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That's the amount you would win if you hit 10 times and had a completely successful run. Players are allowed to play as many as 10 Hit or Run games each day, which brings the total that each person can conceivably win on any given day of the promotion, which is any given day in February, $10,240.

Play at Party Poker

The Party Poker Hit or Run promotion is going on from midnight eastern time on February 1 through one minute to midnight on the evening of February 28. To be eligible for the Hit Or Run heads-up game, a player must earn 20 PartyPoints at Party Poker real money cash tables. All 20 PartyPoints must be earned in a single day to qualify. Players who earn more than 200 PartyPoints per day will still only be able to play in 10 Hit or Run tournaments for that day.

All you have to do is sign up in February for Double Ups and then get playing. The Double Up Dash operates as a leader board based system, with a total of $49,000 paid out each week for 4 consecutive weeks, starting Feb. 1. There will be 3 leader boards in all, called Dash Boards for the promotion, each Dash Board based on a certain stakes range.

Leader board points will be awarded for participation in any of VC Poker's Double Up SNG Tournaments. Just by entering you receive points based on the buy-in amount of the Double Up Sit 'n Go. But you can get those points doubled-up by finishing in the money.

Play at VC Poker

The GSOP IV, as it's called for short, is comprised of 18 guaranteed tournament events in the full gamut of online poker variants: Texas Hold'em, Omaha, 7-Card-Stud, and 5-Card Draw.

Play at BestPoker

PokerStars will be running these Daily £2,000 Freerolls starting now and running for the next 6 weeks. Each one starts at 21:30 pm GMT with a second smaller freeroll for those who showed up too late to register for the big one (or who busted out early) an hour later at 22:30 pm GMT with a guaranteed prize pool of £250.

The £2,000 PokerStars Daily Freeroll is a re-buy event, should a player bust out sooner than they'd like and wish to re-enter, with an inexpensive rebuy of only 50c.

Meanwhile, the next stop on the newly created PokerStars UK and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) is happening February 11 - 14 in Manchester, England. The UKIPT is newest innovation from the creators of the APPT (Asia Pacific Poker Tour), the also new NAPT (North American Poker Tour), and of course the long-standing favorite, the EPT (European Poker Tour), all of which PokerStars runs satellites for throughout the year.

And if you're not yet a PokerStars player this is also a particularly good time to join as the site just increased the amount of VPPs (VIP Player Points) a player can earn from each $1 in rake.

If you're not from the UK, or even if you are, and want to see something really cool, check out Rush Poker at Full Tilt Poker. Rush Poker is the latest invention in online poker, and if you like action packed games, then you're guaranteed to love Rush Poker at Full Tilt Poker.

Creators and sponsors of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), PokerStars hasn't had a World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) since 2008.

Only poker bloggers with a online poker blog active for at least two months prior to entry qualify for entry into the 2010 WBCOOP. But if you do qualify, as mentioned above, there is no buy-in or registration fee.

The 2010 WBCOOP, as with PokerStars' other big online poker tournament series', has several prelim events (in this case, six) all leading up to the 2010 WBCOOP Main Event. The 6 prelim events run January 25 - 30 with the main event taking place January 31.

Winners of 2010 WBCOOP events will get seats worth varying amounts into the 2010 SCOOP or Step satellite events into the 2010 SCOOP. The top prize, of course, will be a full 2010 SCOOP Main Event seat.

Additional 2010 SCOOP seats and 2010 SCOOP Step satellite event seats will be given out throughout the 2010 WBCOOP to the bloggers who publish the best blog posts and Tweets during the week of competition.

Kara Scott is not only a fine poker player, having won the Sports Stars Challenge III in 2008, but she is also a fine hostess and emcee, having presented for the Party Poker World Open V (a performance she will repeat for the Party Poker World Open VI, when it rolls around). Kara Scott\'s other poker accomplishments are making it to the final table at the Party Poker Women\'s World Open I in 2007 and placing 2nd at the Irish Open in 2009.

Tony G. (less commonly known by his given name Antanas Guoga) was the second player signed to Team Party Poker. Tony G., as you might already know, has his own online poker site, TonyGPoker, which has also been absorbed into the Party Poker empire. TonyGPoker players will not be sent to Party Poker, however, but rather to Noble Poker, another property of the PartyGaming empire.

The Last Man Standing promo is just like it sounds. For the promotional period starting February 1st and running through February 28th, Titan Poker will counting up the Player Points each player earns that day. Depending on what level that player is in the Titan Poker VIP Program, Club Titan, at the start of the promotion (i.e. Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.), each player will have a certain daily quota of Player Points that must be earned.

Play at Titan Poker

Every player who reaches their quota, survives elimination for another day. Every player who does not reach their daily quota on any given day is eliminated from the competition. The process continues until there is only one player remaining, the Last Man Standing in each \"group\" (that is, Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.), who each receive a $13,000 prize package that includes a free seat in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.

At benchmark points throughout the competition, Titan Poker is also planning to give out extra bonus rewards to certain players still standing at that time. Among those rewards are free seats in a $5,000 freeroll that takes place on Feb. 28th.

Player Points are earned by playing at Titan Poker\'s real money cash tables. A player is eligible for progressively more groups\' top prizes the higher their level in the Club Titan VIP Program at the start of The Last Man Standing contest.

As a visitor of the Poker For Free website you\'re probably aware of all great our ongoing free poker promos, but a periodical promotion such as this one, one that may bring you to Las Vegas for free to participate in the 2010 WSOP might be the best of all!

It\'s especially tiresome when you\'ve already folded out of the hand before the flop even. In fact, that\'s why many players have taken to multi-tabling. Which gave the whizzes at Full Tilt Poker an idea, one they\'ve decided to dub Rush Poker.

Play at Full Tilt Poker

They decided to make it even easier for players to multi-table and keep the action going, so there is no lag in play time during an online poker playing session, even when you fold out of a hand.

The brilliant innovation Full Tilt Poker came up with, Rush Poker, automatically switches a player and their chip stack to a seat in a table with the same table stakes where the dealer is just dealing a new hand. That way you don\'t have to sit and wait for other people to play out hands you\'re already out of. You can just be transported instantly to a similar table where a new hand is just starting.

Rush Poker is already taking off like wildfire, with players experiencing incredible leaps in hands dealt to them per hour. Full Tilt Poker knows that poker players (online and off) love the thrill of the game, the adrenaline rush of being deep into a hand, but players don\'t like the boring lulls so much. With Rush Poker, Full Tilt Poker has taken the boring lulls out of the equation.

The Full Tilt docket of weekly guarantees in tremendous, starting with the relatively low Monday $1K Guarantee and shooting up into the outer stratosphere with Big Money Sundays, made up of three huge tournaments totaling a one day payout of $1.3 million guaranteed.

PokerStars is giving one lucky player the chance to spend a full day with 2009 WSOP Main Event champ Joe Cada. In addition, PokerStars will give this winning player a seat in its new Vegas NAPT event.

The NAPT Venetian is only the third event announced in PokerStars\' newly created poker tour, the North American Poker Tour. NAPT Season 1 started with the recent PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) and continues with the NAPT Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

Plat at PokerStars

To win the opportunity to Meet Joe Cada, just head over to PokerStars and play in one of their daily freerolls (happening once daily) or their $1.10 satellites (happening twice daily). The top 45 players from the freerolls and 1 in 5 players from each satellite will wind up in the Weekly Finals (happening Sundays at 6:30 pm ET), which in turn will feed the top 18 players into the Grand Final on February 13 at 9 pm ET.

In addition to the day with Joe Cada and the NAPT Venetian entry, the winning player will also get 5 nights of accommodations in Las Vegas plus flight from any United States airport, and $1,000 spending cash.

Important! Only U.S. residents can participate in the PokerStars Meet Joe Cada promotion, but players from outside of the U.S. can find numerous of other great promotions, including free poker games and a very interesting VIP program.

The 2010 Irish Open is going to take place from April 1st through the 5th in Dublin City Center in Dublin, Ireland at the Burlington Hotel. Win your €3,200 + €300 seat in the 2010 Irish Open through Titan Poker and you will get a free 5 night stay, from March 31st to April 6th, at the site of the tournament, for your total convenience.

Play at Titan Poker

You\'ll also receive €800 for flights and expense cash as well as the €100 entry for an organized Titan Poker party / lounge event.

Party Poker is giving players a chance to win a free seat in the WPT LA Poker Classic. And that\'s not all. They\'re also adding $1 million to the WPT LA Poker Classic prize pool, available only to Party Poker players.

If a Party Poker player takes the 2010 LA Poker Classic title, then that player will get an extra $500,000 from Party Poker, on top of whatever prize money they win for taking down the 2010 WPT LA Poker Classic. And where does the other $500,000 go? It gets distributed evenly to every Party Poker player playing at the event.

Play at Party Poker

The Party Poker LA Poker Classic prize packages are worth $14,000 and include the $10,000 buy-in into the event, plus 7 nights of accommodations in a luxury Los Angeles hotel, along with $2,500 cash to spend as you wish.

Players advance through Party Poker LA Poker Classic Sub Qualifier Speed events to Party Poker LA Poker Classic Satellite Qualifiers and ultimately to the weekly Party Poker LA Poker Classic Satellite itself, in which at least 2 players will get $14,000 Party Poker LA Poker Classic prize package.

Finally, 1 in every 10 players in this event gain entry into the Sunday $750 WPT LA Poker Classic Satellite, with 1 in every 20 players winning $14,000 prize packages into the big event (2 prize packages guaranteed at each).

The WPT LA Poker Classic takes place at The Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, California from February 26 to March 4, 2010.

Play at BestPoker

Now, to kick off the New Year in an interesting manner (if nothing else), on Wednesday the 7th of January, 2010 they let a second Team Bodog member go, dropping Justin Bonomo.

That leaves David Williams and Evelyn Ng remaining as the only two members of Team Bodog Poker. The site claims that they will be adding new poker pros to the team - both big name and up-and-coming, presumably - within the year. That\'ll make for an interesting news cycle for Bodog Poker at least. But what does cutting its pro sponsorship in half do for its reputation or morale? That\'s another question entirely.

Justin Bonomo joined Team Bodog in 2007, after rising to notice under the online name ZeeJustin. His poker career started, as many do, in online poker, with his segue into live tournament play (and live televised tournament play to boot) came when he made the final table at the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event (he got knocked out in seventh place).

