The Sun” ran an article about Andrew Feldman who used to work as a paperboy in Watford but quit his job to pursue his carrier as a professional poker player. During the last 3 years he has gone from sitting at his parents house playing $1 Sit and Go’s to buying a flat worth $500.000 and a brand new sports car.

On top of all this he has now become a member of the ever growing Team FullTilt where he will team up with the likes of Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon and many others. With these other pro’s he will travel the world and play in the biggest poker tournaments wearing FullTilt Poker clothing.

PartyGaming Pays $105 Million Fine

PartyGaming has agreed to pay a $105 Million fine to the Department of Justice (DoJ) in order to avoid being prosecuted for having offered online gambling to American citizens. The fine is for the period before the UIGEA was put in place when PartyGaming were still active on the US gambling market.

When the UIGEA was passed PartyGaming decided to leave the US market and since then all of the games that PartyGaming are offering have been closed to US players. They are going to keep blocking the US and will not accept any customers from that part of the world, but after paying this fine they say that they are can now move on with their plans of buying other gambling portals.

The deal that was made with the DoJ is only valid for the company and not its founders. Anurag Dikshit is one of the four persons who founded PartyGaming and he has agreed to pay a $300 Million fine to the doJ. The other three founders are Russ De Leon, Ruth Parasol and Vikrant Bhargava has yet to agree to pay any fines so they are still risking prosecution in the USA.

Yesterday PartyGaming released their quarterly report that shows that the profit is down by 2% compared to the same quarter in 2008.

When the stock market closed yesterday the PartyGaming stock was up by 15.41% on the London Stock Exchange.

New Version of the PKR Poker Software Released

PKR.com is the most well known poker room that is offering a 3-D software. Last weekend they made an update to their software and they have now added Omaha Hi/Lo and a time bank amongst other things.

PKR Poker is offering a different kind of software to the one that the conventional online poker rooms have. When playing at PKR Poker you will be using a poker software that is in 100% 3-D and where every player at the table can be custom designed and make chip tricks and express emotions at the tables.

The PKR Poker client is frequently being updated and last weekend it was time for a new update where a couple of new features were added to make the game more enjoyable. You will now be able to play Omaha Hi/Lo since that game was added with this update, the game is available in both pot limit and fixed limit. This game was added to both cash games and Sit and Go tournaments and according to PKR.com they are also going to add a couple of Multi table Tournaments for this game.

The other poker games at PKR Poker have been updated with a couple of new functions. At all the tables you will now be able to use a time bank where you can request extra time at the tables if you are facing a difficult decision.

Another function that will make all you tournament players happy is that it will now be possible to skip the breaks when playing tournaments if all players agree to it. This means that if all players are ready to skip the break before a final table it will star immediately.

PKR.com also added that they have expanded their VIP Shop where you can use your PKR Points to buy items. You can now buy subscriptions to poker magazines and pay for a membership at the poker training site BlueFirePoker that PKR work together with.

Source: OnlinePokerNews.org

Finnish Government Launches Online Poker Room

Raha-automaattiyhdistys (RAY) is a gambling company owned by the government in Finland. They have monopoly on slot machines and other casino games that are put out in night clubs in Finland. RAY also own and run the casino in Helsinki. They are now also planning to launch a Finnish online poker room to attract all the Finnish poker players to their brand.

RAY was founded in 1938 and they are the only gambling company who are licensed to run gambling operations in Finland. If a night club owner wants to open up a roulette table in their club they will need to go through RAY who will put the table in place and use their own employers to run it. They also offer slot machines to the night clubs and cut them in on a bit of the profit for being allowed to place them in the night clubs. The profit from these machines goes to charitable causes and some of the money is used to get help for problem gamblers.

The Finnish minister of culture and sports, Staffan Wallin, announced that RAY is going to launch their own online poker room within short. All the technical preparations have been made and they expect to be able to launch before the end of the year. The government of Finland will need to change the current law a bit before they are able to be able to fully launch and accept players.

Finland have around 120.000 online poker players so there is definitely a market for a new poker room but it will also be very hard to try to get customers since not many new poker rooms have had a lot of success after the poker boom 5 years ago. It will obviously be very hard for them to compete with poker rooms like PokerStars and FullTilt Poker.

Gus Hansen Keeps Winning Big at FullTilt Poker

Gus Hansen is also known as “The Great Dane” continues to climb on the list of the players who have won the most money during 2009. Last weekend he took on players like “durrrr” and “Ziigmund” at the high stakes cash game tables at Full Tilt Poker and it would prove impossible to win any of the bigger pots of the session against Gus Hansen.

When it was all said and done Gus left the table with a profit of over $1 Million and in total he has made a profit of over $4 Million during 2009.

At the same time as Gus is on a real hot streak Tom Dwan has hit a real cold streak and he is down over $3 Million for the year. He is also down in the poker challenge against Patrick Antonius where he will lose another $1.5 Million unless he manages to turn this bad streak around soon.

