12.04.2008 03:39 PM St. Petersburg and Moscow are two of the world’s most historic and imposing cities, and now you have the chance to combine a visit with playing in a brand new poker series, the Russian Poker Tour. The RPT will bring elite poker tournaments to the country’s most prestigious venues, and you can be there courtesy of PokerStars.
The Russian poker scene has exploded in recent years, with millions of people playing both live and online at PokerStars. The tour kicks off in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, January 25-February 1 2009. Then the action moves to the nation’s capital Moscow, February 22-28 2009.
Satellites for the Russian Poker Tour are running now - giving you the chance to win a prize package worth $8,000. This includes tournament buy-in, hotel accommodation and money for expenses - everything you need during your stay!
How to Qualify
PokerStars is running RPT St. Petersburg satellites starting from $2.22 or 111 Frequent Player Points, Monday-Saturday at 10:30 ET, from now until December 30. To register for an RPT satellite, open the PokerStars lobby, click 'Events' and 'Special'. You can also use the Search Filter and type 'RPT' into the text field.
The St. Petersburg event takes place between January 25 - February 1, 2009, with a buy-in of $5,000 and the Moscow event runs February 22-28, 2009, with a $10,000 buy-in.
12.02.2008 06:00 PM The following statement was made by Poker Players Alliance (PPA) Chairman Alphonse D’Amato:
The recent cheating scandals underscore the need for U.S. licensing and regulation of online poker to help protect consumers. While even the most highly regulated industries are susceptible to fraud and abuse, regulation does provide assurances that when consumers are harmed they have recourse, and that the offenders will be sanctioned. The continued pursuit of poker prohibition, on the other hand, will only drive this industry underground. As the Washington Post pointed out, prohibition represents a widening disconnect between 21st-century technology and 20th-century laws.
Regulation of Internet poker does not equal an expansion of gambling in this country. Like it or not, the phenomenon of internet poker cannot be wished away. The American market has spoken. There is strong demand for Internet poker and no reasonable government can or should stand in the way of adults competing in games of skill on the Internet. To the contrary, the government should step up and exercise regulatory oversight on this multi-billion dollar interstate commerce, and collect the revenue—especially during this country’s economic crisis.
The federal government cannot continue to abdicate this basic responsibility to the millions of its citizens who choose to play poker on the Internet. The attempt to enforce an outright prohibition of online poker is deeply flawed and unworkable, and it invades upon the personal freedoms of law-abiding adults who wish to engage in a game of skill. And as 60 Minutes and the Washington Post stories reported it also exposes American consumers to the rare, unscrupulous bad apple operator who will take advantage of the lack of a U.S. regulated marketplace.
Now more than ever the U.S. Congress needs to step up and enact real public policy as it relates to Internet gaming. We look forward to working with the new Administration and the new Congress to advance sensible regulatory solutions such as those introduced in the 110th Congress by Representatives Barney Frank (H.R. 2046) and Robert Wexler (H.R. 2610) and Senator Robert Menendez (S.3616).
12.01.2008 04:33 PM This week, the PokerStars Sunday Million was a monster. The world's biggest weekly tournament drew more than 8,000 players playing for a prize pool of $1.6 million. When it was over, twirlpro won nearly $200,000.
PokerStars Sunday Million Final Results
1st place: twirlpro ($196,024.50)
2nd place: fratzl ($132,176.52)
3rd place: NewsKoool ($89,611.20)
4th place: svansa ($72,809.10)
5th place: Terkel1 ($56,807.10)
6th place: 1bobbyL ($40,805.10)
7th place: ankolo ($28,003.50)
8th place: PureProfitFo ($18,402.30)
9th place: omba ($11,201.40)
11.28.2008 12:45 PM (CBS) A collaboration by two of the world's most respected news organizations reveals how online poker players suspecting cheating were forced to successfully ferret out the cheaters themselves. That's because managers of the mostly-unregulated $18 billion Internet gambling industry failed to respond to their complaints.
The results of the four-month investigation by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and The Washington Post’s two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul will appear this Sunday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.
"He was raising, just really, really bad hands against very good hands. He seemed to play crazy," says Todd Witteles, a computer scientist turned poker player who believed he was losing too much to the same person. "It seemed like he was giving his money away. Except the only thing was, he wasn't losing. He was playing in a style that was sure to lose, but he was killing the game day after day," Witteles, who played a key detective role, remembers.
Michael Josem, a player and a computer security expert, plotted the odds of such consistent success. "We did the mathematical analysis to find that they were winning at about 15 standard deviations above the mean…approximately equivalent to winning a one-in-a-million jackpot six consecutive times."
The cheating, which netted the cheaters more than $20 million, occurred on two of the Internet's most popular sites, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. The two sites operate out of a shopping mall in Costa Rica and run their games on computer servers housed on an Indian reservation outside of Montreal. They are licensed by a Mohawk tribe that has no background in casino gambling, a tribe that previously made the majority of its money selling tax-free tobacco.
11.27.2008 01:47 PM After the turkey and the pie, around the time you’ve had your fill of Uncle Pete’s stories of his adventures in the aluminum siding business, head on over to Bodog and check out the special tournaments they are running all weekend. Full info can be found here.
And Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from everyone here at PokerRoomReview.
11.26.2008 05:33 PM
Regarding the story of an ex-affiliate manager not being paid by BigDaddysCasino Poker, this manager reports he has been paid in full. The CEO of BigDaddys also contacted PRR to report their poker room is on the Merge Poker Network and that they are in the process of setting up their own payment processing. Further, he stated there are “zero issues with regards to timely payouts from Big Daddy and we have yet to have a single complaint from any player who has made a withdrawal.”
11.25.2008 02:16 PM
In a transparent and most likely futile attempt to distance themselves from the taint of the superuser scandal, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet have merged into a new online poker platform called the Cereus poker network. What the Cereus PR spinners are hailing as “the culmination of more than 12 months of development, delivering a secure, responsive and flexible online poker gaming experience to members of the UB and AP communities” is in effect a shutting down of the more popular UB interface and instead offering a marginally enhanced AP software dressed up as “Bigger, Badder, Better.”
11.24.2008 03:47 PM
WPT Enterprises, the parent company of the World Poker Tour, has announced its attempt at parleying its name into online poker success with WPT Online Poker, has failed. WPT Online had been part of the Cryptologic network, but never attracted the numbers of players required to sustain a competitive online poker site.
11.22.2008 02:20 PM Dutch Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is trying to bully the country's bankers again, this time over his attempt to enforce a UIGEA-inspired initiative that involves the banks refusing to process financial transactions with online gambling companies. Ballin gave notice that the Ministry of Justice intended targeting financial institutions involved in 'illegal' financial transactions with unlicensed Internet gambling companies.
The Netherlands Bankers Association (NVB) fired back and formally advised Ballin that his plans were impossible to implement and unworkable in a practical sense. The NVB told the Minister that his plan to use Dutch financial institutions to police online poker and Internet gambling sites is neither practical nor legal, and that the role of policeman is not part of the banking industry's responsibilities.