There are some who have been wondering aloud online about whether or not Bonomo quit the team, but Bonomo himself put that rumor to rest when he wrote in his blog that it was Bodog who did the dumping in this relationship breakup. And that he is actively looking for another site to sponsor him and make a better use of his assets.

The 100% welcome bonus with the $800 max is on first time deposits made into a PKR Poker account (so if you\'re already a PKR Poker player, you are not eligible to receive this bonus).

Play at PKR Poker

To explain, most poker sites host different qualifiers and satellite tournaments for different live poker events. So a site may have an EPT Monte Carlo qualifier and an Aussie Millions qualifier, but if you win one, you can\'t just up and choose to switch your ticket to the other event. But at BestPoker, if you win one of their Live Event Qualifiers, you get to choose which live event you get to compete in.

Play at BestPoker

The live events BestPoker is awarding free tickets too include the Aussie Millions and the main events of several European Poker Tour events, including EPT Copenhagen, EPT Germany, EPT Snowfest, EPT San Remo, and the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final.

What\'s more, you can enter these qualifiers at whatever buy-in range you\'re comfortable with. Live Event Qualifiers are being held at Best Poke with buy-ins of: $2 + $0.20, $5 + $0.50, $20 + $2, and $30 + $3. Win any of these and receive a $300 + $20 Final Event Satellite Ticket. In very rare cases BestPoker offers free poker satellites to live events.

You can also buy-in directly to the Final Event Satellite by paying the $320 direct buy-in. Win a Final Event Satellite and choose which qualifying live event you\'d like to win your prize package into.

European Poker Tour events are sponsored by PokerStars.

Check BestPoker.com for the schedule of Live Event Qualifiers, running all year long.

Presumably that includes Canada and Mexico, though the move to create the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) was no doubt motivated by the huge discrepancy between the supply and demand for legal U.S. poker tournaments.

The PokerStars NAPT 1 launches with the currently running PCA (PokerStars Caribbean Adventure) in the Bahamas as its inaugural poker tournament event.

Next on its schedule are stops at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut for NAPT Mohegan Sun from February 20 - 24 and the Las Vegas Venetian for NAPT Venetian, as part of the Venetian\'s Deep Stack Extravaganza, from April 7 - 11. Buy-in for the main events at both of these stops are $5,000 each, though there are lower cost side events scheduled too.

Of course, as you would expect, Full Tilt Poker is already running satellite tournaments for free or low cost entry into the FTOPS XV events, particularly the $500 + $35 main event closing out the series on February 21 with a whopping guaranteed prize pool of $2 1/2 million. This time around Full Tilt promises to award at least $17 million guaranteed. And that doesn\'t even include the $6 million guaranteed prize pool for the follow-up MiniFTOPS XV that will be taking place exactly one month later, from March 10 through 21.

Play at Full Tilt Poker

The schedule of events in FTOPS 15 and MiniFTOPS 15 both much resembles the FTOPS and MiniFTOPS schedules of the past, with 27 events this time instead of the 25 of the past, including Fixed Limit and Pot Limit events in addition to No Limit, and including Stud and Omaha events in addition to Hold\'em. And this doesn\'t even include all the FTOPS XV side events.

And don\'t forget, the FTOPS XV schedule also includes numerous FTOPS Challenges and FTOPS XV Satellite Challenges offering, in addition to free entries into various FTOPS XV events, cash and freeroll entries.

In all, there are 1/2 dozen events in FTOPS XV with prize pools of over $1 million, including the coveted $2 million two-day event.

The premiere event of FTOPS XV will take place on February 10 at 9:00 pm ET for a $200 + $16 buy-in.

Titan Poker plans to send 5 players to the 2010 WSOP Main Event through its World Challenge promotion, a regional based poker league where online poker players compete against other online poker players in regional leagues, with individual and league performance tracked in a points based leader board style.

Play at Titan Poker

First there will be 2 rounds with players divided into 12 countries/regions where players will compete only against other online poker players from their region or country. Players can follow their progress on a leader board divided into the various participating countries/regions.

At the end of this whole 18 week adventure, the best performing 200 online poker players from those rounds advance to the next phase where they will sit down live to square off against each other in eight final rounds to determine the five players who will represent their countries and Titan Poker in the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.

The 5 remaining players from these elimination rounds will win $13,000 prize packages that include the buy-in for the 2010 WSOP Main Event (worth $10,000), along with travel expenses and hotel accommodations during the event.

Even though it\'s not a free poker opportunity, this is one of the first opportunities poker players online have for getting into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event for less than $10,000.

The night before the event, however, is the night everyone is currently talking about, because Monday, January 4, is the night of the always exciting private party PokerStars holds for its pros, main event entrants, and PokerStars satellite winners. That\'s set to get going on Paradise Island at the Royal Tower of the Atlantis Resort, starting at 7:00 pm and set to run until 9:00 pm.

One of the expected highlights of the 2010 PCA is the confirmed presence of Kelly Rowland, who made quite a splash at last year\'s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA).

Another invitation-only PCA party hosted by PokerStars will take place on January 9 at Paradise Harbour and will feature entertainment from Kelly Rowland of Destiny\'s Child.

Hip-Hop and R&B seem to be a running theme with PokerStars, as the last time they hosted a big party, this one at the 2009 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the musical entertainment was provided by Nelly. He appears to be quite the poker player, participating in many events in the 2009 WSOP. He also played in the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Grand Final. Now rumor has it that Nelly might make an appearance at the 2010 PCA.

Another highlight of the 2010 PCA is the amfAR Charity Poker Tournament with a $5,250 buy-in and confirmed celebrity entrants including Team PokerStars Sports pros Mats Sundin, Sebastian Chabal, and Boris Becker.

Play at PokerStars

Just in time for Christmas, actually, PokerStars announced the names of the 23 players picked for this great honor.

Among the players on the inaugural roster of Team PokerStars Online are:

Play at Party Poker

Here\'s how Party Poker Cash Machine bonus amounts are figured out. After the promotion ends (so on February 1, basically) Party Poker will look at all the days you earned PartyPoints over the month, and how many PartyPoints you earned on each of those days. Then Party Poker will take the 10th highest earning of those days and use that amount to calculate your reward, based on a return of $1 per PartyPoint, with the minimum payout being $10.

If, however, you earn PartyPoints on 10 days of the month, but not a minimum of 10 PartyPoints on each of those days, you\'re not out of luck entirely. You will still get a free entry into an exclusive $25,000 Cash Machine Freeroll, to be held on February, 3, 2010 at 3 pm ET.

On the flipside, for all your overachievers in the Party Poker community, if you earn at least 1,000 PartyPoints per day for at least 20 days of the promotional period, then you\'ll win a special Cash Machine Booster Bonus, from a minimum of $500 to a maximum of $5,000.

You must head to the Party Poker lobby and opt-in to the January 2010 Cash Machine promotion in order to have your PartyPoints counted toward any Cash Machine Bonus.

BestPoker Player Points, like the loyalty or rewards programs for all other poker sites, rewards a player for frequent play in real money games (both cash games and tournaments, thus free poker games are excluded). As you accumulate enough Player Points, you can start trading them in for tournament entries, valuable prizes, and now cash too.

Play at BestPoker

The amount of your cash redemption value depends not only on how many Player Points you earn, but on how many Player Points you earn per month. The more Player Points you earn per month, the greater the percentage cash back you receive for redeeming them.

On a purely entertainment level, the Nuts and Loaded partnerships allow PKR members to choose to clothe their player avatar in a Nuts or Loaded t-shirt. More, players can even choose from a selection of new, sexy Nuts and Loaded player avatars.

Play at PKR Poker

What\'s more, Nuts and Loaded readers present and future will be able to play online poker in a themed poker room designed with Nuts and Loaded branded imagery, including (and especially) the buxom babes that make the two magazines so popular with men. Readers of Nuts or Loaded will also start to see new features from PKR staff and Team PKR Pro players on how to play online poker and such, as well as tales of their personal tournament exploits.

Party Poker started satellites on December 17, and there\'s still plenty of time to throw your hat into the ring, as the big event itself isn\'t scheduled to take place until February, 2010.

Play at Party Poker

Party Poker satellites into the Premier League IV have buy-ins starting as low as $2. The top 16 players in the Premier League IV qualifier series will head to Las Vegas to compete against one another in a playoff where only one person will be left standing and the winner of the Party Poker Premier League IV qualifier series will be decided.

That player will win the $100,000 buy-in into the exclusive Premier League IV, a high intensity, high stakes live single-table tournament consisting of only 12 players total.

One of the 16 semi-finalists in the Party Poker Premier League Qualifier series (and not necessarily the same one who wins the free poker entry in the big event either) will win a $100,000 contract with Party Poker to be a sponsored player on the Team Party pro team. So it\'s not just a poker tournament, it\'s also an audition!

Both the qualifier playoff and the Premier League IV Final itself will be televised. And among the other 11 players present besides the winner of the Party Poker Premier League IV Qualifier series will be the winner of the Premier League III Final, J.C. Tran.

As always, the series will culminate in the main event, in recent years what\'s become known as the $10,000 Main Event, for the price of the direct buy-in. But don\'t worry if that\'s too steep for your wallet. Most of the major online poker sites offer satellites and qualifiers (many going on right now) awarding free seats into the 2010 World Series of Poker main event and other events.

Harrah\'s will continue to host the World Series of Poker in its Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, only this time, because the event has drawn such packed houses of late, they\'ll be using two rooms instead of one for all the hot poker action.

Some other changes in store for WSOP attendees this time around will be a $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event instead of a $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, and where the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event was will now be a $50,000 mixed games event comprised of 8 games. And the top prize still includes the Chip Reese Memorial trophy. For 2010 there will also be a high-rollers $25,000 6-max NL Hold\'em event.

The 2010 World Series of Poker will take place between May 27 to July 17. The November Nine will then play the 2010 WSOP Main Event Final Table from November 6 to November 9.

For the twelve days running from December 16 to 27, Bodog Poker will be holding two raffles daily. Getting raffle tickets is as easy as playing online poker at Bodog. You already earn Bodog Poker Points when you do that. Well now, and for the duration of the 12 Days of Poker, every time you collect 25 Bodog Poker Points, and again every time you collect 75 Bodog Poker Points, the site will automatically give you one raffle ticket. Play as often as you like and earn as many raffle tickets as you like.

