Tag: pokerstars

Poker Stars Runs Regional Poker Promotions All Year Long

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On top of the poker promotions that Poker Stars offers to all of its players, the site also hosts a massive amount of promotions that are available soley to players who live in specific regions of the world.

For players in CIS countries, PokerStars is hosting a We Are Poker promotion involving three weekly final tournaments with freeroll and $0.55 qualifiers and prizes of iPods, iPads and poker gear in honor of the site’s new TV ad campaign.

PokerStars is hosting satellites into the EPT Copenhagen main event strictly for players in Nordic countries. These run from January 20 to 29, 2012 with the actual prize packages (5 in all) to be awarded in a €215 Nordic EPT qualifier on Sunday, January 29.

Players in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are eligible for the Play With Martin Staszko promotion giving players the chance to win a seat at the Team PokerStars Pro’s private table and a share of a cash prize pool in the thousands.

PokerStars is hosting an Asia Poker League available only to players living in Asia. This consists of free and $0.10 qualifiers that lead to daily tournaments with points rewards. Those points are then calculated to determine the players among whom to divide the weekly $500 prize pool.

The site also runs an ANZ Tournament Leader Board tracking the progress of players living in Australia and New Zealand and awarding the top performers TLB points, cash and tournament entries.

Players living in Malaysia and Singapore can enter Causeway Freerolls with $100 prize pools.

Poker Stars Launches $100,000 Depositor Freerolls

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Pokerstars is now holding four special freeroll tournaments per day, each with a $1,000 guaranteed prize pool. To earn tickets into all of these freerolls for a 31-day period, a player need only make a deposit into their real money PokerStars player account. This promotion is open to new and existing players both.

New players should use the promo code STARS600 when making their deposit so that they’re also still eligible to receive the regular Poker Stars new player bonus: a 100% match up to $600. Existing players making this deposit as a reload deposit should just use the code 100K.

Whether a new or current PokerStars player, after your initial 31 days of four $1,000 freerolls per day is complete, simply reload your account with an additional deposit and you get to play in all the freerolls for the next 31 days.

You can do this once per month, allowing you, if you wish, to play in all 4 daily $1k freerolls indefinitely.

PokerStars’ $1,000 Freerolls utilize a freebuy format which means that within the first 1 hour of play, any player can rebuy as much as they want for a cost of $0.30 each time. That $0.30, of course, is then added to the prize pool.

The $1,000 Freerolls can be found in the PokerStars lobby under Tourney and Freeroll tabs and take place at 04:00, 10:00, 15:00 and 21:00 ET each day.

Remember, this is only happening for a limited time. Make your deposit before April 19 to get a full 31 days of freerolls in. You can still make qualifying deposits after that time, but you’ll only get as many days of freerolls as remains until May 20.

John Dibella: Winner of 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event

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John Dibella was declared winner of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure 2012 main event. For his accomplishment, he claims a $1,775,000 grand prize, along with 2,400 points toward Card Player Magazine’s Player of the Year Award.

Dibella avoided the $10,000 buy-in into the 2012 PCA main event through a live satellite that cost $1,000 to enter. This made him one of three amateur players to make it to the final table. Considering there were only 8 players at the final table, that meant amateurs made up almost half the final table.

Runner-up in the event was Kyle Julius who claimed $1.5 million and 2,000 Player of the Year points for his accomplishment. Franz Jaka came in third place, for $775k and 1,600 POY points. Xuan Liu came in fourth place for $600k and 1,200 POY points. Mark Drover came in fifth place for $468k and 1,000 POY points. Anthony Gregg came in sixth place for $364k and 800 POY points. David Bernstein came in seventh place for $260k and 600 POY points. And Ruben Visser came in eighth place for $156,400 and 400 POY points.

Dibella claims this as his biggest cash win in live poker. His prior winnings include tenth place in a 2006 WSOP event ($1.5k NL Holdem) and he cashed for $16,000, previously his biggest win to date, as coincidence would have it, in the ’08 PCA main event.

Before taking down the 2012 Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure main event, John Dibella’s total poker career winnings was $42k.

Poker Stars Presents TCOOP Ticket Deposit Offer

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Coming soon to Poker Stars is its first ever Turbo Championship of Online Poker, a fast-paced online poker tournament series with a $10 million guaranteed prize pool. And now, Poker Stars players can earn free tickets into TCOOP.

To get your free TCOOP ticket, worth $22, reload your real money Poker Stars account with $60 ore more sometime from January 9 to 18, 2012. And be sure to use the promo code TCOOP when you make your deposit in order to be credited the free ticket.

There are a couple of ways you can then use this $22 free entry you’ve acquired. Either redeem it for entry into a satellite tourney awarding free entries into TCOOP events with buy-ins larger than $22 or redeem it directly for entry into a TCOOP event with a buy-in of $22 or less.

