Poker News

Already on Day 1 of this year’s PokerStars SCOOP, about $10.5 million in prize money has been amassed. Meanwhile, the first ever play money SCOOP has also been launched.

What else could better mark spring for a poker player than the launch of the two weeks long Spring Championship of Online Poker, brought to you by PokerStars? The biggest online festival is now here to keep you occupied and entertained, just until before the WSOP starts, and you can even have a little rest in between. As regards total entries, SCOOP 2014 had already amassed just around $10.5 million in prize money before Day 1 even ended.

PartyPoker once again aims at favoring recreational players over regulars with the latest development.

The room has introduced two improvements recently, the Sit Out feature and the Casual Cash Game tables. The latter addition has caused some outrage in the poker community, being regarded as yet another move to protect recreational players from regulars.

At Casual Cash Game tables, no multi-tabling is allowed; that is, a player sitting at a Casual Cash Game table will not be allowed by the client to open additional CG tables.

Antonio Buonanno and Jack Salter have been torturing each other for 10 hours heads-up before the fate of the €1,240,000 first prize of the EPT Grand Final Main Event was decided.

The Final Table of the EPT Grand Final €10,600 Main Event kicked off with Jack Salter in the chiplead and Columbian WCOOP champion Mayu ‘Marroca5’ Roca not far behind. The seat draw was as follows:

Between 8 and 18 May 2014, the Concord Masters is running at no less than ten venues. The popular event offers a €500,000 guaranteed prize pool for a humble buy-in of €300.

The Concord Masters is one of the most unique tournaments these days, as its Day 1s take place at different locations; in fact, across several countries. The event is running from 8 to 18 May at the card rooms of the CCC group: in addition to the Montesino and the Simmering in Vienna, Bregenz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurth, Kufstein, Linz, Salzburg, Prague and Bratislava also host the event.

The Equity Poker Network (EPN) is apparently banning winning players on the grounds that being aggressive at the tables is not compatible with the game policy of the network.

Online poker rooms and networks are waging a bitter war for recreational players and use a variety of methods to reach and keep them. Some introduce unique features, like Microgaming’s Blazing Cannon, where each 20th raked hand won grants you a free shot with a cannon at a house of cards with golden tokens and a bonus of up to €100 up for grabs. Other options include allowing changing screen names to make it harder for regulars to find weaker players or the ban on utility software, like in the case of now independent Unibet Poker.

World Poker Tour is introducing a new event this summery, scheduled to directly overlap with several tournaments of the World Series of Poker, including the first days of the Main Event.

WPT has announced a brand new event to be held from 1 to 6 July this summer at the Aria Resort & Casino, dubbed “partypoker presents: WPT500 at ARIA”. The buy-in is a moderate $500 + $65 and the prize pool is a guaranteed $1 million with at least $200,000 for the winner. Five Day 1s will be launched and Day 2 will already feature the Final Table on 6 July. Those who enter multiple Day 1s will be granted the largest stack they can accumulate on Day 2.

Following a three-way deal, Dan ‘mrGR33N13’ Colman won €1,539,300, defeating another ace of the game, Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates heads-up.

The eight-handed finale of the EPT Grand Final 2014 €100,000 Super High Roller event started with a dominant player of the Macau high stakes cash games, Lo Shing Fung aka Rono Lo in the chiplead. Paul Phua and Richard Yong also represented Macau at the Final Table and they were joined in the hunt for the €1.8 million first prize by the very elite of poker these days, Ole Schemion, Cates, Colman, Olivier Busquet and Igor Kurganov.

PokerTracker has launched a promotion to lure over Holdem Manager users, running through 5 May.

In early April, Holdem Manager announced that they cease to support HM1 as of 30 April 2014. This effectively means that players will be able to log in, use the software including the HUD but need to expect that no more updates will be released and bugs and crashes will not be fixed. Players owning the HM1 licence are eligible for a major discount on HM2: until 30 April, they can get it 40% cheaper.

German high roller aces dominate the action at the EPT Grand Final Super High Roller: Philipp Gruissem in the lead, Ole Schemion is close behind.

The EPT Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller event launched on 24 April with 48 entrants on Day 1 and 11 re-entries. This means 59 buy-ins so far, although registration is still open at the start of Day 2, so expect more entries and an even larger official prize pool.

The 2014 WSOP Asia-Pacific takes place in October and features ten gold bracelet events, including some exotic ones like the Terminator No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Last November, Caesars Entertainment announced that the WSOP Europe and WSOP APAC series were going to take place on a rotational basis in the future, each being held in every other year. This year, the Asia-Pacific is up and the WSOPE returns in 2015.

The 11th season of the European Poker Tour (EPT) kicks off in Barcelona this August. Additionally, London, Prague, Deauville and Monte Carlo have been confirmed for the next run of the European series.

Five stops with dates have been confirmed for the schedule of the 11th season of the European Poker Tour. The opening is held in Barcelona between 16-27 August, which also happens to be the 100th stop in the history of the series. Participants can therefore expect a major poker festival, which will include the events of the Estrellas Poker Tour for an even wider variety.

Daniel Negreanu disclosed via his Twitter his take on the recent issue of Phil Ivey versus the Borgata. Essentially, the renowned Canadian pro considers the casino beaten in its own game and whining about it.

Recently, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa has sued one of the best and most renowned poker players ever, Phil Ivey. The charge is multiple accounts of edge-sorting cheating in baccarat games and the casino sues the nine times WSOP champion for a compensation of $9.6 million.

PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren started the Main Event Final Table of the European Poker Tour (EPT) Sanremo 2014 stop as short stack but managed to win the €476,100 first prize. She is the first player ever to earn two EPT Main Event champion titles.

Eight players were left for the final day of the EPT Sanremo 2014 €4,900 Main Event, including chipleader online multi-table tournament pro Jordan ‘JWPRODIGY’ Westmorland and short stack PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren.

Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates, one of today's best high stakes cash game player recently visited the Hungarian capital Budapest, this is where he gave an exclusive interview to Rakerace.com. He mentioned the possibility of a Jungleman challenge happening in the near future. As he said:

"Unfortunately, I think that to offer one similar to the durrrr challenge, in terms of offering 3 to 1 in 50,000 hands would not be profitable for me. People are becoming more and more competitive and there’s only so much that you can really even push in No Limit. Doug and I talked a little bit about doing such a thing, but, fingers crossed, maybe it’ll happen. No disrespect for him, he is a very good player, of course, maybe even the best at this point. I’d personally wanna do it against Isildur. Just because, you know, it’s kind of a long-standing rivalry between us, to some extent, in addition, right now I think I have an edge versus him. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, though, because of other reasons."

The iPoker Online Poker Series (iPOPS) launches for the sixth time this weekend, with a total guaranteed prize pool of €1,000,000.

The iPoker network, home to skins like Everest Poker, Betfair, Winner Poker or Coral Poker announces the sixth instalment of their popular online multi-table championship, the iPoker Online Poker Series (iPOPS). After the system successfully debuted in iPOPS V, the championship will be held both at low and at high stakes.