Play at Bodog Poker

The raffle drawings are divided into low drawings (for the tickets costing 25 points) and high drawings (for the tickets costing 75 points), but the truth is that the value of the prizes switches back and forth daily, with $100K Guaranteed seats being the low prizes some days, and items like big screen TVs, GPS, video game consoles, digital cameras being the so-called low prizes other days.

So the point is, all you have to do is play and let Bodog Poker worry about paying. Play your cards right (or in this case, long and often enough during the 12 Days of Poker), maybe even earn yourself a free poker ticket for Bodog\'s $100K GTD, and this could become one of the merriest Christmases ever.

Remember, Bodog Poker also accepts players from the United States!

But it\'s okay, because Full Tilt Poker has another holiday themed bonus going on right now and it\'s even better than the \"meager\" $100 you may have won with the Holiday Hundred bonus. They\'re calling it the 3Xmas Happy Hour.

The 3Xmas Happy Hour is an extension of Full Tilt Poker\'s regular and on-going Happy Hour promotion wherein players can earn 2x - 3x the Full Tilt Points (or FTPs) by playing at tables marked in the Full Tilt lobby with a smiling yellow face icon during indicated \"Happy Hours\". But for the period between Monday December 1st and Friday January 1st, those Full Tilt Points awarded will be tripled. That\'s makes these 3Xmas Happy Hours the party to attend this year, especially on the two big days, Christmas day and again on New Year\'s Day themselves.

Because on those two days, all Happy Hours will be extended to 3x their normal duration, giving you 3x as much time to amass those points.

Play at Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker Happy Hours take place every day, at all different stakes levels, and in both cash games and tournaments. But it\'s not the same Happy Hours with the same bonuses at the same tables and tournaments each day, so check the Full Tilt Poker lobby to be sure you\'re playing in a 3Xmas Happy Hour game.

These tournaments are a huge staple of the online poker world\'s regular offerings for players with little bankrolls to cash in big, and most importantly for today\'s readership - it\'s not cancelled anymore.

Play at Bodog Poker

The Bodog Poker $100K Guaranteed runs, as we said, every week, on each Sunday at 4 pm EST. The buy-in is a respectable $162. Nothing too unwieldy for most. But even still, you don\'t have to pay nearly that much to shoot for a share of the $100K. Throughout the week are a series of qualifiers that you can jump into at whatever level you\'re comfortable with.

It starts with the $1 Cheap Seats qualifiers that run twice daily and award 1 seat in a special Semifinal for every $34 in the prize pool. That $100K Semifinal Sit & Go is a 6-handed Sit \'n Go that runs \"all day every day\" (as soon as six players fill the seats) where, if you don\'t want to work your way up through the Cheap Seats, you can buy-in for $34. 1st place gets into the weekly $100K Guaranteed and 2nd place gets 1/6th the buy-in in tournament dollars, or T$27.

Alternatively there are two other satellite routes to the Bodog Poker Weekly $100K Guaranteed, both with 2 steps.

While all the biggest name poker rooms like PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Titan Poker are whacking swords with welcome bonuses (aka first deposit bonuses) in the $600-$650 realm, a vastly lesser known site BestPoker comes along and puts them all to share with an 8x bonus up to $2,000. It\'s a little complicated to explain, but we\'ll try to do better at it than the BestPoker site did.

There are 6 different welcome bonuses for new BestPoker players to choose from, designed so that players at any stakes level can find the best bonus for their buck. They\'re set up as follows:

But as most of the PokerStars membership competes for seats in the PCA main event, there is a whole weekend of excitement part and parcel of the PCA that you can also find big free winnings in. It\'s the PCA Ladies Weekend.

Play at PokerStars

And PokerStars knows how to treat its ladies. Because with the prize package that the winners receive are not only the $1,000 entry for the PCA Ladies Weekend Main Event, full accommodations at the Atlantis Resort and Casino, and $900 pocket change, but a $250 voucher for the spa as well.

Plus the total $3,500 value also includes an invite to an exclusive PCA Ladies Poker Bootcamp where you\'ll pick up invaluable tips and get personal coaching from some of poker\'s finest female players, like Vanessa Rousso, Katja Thater, and Vicky Coren.

Qualifiers are running now at PokerStars for the PCA Ladies Weekend main event and prize package. Daily, PokerStars offers 3 different opportunities - unfortunately no free poker options, but for buy-ins starting at just $2.20 or 500 FPPs (Frequent Player Points) it\'s almost free - to win a seat in $215 PCA Ladies Weekend Final Qualifier held every Sunday at 5:30 pm ET with 1 prize package awarded for every $3,500 in the prize pool.

Tom \"durrrr\" Dwan, whose meteoric rise to fame as one of the reputed best in the world at NL Hold\'em started not too long ago with a cheap satellite on Full Tilt Poker, put out a $1 million challenge for 50,000 hands of play at Full Tilt Poker\'s heads-up high stakes NL [url=http://www.pokerforfree.org/en/online-poker-rules/texas-hold-em/]Texas Hold\'em[/url] tables. Patrik Antonius took that challenge, and after much back and forth, it is still anybody\'s game.

During this time, Patrik Antonius twice (in less than 2 weeks time) claimed the world\'s record for the biggest pot won in online poker history.

Shortly thereafter, an unknown, who remains to this day unknown, who is only known by his Full Tilt Poker username Isildur1 started taking on these two rivals during their \"downtimes\" from competition with one another. In so doing, this mystery player from Sweden took millions of dollars off of each of these players. At one point, Isildur1 was $6 million-plus ahead, $5 million of that off of Dwan and $1 million off of Antonius.

Play at PokerStars

Team PokerStars Pros like both 2008 and 2009 WSOP main event champs Peter Eastgate and Joe Cada (respectively), along with the man who inspired their PokerStars satellite climb to victory, Chris Moneymaker, as well as some of live poker\'s biggest PokerStars like Daniel Negreanu and online poker\'s biggest young contenders like Bertrand \"ElkY\" Grospellier will be turning out in spades at tournament tables and cash games alike - even Sit \'n Go\'s - and at all buy-ins and stakes levels.

You can even come on by to observe from the rail, and throw in your support (or your two cents) via live chat now and again.

Then, at 1 pm and again at 8 pm ET every Tuesday this month, PokerStars will have the highlight of Team Pro Tuesdays, its two Outlast the Pro tourneys. These have a buy-in of $11, with PokerStars adding $1,000 to the prize pool, to be divided evenly amongst the players remaining after all the Team PokerStars Pros in attendance have been shut out of the competition. This on top of whatever prize pool is awarded to all the players who cash in the tournament.

All this adds up to make Tuesdays in December a special occasion worth celebrating.

Among them are synchronized breaks and easier multi-table tracking. These improvements, and several others, are all a part of the latest Party Poker software upgrade.

All you need to do to win a piece of the action is to be playing at the cash game table when and where the 2 billionth hand is dealt. The winner of the hand, obviously, takes the largest share of the bonus (or $60,000), but all the players dealt cards in the hand (that\'s all who paid the big blind, whether they stayed in to see the flop or folded straightaway) wins an equal share of the bonus as well, set at $40,000 per person, regardless of how they played or finished in the hand.

Play at VC Poker

Starting at 1,900,000th hand dealt, VC Poker started awarding cash prizes to all the players involved in certain benchmark hands. Every 500,000th hand dealt is called a Golden Hand and every 2.5 millionth hand dealt is called a Platinum Hand. Each comes with its own rewards for the players involved.

As an additional bonus VC Poker is giving each player participating in a Golden Hand, a Platinum Hand, or the 2 Billionth Hand a free entry with $530 into the next Monthly Million GP, this one set for January, 2010.

Lastly, there\'s a Bubble Hands Freeroll for the 1,999,900th through the 2,000,100th players with 20 free entries into the January 2010 Monthly Million GP and a $20,000 bounty on the head of the player who won the 2 Billionth Hand.

One of the nicest things about the $2010 promotion is that it\'s open to all Titan Poker players, new and old, sit \'n go, cash game, or multi-table tournament players. The site, Europe\'s biggest, accomplishes this feat by providing multiple ways to win.

Multi-table tournament players can sit down at a Nightly $2010 event that takes place at 8:10 pm ET (20:10 GMT), with a buy-in also aptly set at $2 + $0.10. The top 10 finishers at each night\'s event will compete in a monthly $2010 freeroll.

Play at Titan Poker

New players making their first deposit into a Titan Poker real money account will receive, as part of their welcome bonus package, 4 entries into an exclusive $2010 freeroll, with a guaranteed $2010 prize pool at each one.

And Titan Poker is honoring its VIPs as much as its new players with a bevy of exclusive $2010 VIP tournaments scheduled throughout the month, each with guaranteed prize pools ranging from $2010 to $4020.

Additionally, Titan Poker is holding a $2010 Cash Game Race, a $2010 Sit & Go Tournament Race, and a $2010 Tournament Race. There even is a $2010 Omaha Race. All of these $2010 races use Titan Points and leader boards to track a players progress throughout the month, with $2010 in cash prizes up for grabs at each.

Titan Poker even includes it\'s side game players in the excitement with a $2010 Blackjack Race and a $2010 Slots Race as well.

In all, Titan Poker will award a guaranteed $120,000 in cash prizes in this $2010 promotion.

Anybody who participated in the FTOPS XIV will find the schedule for its lower-stakes companion series very familiar, because it contains all the same events, scheduled in the same order. The only difference is that they\'ve got 1/10th of the buy-in. What\'s nice, you might also notice, is that the $4 million guaranteed prize pool is a lot more than 1/10th the $20 million total prize pool awarded at the FTOPS XIV, which seems to make the Mini-FTOPS XIV the better value.

Play at Full Tilt Poker

As with its big brother, at the Mini-FTOPS XIV there will be a 2-day event, starting December 19, this time with a $256 buy-in and a $400,000 guaranteed prize pool. The main event, taking place December 20, only has a $55 buy-in, and the total prize pool is $600,000.

In addition to the 25 events making up the Mini-FTOPS XIV, there will also be a few side opportunities to win some extra bonus cash, including a MiniFTOPS XIV leader board with a top prize worth $7,500 comprised of free entries into every FTOPS XV event except for the 2-day event. It also includes a collection of MiniFTOPS XIV Challenges, 4 in all - the Satellite Seat Challenge, the Hold-em Challenge, the Survivor Challenge, and the Double Up Challenge.

There\'s still time to satellite your way into the Full Tilt Poker Mini-FTOPS XIV, with buy-ins starting at 50 FTPs or $0.50.

