Poker Guru Blog

Players from the United States who had previously moved to Canada or Mexico have found their 888Poker accounts closed and their funds reimbursed. The room has not yet provided a public official statement on the case.

Apparently, 888Poker has banned US players who had previously moved from the States to Canada or Mexico. Player reports stated that American citizens playing from either of the two neighbouring countries have been sent emails, informing them of the move and providing instructions to be able to access their funds. Apart from the messages sent to players, no official statement from 888Poker has arrived.

Renowned Liverpool FC forward Luis Suárez, nicknamed ‘Cannibal’, joins 888Poker as brand ambassador.

One of the best soccer players around, Liverpool FC forward Luis Suárez has become a brand ambassador to 888Poker, as announced at an official press conference yesterday. Uruguayan Suárez started his career at Nacional Montevideo and entered the adult league at the age of 18 in 2005, scoring 12 times in 34 matches. For the next season, he was signed by Groningen in the Netherlands, where he scored 15 goals in 37 games.

Daniel Negreanu says he or Phil Ivey is to win at least one golden bracelet at this year’s WSOP. They are offering a bet with odds of 1:1 on wagers of $5,000 to $1,000,000.

Six times WSOP champion Daniel Negreanu has been owning live tournaments recently: in the fourth consecutive year, he has won over $1,000,000 in total: in 2011, he scored $1,534,367, in 2012 $1,690,020, in 2013 $3,208,630 and this year, he has already racked up $1,701,763 in live winnings. Additionally, the Canadian won the Player of the Year title from both CardPlayer and Bluff and finished 2nd in the contest of GPI, just behind Ole Schemion.

Full Tilt Poker’s Micro Turbo Online Poker Series (MTOPS) kicks off on 25 May with Days 1A-1N already underway for the Event #1 $3.30 NLH Turbo Multi-Day Tournament. All 75 events of the series are turbo and multi-entry tournaments.

Full Tilt Poker launches the MTOPS with $1,000,000 in guaranteed prize money with at least $400,000 up for grabs in the multi-day $15 Main Event. Two additional tournaments have multiple Day 1s: $3.30 Event #1 and $5.50 Event #37 and the former offers no less than 15 of them, already underway, while the latter and the Main Event both feature nine.

Both in terms of the international market and including the regulated ones, Full Tilt Poker is not far from losing its Top 5 position on the online cash game traffic list.

Despite constantly introduced new features, like the Take It Down promotion, the Flipout Tournaments before that, or a planned venture into the online casino market, Full Tilt has been less and less able to maintain its player pool and is slowly getting taken over by PokerStars Italy as well as Bodog on the international market. The Top 5 position of the renowned room is, therefore, now in definite danger in terms of average online cash game traffic.

Former poker prodigy and scandal villain Jose ‘Girah’ Macedo has recently emerged in the news for the first time since 2011. The 21-year-old Portuguese has been engaged in a successful cleaning business in the UK.

Jose ‘Girah’ Macedo had gained fame as a wonder kid of poker before becoming the bad guy in one of the loudest scandal in the history of online poker. The ex-Lock Poker Pro, or the “Portuguese poker prodigy” as many would call him at the time, got caught cheating first in May 2011: he dominated the field in the Lock Poker Challnege and won the event before getting banned for multi-accounting. Another player had been proven to use his account during the challenge.

Molly Bloom has hosted illegal highs takes poker games with the participation of the likes of Hollywood superstars Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 2013, 34 people have been prosecuted on charges of conducting illegal sports betting and poker; according to the lawsuit, which contains 27 counts, the syndicate organising these games has made tens of millions of dollars and has been in direct connection with the circles of Russian organised crime. The defendants included recognised poker pros like WPT champion Vadim Trincher, WSOP title holder Abe Mosseri and Justin ‘BoostedJ’ Smith.

Recreational players are targeted in the latest promotion announced by Full Tilt Poker. The Take It Down offer rewards post-flop pots won, regardless of pot size.

In their latest cash game promotion, Full Tilt Poker aims to reward recreational players for the number of hands played – and pot won – rather than the size of the pots or other aspects of the game. Running from 9 to 18 May, a bonus prize pool of $18,000 will be distributed among the top twenty players of each of two leaderboards, low and high.

Former poker player Tom Page is now the owner of a successful startup company developing a job matching application. The app is the first of its kind on the market and also is the most widespread, while being constantly developed. But how did this progressive career start?

Page had been enrolled in a poker career in the best possible period: in 2004, he deposited $25 and turned it into $6,500 in a single month and made enough money in his career so that it should not be a concern for him anymore. As it happens, however, Page had never intended to remain a poker player forever, which he explains with a unique reason: “I see it as being worthless to society. You are not creating any value, and that isn’t important to everyone, but it’s important to me.”

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.