There are seven TCOOP events that have $22 buy-ins:
• January 19 at 12 noon ET, NL Holdem 6-max for $200,000
• January 20 at 8 am ET, Pot Limit Draw Poker for $50,000
• January 20 at 12 noon ET, NL Holdem with rebuys for $400,000
• January 22 at 3:30 pm ET, Pot Limit Omaha, double turbo 6-max with rebuys for $150,000
• January 24 at 4 pm ET, Stud Poker for $25,000
• January 24 at 6 pm ET, NL Holdem double turbo with rebuys for $300,000
• January 25 at 2 pm ET, Stud Hi/Lo for $25,000

You must use your free TCOOP ticket for this upcoming TCOOP, meaning that as of 18:31 ET on January 29, 2012, all free tickets awarded through this promotion will be invalidated.

Viktor “Isildur1” Blom Wins PCA High Roller Event

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2012 Pokerstars Caribbean AdventureThe PokerStars Caribbean Adventure High Roller event featured an incredible $100k buy-in, which explains why there were only 34 total players who registered for the event.  Regardless though, 34 players with a huge buy-in like that, makes up quite a nice prize pool in the end.  While there were 34 players in the event, you can bet that it included quite a few well-known players, and also players with some deep bankrolls as well, in order to afford this buy-in.  When all was said and done though, it was a player who not all poker fans know well, but many online poker players are well aware of, who ended up taking down the championship.

Viktor “Isildur1” Blom is a big time high stakes poker player on the popular poker site PokerStars.  He decided to take his poker talents to the live tournament scene over the weekend though, and headed to the Atlantis Resort in Bahamas to compete with big names like Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand “ElkY’ Grospellier, Jason Mercier, Jonathan Duhamel, Dan Shak, Erik Seidel, and many others as well.  When all was said and done, Blom outlasted the rest, and beat out Shak for the nice payday of $1,254,000 in the end.

When the final day of action kicked off, Blom found himself right in the middle of the remaining eight players.  The issue was, that only the top five were able to make it into the cash, so all remaining players had to be careful with those chip stacks.  Blom didn’t do much until they were into the money, as he saw the likes of Mike “Timex” McDonald, Humberto Brenes, and Scott Seiver, all sent home in 8th through 6th place.  It was then that he turned up his aggression and started winning big pots, and actually eliminated every player at the final table on his way to the championship.  The first to go was Negreanu in 5th, then Duhamel in 4th, Galen Hall in 3rd, and then he eliminated Shak in their heads up match in 2nd place.

This would be Blom’s first live tournament win, and it was an incredibly impressive one at that, as he played with the biggest names, and beat out the biggest names on his way to the victory.

PCA Super High Roller Event Draws 32 Players

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2012 Pokerstars Caribbean AdventureThe 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) has one of the biggest poker tournament buy-ins that is offered on the board today.  The Super High Roller event is a $100k entry tournament, that has a smaller field than the normal big time events, but it also draws in a nice prize pool, and some of the biggest names in the game as well.  This year, the event drew in 34 total players, which means that the top five players will be making money.  What’s interesting about this, is that making the final table isn’t enough in this tournament, as they’ll have to make an even deeper run to get a big payday.  The perks of this event are big for both sides, but the fans definitely get a ton of action with quite a few of their favorite players.

As far as the players who are involved in this years Super High Roller event, you’ll see names like Jonathan Duhamel, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Erik Seidel, Viktor “Islidur1” Blom, and Eugene Katchalov.  As far as the top five players who cash, this is how the payouts will work:

  • First Place- $1.25 million
  • Second Place- $846k
  • Third Place- $470k
  • Fourth Place- $313k
  • Fifth Place- $250k

When Day 1 ended the top three players featured Ike Haxton in first, Viktor Blom in second, and Seidel in third.  Blom is one of the more interesting stories in this event, as he’s an online high stakes cash game player, who has made quite a bit of money in the past two years.  He doesn’t have very much live poker tournament experience, but he’s looking to bring in a big payday in one of his few tries.

Currently, the action is down to the final eight players though, with Galen Hall leading the way, and Blom and Negreanu still involved in the action.  One other name who is near the top of the leaderboard is Jonathan Duhamel, who is currently sitting in second place and has rebounded in a big way after the home invasion that three people had on his house in Canada.  He had his WSOP gold bracelet stolen, as well as a $5k Rolex, and over $100k in cash as well.

The final eight of this tournament should be fun to watch, and the winner will definitely have to earn their way to the big payday by beating out a stacked field.

BLUFF Names Eugene Katchalov 2011 Player of the Year

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The BLUFF Magazine Player of the Year Award, presented in cooperation with the Aria Resorts and Casino, one of the most prestigious annual awards in the poker world, and for last year, 2011, 32-year-old Ukrainian Eugene Katchalov has received that honor.

Named 2011 BLUFF Player of the Year, Eugue Katchalov earned a total of $2,572,726 in poker of the course of the year, bringing his career earnings in live poker to $7,001,893. These figures also bring Katchalov to number 36 on Poker’s All-Time Money List tracking the biggest all-time career earners in poker.

