Latest Poker News

The North American stop of the World Poker Tour are currently on at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Ontario. The event has a buy-in of 10,300 Canadian Dollars and 454 players are vying for the prize pool of over 4.4 million Canadian Dollars and a first prize of 1,25 million Canadian Dollars.

Democrat Senator from New Jersey Robert Menendez has introduced a new bill, which is called the Internet Skill Game Licensing and Control Act, S. 3616. The objective of this bill is to establish a licensing and regulatory framework in the United States for control and supervision of Internet poker and other games of skill online.

The World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) is currently being played at the Casino at the Empire in Leicester Square in London. The first event, the £1,500 No Limit Hold’Em was won by the 24 year old Dane Jesper Hougaard.

Duplicate Poker created a revolution of sorts when it opened its doors in 2007 by introducing a format of poker that was 100% skill based. This was to done to circumvent the UIGEA and promote a form of online poker that would be “legal” in the United States.

A few months ago the Kahnawake Gaming Commission had appointed industry expert Frank Catania to probe the insider cheating scandal at Ultimate Bet. The preliminary report is now out and Kahnawake has imposed sanctions on the online poker room.

Last week before the commencement of the WSOPE in London the world’s first aerial tournament was arranged. The table was hanging from a crane 45 meters above the streets of London. The table was in level with the City Hall and looking down on the famous Tower Bridge.

MarketPulse keeps track of a lot of records in online poker cash games such as biggest pot, highest traffic, biggest winner and biggest loser. Yesterday one more category was added. This was the largest stack in a No Limit Texas Hold’em game with a maximum buy-in. This means that the size of the stack indicates what the player has won and not what he has brought from home.

Theo Jorgensen won the bracelet in the £5,500 pot limit Omaha event at the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE). This was a deep-stacked event with each player starting with 20,000 chips.

One of the greatest dangers to online poker is the fraud and collusion committed by players. Ethoca has been in the forefront of the war against this kind of fraud. Ethoca was founded in 2005 for this purpose. According to Ethoca sharing information is vital in this task.

After only a year on the Ongame Poker Network, Mansion Poker announced that it would be leaving to join the iPoker Network. The move comes as a surprise, since Mansion Poker seemed so satisfied to join Ongame and, at the time, said that it’s choice was based on Ongame’s “ability to enhance our business rather than consume it.”

Playtech has announced the addition of yet another poker room to its Italian poker network, bringing the total number of sites to four.

An ad promoting the innovative poker site, PKR has been deemed inappropriate by the UK Advertising Standards Authority. ASA said that certain elements of the ad ‘glamorized’ poker playing and was thus socially irresponsible.

It took John Juanda all of 22 hours to whittle down Stanislav Alekhin and win the £10,000 No Limit Hold’Em Main Event at the World Series of Poker Europe in London. Juanda also took home £868,800 as the first prize.

One of the fastest markets in the online poker industry these days is undoubtedly happening in Italy. Playtech has been at the forefront of this expansion as it continues to attract poker room after poker room to its Italian network, including Gala Coral’s Eurobet and Snai.

Event # 20 at the on going World Championship of Online Poker, sponsored by PokerStars, was the $1,000+50 No Limit Hold’Em with a guaranteed prize pool of $3,000,000.  Since there were 3,467 entries the prize pool swelled to $3,467,000. Of this  $1.34 million was payable to the top five players.