The $50,000 Cash Game Race is for cash game players, as you might expect. It runs from December 3 to 23 and involves climbing a leaderboard by accumulating as many PartyPoints as you can during the promotional term. The top 500 finishers will receive a cash prize, with the top finisher getting $3,000 and the top 4 finishers guaranteed a four-figure award. One hitch - only Bronze, Silver, and Gold Party Poker members can participate.

Play at Party Poker

The Jackpot Hunter is for Sit \'n Go players, with a total of $160,000 up for grabs. Claiming part of that jackpot involves playing in single-table Sit \'n Go tournaments that have buy-ins of $55 or higher. Win 5 in a row and win a jackpot. The size of the jackpot depends on the stakes level at which you\'re playing, with the higher stakes having 3 $20,000 top prizes, the lower-stakes having 5 $10,000 top prizes. There are a few other restrictions, like the fact that all 5 have to be at the same stakes level.

Last part of the Party Poker Full House promotion for December 2009 is the $1 Million Multi-Table Tournament Jackpots. Like the Jackpot Hunter, this runs the entire month long, December 1 to 31. To participate, pay 20 PartyPoints to buy-in to a tournament with a $5,000 guaranteed prize pool, and the top 200 finishers at each being awarded a seat in a January 3 final with a guaranteed prize pool of $250,000. Direct buy-in to the final is 1,000 PartyPoints. Prizes will also be awarded for winning multiple $5,000 tournaments.

This post is in regards to our Summer Survival League, a competition of 8 $50 added events with low buy-ins and a final of $1,000 where only 20 players will qualify for. The first prize of the league is nothing less than $500!

Quite frankly, I am a bit fed up with how things are going when we\'re running special events. As most of you already know, we had plenty of leagues running at Poker For Free in the past, but because of all the freeroll whores ruining the atmosphere, we decided to change our concept around and went from free poker to low buy-ins.

The 25 events of FTOPS XIII cover a wide variety of poker games and buy-ins. The lowest buy-ins are in the $100 range, while the largest buy-in is the $2500 two day event. There are a ton of different tournaments as well including a few standard hold\'em and Omaha tournaments, as well as a heads up pot limit Omaha tourney, 2 no limit hold\'em shootouts, no limit hold\'em and pot limit Omaha heads up tourneys, a razz tournament, a stud tournament, a HORSE tournament and more. You are sure to find a game to your liking in FTOPS XIII.

Play at Full Tilt Poker

The added prizes for FTOPS XIII are the same as they have been for the past few FTOPS series\'. Every player who reaches the final table of a FTOPS XIII tourney will receive a FTOPS jacket and if you win a tournament you receive a limited-edition gold FTOPS jersey to go along with your jacket. The top finisher on the FTOPS XIII leaderboard wins a custom Full Tilt avatar, as well as a free entry into every FTOPS XIV event, which is worth about $7.5K. The MiniFTOPS prizes are basically the same except the winner\'s jersey is silver instead of gold.

As already mentioned, all events have a low buy-in and we add an extra $50 to the pot. While playing in our weekly events you can earn leader board points and if you happen to be among the top 10 in July, or the top 10 in August, then you will qualify for our Summer Survival League final on September 2nd. The final will have a total prize pool of $1,000 divided by 3. The payout structure will be 50%, 30% and 20%, which equals to $500, $300, and $200 respectively.

All tournaments will start every Wednesday evening at 19:30 GMT (21:30 CET).

All players who register an account at Titan Poker following one of the link on Poker For Free can participate, of course also the ones who have registered an account through us in the past.

PKR Super Series 09 kicks off on June 26th at 3:15pm EST with a $10,000 guaranteed, $10 rebuy tournament. The second tournament of the series will be considered the $100K PKR Masters event with a buy-in of $250 that usually runs on the last Saturday of the month anyways. PKR decided to kill two birds with one stone by adding this already existing event to the Super Series schedule. After these two events there are 7 more affordable events with buy-ins ranging from $12 to $50. These 7 Super Series events will be a lot of fun with many popular variations including a terminator bounty tournament, a deep & steep stack tournament, a heads-up \'terminator two\' tournament, a Pot Limit Omaha hi/low tourney and a double chance tournament where you have the option to only risk half of your stack at once. Finally, the last event of the series is a $100 no limit hold\'em 6-handed deep stack tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $35,000.

Play Poker at PKR

In the first hour of the tournament you should play extremely aggressive. Everyone will be playing looser so when you do get a big hand you can bet big and you will still usually be called. For example, if you are dealt pocket aces or kings in the rebuy stage of the tournament you can make a raise of four times the big blind. Then if you are reraised you can move all-in. Often time\'s players are happy to get their chips in for a coin flip or even slightly behind at this stage because they are trying to build their stack. You should use this fact to your advantage and double up when you have a strong hand.

The second last event the European Poker Tour schedule took place in San Remo, Italy. The event had a buy-in of €5,300 and brought in a field of 1178 players, which made for a €5,713,300 prize pool. The event started on April 18th and concluded on April 23rd when Dutchman Constant Rijkenberg took home the €1,508,000 first place prize. All of the chips got in when Niemi, the second place finisher, pushed with (A,10) on a 10 high board. Rijkenberg, quickly called with pocket aces and dodged a ten on the river to take down the cash and the championship.

Play Poker at PKR

All Poker Club members may submit as many testimonials as they wish, but limited to one per poker room, as only one counts as a entry-ticket for this promotion. You will only become eligible for the monthly prize-draw if you have used the same name when posting a testimonial as you have signed-up with upon your Poker Club registration.

Only one testimonial per poker room, per person is allowed. At the end of each month we will draw one winner out of all people who have submitted a testimonial. The prize will be distributed approximately the 10th of a following month.

For example: You may submit a testimonial for each of the poker rooms you play at in one month, or you can spread these over several month, as we select one winner every new month.

You can find the link to a poker rooms\' testimonial page, on the poker rooms\' review of your choice, in the right column where it says \"related links\".

The winners will be announced via e-mail and in our forums.

Join Poker Club

More details about our monthly $100 sweepstakes can be found after logging into your Poker Club account, in the members only zone.

For example, if there is a pot of $20 after the turn and you are forced to make a call of $5 to see the river, then your pot odds would be 25%.

Play Poker at PokerStars

Currently, we would suggest this no deposit bonus to everybody, because PokerStrategy has it all and you get to play with $50 totally free.

What\'s the scoop you\'re asking yourself? It\'s easy, they make money while you play, so they are willing to invest in you and hopefully for them, you\'re going to be the next online poker pro! Technically spoken, they make a small percentage off all the rake you generate and tournament fees you pay. The more you play, the more commission they get. Also, once you have earned a specific amount of points (which equals to a specific amount of earned money for them), they are going to give you yet another $100 to play with - as you have proven to be a solid and skilled poker player.

For me personally, I have been able to travel quite a bit. I traveled to Miami to meet with friends, stayed at a luxury hotel at Sunny Isles and had an amazing time. Later that year my favorite niece got married in Forza d\'Agro (near Taormina, Sicily) in the actual church where they filmed one of the Godfather movies. Then there was another wedding in Philly, where I happened to be best man!

This time the mistake was completely on my side and not Titan\'s, so I guess the best I can do is contact them at first occasion and have it postponed to a new date, probably early January 2009.

Sorry for all the inconvenience that it may have caused, fellow Poker Clubbers!

Many of you will play a lot more of (online) poker during the holidays and so do I. When I was going through some poker promotions this morning, I stumbled upon the PokerStars world record attempt. This Sunday they will run a tournament where they aim for 35,000 participators and get a Guinness Book of Records listing for the largest online poker tournament to date.

There will be a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool and the buy-in is only $11. You can play at PokerStars for humongous prizes and even become part of history. If you happen to make the final table, you would become famous, next to being awarded with a nice sum of cash.

Play at PokerStars Now!

During this promotion there\'s a total prize pool of $75,000 up for grabs. Playing this amount of tourneys for the given total prize pool is a great way to work on your poker skills and build on a solid bankroll for free.

Everyday until December 27, there will be five $500 freerolls per day (see schedule below). If you make it in the money in any of these freerolls, then you will also win a ticket to one of the five freeroll finals on December 28. These finals will all have a prize pool of $5,000!

Play at PokerStars Now!

Play Cash Games at PokerStars

Depending on where you live you need to check where there is the most traffic in the hours that you like to play. It is also a good idea to keep an eye on when your games come out the best and adjust your hours to this.

Although the first paragraph of this article seems to focus on bankroll management, it actually doesn\'t. Instead, this particular poker article is about how you can play among the big guys, for instance in the Sunday Warm-up or the Sunday Million at PokerStars, without going broke naturally.

I\'m sure that you know that the best way to play in poker tournaments in the higher buy-ins range is through online satellites. Satellites are +EV, you play to qualify and usually that can be accomplished without having to finish first, or among the firsts.

Play Poker at PokerStars

Many times you\'ll see that regular tournaments have a payout structure where a lot of players get ITM, but only the top 5 players get a significant prize. When playing satellites, about 1 entry-ticket per 10 players is guaranteed. This means that your chance to accomplish your goal in a satellite is a lot higher, as you don\'t need to finish in the top 5 out of 1000 players (0.5%) to get paid well.

The best part about Mirada\'s new product will be its availability across other platforms. Virtual dealer roulette will be available streaming over the web, through major live platforms and even on television. The product will also feature multi player capability, live chat, messaging, real time stats and rich three dimensional graphics.

Mirada has created the product to create a more pleasing and interactive experience for online gamers, and at a fraction of the cost of an actual live dealer game. Virtual Dealer roulette is also very adaptable and easily integrated into existing platforms. This makes for easy integration of player accounts, wallets, back office applications, additional games and customer management.

Mirada\'s CEO had the following to say regarding their latest product.

\"Games need to be fun, visual, provide a sense of community and these are all the ingredients we are adding to traditional gambling products. The result is a video roulette that stands out from the competition, applies to both online and interactive TV worlds and offers platform operators a great way to differentiate their offer for a fraction of the cost of live dealer solutions.\"

Here are the payouts for the final table:

The general feedback from the first event was very positive according to Glenn Casale, the Director Casino Operations. He went on to say, \"The players were so pleased with the tournament - the way we ran the events, the reasonable buy-ins, the quality of our dealers, the level of competition - they practically insisted we make it an annual event.\"

So Binions did just that offering a range of events from your standard [url=http://www.pokerforfree.org/en/online-poker-rules/texas-hold-em/]Hold\'em[/url] tournaments to the popular HORSE event and a ladies-only game set to take place next week. The championship event takes place on November 3 and will mark the end of the very popular event for players willing to put up the still manageable $1,000 entry fee. For a chance to compete in the hallowed halls of a poker landmark like Binions, that\'s a small price to pay for most poker players.

