Online Poker News

Last week we brought you word of the 2010 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker schedule, and in that post we briefly mentioned that the site was offering 3 table stakes ranges for each of the series’ 38 tournaments. So we thought it would be nice to give you lower and medium stakes players a bit more info on what PokerStars has in store for you in this 2010 SCOOP.

The PokerStars 2010 SCOOP—running Sunday, May 2 through Sunday, May 16—is offering lower stakes versions of each event with buy-ins of approximately 1% of the cost of the “regular” (high stakes) version. Best of all, the prize pool is far more than 1% of the prize pool for the original versions—a full 25% of 1/4th the prize pool.

So that means for event #2, the 1st of three 2-day events in this year’s PokerStars SCOOP, you low-stakes players would pay only $22 instead of $2,100, and yet be able to win a share of a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool rather than the original’s $2 million.

By the same token, the main event buy-in for low stakes players in the 2010 PokerStars SCOOP is the 2-day main event is $109 rather than $10,300 and the prize pool is $1 million guaranteed rather than $5 million.

As for the medium stakes players, the buy-ins for your 2010 PokerStars SCOOP seats are all approximately 1/10th (10%) the cost of the originals, but the prize pools are much closer to their originals, in some cases even matching the originals. Look at the kickoff event on May 2, the original being a $2,100 buy-in for $1 million guaranteed. Well the medium stakes equivalent has a $215 buy-in, but still offers a $1 million prize pool.

The prize pools for the mid and high stakes 2010 PokerStars SCOOP events aren’t always identical, but the mid-stakes prize pools are never less than half of the original high-stakes versions. And the prize pool for the PokerStars 2010 SCOOP main event for mid-stakes players, instead of $5 million, is a still handsome $3 million guaranteed.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Titan Poker is advertising a 50% up to $200 bonus on their website, but in fact players can get a bigger bonus very easily when they are signing up. Titan Poker is one of the world’s largest online poker sites and they make it clear by giving away free money to their new players. Although most online poker rooms give out free money to new players, Titan Poker offers one of the better new player bonuses, plus they have some of the best promotions running year round, adding lots of value to playing at the Titan Poker tables.

The special new Titan Poker bonus is a 100% up to $500 bonus instead of the $200 bonus at only 50% of the player’s first deposit. This bonus is activated when players sign up using the special Titan Poker Coupon Code TITANHUGE. When you are creating a new account at Titan Poker (after downloading and installing the software) you will be asked for your information on the sign up sheet. On the right hand side of the registration you will see a field that asks for a Titan Poker coupon code. This is where you must type in the Titan Poker Coupon Code TITANHUGE to receive your $500 bonus.

The bonus is a 100% match bonus, meaning whatever amount you deposit for your first time at Titan Poker will be match in free bonus money courtesy of Titan themselves. This has a maximum amount of $500, but that doesn’t mean you cannot deposit more than $500. Any deposit of over $500 will receive the maximum coupon code bonus of $500. An extra $300 and 50% of your bonus just by entering a simple coupon code when signing up, pretty easy huh?

Titan Poker is probably the best online poker room when it comes to promotions. Not only do they award players with free money on their first deposit, they also have other promotions such as Club Titan which is a great VIP program. The more you play at the real money Titan Poker tables the more you will be rewarded with their VIP program. Titan also runs qualifiers for players to live events, where you can win a seat to prestige events such as the WSOP for a very small fraction of the actual buy-in price. You will also receive travel and accommodation expenses to go along with the tournament entry for these promotions. Overall Titan Poker is rated one of my top 5 favourite online poker rooms, don’t forget to enter the Titan Poker coupon code when you are signing up for an account.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Cake Poker Network was the 10th largest online poker network on the web, until now. Thanks to the addition of Unabomber Poker, the official poker website of Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, and 7 more poker websites, the Cake Poker Network is now the 9th largest poker network online

At Unabomber Poker, you can play online poker vs the Unabomber Phil Laak himself as well as win Unabomber themed prizes that include a day with Phil Laak in person at his home in LA, California.

Unabomber Poker and the other 7 online poker rooms just added to the Cake Poker Network (one of which is a sportsbetting site), are all U.S. player friendly sites and all of them will feature Cake Poker’s Gold Cards and Gold Chips player rewards program.

Phil Laak is a WPT champ and WSOP runner-up. The Cake Poker Network includes Doyles Room Poker, another poker room featuring a top poker pro. The Cake Poker Network now spans 55 online poker and gaming sites.

Popularity: 2% [?]

There are plenty of rakeback websites but the very most of them are not attractive enough for VIP players that rake way more than an average player. As an average player you can find some very good deals, no doubt about that. But if you make twice as much rake or even more you should get much better deals. Sure, some rakeback sites offer rake races and promotions like that to give better players a bit more rakeback but this is often just a tiny difference.

So what is a better player supposed to do? He can try to negotiate with poker sites directly to get a way better deal. Sometimes this works (depending on the poker rooms policy) but it’s a waste of time more often.A better idea is to look for somebody with good contacts that can arrange such deals with poker rooms that are ready to give better players better deals, so called VIP rakeback.

