The $50k Guaranteed tournament takes place every Sunday at 7:00 pm ET for a $200 + $15 direct buy-in, although $22 + $2 satellites into the event run throughout the weekend leading up to the event. Some of these satellites offer 2, 3, or even 6 seats guaranteed in the $50k GTD event and some of these satellites are hyper turbo events. At each $50K Guaranteed tournament, the first place winner gets around $10,000.

The $10k Guaranteed takes place every Saturday night at 9:00 pm ET for a $50 + $5 buy-in and allows one rebuy and one add-on.

The $2,500 Guaranteed takes place midweek, every Wednesday at 8:00 pm ET for a $5 + $0.50 buy-in.

The $4k Guaranteed No Limit Holdem Freezeout takes place every Saturday at 6:00 pm ET for a $40 + $4 buy-in.

The $3k Bi-Weekly Guaranteed is actually a Semi-Weekly event (bi-weekly meaning every other week) which takes place every Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 pm ET for a $25 + $2.50 buy-in.

The $300 GTD with a $2 Bounty takes place daily on weekdays, Monday through Friday, at 4:00 pm ET for a $12 + $1 buy-in. From each player’s buy-in, $10 goes tot he prize pool and $2 is applied to a bounty on that player’s seat, awarded to whichever player knocks him out of the tournament.

The $7k Deep Stack Tournament takes place 4 days a week, on Tuesdays through Fridays, at 9:00 pm ET for a $25 + $2.50 buy-in.

The Bovada Poker $100K Guaranteed Tournament takes place every Sunday at 4:00 pm ET. The event attracts around 500 players, which gives you good odds off making out like last week’s 1st place winner, Jay K who received $20,500 for his achievement. Even 3rd place from that event took home more than $10k.

The direct buy-in comes to $162 but players can win their seat in the $100K through any number of qualifiers, with buy-ins starting as low as just $1. These are called the Cheap Seat Tournaments; there’s no tournament fee; they take place Monday through Sunday, three times daily and award 1 ticket in a $17 semifinal for every $17 in the prize pool.

Then there are Special Qualifier Tournaments for $18 + $1.80. They take place once each Saturday and award the top 30 players a seat in the $100K GTD itself. For the same buy-in and at the same date and time is also a 50-seat Guaranteed version of this event. Players can also pay 1,750 points to enter this 50-seat Special Qualifier instead of paying the cash buy-in.

Following that are Semifinal Tournaments for $16 + $1 taking place Monday through Sunday 4-5 times daily and awarding 1 seat in the $100K for every $162 in the prize pool.

And all this just scratches the surface of Qualifers for the weekly Bovada Poker $100K GTD. There are also three other Semifinal Tournament options and 5 differ Last Chance Qualifiers.

Usual Intertops Casino bonus terms and conditions apply, including only one bonus allowed per account and per household, and players must wager the bonus plus the qualifying deposit amounts 30 times at select games on the site before being able to withdraw any funds from their Intertops account as cash.

Also currently taking place at Intertops Casino is a leaderboard points race with a $70,000 prize pool called Greek Gods, with prizes for players of all levels. Six different leaderboards ensure that players in every stakes range can come out a winner. Eighteen players in all will win grand prizes of up to $1,000 while 200 players each week will win individual bonuses based on their performance of the few days leading up to the award.

To participate, play at your favorite Intertops Casino games, earning points while you play according to how much you wager and how much you win or lose. Points are tracked on a live leaderboard you can check at any time. The $70,000 Greek Gods promotion runs throughout May 2012. Players should check their emails every Monday and Thursday of the promotion to see if they’ve won an instant prize. The remaining prizes will be awarded after the month is complete.

In each case, the contest is a points race. Earn as many points as possible by playing in your choice of America’s Cardroom cash games or tournaments and land on the respective leaderboard. The $60k Marathon leaderboard is for all America’s Cardroom players, no matter the game or style, with 1 1/4 points awarded for every dollar in tournament fee or rake paid. Players can also earn extra points for playing in certain key events, like America’s Cardrooms Satellite tournaments for Latin Series of Poker event in Lima (LSOP Lima).

And incidentally, speaking of the LSOP, America’s Cardroom is also currently holding satellites for the LSOP Lima taking place June 5 through 10 at Casino Atlantic City in Lima, Peru with a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool.

