Archive for February, 2010
PartyPoker.com has announced that it is adding a new professional player to its ranks. Dragan Galic, a top European professional player, has been added to the Team Party pro lineup.
Galic joins other Team Party pros like Mike Sexton, Kara Scott, Felipe “Mojave” Ramos, Remy Biechel, Tony G and Bodo Sbrzesny.
The powers that be at Party Poker were impressed with Galic’s play and invited him to play as a special guest in the Team Party heat at the recent PartyPoker.com Premier League IV tournament in Las Vegas. While Galic didn’t get out of the play-off stages, he impressed enough to get the Team Party invitation.
“After spending time with the other members of Team Party in Las Vegas,” Galic said, “I am delighted to join.”
Galic said he’s played often at the site and feels like being added as a pro is “like coming home. I find games suitable for me on there and am excited by the opportunities this sponsorship deal will offer.”
Galic, a 35-year-old Croatian who lives in Germany, has won more than $900,000 since he began playing. The former BMW service engineer switched careers in 2006 and has become a force on the European poker scene.
A statement from Party Poker indicates excitement about adding Galic to the roster of Team Party players.
“He has great qualities as an ambassador and an amazing game to go with it,” read a statement from the site. “We are excited about our partnership.”
Galic will be playing under the user name “DraganGalic”.
Following in the footsteps of its competitor, Visa has recently also created new restrictions on payments going to online casinos or poker rooms.
Last month, MasterCard began restricting payments to online casinos and poker rooms by denying payments made with specific codes that indicated the payments were being used for gambling. Recently Visa announced it would follow a similar new strategy to restrict payments for online gaming.
Visa also announced that it would restrict payments going through e-wallet accounts, like Click2Pay or UseMyWallet, which some players use to bankroll their online gaming accounts. Some gambling officials say that Visa’s restrictions aren’t quite as harsh as MasterCard’s, but that the restrictions are limited to American players only and that the payment restrictions will make online play harder for American players.
The restrictions are thought to be an early response to new gambling laws set to take effect on June 1, which will restrict the ability of Americans to play at online casinos and in online poker rooms.
Some online casinos have discovered specific methods for coding the payments so the payments are processed without incident, and other sites recommend that players pay with e-checks, which take the money directly from a bank account rather than a credit card account.
More restrictions are likely to be set forth as credit card processors begin to comply with the new laws. It’s also likely that new payment options will become available to USA online casino players so they can continue to play even if their credit cards are no longer allowed at the sites.
PokerStars’ recent promotion to celebrate its 40 billionth hand dealt was a success, bringing more people to the virtual table and awarding one lucky poker player $24,000 on Saturday.
PokerStars (www.pokerstars.com) offered an incentive to the site’s poker players by suggesting that every player playing in the site’s 40 billionth hand dealt would receive special cash prizes. Each player in that hand would receive $400 for every VIP player point (or VPP) earned in the previous 40 hands played at the table. The winner of the hand would receive double that as a cash bonus.
The winner of the $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em was a PokerStars player whose user name is Senecady. He walked away from the table with $24,000, while the other players at the table took sizeable cash prizes as well.
According to PokerScout.com, which keeps tracks of online poker room traffic, a record 53,372 players were logged into PokerStars.net on Friday. That exceeded the previous few days, during which more and more players were reportedly logged onto PokerStars.net in an attempt to be part of the approaching 40 billionth poker hand.
Other players at the 40 billionth handle table included thecooler992 and zawaaa, who both took home $15,590, and jeckjeck, who took home a little more than $12,000. Even the player who took the least amount of cash, Joe Hahn, came out with $1,500 in bonus money.
As more and more people begin playing poker and watching poker on television, more television programming has been devoted to poker. ESPN announced this week it will air 16 episodes taped during the PokerStars.net North American Poker Tour. The episodes will begin airing in April on ESPN2.