The current decline in revenues is the largest recorded since the control board began keeping records in 1984. The first eight months of 2008 show that revenues have dropped six point eight percent. The Strip, Las Vegas' famous line of amazing high rise casinos and lavish attractions has been hit with a six point six percent decline in revenues. Obviously the reduction in gaming revenues has also led to a reduction in tax revenue for the state. There was a six percent drop in tax revenues for the state to this point so far in the year.

In other areas of the state, gaming revenues were off by as much as seventeen point eight percent and twenty two point four percent. Clearly the difficult times in the American economy are having an influence American's and their willingness to come out and gamble away their money.

The news from Las Vegas is in sharp contrast to some of the success foreign based online casinos have been seeing as of late. A rise in the number of participating players has brought some record numbers to several online casino properties. Proprietors in Las Vegas might soon be getting a break however as fuel prices start returning to normal levels and long distance travel becomes more of a reality again.

The online version of their television channel is set to deliver short and long-form video coverage of major poker tournaments, \"how to\" videos, interviews with famous poker players, and much more. Major names that The Poker Channel promises to serve up include Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson. Starting in 2009 they even plan to serve up these videos translated into other languages.

Competing against established brands such as ESPN.com and CardPlayer.com will be a tall order for the European company. With more languages supported and the Brightcove techonology, Chris White from The Poker Channel had this to say: \"With Brightcove\'s technology, we can help make pokerchanneleurope.com the premier destination for poker fans worldwide, and offer more ways to engage and interact with our audiences whether on TV or online.\"

So I got in a little over 22:00 and it was just Freddy and one of the gorgeous looking dealers sitting at the table. I was surprised because it looked crowded to me in the Maho Beach area, as well as at the blackjack tables.

Anyway, I sat down and listened to some more of Freddy\'s interesting poker tales. After about 30 minutes, a guy from Chicago, which I played with before, came in and we started playing poker with just the three of us. This lasted for about 1 hour (!) and I went from $200 to $50 to $200+ before more people joined us. Within no time the table was almost filled up entirely, so I changed gears and played conservative until I had to pick up my dad at Lady-C. I left with $290, a $90 profit for the night so far. I stood up, but promised to be back ASAP.

Alex Bond was the events heartbreak kid when his clearly superior AQ lost to Wang Che Jung\'s QT on a long shot straight draw. Bond was ridding the bubble and took the fall. The remaining 32 players all then took a relaxing dinner break before continuing their quest for the final table.

Play for the second day ended once the field was limited to eleven players. Andrew Pantling fell in twelfth place taking home just over ten thousand dollars. Pantling\'s KJ off suite was beat by Eward Holdcroft with the AQ. Holdcroft nailed two pair on the flop and never looked back.

Here are the standings for the remaining eleven players:

That the authorities felt compelled to cite these soldiers with a misdemeanor is disappointing, as these people all are serving our country and should have the opportunity to play legal poker as an outlet of some sort. Unfortunately in North Carolina that's not the case as poker is clearly against the law according to the books.

It's unlikely they'll get a break in court as both states frown heavily on illegal gambling and often pose fines in the thousands of dollars to offenders that are convicted.

Anyway, after dinner we split up, some of the group went to Lady-C, my dad was exhausted and went to sleep and I had the night all for myself, so I went to Casino Royale across the street to see if I could catch some cash game action. Surprisingly the table was filled with 5 players and I was happy to join them. The stakes were $5/$2 with bets of multiplies of $5 only.

As you might have read in the forum, I didn't play any live poker on Monday night, as I couldn't find any action at Casino Royal when I checked. Yesterday I planned to play the $2000 freeroll at the Atlantis World Casino, at Southern Dutch/French border of St. Maarten. My dad and I managed to get there 2 hours early, so we could also have dinner before the tournament would start at 20:30. I was the first to register and was a little sceptical, but since the Atlantis World has many tourneys, as well as one of the biggest poker rooms on the island, I could be easily wrong... and I was.

After finishing dinner, a nice piece of swordfish for me and a pepperoni pizza for my dad, we entered the casino. By now lots of people gathered around the registration area and it was obviously that the freeroll "sold out".

The reason for our short trip is that my dad turns 75 years old and we thought it would be a killer idea to celebrate it together with my brother, who moved to Sint Maarten more than 6 years ago. We never told him that we were coming... imagine the looks on his face when we surprised him :)

Unfortunately, it takes money to hire big lobbyists and that's what keeps Washington running. The trickle down effect is what helps the common folks, like us with legislation that hopefully makes our lives a little better. When it comes to poker and protecting our game it's good to know that we have an ally like the PPA on our side. Spending by the PPA on lobbying efforts has ramped up considerably since their launch in 2005. The spending curve has progressed as follows:

The Norwegian proposal has been highly debated since its introduction. The local press in Norway is creating a very bad picture for online poker which is not helping the cause for poker players. On the other hand, the European Commission in Brussels has cited heavy criticism of the proposal. It is very possible that if the ban does pass in the Norwegian Parliament, it will simply end up in European Court of Justice.

One reason behind the Norwegian proposal is heavy public outcry about the number of people playing too much online poker and the increase in gambling addiction. The Norwegian Culture Minister has cited an increase in people turning to help through government sponsored gambling addiction programs. Hopefully this will just be another failed attempt at legislating morality and online poker will continue to prevail in Scandinavian countries.

While it\'s exciting to see another player jump into the fray for the online gaming market, one has to wonder if these applications will ever see the light of day. Established brands such as Prima and Microgaming already have mature applications that can be licensed. A quick visit to their website yielded nothing as far as demos or even references for the fledgling company.

The one encouraging tidbit here is the growth of the online gambling industry because if the analysts are even half right, that\'s a $60+ billion dollar industry we will see in just under 10 years. So perhaps there is indeed room for new players such as Castle but only time will tell.

The polar opposite of that spectrum is the online poker world, which has completely turned that concept inside out. With the two top online poker sites taking in hordes of new players, the industry continues to buck trends and grow when so many other economic indicators are faltering.

During the month of September PokerStars remained the leader by a wide margin with an average of 18,644 players per day. They hit their peak on September 28th with 21,340 players were seated and playing real money games. Following closely behind was Full Tilt Poker with 8,039 players on average and a peak of 8,598 reached on September 17th.

Based on the outcome of this critical bill in the US, we will have to check back in another month to see how these same sites fared for the month of October.

The main event in Seoul was a no limit [url=http://www.pokerforfree.org/en/online-poker-rules/texas-hold-em/]Texas Hold\'em[/url] tournament with a buy in just shy of three thousand dollars. Day one saw 165 players ante up in hopes of taking home the first prize of nearly $130,000. Yoshihiro Tasaka, a player from Japan was one of six Japanese competitors to finish in the money at APPT Seoul. Tasaka had a fierce heads up battle at the final table with a fellow Japanese player Hidenari Shiono before finally knocking him out and taking home the first prize.

Here are the final results for APPT Seoul:

Some significant improvements include new betting features such as half pot, three quarter pot and full pot as well as an improved slider button for more clear and concise betting in tough situations. The note taking feature has been improved as well allowing for quicker and cleaner note taking.

Of special note in the update is the welcome addition of new avatars! Party Poker players for years have been begging to drop the 1990\'s style figures with something a tad more modern. Well the wish has finally been granted with a set of sharp and well done avatars.

Some of the new Party Poker features include:

The World Series of Poker Europe runs through October 2nd and features four big poker events. After event one concludes on Monday the 22nd, there will be a H.O.R.S.E. event followed by a Pot Limit Omaha event and then the ten thousand pound Main Event starting on Saturday September 27th. Last years Main Event was won by the quiet female assassin, Norwegian Annette Obrestad. Annette was only twenty years old at the time and the first women to win a World Series of Poker Main Event.

The single biggest mistake beginner Omaha players make is that they are unable to shift gears from the Hold\'em mindset. A classic example is thinking you can play a single hole card to make a five-card hand. This isn\'t the case and you can find yourself losing a large pot if you ever make this mistake. In Omaha, you must play TWO of your hole cards to make a winning hand. Here\'s an example of a typical Omaha hand:

Loose, maniac, or rock?

Some of the easier reads are made easier when a player sits down at an online poker room and proceeds to play every single hand to the river and quickly lose a large amount of cash. Some reads are more subtle and take time to fully compute. Let\'s take a look at the following example:

Johnny has been playing 2/4 NL Hold\'em at Titan Poker on the same table for an hour. He\'s watched a player named Xmode play for the same hours time and take forever on every call, raise, or fold. He doesn\'t type anything into the chat box and sometimes, even times out and has his hand folded. Wow, what a terrible player right? Maybe, maybe not. Xmode may have a slow Internet connection, or he may be trying to read a starting hand value chart as he plays for the first time. Of course, he could just be a 75-year-old Grandfather who\'s as solid as a rock and only plays the nuts.

So how do you figure out whether Xmode is a donkey, a rock, or just a geriatric Pappy who\'s playing on his Grandson\'s account? While there\'s no sure-fire way to know for sure, you can do a little digging to find out. First of all, some sites display the connection strength of players so that\'s the first thing to check. If it\'s low, it\'s likely the connection that\'s causing his slow play.

You can try to start a conversation with him in the chat box. Don\'t be nasty and tell him how bad his play is or how slow he is. He may just agree with you and leave! Take a look at his city (if the poker room shows this information) and ask him about the weather. It doesn\'t matter what topic you choose just start a conversation. He may or may not answer but if he does, you can usually be assured that his connection is fine.

You can also pull up the hand history (you may want to take a five minute break to do this) and look at the hands he\'s shown down. This information is self-explanatory and will help you as you continue to play with him. If you\'re playing a tournament go to a site such as SharkScope and enter his player name. If he\'s a long-term loser with a negative ROI, you have yourself a prime target there.

Conversely, a player that sits and makes instant decisions but rarely plays a hand is almost always a rock. Stay away from them unless you have a really big hand. If a player has only played 6 hands in a session and plays to river every time, again you\'re likely against a solid player who rarely bluffs or shows down the second best hand. Steer clear if you can.