The $10k Sit ‘n’ Go Mania leaderboard is for, as it sounds, the site’s sit and go players. To determine how many Sit ‘n’ Go Mania leaderboard points you’ll earn for playing in a sit and go, multipy the buy-in cost by the number of players in the event and divide that by 10.

First place in the $60k Marathon is $8k and America’s Cardroom pays out to the top 275 places, while first place in the $10k Sit ‘n’ Go Mania promotion is $2k and the site pays out to the top 125 places.

In the Turbo Gold Cards promotion, players at Cake Poker’s cash game tables between Saturdays May 5th and 12th can earn twice the Gold Cards they ordinarily would simply for playing between the hours of 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm GMT or 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm ET.

This should give you ample opportunity to collect as many diamond suited Gold Cards as you can, because diamonds are the suit of the month this month at Cake Poker, with a $40,000 Diamond Mine Gold Card Tournament Series.

In this part of the promotion, every day between May 15th and 27th, Cake Poker will be holding a different Gold Card tournament with a different Gold Card (deuce through Ace) required for entry. These tournaments have no cash or points buy-ins, only Gold Cards, which can be purchased or traded for at The Exchange if not earned through regular play. Each of these tournaments have real money prizes, from $1,000 to $5,000.

Players able to enter all 13 of these Diamond Mine tournaments will also earn seats in the Flawless Final, a freeroll tournament with a $10,000 prize pool that will take place on May 31st.

Be sure to note when reading a Diamond Mine tournament’s entry requirements that you see which series Gold Cards are eligible for entry. Sometimes it’s just the series ’12 cards that are eligible, sometimes it’s any series.

Players can climb through any of four levels to get one of those prize packages, which level you enter depending on the buy-in you’re willing to pay. You can enter the APT Macau satellite directly for $300 + $25 (starting on June 2 and running thereafter once weekly), or enter a semifinal for $44 + $4 that leads to the satellite. Alternatively, you can enter a quarterfinal fo $7 + $0.70 to $10 + $1 that leads to the semi final. Or, for $1 + $0.10, you can enter a cheat seat qualifier and try to win your way through to the quarterfinal, then the semi-final and finally the APT Macau satellite itself.

There are also sit and go routes to the APT Macau. You can enter 6-handed single table sit and go tournaments May 7 – June 30 around the clock for an $11 buy-in with first place at each winning a $48 seat in the semi-finals. There are also Friday Freerolls, each one awarding a $325 seat in the satellite tournament. These take place between May 31 and June 27, and to enter you simply need only to play in at least 3 $11 APT Macau qualifiers in any given week.

Each $7,000 prize package into the APT Macau includes the $3,300 main event buy-in, $1,700 to apply for eights nights of accommodations at the Galaxy Hotel Resort, $2,000 for traveling costs, and a Swag Bag, courtesy of Bovada. The APT Macau Main Event takes place July 25th to 31st.

In addition to these grand prizes, every day Lock Poker will award 3 other prizes, ranging from Lock Poker merchandise to player points to tournament seats.

To enter one of any given day’s 3 Lock Lotto Extreme drawings, you must earn a target number of points that day. There are three target levels, each with its own daily drawing. To win a prize, reach a daily target level and you’ll be entered into a drawing for that level’s prize on that day.

The lowest target level is 1,000 points in a day, and sample prizes include a Lock Poker T-shirt, 3k VIP Points or entry worth $33 into a $3k freezeout tournament.

The middle target level is 1,500 points per day and sample prizes include a Lock Poker sweatshirt plus entry worth $109 into a $125k guaranteed freezeout satellite, entry into both the $125k satellite and $3k freezeouts, and 12k in VIP points.

The highest target level is 3,000 points and sample prizes include $500 cash plus the buy-in worth $218 into the $125k guaranteed freezeout, a 16 GB Apple iPad 3, and 50k in VIP Points.

In addition, every day of the month that you qualify for entry into that day’s drawing, you also earn another entry into the monthly drawing for the World Series of Poker Main Event prize package and the Ducati 848 EVO Superbike.

As of now the Cake Poker Room as well as several other skins will continue to operate and will not be integrated into Lock Poker. Lock Poker has exploded in popularity since Black Friday and is believed to be the biggest earner on the Merge Network.

Sources have also said that the whole Cake Poker Network will be revamped with new technology like being Mac compatible, better player rewards, upgraded software, bigger tournament guarantees and more.

