Online Poker News

For the fifth year in a row, Absolute Poker will be hosting the UBOC Online Championship of poker, starting August 18, 2010, running for 12 days, covering 20 tournaments, with a total guaranteed prize pool up for grabs of $4 million.

Each of the 20 events in UBOC 5 will be hosted by own of Absolute Poker’s celebrity pros, and the tournament schedule will include a $1,050 deepstack six-max championship and a $1,050 heads-up championship, as well as events in Omaha, mixed game, and Absolute Poker’s own Sniper tournament style, among others. It’s all leading up, of course, to the $1 million guaranteed main event on Sunday, August 29, a $1,050 Monster Stack NL Holdem event.

In addition to the $4 million guaranteed prize pool, players will also be competing on a Leader Board for bonus cash prizes and awards.

The Absolute Poker UBOC 5 equivalent of the World Series of Poker bracelet (and by some standards a more practical trophy) is a commemorative watch. These will be distributed to the winners of the UBOC 5 events, to the Mini-UBOC 5 Championship Main Event winner, and to the UBOC 5 and Mini-UBOC 5 Leader Board champions.

Satellites into the various UBOC 5 events are running now at Absolute Poker, which by the way is one of the webs best poker sites.

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Shine Poker offers their readers the best of the best on poker news. We want you to go online and find the poker room offering the best rakeback deal saving you a lot of money. For example with Cake Poker rakeback you will receive 33 % rake paid back to your players account every month. This room offers one of the highest percentage rakeback available online.

It’s always so much fun when a poker site finds something other than cash or a live tournament entry prize package to offer as a reward (though there’s nothing wrong with cash and live tournament entry prize packages, of course). And PokerStars has once again come up with a winner in the form of another sports car. You may remember that earlier in the year, another top poker site, Party Poker gave away an Aston Martin DB9 Coupe. This time it’s Poker Stars, and they’re giving away a Lamborghini Gallardo.

The promotion is called the PokerStars Lamborghini Freeroll and – yes – it is a freeroll based tournament, with 24 freeroll qualifier tournaments running daily between July 25 and September 25. And in addition to the $200,000 dream car being awarded, PokerStars also promises over $1 million in cash will be awarded during the promotion, with $100,00 Weekly Finals and the $250,000 Grand Final.

In addition to the 24 daily freeroll qualifiers, there are also cash satellite tournaments into the weekly finals for buy-ins of $1.10 and $11.

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Online poker and sports have been making fantastic bedfellows for a long time now, and one of the poker sites spearheading that union is Poker Stars.

Poker Stars has just announced that it will be sponsoring the Federación Española de Baloncesto (FEB), otherwise known as the Spanish Basketball Federation for at least one year’s time.

As part of its sponsorship, Poker Stars will start offering satellite tournaments that award as their top prizes tickets to various Spanish Basketball Federation (FEB) games, including the 2010 FIBA World Championship that begins August 28 in Turkey where Spain’s basketball team, which currently holds the 3rd place ranking beneath the U.S. and Argentina, will face off against those top rivals as well as Canada, France, Lebanon, Lithuania and New Zealand, the five other teams with whom the Spanish team shares Group D.

Among the satellite tournaments awarding tickets to watch key FEB basketball games will be plenty of freeroll tournaments.

PokerStars sponsors many sporting events and hosts satellites awarding tickets to events across various sports. There are also many individual athletes on Team PokerStars, including tennis star Gaël Monfils, football goalkeeper Gianluigi ‘Gigi’ Buffon, field hockey legend Fatima Moreira de Melo, and rugby player Sebastian Chabal.

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Cake Poker is giving players the chance to win seats in the 2010 English Poker Open in London for only $3. Only the 2nd annual running of this event, the 2010 English Poker Open will take place between September 11 and 14.

Cake Poker satellites into the 2010 English Poker Open will run at 4 pm ET every Sunday. At each of these, at least one English Poker Open prize package will be awarded worth $7,000 that includes the $5,000 + $350 buy-in into the 2010 English Poker Open Main Event, $1,650 cash for travel and hotel expenses, a ticket to the private English Poker Open Welcome Party on September 10, and an Official Team Cake gear pack.

The English Poker Open is a perfect opportunity to sharpen your skills for late September’s World Series of Poker Europe. The guaranteed prize pool at the 2010 English Poker Open is $1 million.

Daily $3.30 English Poker Open Satellites and $5.50 Satellite R&A (rebuy and add-on) tournaments seed players into daily $27 English Poker Open Semi Finals which in turn seed players into the weekly $268 English Poker Open $7K Final in which Cake Poker awards the actual prize packages.

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The 2010 Poker Stars Spring Championship of Online Poker is coming up May 2^nd – 16th, and this time will be comprised of 38 events for a grand total of $45 million guaranteed to be awarded.

Each of the 38 events has 3 different buy-in levels with 3 different prize structures to match, making it so that anybody with any size bankroll can participate. The types, styles, and varieties of poker tournaments on the 2010 SCOOP schedule run the gamut from the typical (Holdem, Omaha, Stud) to the atypical (HORSE, Razz, 8-Game, 5-Card Draw, Badugi), and includes alll limit styles (No Limit, Pot Limit, Fixed Limit), table sizes (incl. 4-max, 6-max, and heads-up events), as well as Hi-Lo, Turbo, Rebuy, Addon, and Match Play events.

Head to PokerStars now to qualify for free into many of the 2010 SCOOP events, including the $5 million Main Event, through Poker Stars SCOOP 2010 satellites running now.

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In an effort to bring the game of poker back to its online poker cash tables (as distinct from a roll-of-the-dice which is an entirely different game), Cake Poker is squeezing out short-stacked players from its cash tables by raising the minimum buy-in to sit down at one to 30 Big Blinds.

In order to sit down at any Cake Poker cash game table, you need to buy-in with a minimum bankroll of chips in front of you. A short-stacked player is one who sits down at a cash table with that absolutely minimum buy-in possible, which makes for a very unbalanced table, considering most everyone else has the decency to put several times more than that at stake before they sit in.

The problem with the short-stacked player is that he stands to gain more from everyone else than they stand to gain from him. The short stacked player tends to be taking an easy crapshoot of a chance to double up their stack by waiting for ideal hands before putting anything at stake, while to the other players the short-stacked player’s chip stack makes them as good as an empty chair.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

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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: 5% [?]

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.

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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: 7% [?]