The Bet365 Poker Summer Reload Bonus is open to all Bet365 Poker players new and old who opt in to the promotion and then deposit or transfer some amount of money into their Bet365 Poker real money account. How much of a Summer Reload Bonus you get for your deposit depends, as you might imagine, on the size of the deposit.

Bet365 Poker is offering 3 different bonuses in their Summer Reload Bonus promotion: $20, $100, and $500.

If you deposit less than $20 (that's $19.99 or less) you get $20. If you deposit between $20 and $99.99 you get a $100 bonus. And if you deposit $100 or more then you get the full $500 cash Summer Reload Bonus.

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You can make multiple deposits during the Summer Reload Bonus promotional period (July 26 - August 2), but only the highest deposit will be counted toward deciding the bonus amount you receive. In other words, they will not add up all your deposits over the course of the week and base their determination of your bonus amount on that. So make sure you make one big deposit that counts. Even just $100 gets you $500. That's a 500% deposit bonus. You can't find that on most poker sites.

You are credited for the bonus not when you make the deposit but within 24 hours of the promotion's end (so that's 23:59 GMT on August 3. As with any cash Bonus Dollars you receive at Bet365 Poker (or virtually any other poker site, for that matter) you must "clear" the bonus to access the funds, meaning you must play in Bet365 Poker's real money games and tournaments to earn a certain number of Merit Points. In this case, the Summer Reload Bonus Dollars will be redeemed at a rate of 1,200 Merit Points for every $10.

You have 60 days from the time of receiving the Bonus Dollars to clear the entire bonus. Any portion of the bonus not cleared by the end of the 60 day term will be forfeited. For more details on how to earn your Merit Points you can also see our info on the Bet365 Poker Bonus for first depositors.

The official Bwin Poker word on Essence, as revealed in a memo issued to its Affiliate Partners, is that it is an improved algorithm designed in such a way that "the player’s overall contribution to the poker ecology becomes a major component to its healthy balance."

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Ordinarily a poker site (or land-based poker room) will have a set rake that the house takes out of any pot (often limiting it only to pots where a flop is dealt). That rake is typically determined by the size of the pot, the number of players dealt cards in the hand, and the table stakes. It's how the house pays itself.

But with Bwin Poker's new rake scheme, certain new, additional factors will be taken into account in an effort to more fairly personalise the rake requirement on each player.

The Essence rake scheme will take into account each given player’s playing style, their contribution to the pot, their skill level, the effects each player has on all the others over the long term. In this way, Bwin Poker hopes to define each player's value to the site. That value, determined over the past 90-days performance, will be converted into a numerical coefficient that will allow Bwin Poker to distribute the rake obligation of players more equitably. At the end of each pot, the rake contributed by each player will no longer necessarily be divided equally. It may be, but if factors are diverse enough among players at the same table, different layers will pay a different rake.

The existing rake scheme for tournaments (which is really just the fee tacked on after the plus sign "+" in a tournament buy-in), will remain unaffected and unchanged by the new Essence guidelines. As will the existing Bwin Poker Points system. The new Bwin Poker Essence rake scheme only affects cash games at the site (and those of other OnGame Network Poker sites).

Read our detailed info about the Bwin Poker Bonus on how this will affect clearing the poker bonus.

The Titan Poker Summer Jackpot is comprised of two different racing periods, the first running between July 12th and 29th (a period of 3 weeks), and the second running between August 2nd and 26th (a period of 4 weeks).

The $125K worth of cash prizes in the TitanPoker Summer Jackpot is split primarily into two Monthly Summer Races, seven Weekly Summer Races, and two Super Side Pots.

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The $20,000 Monthly Summer Race awards the fifty top points earners tracked on the monthly leaderboard a share of a $20K prize pool. Two $20K prize pools are up for grabs, one each for the 1st and 2nd periods described above. The top 50 will be determined by best average daily ranking over the course of the 3-week or 4-week "month", respectively.

$5,000 Weekly Summer Races

Each of those seven weeks comprising the two month Summer Jackpot promotional period, Titan Poker is awarding up to $5,000, divided up into $500 increments for up to 10 players. This prize is only awarded to players finishing in the top 10 of the daily rankings for 4 days in a row between Monday and Thursday of any given week in the promotional period. If nobody qualifies, no prize is awarded. If only one person qualifies, only one $500 prize is awarded. And so on.