So what about your table image? Simple, take this information that you\'ve just read and reverse it. Regardless of your connection speed, fake it and tell the viewers in the chat window that you\'re having issues. Make quick calls and raises if you\'re on a bluff, or perhaps only when you\'re holding the nuts. Switch gears often and make the subtle changes to your game to send whatever message you choose. As you perfect this skill, you can truly change your table image from table to table as you continue to play online poker.

The Federal Reserve System and The Department of the Treasury both admit that UGIEA is confusing and will be very difficult for financial institutions to follow properly. Frank's bill will hopefully bring some clarification to the daunting bill that in addition to making most forms of online gaming in America illegal has also made the online gaming environment in the United States ambiguous as ever.

Another facet of the bill would be the requirement of an administrative law judge to define exactly what is unlawful internet gambling and for a report on economic impact and consequences on American financial institutions. This bill is similar to an earlier attempt by Frank to bring some clarification to UGIEA. The last attempt failed to make it to the table from Frank's own committee debating the issue.

The semi final match of the tournament brought together Steve \"stevesbets\" Jacobs against online player \"zivziv\" in what zivziv recalls was a very tough match. Jacobs is a very fast player and zivziv undoubtedly was having trouble making good poker decision in all the fast play. Steve Jacobs would go on to defeat zivziv and then take on ElkY. ElkY (Bertrand Grospellier) is actually a world renowned video gamer and could easily keep up with Jacobs speed in the championship match. In fact at one point ElkY held a three to one chip lead, unfortunately for him he couldn\'t hold on and Steve Jacobs went on to win the title and the $560,000 first prize. Below are the top ten finishers in the heads up tournament:

Action for this tournament will be concluding tonight as the final thirty player\'s battle it out for the bulk of the prize pool. At the time of this writing the chip counts are as follows:

Rather than battling it out themselves, the challenge is for the Ultimate Bet Pro's to teach poker students to be an excellent player and then those players will take each other on. Annie Duke and Phil Helmuth will be instructing 18 different players. Players were selected as part of a contest hosted by Ultimate Bet.com. Potential players created an audition video and submitted it to Ultimate Bet. In the video, players had to plead their case as to why they are the best choice for a reality show about poker.

Ultimate Bet also held a live audition at this years World Series of Poker where they were able to get around a lot of great players at once. In addition to the WSOP auditions and the send in tapes, Ultimate Bet gave away a few spots to people who qualified via online tournaments.

The show has already begun filming and will begin airing on October 27th on Fox Sports Net.

Essentially, what the poker room is doing is taking the prize pool and dividing it by the number of \"seats\", or entries to the main event that you\'re trying to qualify for. So if the tournament you\'re trying to qualify for requires a $1,000 entry fee and you\'re playing a $100.00 satellite, then for each 10 players there will be one seat available ($100.00 X 10 entries = $1,000.00). So if there are 105 players in the event, ten seats would be awarded and the remaining $500 in cash would distributed to the players that finished 11th, 12th, and so on.

Unlike a tournament however, where you are playing to win and take home the big prize, satellite strategy is fundamentally different. If you\'re in 5th place in a satellite that awards 10 seats, you should avoid any big confrontations as the bubble approaches. Think about it, in this scenario first place is the same award as tenth place. So there\'s no need for you to risk chips needlessly (so fold that weak ace from middle position!). Just as in a regular tournament the bubble players will sooner or later be forced to play a marginal hand and hopefully, lost to a larger stack so that you have secured your seat to the bigger event.

Early play in a satellite should not differ too much from a standard tournament. Your primary goal at this point remains the same, which is to chip up and be in a good position to make moves on weaker (smaller stacked) opponents as the middle point of the tournament approaches. Again, it\'s important to note at this point in a satellite that your play should remain steady just as if it were a standard tournament.

At the middle point, you can typically expect the remaining entrants to be relatively solid poker players. Of course, donks can run deep in poker satellites just like standard tournaments so be careful to try and spot these players also. From this point on you must focus on the donks and the weaker stacks but still maintain a solid starting hand/positional strategy to ensure you\'re in a good spot as the bubble approaches. The best tactic at this point is use your reads and exploit patterns that the weaker players have demonstrated.

As the bubble approaches, remember what you\'ve already learned in this article and that\'s to avoid unnecessary confrontations. Even holding a premium hand like KK may be a wise lay down with only one player to the bubble in a qualifier situation. This is contrary to what you have learned in cash games but again this isn\'t a cash game! Take the following example:

You hold KK in middle position and an early player raises 5X the BB. Hand for hand play is in effect as after only one more elimination, you\'ve earned a seat to the big one. The raiser has 2X the chips you have and can eliminate you if he wins the hand; you\'re currently 6th in chips. Do you call, raise, or fold here? In the author\'s humble opinion, a fold is the right move. Early position raises from a chip leader at this point usually indicate strength. He may not hold AA but he could hit a set, a flush, or any two cards to take your Kings. In other words live to fight another battle, the odds of a smaller stacked opponent going out on the bubble are much greater than you getting chipped off due to blinds at this point.

So you must remember to shift gears and also your logic during a satellite. If you\'re able to effectively do this, your bankroll will thank you for it!

All important features work, but there is still some work left, though you will probably not even notice :)

Let\'s dig a little deeper to give you a clear view of what I am talking about. Jackpot Sit n\' Go\'s have an additional prize for winning a given amount in a row. For instance, you will get a bonus of $50.000+ when you win 6 Fort Knox [url=http://www.pokerforfree.org/en/poker-strategies/sit-and-go-strategies/]Sit n\' Go\'s[/url] in a row. Honestly, this is a little hard and you will need variance of the cards to be a on your side, but it\'s definitely doable, in fact it\'s been done many times before. Also, when you manage to make 6 top 2 finishes you will receive a nice consolation prize of $750.

The reason I personally love these type of tourneys is that you have 3 places paid out of 6, instead of 2 like in regular Sit n\' Go\'s. As I am a real bubble-boy when playing shorthanded Sit n\' Go\'s, I now tend to break even many more times because of this pay-out structure. I also made the consolation prize a few times, but unfortunately I never managed to hit the jackpot!

So, as mentioned already, the iPoker Network offers three different type of Jackpot Sit n\' Go\'s:

Because of this you see that many players re-deposit, while it's so much better to step down if you're serious at becoming better. I speak out of experience, but recently began with basic bankroll management and I can say it really helps me a lot overall. Let me explain what happened prior to this.

I have played a lot of poker for a long time, initially freerolls, but I made the move to playing poker for real money within a year after I started playing. Loosing becomes a much bigger factor when playing poker for money, but it happens. Every online poker player will have periods that the odds are against them, these periods are called down swings. It's hard, it's frustrating and can cost you a lot of your money, specially when you're not managing your bankroll. Hardest of all is definitely to avoid getting on tilt when you constantly keep loosing when having pot odds.

To overcome down swings you should, no... you must do proper bankroll management! This way you can take a loss two, or even more. The best part, you can play over "the long haul", because that's what matters for getting positive odds in poker. Sure you will see yourself being sucked out occasionally, but over a longer period of time the odds change in your favor when playing the right hands.

With bankroll management you play in levels of limits-heights dependent to your bankroll. Once you drop below a certain amount of money, you will also have to move down in limits. For instance, if you loose a 95% winning hand when playing $5/10, but still have $99,000 left, you won't care about it and playing poker becomes a lot less stressful.

So, knowing all this might mean you have to step down a few levels from where you're playing online poker now, but the benefits of good bankroll management are simple, you won't go broke! Trust me, your bankroll will grow, thus you will move up soon enough, if you win consequently. Below you will find a few guidelines, I'd say hit the printer friendly button (printer icon) stick it to your wall next to your monitor.

This is not really an article as you are used to, but since Scott Brown vanished from the world of online poker and has been spotted on XBox Live lately, plus the fact that I personally don't have the time to blog frequently, we're seriously looking for a blogger.

Of course it would make sense if you are one of our regulars, because that way you know your way around, maybe play in our leader board and have some material to blog about. Other subjects to write about could be poker tournaments online, live poker tournaments, for instance one of the major events like the World Series or the EPT.

You will get $10 in a poker account per article to start with, payments will be made in the first week of a new month. Later on we will evaluate and see if there's more space to lift the payments up.

The only thing we want is someone who has superb English grammar skills, so we don't loose time reviewing articles.

So, if you're having fun at writing and want to play poker for real money... this is your chance! Please contact us if you believe to have what it takes and if you're seriously interested for a longer period of time.

I decided to enter a $2+$0 satellite and about 200 or so people entered while I waited for it to start... As I got my seat at my table, some people we re-buying some extra chips, but I decided not to do so at the start and see how the cards would fall. People at my table were "Dvautl", "Hem70601" and others! A full table of 9 people I think.

My first hand was A-7 and there were 3 players calling the 20 BB. The flop came down, K-J-T and it was checked around. The turn brought a J and it got checked around again. I feared someone could be slow playing three of a kind Jacks, so I checked my hand as well. The river was a T and it got checked around once again. I won the hand with two pair and my Ace high. It's great to win the 1st pot, even though it was just a small one! So from my starting 1000 chips I went up to 1040.

The second hand brought A-8 and I just called the Big Blind, together with 3 other limpers. The flop brought K-9-7, all rainbow and I checked since it was all checked to me. The turn brought a J and someone made a pot sized bet. Everyone folded and so did I.

The third hand was another Ace, this time it was A-6. I was thinking: I might get lucky getting an Ace hand for the 3rd time in a row, so I limped into the pot together with 4 more people. The flop brought A-7-5 and I decided to make a pot sized bet. Everybody but one player folded and the turn brought a 6, giving me two pair. So I made another pot bet and it got called. The river brought a 3 and with no flush or straight draws I made a final pot sized bet. My opponent called and showed A-6... a split pot! Everyone's happy splitting the blinds and bets.

Blinds now went up to 15-30 as I got dealt Q-7. I called the BB and the flop came down as J-7-6. I paired my 7 and someone called. "Nneff" betted 30, I called and so does one other person. The turn brought a 3 and again "Nneff" made a bet of 30 chips. I called and so did the other person. The river brought a K and it got checked around. "Nneff" got his King on the river, helping him pick up the pot.

A small flat spot of cards came were I was getting nothing really worth playing, so I folded and waited on the good cards. I got J-8 and called the BB of 30. There were 5 others in the pot and the flop brought down A-7-5. Someone betted just over the pot making me and everyone else fold.