Titan Poker Wins Award for Best Poker Support for the Third Consecutive Year

The online poker room TitanPoker.com that is located on the iPoker Network recently won the Gambling Online Magazine award for best poker support. This is the third year in a row that Titan Poker has won this award.

Titan Poker is one of the leading poker rooms on the iPoker Network and they are very proud to say that they have managed to put a “personal touch” on the support that they offer their players.

Gambling Online Magazine has been handing out awards to the best casino and poker rooms for the last 8 years and since Gambling Online Magazine is the biggest and most read magazine in Europe it is a lot of prestige in winning an award like this.

Titan Poker has a very good reputation in the online poker industry and they have been working very hard to achieve this. The main reason to why they have become so popular is their amazing customer support that is available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. You can always reach the Titan Poker support by either email or live chat.

As a VIP player at Titan Poker you will always have access to a dedicated support person, this is a very cool feature and many players like the fact that they have access to their very own support person. But even if you are not able to reach VIP status at Titan Poker you will always get great support in the regular live chat. After all, they have the awards to prove that they are the best when it comes to offering support for their poker players.

$770 Freeroll at Poker770 | 8th May 2009

All players that create their account at Poker770 through this link will get a $7.70 no deposit poker bonus and they will also be able to take part of many special freerolls such as this one.

Tournament Name: PokerNews Freeroll

Poker Room: Poker770.com

Time and Date: 8th of May 2009, 18:05 GMT

Prize Pool: $770

Password: PNEWS13

Requirements: All you need to do in order to play in this freeroll is to make a minimum deposit and enter the freeroll by using the password PNEWS13. The tournament itself has no buy in as it is a freeroll but you will need to be a real money player in order to participate which means that you will need to make a deposit.

PokerBonusSource.com Speaks Russian

We are happy to let you know that the popular poker portal PokerBonusSource.com is now available in Russian.

So far only a couple of pages have been translated but according to our guy at PBS they are planning to create a full scale site in the Russian language.

As from now all Russian poker players out there will be able to read a full scale PokerStars review and get all the information about the Russian PokerStars marketing code in their native language.

This will hopefully be a nice contribution to the ever growing Russian poker community.

The Gladiator Promotion at PartyPoker

PartyPoker are going to run a promotion called “The Gladiator” during the month of April. During the month of April you will need to generate at least 10 Party Points on at least 10 different days. Depending on how many points you manage to generate and how many days you are playing you will earn different types of cash bonuses.

The least amount you can earn is $5 and that will be awarded to you if you manage to generate at least 10 points per day on 10 days in April. The maximum bonus according to the table presented at the PartyPoker website is $1000 and this will be yours if you generate at least 400 points on 20 different days.

According to the people at PartyPoker you will also be able to earn even more money if you are playing more days and earning more points. If you are one of these players we suggest you contact PartyPoker support and they will let you know what kind of poker bonus they can offer you.

12 Day Poker Festival in Macau

Asian Poker Tour has just gotten an extended permit and they will celebrate this by hosting a 12 day poker festival in Macau this August.

The hosts of the poker festival promise that there will be 24/7 access to poker with tournaments and juice cash games during the 12 day poker festival in Macau. The festival will start at the 12th of August and finish on the 23rd of August and it will be held at the Galaxy StarWorld Hotel and Casino in Macau. The main event is also going to be bigger than originally planned with 3 starting days and a TV broadcasted final table. The buy in for this tournament is going to be $4300 and you will be able qualify through satellites at your favorite online poker room.

You can qualify for the main event in satellites that are held at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Titan Poker, PartyPoker and Everest Poker and many others. All of the poker rooms on the iPoker and Microgaming Network will also be running satellite tournaments for this main event.

Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond Lanches BlueFirePoker.com

One of the best cash game players in the world, Phil Galfond (OMGClayAiken) is not only a professional when it comes to playing poker, but also when it comes to teaching poker to new players. This is why he has decided to launch a new poker strategy site called BlueFirePoker.com where both new players and the more experienced ones can come to learn the game of poker.

Galfond has been asked to join many of the poker training sites out there but he always turned them down and now it is obvious why he did so since he is launching his very own poker training site. Just a couple of days after Galfond announced the launch of BlueFirePoker.com a new press release was sent out stating that they had now teamed up with online poker site PKR.com. The deal they have with PKR.com is that they will provide strategy material to both PKR.com and PKR TV and in exchange they will be able to offer PKR players the opportunity to pay for their BlueFirePoker.com membership in the PKR Poker VIP Shop.

You can also get a $600 bonus at PKR when using the PKR Poker bonus code EASYPOKER600 when you create your account.

Game Over for PokerRoom.com

PokerRoom.com was founded in Sweden just before the big poker boom and it quickly grew and became the biggest poker room on the internet.