Then the Super Side Pot is awarded once "monthly" during the two month Titan Poker Summer Jackpot, consisting of all the unused weekly summer jackpots of that period that haven't been awarded. The Super Side Pot will be split amongst all players who finished in the top 10 either seven times over the course of period 1 or ten times over the course of period 2. Players who already won a $500 Weekly Summer Race prize are not eligible for the Titan Poker Summer Race Super Side Pot.

Starting every Sunday at 12:45 pm ET, the Party Poker $300K Guaranteed Sunday has several ways to enter. You can buy-in directly for $215 or you can enter one of Party Poker's many qualifiers for much less and win your way in. And now, Party Poker has introduced even more $300K Guaranteed Sunday qualifiers from which to choose.

There are both Multi-Table and Single-Table Tournament Qualifiers into the Party Poker $300K GTD Sunday.

The MTT qualifiers include the following:

• $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Speed for $21.50 + $1.50
• $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Rebuy for $2.40 + $0.60
• $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier for a buy-in of 50 Party Poker Points
• $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier for $10 + $1
• $300K Gtd Sunday Qualifier Turbo for $11 + $1
• $300K Guaranteed Qualifier Turbo for $107 + $9.50
• $300K Gtd Sunday Qualifier Speed Rebuy for $5 + $1

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All of these events guarantee to award at least one ticket into the next scheduled Party Poker $300K Guaranteed Sunday, but some of these events guarantee even more, up to as many as 15 seats in the $300K Sunday Guaranteed sometimes being awarded in a single qualifier.

Party Poker also offers a $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Special for $53.75 + $4.25 that you can qualify for through one of its own satellites, $300K Gtd Sunday Sub Qualifier Special Speed for $14.50 + $1.50 and a $300K Gtd Sunday Sub Qualifier Special Speed Rebuy for $5 + $1.

Most of these events are daily, at least 5 days a week, with several being offered 6 and 7 days a week.

As for the Sit & Go single table tournament qualifiers, Party Poker offers the following:

• $3 Sit & Go Qualifier (10 handed)
• $3 Sit & Go Qualifier Speed (10 handed)
• $66 Sit & Go Qualifier (6 handed)
• $26 Sit & Go Qualifier (10 handed)
• $26 Sit & Go Speed Qualifier (10 handed)
• $120 Sit & Go Qualifier (2 handed/heads-up)

You know the concept of the Bad Beat Jackpot, right? It's a bonus that a poker site offers to players who bust out while holding a killer hand. Typically it's a high four-of-a-kind, but the minimum qualifying hand varies from site to site as does the amount of the jackpot and its rate of increase.

So while the gist is the same - lose a hand with great cards and get a consolation prize that's bigger than the pot you would have won anyway - the details are what differentiate the Bad Beat Jackpot of one site against another.

The details on the PokerKings Bad Beat Jackpot are such:

• To qualify for the Bad Beat Jackpot you must lose a hand with at least four 6's or better. (Compare this with other sites' Bad Beat Jackpots that require a minimum qualifying hand of four 8's or four Q's or K's or better.)
• The PokerKings Bad Beat Jackpot increases by 50 cents per raked hand dealt out on all Bad Beat Tables at the site. You must be playing at a PokerKings table that is specifically marked as a Bad Beat Table in order for a qualifying hand to be eligible for the jackpot.

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When hit, the PokerKings Bad Beat Jackpot is paid out as follows: 10% of it goes to administrative fees and 20% of it goes to starting out the next Bad Beat Jackpot.

The other 70% of the jackpot is divided amongst the players in the qualifying hand, according to the following breakdown: the player who won the hand wins 25% of the figure, the player with the Bad Beat hand triggering the jackpot wins 50% of the figure, and the remaining 25% is divided evenly amongst the players participating in the hand.

You are considered to have participated in the hand as long as you were dealt cards, even if you sat out or folded out.

The Partouche Poker Tour Final will be taking place between August 29th and September 8th at the Palm Beach Resort in Cannes. The event boasts a guaranteed prize pool of EUR 3 million. The playing field will no doubt include the gamut of players from starry-eyed amateurs to the poker pros themselves, including members of the Bwin Poker Team.

Bwin Poker is offering its members two different ways to win free seats in this main event: the $15,000 Partouche Finals and the $160,000 Partouche Final.