The North American Poker Tour (NAPT) began this year with the Pokerstars.net Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. The second leg begins Saturday in Las Vegas; it’s here that ESPN2 will begin filming the NAPT and footage from the tournament will begin airing April 19 to start off the 1-hour episodes of the 16-episode series.
The network will air the show again on April 26; the second original episode will follow a re-airing of the first episode and will feature coverage of the Venetian Casino $5,000 main event during the Las Vegas, USA Casinos leg of the NAPT.
ESPN’s coverage will then carry over into May when it airs episodes filmed during the NAPT stop at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut April 7 to 11. Coverage of this event will include the Mohegan Sun shootout and coverage of the main event.
Actress, model and poker player Joanna Krupa will host ESPN’s coverage of the NAPT.
At least one professional poker player is excited about EPSN’s planned coverage of the poker tournament. “Having the NAPT on ESPN2 is going to take poker on this content to a different level,” said Daniel Negreanu.
It looks like Canada won’t overlook the power of online gaming. Recently Quebec added an online gaming option to the province’s lottery, Loto-Quebec, likely in an attempt to cash in on what has been a profitable avenue for many other gaming operators.
Canada has a history of not supporting gambling. In the late 1800s, all types of gambling were prohibited but over the years laws have been relaxed and gambling has been introduced, but still on a much smaller and less raucous scale than in America.
Currently, there are many types of land-based gambling, including the national and province lotteries. But as far as online gambling, Canada is far behind the times. The country currently bans Canadians from operating online casinos, but Canadians are allowed to play at online casinos. Locals can’t benefit from those casinos, however (by running the casinos, for example).
But it looks like Canada will be amending some laws in order to allow online gambling. That means that operators of brick and mortar casinos or others interested in operating an online gambling portal can get licenses from the Canadian government that will give them the right to run this kind of business.
Loto-Quebec has already included online poker as part of its provincial lottery and it seems likely that other lotteries and online gaming portals will follow.
The World Poker Tour will again make a stop in Spain this year as it will be hosted by Casino Barcelona from May 19-23.
Called the 2010 WPT Spanish Championship, the main event will be available to players who buy in or who qualify through various land-based satellites and online qualifiers. Super satellites will be held on May 17 and 18 for those who want to travel quickly.
The Spain stop was added to the WPT in 2007, and has consistently attracted some of the sport’s top players worldwide. Some of these players include Eric Seidel, Barry Greenstein, Gus Hansen, Annette Obrestad, Steve Sung and Ludovic Lacay, among others.
The champion of the Spanish Championship will be awarded with a WPT title and a $25,000 entry into the 2011 WPT World Championship event.
Rohin Malhotra, WPT chief executive officer, said the Spanish casino is an excellent host for the WPT.
“Casino Barcelona has been an incredible partner,” Malhotra said. “From player and partner servicing to tournament staff, their dedication to every detail is second to none.”
The casino might be a good host, but it also offers a good location. Poker players will enjoy the casino’s location just steps from the Mediterranean Sea. Aside from poker, Casino Barcelona also offers slot machines, French and American roulette, blackjack and other casino games.
The Game Show Network has a special Valentine’s gift for poker fans everywhere. The sixth season of “High Stakes Poker” will premiere on Sunday and will feature an impressive lineup of players and a new look for the show.
There are no novices playing this season. Instead, it will feature an impressive lineup of professional poker players who can excite and educate viewers. The sixth season premieres with coverage from the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Kara Scott, the new co-host of the show and regular host Gabe Kaplan, will interview poker players about their strategy and about poker table dynamics.
The show airs at 8 p.m. ET on Sundays, with encore airings following at 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET. The premiere of the show will be preceded by an 8-hour “I LOVE POKER” marathon, beginning at noon ET on Sunday. The “I LOVE POKER” marathon features eight of the highlight episodes of High Stakes Poker from seasons 1 through 6.
