News, Bonuses, Promotions
| Room | Bonus | Review | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Full Tilt Poker | 100% bonus up to $600* | Review | « Play » |
| Party Poker | 100% bonus up to $500* | Review | « Play » | |
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PokerStars | Deposit $50, get $50 bonus.* | Review | « Play » |
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Sportsbook Poker | 100% bonus up to $650* | Review | « Play » |
| Titan Poker | 100% bonus up to $600* | Review | « Play » | |
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Absolute Poker | 100% bonus up to $500* | Review | « Play » |
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Ultimate Bet | 111% bonus up to $1,100* | Review | « Play » |
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Carbon Poker | 100% bonus up to $600* | Review | « Play » |
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PDC Poker | 100% bonus up to $600* | Review | « Play » |
2008 November Niner David "Chino" Rheem proved his poker skills once again with a win at the Asian Poker Tour Macau Festival this weekend.
The APT kicked off its Macau leg last week and five events have already played out on the way to the main event scheduled to start Aug. 20. One of those five events was topped by Rheem.
Online poker has a new champion in Washington D.C. Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) introduced legislation last week that could allow the licensing of online poker and other skill-based online games in the United States.
The bill, S. 8309 Internet Skill Games Regulation, is meant "to amend title 31, United States Code, to provide for the licensing by the Secretary of the Treasury of Internet poker and other games that are predominantly of skill, to provide for consumer protections on the Internet, to enforce the tax code, and for other purposes."
The Asian Poker Tour is heading to Macau Aug. 12-23, and the tour has issued a letter to Michael Phelps in hopes of enticing him to the event.
Phelps was also invited by the tour last year after he won his record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. The APT Macau Festival was a six-day event in 2008 and will be even bigger and better with 12 days of action and the filming of "Poker King," a Chinese language poker film.
Online poker sites are often upgrading and improving their software. Full Tilt Poker is making their latest upgrade special with the "Biggest Bonus Ever."
Coinciding with the launch of the new software features today (July 30), Full Tilt Poker will pay poker players at least $100 in bonus money for playing on the site. They don't even have to make a deposit.
With Russia's recent ruling that poker is no longer considered a sport, the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour is having to make some adjustments to its schedule.
"That event has been cancelled because our ability to run the event was placed in doubt due to the recent closure of all casinos in Russia," said the EPT.
This week poker advocates have been swarming Washington D.C. to talk to their legislators about the right to play poker and to play it online during National Poker Week.
National Poker Week was declared by the Poker Players Alliance, which has been working to protect poker players' rights at the state level as well as the federal level. This week several top members of the organization such as Annie Duke and Greg Raymer were in D.C. to support the cause.
This week poker advocates have been swarming Washington D.C. to talk to their legislators about the right to play poker and to play it online during National Poker Week.
National Poker Week was declared by the Poker Players Alliance, which has been working to protect poker players' rights at the state level as well as the federal level. This week several top members of the organization such as Annie Duke and Greg Raymer were in D.C. to support the cause.
Tony Parker and his wife Eva will throw their second annual Celebrity Casino Night fundraiser in September, and Phil Hellmuth has stepped up to play host again.
"Phil's dynamic personality scored big during last year's event, and we are thrilled he has agreed to return," said Christiane Perkins-Garcia, Eva's Heroes executive director. "Having the biggest name in poker hosting our event adds a special touch to the poker tournament that will make for a very memorable night."
Alex Gomes had a pretty discouraging 2009 World Series of Poker. His best finish was 80th place for some cash in one of the events before the series was over.
It would have been easy to give up and just leave Vegas in hopes of finding luck elsewhere. Instead Gomes decided to switch casinos and try a different major poker tournament on for size.
While most of the focus of the week was on who would end up in the November Nine of this years World Series of Poker Main Event, many of the pros were also moving on to other things once they were knocked out of the tournament.
This week's tweets reflect that mix as Phil Ivey battled his way to the Main Event final table, Joe Sebok went deep into the money as well, and other players looked to their next big events.
From 6,494 players down to nine and the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, and yes, Phil Ivey is still in it.