As a player, there is nothing for you need to do. Once software changes are ready, Lock Poker players will login and be redirected to a new download. That’s it. Cake Poker players, it business as usual for you with one exception. Lock Poker already has it’s own cashier, which will be integrated into the software. All 2012 Series games will continue as well as gold cards and other loyalty programs.

This will be the second time that Lock Poker is on the Cake Network. Only this time they will have total control over everything. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more about this deal.

The Intertops Poker 26-Day Endurance Challenge runs from May 1 to 27. During this time, players try to earn as many Frequent Player Points (FPPs) as they can each day for as many days of the promotional period they are able. Earn just 14 points each day for five days and get entry into a $750 freeroll. Earn 224 points each day for 5 days and you’ll also earn $10 cash.

Other prizes include entry into a $1,000 freeroll for meeting any FPP target for 10 days and entry into a $1,500 freeroll for meeting any FPP target for at least 15 days. Additionally, cash prizes ranging from $3 to $42 can be earned on top of those freeroll entries for earning just a bit more on each of those qualifying days.

The Intertops Poker May FPP Race, meanwhile, is made up of four weekly FPP Races worth a total prize pool of $25,000 divided into $6,250 weekly portions.

Simply be among the 100 top FPP earners at Intertops during one of the race periods (May 1 to 8; May 8 to 15; May 15 to 22; May 22 to 29) and win a piece of that cash prize pool. Racing periods run from 4 am to 3:59 am GMT. Prizes are credited to player accounts within 48 hours of the completion of each racing period.

As we mentioned in our previous post on the subject, prize winnings are based on the VPPs a player is holding when seated in a milestone hand. To be seated in a milestone hand, simply play as often as you can, and at as many tables at once as you can manage. To earn the maximum prize you can for that stellar timing, read on…

Can’t Play on Pokerstars? Check out our list of top US Poker Sites

All players dealt into a milestone hand earn a prize equal to their VPP total over the last 50 hands cumulatively multiplied by $60, with an additional $20 tacked on to that total. The hand’s winner gets twice that amount.

There are 300 regular milestone hands in this leg of the Road to 100 Billion Hands, and then there’s the Mega Milestone 80 Billionth Hand. If you’re dealt into that hand, you get $10,000 plus $1,000 for each VPP you earned over the last 50 hands, while the hand’s winner gets double that.

After this leg of the Road to 100 Billion Hands is over, the next leg will come around 3 billion hands before the 85 billionth hand.

VIP Points are one of two rewards points currencies offered at Poker Stars, the other being FPPs. Ordinarily, VPPs determine players’ status level in the Poker Stars rewards club while FPPs are redeemed for rewards.

Open solely to Party Poker’s Palladium VIP and Palladium Elite VIP players, the VIP 500 Club awards instant prize cards to each player who earns 500 points during the promotional period, each time they do it. Each instant prize card contains a guaranteed prize ranging from $5 to $500 cash, $25 to $100 poker bonus, 100 to 500 loyalty points or an iPod or iPad 2.

Keep collecting VIP 500 Club cards every time you accumulate 500 more points and keep raking in the prizes. If you can manage to amass 60 VIP 500 Club cards, you’ll receive a special bonus instant prize card that grants you $1,000 and 5,000 more points.

You must opt-in to this promotion through the Party Poker website or your player admin before your points earned during the promotional period can be counted toward your performance in the promotion.

You earn points by paying rakes in real money cash games at Party Poker, with each $1 you pay in rake equal to 2 points.

For the poker bonuses rewarded, players have 60 days to earn 100 to 300 points, depending on the size of the bonus, with a multiplier of 4 to 8, again depending on the bonus size, to release the bonus as cash.

Amarillo Slim became synonymous with poker in 1972 when he won the WSOP championship after a 22 hour match. In his lifetime he went on to win 3 more WSOP bracelets.

Born December 31, 1928, he died in a Baptist hospice, St. Anthony’s, near his home in Amarillo, Texas on Sunday, the 29th of April, ’12 at the age of 83.

WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla says he’ll be remembered as the 20th century’s most famous poker player. Part of that was because of his unassailable poker prowess, but another part of it was because of the outlandish stunts he pulled. These include beating Willie Nelson at dominoes for $300,000; Monterey Fats at pool with a broomstick for a pool cue; and Evil Kenivel at golf with hammer for his club. He rode a camel through a Moroccan casino and appeared on numerous TV talk shoes, including The Tonight Show and 60 Minutes.