In December of 2005 the owners decided to sell PokerRoom.com together with the whole Ongame Network to the Austria based company bwin.com. Bwin.com bought PokerRoom.com together with the Ongame Network for the total sum of $500 Million. At the time of the deal PokerRoom.com was the biggest online poker room in the world (Yes, even bigger than PokerStars.com) and they had a lot of success in the North American countries.

Three years down the line it is a completely different story and bwin have now decided to close down PokerRoom.com and move all of the players over to bwin Poker. All PokerRoom.com players are offered a cash bonus for transferring their account over to bwin. The upside to this story is that enjoyed playing at PokerRoom.com will still have access to all the same features at bwin Poker as they are using the same poker platform.

All PokerRoom.com players are asked to log on to their player accounts for full instructions on how to move their player accounts over to bwin Poker.

Karl Hevroy Wins LAPT Punta del Este

A total of 327 players signed up for the 2009 edition of the PokerStars LAPT Punta del Este. After 2 days of play there were only nine players remaining and amongst these players was Karl Hevroy, a 20 year old poker player from Norway.

Hevroy was the only European player left in the tournament when it came down to the final table and he found himself surrounded by players from South- and North America. Hevroy had over $1 Million in chips when the final table started and he had a healthy lead and was the favorite to take down the first price.

Later in the tournament it would also become apparent that he was meant to win this tournament and he got some much needed help from the poker gods in certain hands. More than once he found himself going all in with the worst hand but every time he managed to either out flop his opponents our draw out on them on the turn and river. When it came down to heads-up play he found himself holding a 6 to 1 chiplead over Alejandro De Arruabarrena who was the only remaining player to beat.

After only one hand of heads-up play the players found themselves all-in and when Karl Hevoy flipped over his cards showing a Full House for the nuts his opponent was drawing dead on the river.

Karl Hevroy from Norway ended up winning the tournament and took down the first prize of $283.500.

Brazilian Poker Queen Joins Team PokerStars

The most successful Latin American woman is awarded with a prestigious contract with the world’s biggest online poker room, PokerStars.com. Maria Mayrink is going to become a full time poker professional and will form a part of the Team Pokerstars.

Her face is well known on the international poker scene and she was recently on the cover of CardPlayer in Brazil where she was also interviewed and told the story of how she got started playing poker. Maria is very ambitious and popular, her blog gets over 200.000 visitors every month. During the 2008 WSOP she became the second most successful Brazilian player. In the world of online poker she is more known under her poker alias and nickname which is “Maridu”.

In an interview Maria said, “I really feel that joining Team PokerStars will improve my chances of making it in the poker world. Since poker is my true passion it is very important that I take this opportunity to evolve as a poker player. This contract with PokerStars.com gives me a chance to prove to the entire world that I am a good poker player and that I can make it on the tour and I hope that I will get the chance to play the major poker tournaments in Europe”.

Maria is not only a poker player but also a producer at a large TV Network in South America but recently she signed a contract with the leading poker agency Poker Icons who played a big role when it came to getting a good deal when joining Team PokerStars.

Maria is spending all of her spare time playing poker and you would think that this might cause some problems in the household but since her boyfriend is also a poker professional (Jon “Apestyles” Fleet) this is not causing any problems at all.

We are looking forward to seeing Maria Mayrinck in all the big poker tournaments the coming years and we wish her the best of luck.

If you are looking to challange Maria for a game of poker we advice you to use the PokerStars marketing code PAWSUB465 when you create your account for a nice $50 free bonus.

Durrrr Still in the Lead

“durrrr” took back the lead in the “durrrr Challenge” this weekend. Between Friday and Saturday he lost the lead to Patrick Antonius but the day after he was back in the lead again.

This weekend Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Patrick Antonius managed to play 1000 hands in the famous “durrrr Challenge” that will last for 50.000 hands.

In total they have now played around 6000 hands of poker and Tom “durrrr” Dwan is in a small lead at the moment. In total Dwan have won 3208 hands and made a $15.258 profit so far into the Challenge.
The match has been going on for 18 hours and 35 minutes and during this time frame they have managed to have a turnover of over $33 Million over the 6000 hands played.

Play at the Cake Poker Network using a Mac

LockPoker.com that is located at the Cake Poker Network has announced in a press release that they are now offering a Mac friendly version of their poker client. This means that they are joining a growing number of Mac Poker Sites.

The Mac version of Lock Poker has all of the functions that can be found in the regular PC friendly version. You can play with either real money or you will be able to play at the play money tables if you are just interested in testing the new software before making a deposit. You will be able to use the chat features just like in a normal poker room but the best feature is probably that you can adjust the table size which is really great if you are playing more than one table at a time.

According to the poker players that have tried out this new Macintosh friendly software on the Cake Poker Network have reported that they feel it is faster and more stable now that they don’t have to use an emulator from a third party to play poker on their Mac.

In order to be able to play at LockPoker using a Mac you will need an Intel Processor and Mac OS X 10.5 or a later version.

Hopefully it will not be long before other poker rooms on the Cake Poker Network also gets this Mac friendly version of their poker software.