Ivey already has two bracelet wins this year to bring his total up to seven, and now he has a chance to make history by taking down the Main Event as well to become World Champion. It'll be an uphill battle for the poker superstar, though.
You don't have to be a genius to realize the potential "The Genius" promotion at Party Poker has for online poker players. Now players have even more opportunity to win extra cash as Party Poker extends its promotion an extra five million hands.
The promotion began July 6 and has since awarded more than $147,000 in prizes for Genius hands. For every 50,000th hand played on cash tables, the pot is squared with everyone in the hand getting a piece of that pot and the winner of the hand getting the original pot on top of that.
The Absolute Poker family is growing. The online poker site announced today that it has signed Lacey Jones to its pro lineup.
“I’m so excited about this amazing new chapter of my career with Absolute Poker,” said Lacey Jones. “Our fit couldn’t be more perfect and I can’t wait to share all of the amazing stuff that’s in store with the AP community.”
Our first promotion is off to a great start, but would love to see more people taking advantage of this great offer. If you or anyone you know have thought about trying out some Poker Online, check out our July Promotion, it is perfect for getting started and maximizing your rewards!
In the last few years, it's become less and less surprising to see young guns still in the mix of the World Series of Poker Main Event as it gets down to the money. However, the most surprising player this year isn't a young gun but rather Young Guns actor Lou Diamond Phillips.
The star of the big screen and the small screen with appearances in shows such as Numb3rs, 24, Stargate Universe, and winning I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here now proved his prowess at the poker felt.
The talk of the poker town this week is the Main Event of the 2009 World Series of Poker. Four Day 1s, two day 2s and now Day 3 are all wrapped up.
The 810 players left of the 6,494 that started last week will head back to the tables today for Day 4. While they're getting ready to battle it out in search of the money, we'll recap some of the top tweets about the Main Event from the past week.
For the first time ever the poker loving public had a chance to vote on nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame. After five weeks of online voting, the top 10 nominees list is out.
Voters chose Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Barry Greenstein, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Tom McEvoy, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel and Mike Sexton as this year's nominees.
Like the pied piper leading children from the city, Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke will be luring poker players and celebrities to the Playboy Mansion this weekend for a celebrity poker tournament and pool party.
Vegas Rocks at the Playboy Mansion will take place Saturday and include the Aces & Angels Tournament and Midnight Swim Party. Hellmuth and Duke will host the poker tournament, which will award more than $25,000 worth of prizes including a seat in the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.
The night will also include casino games, full hosted bar, Vegas buffet style dinner, live concert performances, casino games, VIP lounges and more.
On Monday, Party Poker launched the start of "The Genius" promotion on the online poker site.
The promotion will last for 10 million hands, counted from midnight July 6. Every 50,000th hand that's played at the cash tables will see its pot squared to create some big jackpots from a minimum of $100 up to $5,000.
Due to a little holiday taking and enjoyment of a few days off, we bring you the Tweets of the Week from last week a few days late.
The Twitter traffic from last week is more than enough to make up for being late, though. There's some good comments from all over the poker world.
If you're looking to catch some of the stars in Las Vegas this summer, the best chance you may have is during the Ante Up for Africa charity celebrity poker tournament Thursday.
This is the third year poker pro and Celebrity Apprentice Star Annie Duke and Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle have hosted the charity tournament during the World Series of Poker. It brings out the celebrities and the poker pros to raise money for Refugees International's efforts for the displaced people of Darfur and all of Sudan.
This year Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Brad Garrett have already said they plan to attend. From the poker realms Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch and Phil Hellmuth are also on tap to participate.
2009 must be the year of multiple World Series of Poker bracelets. Phil Ivey has two, Brock Parker has two, Jeff Lisandro has three and now Greg "FBT" Mueller has picked up a second one as well.
Mueller won 2009 WSOP Event 50, the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout. The event attracted 571 players, including some of the world's best like Humberto Brenes, Shawn Buchanan, David Williams, Andreas Hoivold, Jean-Robert Bellande, Nick Binger, David Plastik, Juha Helppi and others.