The blinds went up again, with the rounds now being only five minutes. You really have to make good and strong moves not getting blinded out...

I was sitting on the Big Blind and I got dealt 5-2 off suit. If I could check I would have, but someone moved all-in for 820, so I folded there just like everyone else. He just took my blinds.

Again I hit a small period of rubbish cards, so I folded and watched other peoples' betting ways and noticed a few things. People were making pot sized bets when they hit the flop and just betting the blinds if they had some kind of straight draw or flush draw! Watching other people bet is also great... After a while I got Q-9 and it's my Small Blind, thinking: "I'm going to see a flop if nobody raises", but someone pushed his chips in for 790 and got one caller. That made me fold and the other person made a Full House Sevens over Aces. NH and GG was said and one more person was eliminated from my table. The seat got filled up with yet another person who maybe was hoping to get to the WSOP in Las Vegas.

I decided that, as the blinds were going up fast, I would re-buy for $2 to get another 1000 chips. With the blinds now at 50-100 I had to make it and not very much after I got dealt pocket 5's. Someone pushed all-in for 300. I called on the button and everyone else folded, so being heads up he showed pocket 2's. I showed my 5's, having the edge and they held up. Another person gone from my table! A few hands down the line I got A-K and someone pushed all his chips in, about 250. I called and everybody else folded. My A-K held up again as I hit the K on the turn...

Folding again and picking my moments I finally got dealt pocket T's. Since it was my BB, someone tried to steal it by pushing in all his 700 chips. Everyone else folded around to me and I decided to call him with pot odds and maybe being in front already. He showed A-7 of hearts. The flop brought J-T-4, the turn a Jack and I don't remember the river since I already made my full house, eliminating another person from the table. The blinds now went up to 100-200 and I got pocket 8's. Someone raised to 400 and I decided to call. The flop brought 7-2-2 and it was checked to me, thinking he would raise on 7 or a 2. I made a pot sized bet for about 800 and he folded. I thought he might had A-K or something like J-T.

The 5-minute break started and I saw people buying 1500 add-ons for $2. I decided not to do so, as I felt I had enough chips already, plus I also made a re-buy before. I had 3584 in chips and with the blinds at 100-200 I was OK for a bit.

But as the poker tournament continued, the blinds were up to 150-300, now including an ante of 25 chips. I was thinking to myself that I could better have added-on, but hey... you learn from your mistakes :)

Folding my cards, as I had nothing to play with, I noticed that the antes were hurting my stack. I had to keep folding, even my BB's and SB's, because the small stakes kept going all-in and I had nothing to call them down with.

When I got dealt K-9 of hearts, I decided to push the remains of my chip stack in the middle, hoping to pick up the blinds, but 2 people called my bet: A-K and A-Q. An Ace hits the flop and with no hearts on board, no gut shot straight draw, I got eliminated in 91st place. I realized I should have added-on, but like I already said... you have to learn from your mistakes, especially if you want to make it to the World Series of Poker!

I get a hand of Q-J suited of clubs, I raised up to about 60 which was 3 times the big blind, and I got 4 callers. Not really what I wanted to see, but the flop came down J-T-8 rainbow.

I made a pot sized bet hoping to take the pot there and then, didn't wanna see no more cards. I got one person calling me, "Forsenking", the turn brought a 5 so that was ok. I bet about 300 chips and got called again, the river was a Q, now giving me 2 pairs. I check because of the straight draw with "Forsenking" pushing nearly all his chip stack into the pot. I don't know but it screamed 9... giving him a straight which had me battered... I decided to fold with him showing 8-9... a good fold for me.

A few more hands down the line and me with about 700 in chips... I was in the Big Blind with 30 in and 3-2 suited of hearts. I check, the flop comes down 4-2-2, nobody's betting, and then someone puts a 200 bet in. I thought he might have got a 4? I raised him about 200 on top and he puts me all-in, thinking that maybe he has A-2, but with me being so committed to the pot I had to call him. I think he showed A-J, but the turn brought another 2! I made quads and the river was a 3 to add a little bit of salt to his wound. I was very happy that I made quads and won a pot :)

Then the card dead part came again trying to wait it out. I got dealt K-J, I thought a raise up would get rid of people but I got one caller. The flop brought nothing, so thought a bet would put him off, but he called. The turn brought nothing as well, he checked and I thought maybe he's weak and pushed the rest of my chip stack in the middle. After a short think he called and showed pocket T's. I needed a King or Jack on the river... which didn't come.

I had loads of fun though, and there was some great action... Some of the people at my table were "Forsenking", "Pokeristu232" and "BestBoy1", it was great playing you all and I look forward to playing you all again soon! Don't forget to register for the leader board!

The only bad beat I've had is when I had A-A and the flop came A-T-K all of spades, giving me trips. The next card came, a Q also of spades, and you can guess what the other player had in his hand, the Jack of spades... A lil frustrated by it maybe, but I really didn't put him on a Jack, nor a flush draw because he checked and when I bet min, he just flat called the checked the turn. I bet min, he called, and you would have thought he was weak or maybe say on a King? But then the final card came, I tad doughts now, but to be bluffed on nothing maybe? And throwing such a good hand away... I was already pot committed in some sense, as I only took $3 dollars to the table and maybe had $2 in there already! But he was happy with his royal flush (and my money) and I learned another lesson on poker! So even though I may have lost, I learned something in the process!

The freeroll tourneys are great, they do fill up really quickly though, so you really have to sit and wait for them to open for registration, but the game play is great. Everyone plays proper and respects bets even on the freerolls, and its quite easy to make the money if you play good cards, think about the way and how much your betting! Plus there seems to be some very good SNG's and some satellites I want to play in, when I next get $$$ on my account, to see how I can do on them? Seat at the WSOP?? I can only wish.... But you never know!

I got A-A and made a pot size raise, and got a person push all in. Now most people would instantly call but A-A can lose just as much as 7-2 in my eyes, although the odds seemed very good for me. I did call and he showed K-K in his hand, so as long as no runner-runner or anything funny like that appears I would be good. Damn, a K on the flop making his 3 of a kind, thinking I'm out I watched the turn being blank and then the river….. ACE! Three of a kind Ace's, yes!

Now I'm very comfy in chips and I can sit and play my blinds only, unless I get some very good cards. Now being just 3 away from the money, there's a 3 way all in call on the other table, thinking this was great, but the chip leader had the most chips, so he wasn't going out. I was hoping that he would take both the all-in calls out, but he only took one of them out, so that left 2 more to go.

Down to 12 people with both tables short handed. The blinds were pushing up on people and soon enough I've was In The Money! I think the 10th place paid $8? As we all were on 1 table now, the blinds increased took out the short stacks. If anybody pushed all-in, I would fold and let the other people take them out. Now it was all about how much money I could get and the money went up with each person going out! Down to 9 people… then 8… then 7… I was thinking great, I'm going to make some good $$$ for free.

6th place soon fell, also that was a A-A hand losing to J-10, hitting a straight Jack high. So now I'm guaranteed at least $18 and I got dealt A-K. This was definitely my pushing in hand. I got called by A-Q and he hit his Queen, so I'm out... but $18 for free is great and I've learned now to really play my hands hard while the blinds are low, so I can have a comfy chip lead and not worry about the blinds once they increase.

My $18 has turned into $24 by now and I'm going to keep playing micro stakes poker and just build up my bankroll, and of course I'm going to keep playing the freerolls.

The best way I find is to bet small amounts, unless I have the absolute nuts. I always try to see a cheap flop, as then you know if you have hit it or not, making my hand playable. Also watch out for the bluffs. I had one guy re-raise me when I had 3 of a kind 9's. He re-raised on nothing hoping me to fold my hand, maybe he thought I had a weak hand, but even my way of betting should have rang bells telling him I was holding something strong!

4096 people entered the tournament and I came 80th. I think that's amazing, a really good position. My strategy worked out about 4/5 heads up matches, but the competition became so much harder closer to the top. I'm going to play these more often, they're fun and its a great way to work on your live play when playing heads up!

My mind's currently more refreshed, I've recovered from losing a bit of money and am now back on track to play money again. So... a little advise from someone that knows, if you do lose a BIG pot, turn off your laptop/PC and take a break from it all together. Play live to stay focused, but just don't play online...

My live league has just started up again after changing venues. I'm now playing in my local nightclub, so I will have more news about how my games coming along as of this Sunday! I apologize that my report is really short this time, but I will have more to tell next time!

Happy new year,

Scott

Because of the nature of this site, Poker For Free, we see many players choosing for free online poker money and instant poker bonuses. Let tell you a little bit about them in a nut shell, and how you can get the maximum value out of each of them.

For instance, a $100 added tourney with the buy-in of $1.10 and 20 participating players will have a total pot of $120. The $0.10 fee per player goes to the online poker room for hosting the event, that's how they make their profit.

The difference between freerolls and added tournaments at first sight is definitely the buy-in. But what's really better, the level of game play is much more serious because the people at the tables have actually spent some real money to be able to play - so that's a lot less all-ins with A-x you'll be facing!

Also, I have started to play the $50,000 freeroll where the top 6 people get a ticket to the $50,000 freeroll. The other 26 top finishers all make the money, and with a field of about 10000 people I expect to be there for quite some time bringing on my best game. I came 2987 out of 10000 people, some may say that's quite poor, but for my 1st go at it I didn't feel too bad.

I've also decided to set myself a challenge: I want to make 100,000 in play chips by Christmas from the starting 1,000 you'll get. Some will properly be thinking this is way to easy, but its not as easy as you would think, so I'm going to be playing a lot of 27/45 person SNG's. My screen name on PokerStars is scott_20uk, if you see me on the table say hi. (Sit & Go -> Play money -> Low or Medium tabs)

Now, since you will still be making Dollars online, it basically stays the same, though there are two scenarios where you can gain advantage of this situation.

Scenario 1
You make a deposit, play tight, or Limit Texas Hold\'em to release some of your first deposit bonus, and make a withdrawal when the Dollar has gained in value.

Scenario 2
You make a deposit at a site where US players are allowed. No offense against our US visitors, but... since their currency values more to them, than it does to Europeans, you have an advantage of about 40%. This, and the fact that the majority of American poker players are known to have a loose game should make this scenario considerable.