Unfortunately celebrity also had its price, as Slim was the victim of robberies on 3 occassions: in 2009, 2007, and 2006. He also entered into a plea agreement on a child indeceny charge which he denied to his death, saying the agreement was simply to spare his family a lengthy, ugly trial.

Slim will long be remembered, however, as the man perhaps most responsible for giving Texas Holdem the mainstream status it now bears.

There are Party Poker satellites going on now awarding free seats in the various Pokerfest II Online events, with a $55 structure, $99 structure, $215 structure, $530 structure, $640 structure and $1,060 structure, so that for each of the 47 events in Pokerfest II you can win the full buy-in at a satellite.

In addition to the 47 main events comprising Pokerfest II, you can also play in two Daily Dollar side events each day of the series, each event having a $1 buy-in, and each one varying slightly in game structure or style (e.g. short-handed, deepstack, turbo, etc.). They take place at 1:45 pm and 4 pm ET daily.

There are also Pokerfest II Jackpots that can be win by achieving certain objectives, such as winning any 3 Pokerfest II events ($20k + WSOP prize package), final tabling in 5 or 10 events ($7,500 or $15,000, respectively, plus an iPad), or finishing in the money in 10 or 20 events ($2,500 or $5,000 plus iPad).

To win yourself a share of that million dollar prize pool, simply be playing in any millionth hand between 79,700,000,000 and 80,000,000,000, based on the hand history counter built into the Poker Stars software. So, for example, if you’re playing in hand number 79,703,000,000,000, you’ll win a prize.

And the best part is, you win cash for simply being dealt cards in that hand, no matter how you fare in the actual hand. The winner of the hand, however, receives the lion’s share of the prize pool for that hand.

Already at the time of this writing, on Friday morning, 11:41 am ET, Poker Stars is up to the 79,527,155,345th hand dealt. So you’d better hurry. There’s no time to waste before the 80 billionth hand is dealt and the biggest prize of all, $20,000 for that hand’s winner.

According a story in Reuters, and pretty much every major media under the sun, and based on information acquired from an unidentified source, Poker Stars is currently in talks to purchase Full Tilt Poker where the Groupe Bernard Tapie had failed.

The deal under discussion is for PokerStars to buy up its former rival’s assets, according to the person. It would constitute a portion of a larger settlement of the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil case against Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

Part of the deal would formulate a method for paying back the some $300 million of player funds held up in the seizure, about $150 million of which belongs to players in the U.S.

In investigating the possible acquisition, Poker Stars has sent some of its people to FullTilt’s Dublin, Ireland headquarters to conduct due diligence.

Despite its sullied reputation after the events of Black Friday a little over a year ago now, Full Tilt Poker is still considered a leader in online poker, with an enormous database of poker player and poker software that ranks among the industry’s best.

Isle of Man based Poker Stars had its U.S. operations shut down in the same DOJ raids that shut Full Tilt’s U.S. operations, but unlike Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker was unable to continue its operations outside the U.S. when, in June of last year, it was learned that the site would not be able to pay back players the money held up in their accounts.

The Carbon Poker Last Man Standing promotion starts May 1st, 2012 and lasts for 60 days (2 months) during which players earn as many VIP Points as they can by playing at Carbon Poker’s real money games.

In order for any of your play to count toward the Last Man Standing competition you must first opt-in to the promotion through your CarbonPoker player admin. Once that’s done (and after the promotional period begins on May 1) Carbon Poker will track the VIP point earnings of all participating players.

Making this contest a bit more exciting (and competitive) than other types of points races (or leader board races), Carbon Poker is setting a certain quota of VIP points that players must earn by certain target dates in order to be allowed to continue in the competition. Players failing to meet those quotas will be eliminated from the running.

What’s more, players can only miss 3 days of the promotional period before being kicked out of the running after missing a 4th day of play. In addition, after day 45 of the competition, no players are allowed to miss a day without being ejected from the contest.

The top 25 players remaining at the end of the 60 days will share $25k of the prize pool, with first place getting $6k, 2nd getting $4k and 3rd getting $2.5k, down to 22nd through 25th places, which award $250 each.

Then there are Last Man Standing Freeroll tournaments four in all, that players qualify to enter by simply achieving their required weekly VIP Point quotas. The freerolls are scheduled for every Sunday in May: the 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th. The total prize pool up for grabs at these freerolls is $10k.

Between now and May 3rd just enter in the bonus code MAX250 when making your deposit. Then use the bonus money to get in on the 40 events worth of action at the 2012 SCOOP.