Phil Hellmuth may be the main face of UltimateBet, but it was a couple of their other pro members that were in the spotlight this week at the 2009 World Series of Poker.
Matt Graham picked up a win in Event 40, the $10k Pot-Limit Omaha Championship, and Brandon Cantu came in second in Event 39, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event before picking up a bracelet win Saturday in Event 48, the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo Split Eight-or-Better event.
There were a few good tweets from the pro poker ranks but perhaps the best use of Twitter this week was to spread news that had nothing to do with poker.
Ivan Demidov got a second chance taking down riegning poker world champion Peter Eastgate today. The second time was the charm for the Russian.
PokerStars set the two up with a rematch of their 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event heads-up match. They each got the same starting stacks they had in November - 80,300,000 in chips for Eastgate and 56,600,000 for Demidov.
Jeff Lisandro is a Stud stud. The proof is in his third World Series of Poker bracelet win at the 2009 series, with all three bracelets in stud events.
Lisandro picked up the first bracelet of the 2009 WSOP in Event 16, the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud event. Then picked up another one in Event 37, the $10k Championship Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo Split Eight-or-Better event.
The stars of television will align to help support autism education with a charity poker tournament on Saturday at the Radisson Fort McDowell Resort and Casino in Fountain Hills, Ariz.
Patrika Darbo and Kevin Dobson, from Days of Our Lives; Chris Rich from Reba; and Daniel McVicar from The Bold and the Beautiful will all ante up to help support the cause at the Texas Hold'em Show Down for Autism.
On Monday the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) announced July 19-25 as National Poker Week.
“Our members – the poker players of America – are our best advocates to protect the future of poker,” PPA Chairman and Former Senator Alfonse D’Amato said. “National Poker Week, with events in Washington D.C. and across the country, is the PPA’s way to make it clear to my former colleagues in the U.S. Congress that poker is important to voters and is here to stay.”
On July 3 the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event will get underway, and that gives players just a little more than a week to brush up on their skills and try to fill a hole or two in their games before taking on thousands of other players from around the world.
If you're looking for a little help, you won't have to look any further than Caesars Palace in Las Vegas June 29-July 1. The WSOP Academy will be hosting its Main Event primer with instructors such as Phil Hellmuth, Phil Gordon, Annie Duke, Greg Raymer, Mark Seif, Joe Navarro, Sam chauhan and Annette Obrestadt.
The World Poker Tour (WPT) will be firing up an 8th Season in July with 12 scheduled stops so far.
The WPT published the full details for its next season today with 12 stops on the schedule. The first one will be at the Bellagio in Las Vegas July 13-19 for the Bellagio Cup V.
Season 8 will also include some of the usual stops at the Bay 101 in San Jose, Calif.; Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss.; the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles; and Foxwoods in Connecticut. The WPT is also planning some new stops this season, one of which will be the Hollywood Poker Open in Lawrenceburg, Ind.
Jerrod Ankenman went into the final table of Event 42 at the 2009 World Series of Poker Tuesday with a chip lead and ended up walking away from the table a winner.
It's actually not all that often a player with the chip lead can make it to the finish line as the winner. But in Ankenman's case, the odds are a little more stacked in his favor because he's all about the math of poker and playing the right odds.
Players at Party Poker are getting a bigger bang for their buck with PartyPoints now worth up to 50% more than they were before.
"We've completed the changes to the PartyPoints store and challenge you to look at them closely as they undoubtedly offer market leading value," said a Party Poker spokesman.
Absolute Poker announced today it has signed Matt Vengrin as its newest pro.
Vengrin is an online poker pro who has amassed more than $717,000 in online poker winnings in just over two years of play. He's known for playing at UltimateBet, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars as well, but he's chosen Absolute Poker as his sponsor site.
Not all the poker action is in Las Vegas this weekend at the World Series of Poker. Shannon Elizabeth will be making the trip to Atlantic City to host a poker tournament at the Tropicana Casino and Resort as well as a new stage show.