Katchalov’s 2011 started out with a heads-up victory over Daniel Negreanu for $1.5 million in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $100k Super High Roller event. Less than two weeks later he finished second at the PCA $10k High-Roller 6-Max event, for an additional $131,920.

Over the course of 2011, Katchalov has finished first place twice, including his first ever WSOP championship in the $1,500 7-Card Stud event. He also made 7 final tables and cashed in 13 events in 2011. Other highlights of the year for Katchalov include a third place finish in the EPT Barcelona Main Event, earning him another $453,812.

Katchalov’s cashes include three EPT main events (one being the season 7 grand final).

Coming in at a close second behind Katchalov for BLUFF’s 2011 Player of the Year was Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, who notched up $2,296,620 in winnings this year, including his first ever WSOP win.

Both Grospellier and Katchalov are Team Poker Stars Pro players.

PokerStars Cuts Back One More Pro

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PokerstarsPokerStars just hangs out in the poker news these days, and a few times now it has related to them cutting back on their Team PokerStars Pros.  They’ve come back into the news once again, and it’s for that same thing, but it’s one player who is very well known on the live poker tournament circuit.  John Duthie is well-known in the poker game all around the world actually, but especially in Europe, where he created the European Poker Tour (EPT).  In a week that features Stars in the news for their recent changes to their site, including a change to their VIP program that featured protests all over the site; this news just comes on the top, and leaves many players asking if Duthie’s leave from the site has to do with the recent changes.

What makes this story even more interesting, is that quite a few players went onto the popular poker forum Two Plus Two, and voiced their opinion that the separation between Duthie and PokerStars had something to do with the protest between the players and the site this past week.  Many players feel strongly about Duthie, and the fact that he has made poker huge in Europe because of his creation of the EPT.  These rumors that were floating around though were quickly put to rest by Duthie after they began though.  He went onto the forum and stated that the split between the two had nothing to do with the situation that was currently going on, and also that the protest had nothing to do with this either.  The split also totally up to Duthie apparently, who decided that he had no interest in renewing a contract with Stars for the upcoming year.

Duthie’s creation of the EPT was just the start for the big named player, as he also has a total of $2,774,963 in live tournament winnings, with 13 World Series of Poker cashes under his belt as well.  Duthie jumped onto the scene back in 2000 when he took down the Poker Million, and a pay day of over $1.4 million for his efforts.  You can bet that we’ll still be seeing him on the live poker tournament scene in the coming years as well.

Pokerstars Makes Changes, Causes Uproar

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Pokerstars caused a bit of an uproar to mark the turning of the calendar when last week (which was also last year) the site announced certain changes to its VIP program and its rake structure.

In a Bank of America style backlash, PokerStars players came out to the online forums by the scores to protest the actions.

One of the two controversial changes was from the former “dealt” method of calculating VIP Player Points (VPPs) to a new “weighted contributed” method. In the dealt method, all players dealt cards in the hand received an even share of the VPPs for that hand. In the weighted contributed method, those same number of VPPs are distributed, instead, according to how much money each player put into the pot. Players who fold before the flop will now receive none of the share. All of this obviously disadvantages tighter players by encouraging lots of action.

The other controversial changes were to Poker Stars’ rake structure. Designed to simplify the process on PokerStars’ end, the changes that include lower rake percentages and new rake caps seem only to reduce the amount of rake most players will be able to get.

By the same token, even a Poker Stars representative admits that the new VPP calculation method will have the effect of reducing the number of VPPs awarded in any given period as well.

PokerStars’ reaction to the protest? Poker Stars is moving forward still with the change to the VPP calculation method but has decided to put its rake structure changes (including the caps) on hold pending further study.

Poker Stars Holds VIP Club Blast Off in January

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For January of 2012, Poker Stars is blasting off its VIP Club with enhanced benefits all month long, including Discount TCOOP Tickets & Merchandise Sale, VIP Ring Game Happy Hours, a Pace Bonus, Special VIP Tournaments and VIP TCOOP Satellites.

Discount TCOOP Tickets & Merchandise Sale offer discounted entries into the upcoming PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker, taking place January 19 – 29. No matter a player’s VIP club level, he or she can find a discounted TCOOP seat in the PokerStars VIP Store. So too are over 100 different items of PokerStars merchandise in the store discounted to up to 60% as of January 4, 2012.

VIP Ring Game Happy Hours take place daily from January 2 – 29, albeit at different times each week. Regardless of the time, however, the benefit is the same: 50% more VIP points earned for all your real money play during those hours.

The Pace Bonus is a special bonus for PlatinumStar and Supernova VIP players only, giving a cash bonus in February for your January performance.

Special VIP Tournaments include Weekly $30,000 VIP tournaments and a Monthly $100,000 VIP tournament. The Weekly $30,000 VIP Tournaments run every Saturday at 2:30 pm ET for a buy-in of 100 FPPs. The Monthly $100,000 VIP tournament takes place Saturday, January 28 at 3:00 pm ET.

VIP TCOOP Satellites are offered solely to Poker Stars SilverStar VIP players and higher, giving extra, exclusive chances to win seats in the first ever TCOOP.