Deposit minimum for this offer is $10 but if you deposit $500 then you can get the full $250 bonus.

In order to redeem any of this bonus, once you’ve made your eligible deposit, you need to earn a certain amount of VPPs, or VIP Player Points. Bonus cash is released in $/£/€10 increments, with the exact amount of VPPs required to clear each increment differing depending on the player’s chosen currency. Euros are released in 260 VPP increments; pounds are released in 320 VPP increments; and U.S. dollars and Canadian dollars are released in 200 VPP increments. Bonus cash can only be redeemed in the same currenc in which the qualifying deposit was made. Players have 30 days after making the qualifying deposits to clear as much of their bonus as they can, after which any remaining uncleared portion of the bonus is forfeited. Each PokerStars player may redeem this bonus only once.

Stay tuned here to learn more about the Poker Stars 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker and all its 40 events as the time approaches.

Grospellier stands atop a 57 player field after a two-day battle for the $301,992 grand prize in the $13,610 buy-in event. It happened at Berlin’s Grand Hyatt and say a total prize pool of $872,190.

When the eight-player final table dwindled down to the top two, Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman of the UK had a 2 to 1 chip lead over Grospelier. Moorman happens to be the highest winning online tournament poker player in history, claiming over $7.9 million in winnings. He also claims $2,657,951 in live winnings, which he started bringing home only as of 2008. 2011 was a big year for Moorman, placing in both the $10k Six-Handed event at the 2011 WSOP and the WSOP Europe Main Event. Alas it was another runner-up finish in this latest event, adding $189,824 to his winnings.

ElkY of France beat out Moorman on 3 out of 3 all-ins heads-up, Moorman reported to his Twitter followers. This win brings Elky’s live career winnings to $9,092,892. He’s been ranked #17 on the ‘All Time Money List’ of poker and is one of a select few to achieve a Triple Crown, winnings the EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, 2008 WPT Al Lago Classic, and a 2011 WSOP bracelet.

Third place in the EPT Berlin High Roller event went to Marvin Rettenmaier of Germany while David Peters of the U.S. took fourth. The remaining final tablers, from 5th through 8th, were: Tobias Reinkemeier, Oleh Okhotskyi, Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom, and Martin Jacobson.

The tournament series is going to run from May 6th to May 20th, and it will end with the Grand Finale Main Event that is guaranteed to give away at least $800k in prize money.  To make these tournaments even more interesting is the fact that a Lock PRO Elite player will host each of the tournaments, and all of these pros will have bounties on their heads as well, meaning that you can take home a nice payout if you are the person who can send the pro home!  As we all know, Lock Poker has one of the strongest professional poker lineups out there today, so this is just another chance to potentially play with some of the biggest pros in the game.

There will also be a “Champion of Champions Tournament” which will be offered for any player who takes down one of the 33 different events.  This tournament will give away two seats to the World Series of Poker Main Event, meaning that you have a great chance to take down one of the seats if you can win one of the 33 events.  Lock Poker is going to run a leaderboard that will be constantly updated as well, and the players who finish in the top 100 at the end of the tournament series will automatically be entered into another special tournament after the Main Event comes to an end.

UPDATE: The Merge Poker Network has cancelled the LOCKOPS Series

CakePoker’s Russian Roulette is not a poker game. Instead, each player gets 3 tokens to use in making a simple decision: To Shoot or Not to Shoot. That is the question. If you shoot and the gun goes off, you lose. If you shoot and the gun doesn’t go off, you collected the pot and stay alive. If you don’t shoot, pay another token into the pot and stay alive as the turn goes to the next player.

The $4,000 Russian Roulette Leaderboard competition started on Sunday, April 15, 2012 and it runs for the next four weeks, awarding $1,000 per week until the full $4,000 prize pool has been awarded.

Every dollar a player spends playing one of these games earns that player an additional leaderboard point. The 100 top points earners each week will win a cash prize of up to $100.

There is no extra buy-in or opt-in requirement for this contest. It is simply offered to all players at Cake Poker’s new Russian Roulette tournaments and ring games, simply to entice you to spend more time (and, okay, money too) experiencing this unique new offering.

Those 4 race periods are from April 15 to 22; April 22 to 29; April 29 to May 6; and May 6 to 13. Each race period starts at 12:00 am (00:00) GMT on its listed start date and ends at 11:59 pm (23:59) GMT on its listed end date. Leader board tallies will be updated on the site every half hour.