It’s easier to find good rakeback deals at some of the networks like ipoker, ongame, entraction, boss media, microgaming, cake and so on. It’s almost impossible to find special Full Tilt or Pokerstars deals. We can highly recommend entraction rakeback. This network is the fastest growing network and one of the best places for European players. And you can get some good deals there.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hey poker playing Lads! Do you like seeing buxom broads in skimpy outfits? Of course you do! That’s why you read Nuts Magazine or Loaded Magazine, the two places you can count on seeing plenty of them every month. Well now you can enjoy staring at them all you want while you’re playing online poker too, thanks to 3-D online poker room, PKR Poker.

IPC Media, the company that puts out the popular UK magazines for horny men, has joined the PKR Poker team, offering new avatars looking like sexy gals – and remember, this is all in 3-D! And they’ve come up with Nuts & Loaded t-shirts that you can clothe your avatar in (whether one of these new buxom Nuts or Loaded ones, or your existing avatar). There will now also be special Nuts & Loaded themed poker rooms you can play in, with branded imagery (including luscious gal pics) posted everywhere, including on the rails and the poker felt itself.

The site and the magazines have also teamed up for a variety of special promotions they will be offering throughout each year. Keep coming back to Shine Poker to find out about the latest sexy Nuts and Loaded promotions over at PKR Poker.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It was only a matter of time before online poker went mobile, and it looks like that time is just about upon us, courtesy of Poker Stars. Just the site you’d expect to be making a bold and progressive move forward onto the smartphone scene by enabling its enormous worldwide member base to play online poker on their cell phones.

Most mobile phones these days already have the internet built in. So all PokerStars, or any other poker site, has to do is tweak their software to make it viable (read: playable) on a 3.5″ screen, or smaller. And the way that PokerStars is doing this is by purchasing its very own mobile software development firm.

They won’t say how much they paid for Cecure Gaming, originally a Cavendish Corporate Finance property, but one thing is for sure. It is PokerStars’ latest sally in an ongoing effort to remain at the head of the pack. Expect PokerStars mobile to set the trend for mobile online poker now.

If you want to get a jump on the move to the mobile platform you can check out the existing software by using a Poker Stars Promo Code or a Marketing Code for PokerStars.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Over at PokerStars this weekend, a 22-year-old Russian player going by the name of innerspy accepted the challenge posed by the Russian Card Game Masters and hosted by Poker Stars to try and break the world’s record for the most number of hands played in one sitting. And he did it!

Innerspy sat down for just over 18 1/2 hours at PokerStars last Saturday and in that time played an amazing 40,088 hands of online poker. Until that time, he hadn’t played more than 20,000. But when he heard the challenge posed, he knew he was capable of taking it on, and apparently he was absolutely right.

But it wasn’t easy. To add to the pressure, this all took place in front of 10,000 fans watching over their computers.

Now that it’s over, Innerspy says it will be a lot easier for him to achieve his goal of becoming a PokerStars Supernova Elite member.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Phil Ivey is no longer the only Ivey making it big in the poker world, nor is he the only P. Ivey, even. His near-namesake (and near-doppelganger in recent success as well) is named PatIvey and after winning the PKR Masters in September, for about $30,000, and then winning it again in October, for another approximate $30,000, he makes it to the final table of the November PKR Masters as well, and almost makes the hat-trick, coming in third instead to Russian ShatokhinNikita (PatIvey is a Swede). That most recent 3rd place PKR Masters win brought him another $11,250, making his total from just this one recurring event at PKR, $71,250. Add to that, then, the $7,800 win his notched in last Saturday’s Saturday Big Shot event and top prize in PKR’s $10,000 Gtd Prime Time Poker event, and you have a rising star the likes of which Phil Ivey himself will one day probably have to come up against, face to face.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Satellites galore going on at PokerStars, awarding free entries into every stop on the several live poker tours that Poker Stars now sponsors. Schedules are just coming out for the third season of the Latin American Poker Tour, the sixth season of the European Poker Tour, and the inaugural season of the eagerly anticipated U.K. & Ireland Poker Tour. And with the announcements of the schedules for each of these poker tours comes the launching of the satellite schedule for awarding players free seats in these various events.

Season 6 of the EPT is already underway, but the schedule for the second half was only just released. It has the next event on the EPT schedule coming November 17 to Portugal.

Season 3 of the LAPT starts next, with LAPT Costa Rica coming up on November 19 in San Jose. Other stops on LAPT 3 are Uruguay, Chile, and the Grand Final in Argentina.

Season 1 of the UK & Ireland Poker Tour starts December 11 with UKIPT Galway, better known as the Irish Poker Championship. The other events in this first-ever UKIPT will be held in Manchester, Coventry, Nottingham, Killarney, Brighton, Scotland, and Dublin.

Satellites for the first stops on each of these tours are going now at PokerStars.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Welcome bonuses (or first deposit bonuses as they’re also called) a one of the ways that poker sites compete with one another for your patronage. That’s why they are constantly trying to one-up each other with how much “free money” they can offer players to join their site. Most of the welcome bonuses offer 100% matches on your first deposit into a real money online poker account, up to some maximum. It is these maximums that just keep get jacked up higher and higher. And recently they hit new heights.

While Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars (the two to beat, if you ask most folks) are offering a respectable $650 and $600 match, respectively, two sites have upped the ante even further.

PKR, the one-of-a-kind 3D poker site, has a new $800 welcome bonus maximum and William Hill Poker has a £400 max.

Some sites, by the by, offer no deposit bonuses, albeit of much smaller amounts, but nonetheless something-for-nothing. One of the best casino signup bonus running right now is at Ladbrokes as is for £25.  You can find other bonuses by doing an online poker search here.

Popularity: 7% [?]