I was the 1st big blind, and had something like 8-4 off suit. I decided to fold as a raise was called. To be honest this hand was representative for the kind of hands I was getting all night. I was bluffing my way around, got me a couple of pots but nothing huge. When I did find myself with say J-T, I raised a small amount and nothing would come on the flop. When I bet at it trying for a bluff I got called so instead of bluffing all my chips away I decided to fold... I was dealt K-7 suited of hearts and decided to make my move, pushing all in with my stack of 1000 chips left (starting with 2000 each). I got 1 caller holding A-X. The flop came down, all black cards and not even one pair. The turn was an A and the river... well that didn't matter, nothing could of helped me as I was drawing dead :( So going out in 132nd place (or very close to that) out of 300 people is not too bad I suppose, but since I was that card dead, what else could I do :(

Playing these I always feel like I'm going to get a million and one bluffs, or all in'ers, but really you don’t. People play to win, and the more play chips you get, the better Sit n' Go's you get to enter! My screen name is Scott_20UK and you will find me on the SNG tables 310 + 40 most days, so if you see me say hi :)

I've won a few of these SNG's, so I'm making my way up playing only the best cards. My best hand on PokerStars has been a Straight Flush hitting it on the river. My worst beat was Kings over Aces, to be beat by Aces over Kings :(

So I played the 1st one of about 2000 entries and didn't do well, playing very loose, and chasing so many cards, I came something like 1400 which kind’ a sucks, and for a few more nights I was not getting under the 1000 mark, with hitting bad cards and sucking out on the river...

Then my luck turned Saturday night. I sat down again and this time there were 1522 entrants, I was hitting good cards from the start, all A-Q, K-J, 10-10 that kind' a thing and always hitting the flop, Flushes and Trips everywhere. I got myself up to a very nice 22,000 in chips from a starting chip count of 1,500.

With the 1st break about to come in I was still sitting, pretty just playing the best cards, and waiting for my turn to strike! One guy I noticed was calling just about everything, I thought great person to pick off his chip stack. His stack was about 30,000, and I think he got there by hitting cards when it counted. So I thought I would try to get me and him in the pot, and I did to sting 10,000 off him, he held 9-9 I had A-J, and my Ace held up hitting one on the flop. So with that the guy went into all in mode, every hand all in. I just sat back and watched him tilt, and the obvious happened, he went out of the tourney! So now I'm looking at about 35,000 in chips, and the 2nd break starting.

I'm now in the money, not big money but anything is a bonus. I play for the fun and the excitement, starting the 3rd time. Blinds were now up at 1,200/600. I thought making a move soon would be good because the blinds still creep up on you, and since I was making a very satisfactory placement of somewhere in between 30-40. I can't quite remember but out of 1522 to come there I played well I think! I've now freerolled enough times to have enough in my bankroll to play micro stakes poker and try to build up a bigger bankroll... :)

On a couple of occasions I went playing poker in two of the 12 casinos the island counts. St. Martin is partitioned between two different nations (Dutch and French), and the casinos are only allowed on the Dutch side. Some of the Saint Martin casinos are small, have lot\'s of slots and no poker rooms. Very few players (except for some huge Americans and locals) could be found playing, mainly because it\'s currently low season, but some others were larger (not massive like Las Vegas, but respectable) and offered also a couple of poker tables.

First we had a bug in our newsletter software causing all members to receive between 1 up to 918 copies of the same e-mail. Some were so mad at us that they called us names, others simply unsubscribed, and also quite a lot of (very friendly) members understood that we never meant to sent that many emails. Thank you, you've put a smile on our face when we felt miserable!

Second we had trouble sending the password in time with a temporary made newsletter script. (We just didn't want to risk making another mistake.) Because of this some members didn't received the password for our freeroll at PKR in time.

Third we found out that PKR Poker didn't give us a $100 freeroll as promised, but just 3 seats into a $2 tournament on August 9th.

Can it get any worse?!?

Everybody who's mad at us are so right! Poker For Free is the only one to blame. This all came in a period that we have plans on expanding the site and doing some really cool things. In each case we will continue, and we definitely promise to make it up to those members who remained loyal and understanding. You guys and girls stand out!!!

Once again, we apologize to everyone for our mistakes and the inconvenience you may have had from it, and hope for your forgiveness. We assure that we have taken proper actions to prevent it from happening again!

Best regards,

All people that make Poker For Free happen

I myself am a Mac user, because it has simply the best and very user friendly operating system. Though, I also own a Windows computer, since I can't live without one for several reasons. My Mac is a Power Book G4 and is about 2 years old. This means it doesn't have the Intel processor that current Mac Pro's have. Not having an Intel processor is a huge disadvantage if you're looking in ways to run a stable version of Windows. I basically spent hours trying to get everything to work, just to be able to play online poker on my Mac. Sure, these hours may be less if you have experience, but I did not (just like many others out there).

This article will be divided in two sub articles from here. You may be interested in reading both, but most probably you will just read the article that fits your Mac.

So what's up next? Freerolls baby, we've got some interesting tournaments coming up. We will start July 6th with a $100 freeroll at Everest Poker, and only 2 days later (July 8th) we will have a major $250 freeroll at VC Poker. We have also agreed to have a freeroll at PKR Poker, so make sure to be ready for it once we'll announce the date.

Yet, Poker For Free is growing quickly, thus you will notice things around here change quickly. New things will be added, and we'll have at least two poker freerolls per month. Basically it works like this: "The more players we deliver, the more freerolls online poker rooms will give for our members." We hope to grow to at least one freeroll per week within a short matter of time, so we can finally start creating a league with added (cash) prizes and build up a nice poker community.

More new things are the in dept promotion pages for specific online poker rooms, for instance Everest Poker. They have given us a better than average sign up bonus. This together with their special poker promotions makes Everest Poker a very attractive site to play online poker! We have also added a few pages where you can find satellites to qualify online for some of the major live poker tournaments, including the WSOP Main Event, WSOP Europe, and the European Poker Tour (EPT).

By the way, you might have missed out on the new poker room reviews. We have added many new poker room reviews, plus we have also taken care of, and rewritten some of the older reviews. Don't forget to check out our online poker bonuses before signing up, since some sites offer more than one poker bonus code.

See you at the tables!

Giorgio

Titan Poker is part of the iPoker Network, which is among the leading poker networks in the industry. Actually, Titan Poker is the largest poker client operating there with currently over 16,000 simultaneous poker players on an average night.

The reason that I have picked Titan Poker is because of their large number of poker tournaments and SNG's. I personally love the Jackpot SNG, where you will earn a bonus after finishing in the top positions six times in a row. The fee is quite high, but you'll understand when you win your first jackpot. If you play to get in the money, then you won't have to worry about the buy-in fee anyway. By the way, getting ITM is not that hard since three out of six places get paid. My personal strategy... oh well let me keep that to myself since I don't want to see you beat me heads up!

These are the Jackpot SNG's I am talking about:

Besides lots of guest speakers, workshops, and exhibit stands, there will be a whole lot of partying. Many of the greater affiliate programs will throw parties. Imagine how much I am looking forward to these days!

It was actually quite a shocking moment when I found out that the ticket price was as high as $750. I already gave up on going when I received an invitation from PKR Poker, whom decided to offer me a sponsorship for my ticket. I am very thankful to them, but then again, this matter fits perfectly in their profile as a top poker site!

I hope to get inspired at the CAC to improve the Poker For Free website, but next to that I will aim my target on getting the best deals possible with poker sites that I am currently promoting, and maybe also some new poker rooms. The word goes that informal meetings with affiliate managers at conventions are the best to get great deals for your site. We have already scheduled a few meetings, so you will notice it later.

If you like to meet me at the CAC, then please let me know by contacting me. It will be a pleasure to meet with a visitor and discuss how I can improve the Poker For Free website. Of course, affiliate managers reading this article are also invited to contact me!

I will definitely let you know how this ends. A report, including pictures will be placed online only a few days after the convention.

PKR is a quite new poker room, but the traffic is raising. More players find their way to the PKR poker room each day. The games played are mostly Texas Hold'em. You will always be able to find yourself a suitable ring game, online poker tournament, or sit n' go.

You hear me right, I am gonna give you some valuable advice if you're a rookie poker player that is looking for a good poker room to start out with. It's too early for you to spent your money, isn't it? Don't worry, we've all started out trying to figure out what's best for us!

I still remember those days when I started playing poker, not even knowing that a quad hand ranked higher than a flush? I wasn't even aware of the hand rankings at all, but the more I played, the more I fell in love with the game. You could find me day in, day out at the Pitbull Poker freerolls. I made sure to get up early in the morning to be able to make the last $50 tournament. But be careful that you make sure not to start out overwhelmed. Poker is a skill-game, and experience and patience are two very big factors for your success. I have personally learned a lot by playing zillions of freeroll tournaments.

So why Pitbull Poker you ask? They have a freeroll every hour, but better yet... there's no competition! Also in favor is that their freerolls start at the half, instead of the full hour.

But let's focus on the level of competition at Pitbull Poker for a minute. Hmmm, there is none! Seriously, as a poker player with almost zero poker knowledge I was able to make the final table several times. Playing tight was the key to my success, and nowadays still is. That's how I slowly managed to build my first bankroll!

If I haven't convinced you yet, here's another thing that might change your mind. Pitbull Poker gives away $10 for free, no deposit needed! All the information that you need to develop a winning game can be found on our website.

Good luck!

Giorgio

One of my personal favorite poker sites at this moment is PKR. I'm sure you've heard about them. PKR is 3D and a totally new experience. if you're a fan of first person computer games, then you are certainly going to like this. If you have always wondered how it's like to play at a poker table in real life, then PKR Poker is the next best thing. It's so close to real that you get excited before the game starts.

Does my article makes you curious? PKR organizes a $250 freeroll with a maximum of 750 participating players, every night starting at 21:30 GMT+1.

I'll be there most of the nights, and you can recognize me by the name "PokerForFree". Make sure you register in time since the spots are filled up sooner every night.

Have a good one!

Giorgio a.k.a. PokerForFree

Many poker sites around the web offer special holiday promotions, so we\'ve organized our information and listed a few of the very best poker promotions and tournaments for you just below.

Fortunately there are still a few online poker rooms that still accept US poker players.

We've been in touch with the sites' customer service and they have confirmed to us that they will keep accepting US based poker players until any further notice. You can recognize an online poker room that accepts US poker players by the icon as below.

We have listed the online poker rooms that still accept Americans with the icon under the poker site reviews section of our website.

Hopefully at some point, online poker will be regulated, and controlled... but not forbidden, because this is ridiculous! Isn't it?!

Giorgio