Some of the pro players who will be shown playing during the sixth season of the show include:
* Doyle Brunson
* Eli Elezra
* Phil Hellmuth
* Phil Ivey
* Daniel Negreanu
* Patrik Antonius
* Barry Greenstein
Scoot was recently assigned the position of co-host. She might not be well known in the United States, but she is well known to European audiences as both a poker player and a journalist. She hosted television coverage of the European Poker Tour in 2007 and 2008. She finished second in the Irish Open in Dublin and was a successful player at both the 2007 and 2008 World Poker Tour Main Events.
Kaplan, who is a viewer favorite both thanks to his knowledge of poker and his ability to explain it to audiences, is returning to his sixth season of the show. Kaplan is best known as an actor; he was the teacher on the hit TV show “Welcome Back Kotter” in the 1970s and has appeared in a number of theater productions. Most recently, he has become a world-class poker player; he has appeared at the final table in six World Series of Poker main events. He has twice won the Super Bowl of Poker.
Looking to create even more exciting opportunities for online gamers, Millionaire Casino has created roulette tournaments. The first tournament is set to begin Thursday, Feb. 11 and will conclude Feb. 18. Each roulette tournament will run for seven days, from Thursday to Thursday.
The tournaments require a buy-in of $5 and the winner will receive the prize pot. The total prize pot won’t be known until players are actually part of the tournament, but each time a player joins the tournament and contributes their $5 buy-in, the prize pot will rise.
The roulette tournaments will utilize the European Roulette Board and will run much like other tournaments. Many online casinos have begun using a variety of tournaments to lure players to their sites. Slot tournaments are usually the most popular; blackjack tournaments are also at the top of the heap. Video poker tournaments are rising in popularity but Millionaire Casino has changed the face of tournament gaming with its roulette tournaments.
There are many bonuses being offered to players at Millionaire Casino right now to help offset the $5 buy-in cost. Information on the various tournaments at Millionaire Casino can be found by logging into Millionaire Casino and clicking on the “tournaments” tab.
Last week, the Poker Player’s Alliance issued a statement saying that the online poker community had donated $1.5 million for Haiti earthquake relief. This is an update to a post we did a week ago on the Haiti relief effort by online casinos & poker rooms,
But a week later when the month officially came to a close, the numbers were much more substantial. The two big players in the online poker world, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, combined for a donation of more than $2 million and other poker sites were able to donate a good deal of money as well.
Poker Stars (www.pokerstars.com) was truly the star of the Haiti earthquake relief fundraising efforts. It will be contributing more than $1.4 million to Haiti Earthquake relief. The money will be sent to the Red Cross.
Players donated half the money and Poker Stars matched the amount donated by players. Players were allowed donate money several ways. They could transfer money to a special account called “Haiti Fund”, they could purchase donations in the VIP store or they could register to play in special Haiti relief tournaments.
Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com) is donating more than $650,000 and that is again via donations from players and a matching donation from the site. That money will be sent to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF.
Players at Full Tilt were able to donate money in roughly the same way they were at Poker Stars.
One of the first poker sites to announce it would be donating money to Haiti relief and would be holding special tournaments for fundraising was Cake Poker. That site was able to donate $32,000 to relief efforts. Again, half the money came from players and half came as a match from the site.
MasterCard is the first credit card company to officially restrict and limit payments made to online casinos and poker rooms.
For some time, credit card companies have been trying to figure how to limit these payments to the online casinos (since technically, UIGEA should be trying to United States player transactions) but most have not been able to work through the coding that the online casinos and poker rooms use when charging the fees.
This week, however, the news broke that MasterCard has successfully blocked transactions for online poker rooms and casinos.
In June, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) will become effective, and many credit card companies have tried to be ahead of the curve by successfully limiting these transactions now, but without success.
Because MasterCard has successfully blocked these transactions, the MasterCard logo has already been removed from many big sites as an accepted form of payment. Other forms of payment are still being accepted from U.S. players, however.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is continuing his efforts to get the UIEGA overturned. He has introduced legislation that would overturn that law, but also create other laws to legalize and regulate online gaming in the United States. He hopes to have the UIEGA overturned before it takes effect in June.