The poker tournament will take place Friday, June 26, starting at 7:15 p.m. It has a $100 buy-in plus a $22 entry fee.
While Doyle Brunson was in the hunt for a record-tying 11th bracelet on Saturday, Phil Hellmuth was working his way deep in a tournament as well looking for his 12th World Series of Poker bracelet to stay ahead in the count.
Unfortunately neither was successful.
Doyle Brunson is on the hunt for another World Series of Poker bracelet today. He's made his way to the final table of Event 37, the $10k Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo Eight-or-Better Championship.
The event drew 164 players and has a $1,541,600 prize pool. The winner will walk away with $431,656 as well as a WSOP bracelet.
For Brunson, that bracelet would mean tying Phil Hellmuth for the most WSOP bracelet wins. He's come close to tying the count before, but this is his first time in the 2009 series to get this close.
How much has Twitter been playing a part in the 2009 World Series of Poker? So much that the New York Times did an article on how Twitter is changing professional poker.
There are more than a few big pros tweeting from the tables, sending photos, giving chip updates. It's a record of play 140 characters at a time, and it's not always just serious poker talk. Through Twitter you get a little glimpse of the pros personalities, their friendships and their highs and lows at the felt.
PokerWorldReview is going to round up some of the more interesting tidbits each week when we stumble upon good tweets and share them with you. Just in case you missed them yourselves.
Thousands of new poker players are made every year as new people sign up to play online poker or sit down at the felt in brick-and-mortar casinos. Like snowflakes, however, there are no two players stories alike.
Case in point is Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko.
Yes, he's an online poker player who has transitioned to some live play once a year at the World Series of Poker. But, he's not the average player who got his start in a college dorm playing online to kill some boredom.
The crown jewel of live poker tournaments is playing out right now in Las Vegas, but for those more interested in the top online tournaments, PokerStars just released a sneak preview of the 2009 World Championship of Online Poker.
The biggest part of that preview is that there will be 42 events this time around with $40 million in guaranteed prize pools.
Earlier this week we reported on the special NHL Charity Shootout taking place at the Rio alongside the 2009 World Series of Poker. Perhaps you're curious about how it turned out?
Close but not quite no longer applies to Greg "FBT" Mueller. The Canuck, who is known as a professional Limit Hold'em specialist, finally found his major tournament win Wednesday night at the 2009 World Series of Poker.
Mueller, a Full Tilt Poker pro, topped Event 33, the $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship, to earn a WSOP bracelet and a $460,841 payday.
Mark Monday on your calendar as the day the Poker Players Alliance will announce the dates for National Poker Week.
National Poker Week will be a coordinated effort to educate lawmakers in Washington D.C. on the benefits of protecting the game of poker. The organization will also unveil new advocacy tools and websites for poker players during the press conference.
Got a good story from the World Series of Poker? We want to hear it!
Every year thousands of people from around the world head to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. You've all got stories to tell, but the media can only cover so much of what's going on in Sin City. We talk about bracelet winners and big pros that do well, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of all that happens at the WSOP.
It's 12 days and counting for the Party Poker Million Hand Promotion, and already the online poker site has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars just for earning Party Points.
What does the Million Hand Promotion mean for players? It means the potential for extra cash for Party Points. Players at real-money tables at Party Poker will get a playing card for every 15 Party Points they earn during the promotion. Once you build a five card hand with those extra cards, you win cash if you've got a pair or better.
Poker players and NHL players and fans are mingling as one today in the NHL Charity Shootout at the Rio in Las Vegas.
Sponsored by the NHL and PokerStars, the tournament brings together hockey players, poker players, celebrities and online qualifiers from PokerStars to compete for their favorite charities.
According to The Hollywood Reporter Leonardo DiCaprio is on tap to star in a movie based on the world of online gambling in Costa Rica.
The movie is said to have been picked up by Paramount and was pitched from Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Koppelman and Levien are the writers of Ocean's Thirteen and made their debut in the movie world with the script for Rounders.
The PokerStars.com European Poker Tour released the first half of its schedule for Season 6 this week with two new stops on the tour.
The new season will kick off in August with a brand news stop on the tour in Moscow, Russia. The tournament will run Aug. 18-23 with a 200,00+12,000 RUB buy-in.
That's just the first of seven events the EPT will host between then and the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January. The EPT will also head to Barelona, Spain; London, U.K.; Warsaw, Poland; and Prague, Czech Republic.
Roland De Wolfe has a PokerStars.com European Poker Tour title, a World Poker Tour title, and now a World Series of Poker win to complete the Poker Triple Crown.
De Wolfe picked up his bracelet win Sunday night in Event 27, the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Eight-or-Better event of the 2009 WSOP. He bested a field of 198 entrants, including a final table against Scott Clements, Alex Kravchenko and Andy Black, to earn that win.
The worlds of poker and golf are colliding again with the "Legends of Poker & Golf Academy" in November.
Golf instructor David Leadbetter will be teaming with Doyle Brunson, Dewey Tomko, Daniel Negreanu and Mike Caro to offer a four-day golf and poker event at the OMNI Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate, the headquarters of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy. The event will take place Nov. 3-6.
The event will offer three days of poker instruction followed by a day of golf and poker instruction before giving participants a day of golf and poker tournaments.
He said after his first win this year that he was gunning for two bracelets, and now Phil Ivey has them after taking down Event 25 of the 2009 World Series of Poker Saturday night.
Winning the $2,500 Omaha/Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-Better event, Ivey made his goal before even half the 2009 WSOP was done and now has a seventh bracelet to his collection. He joins Billy Baxter as the only players with seven bracelets, but still has a few to go to catch up to Phil Hellmuth and his record 11 bracelets.
One of the most anticipated weekly online poker tournaments will be missing this week on PokerStars. Yep, there will be no Sunday Million.
But don't despair my fellow online poker fans - in it's place there will be a Mega SuperSatellite with at least 200 World Series of Poker Main Event seats up for grabs.
During the World Series of Poker, players can end up sitting at the tables for more than 12 hours if they're still in an event. But what do they do when they bust out and there's still plenty of day left to do something else?
Yeah, some might hang around the Rio to check out how their friends and enemies are still doing at the felt. Some have homes in Vegas so they can retreat to solitude when they bust, but Las Vegas has no shortage of entertainment for those looking for a different sort of action as well.
The big legal news of the week was that a federal prosecure in the Southern District of New York froze payment processor accounts containing more than $30 million in poker players' deposits and payouts to online poker sites.
The accounts were frozen after the U.S. District Court sent letters to Citibank and Wells Fargo, which have both confirmed the action, advising them that accounts held by Allied Systems Inc. were subject to seizure and forfeiture because they are allegedly porperty involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses.
Miracle of miracles, Patrik Antonius and Tom Dwan found time in their busy World Series of Poker schedules to play a few hands in the durrrr challenge.
It was only 786 hands on their way to playing 50,000 hands of heads-up Pot-Limit Omaha in durrrr's million dollar challenge, but that was enough hands to erase a large part of Dwan's deficit in the game so far. And it was enough to perhaps appease some of the online poker players dying to see how this challenge ends.
Welcome to Part 2 of the World Series of Poker promotions round-up. Tonight we continue our tour of the different promotions some of the major online poker rooms are running in celebration of the World Series and to even send their players to the events! We continue now with the promotions from PokerStars and Sportsbook Poker.
For those of you who think poker is mainly luck, I guess John "Brock" Parker must be the luckiest man at the 2009 World Series of Poker so far. Or he's the most skilled six-handed player, both in Limit and No-Limit Hold'em, at the tables this year.
The 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) has been going on for nearly two weeks now, so we've got to play a little catch-up in our coverage. And by a "little" I mean 18 bracelet events worth of coverage plus the Champions Invitational.
Welcome to Part 1 of the World Series of Poker promotions round-up. Over the next couple days we will be taking a look at some of the promotions and ways some of the major online poker rooms are sending their players to the WSOP 2009. Today we take a look at what types of fun things Full Tilt and Party Poker are offering their players.