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The $15,000 Partouche Finals will be taking place each Sunday at Bwin Poker at 20:00 GMT. At each of these events, at least one Partouche Poker Tour Final prize package is guaranteed to be awarded. These events have a $300 + $20 direct buy-in, although satellite tournaments are running at a rate of twenty per day qualifying players for this event for buy-ins as little as $2. The first of these events took place on the 4th of July. The last of these is scheduled for August 15, 2010.

The $160,000 Partouche Final will be the pinnacle of this promotion at Bwin Poker, a 10-package guaranteed event, meaning that at least 10 players in the event will win Partouche Poker Tour Final prize packages. What's more, $10,000 in cash prizes will also be awarded to the runners-up in this event. Satellites qualifying players for the $160,000 Partouche Final start with buy-ins as little as $1.

The prize packages into the Partouche Poker Tour Final include the $10,500 buy-in into the main event plus $1,300 spending cash, and accommodations at hotel 3.14 for the dates of the event.

Club Titan is billed by Titan Poker as "the world's most rewarding online poker VIP club". Whether it's the "most" of anything or not, it is certainly rewarding.

As with most poker sites' rewards programs, at Titan Poker's Club Titan you earn VIP points for playing in real money games at the site. They give 17 points per $1 in rake as a good general estimation of how many VIP points you can accumulate.

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What Titan Poker does next with these VIP points is one of the things that distinguishes Club Titan from other poker sites' player rewards programs. If you can manage to earn enough points in any given month then you get to advance to a new level in the Club and earn a free VIP Points Boost as a bonus.

Depending on your VIP level, your points boost can range anywhere from 20% to 120%. VIP levels are (in order from entry level to highest status): VIP Bronze, VIP Silver, VIP Gold, VIP Platinum, VIP Titanium, VIP Diamond.

If, for example, you are in the VIP Bronze level, it means you've only earned 999 VIP points or less in the previous month, and your points boost is zero. But if you earn between 1,000 and 4,999 VIP Points in a given month, then you advance to VIP Silver status level and you start getting a 20% points boost. If, on the other hand, you are a VIP Diamond level player, it means you earned 35,000 VIP Points or more monthly and, because of that accomplishment, are given by Titan Poker a 120% boost on your points.

Club Titan Points can be cashed in for actual cash, with the rate varying as points redeemed increases. To give an idea of the range of cash rewards, for 2,000 points you can get $10 and for 7 million points you can get $120,000.

On Saturdays at PokerKings is the €100 Freeroll. Daily satellites into the PokerKings €100 Freeroll run Monday through Sunday (with the exception of Saturdays) at 12:00 GMT with the top 100 finishers from each coming together in a PokerKings €100 Freeroll Final to compete for the €100 prize pool on the following Saturday at 12:00 GMT.

Two other €100 Freerolls occur at PokerKings on Saturdays, one at 16:00 GMT and the other at 17:15 GMT. Satellites into these events run as above, except at 16:00 GMT and 17:15 GMT, respectively, each day (but Saturdays). And also as above, the top 100 finishers from each of these satellites advance to the PokerKings €100 Freeroll Final.

Still one more €100 Freeroll takes place at PokerKings on Saturdays, this one at 21:00 GMT. Satellites into this event run Monday through Sunday (except for Saturdays) at PokerKings at 21:30 GMT.

Finally, saving the best for last, and also on Saturdays at PokerKings is also a $75K Freeseat. Daily satellites into the PokerKings $75K Freeseat run every day except Saturdays at 15:00 GMT with the top 50 finishers from each coming together to compete in the $75K Freeseat the following Saturday at 15:00 GMT. The winner of that event will get a free seat in the $75K Guaranteed tournament that PokerKings holds each Sunday at 17:00 GMT.

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As you can see, Saturdays is a big day at PokerKings with no less than five chances to win something for nothing - that something being a share of €400 and $75,000 each and every week at PokerKings. And that's just a small part of the guaranteed prize pools PokerKings offers monthly, with a total of €3 million in total guaranteed prize pools awarded at PokerKings each month.

Details on the 7 regularly scheduled Bet365 online poker tournaments with guaranteed prize pools into which the hosts regular satellites are as follows.

• $20,000 Double Stack Freezeout - This is a No Limit Hold'em Freezeout event taking place every Friday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $320. Stage 1 SNG (Sit and Go) satellites are $70 for a 5-player game.
• $40,000 GP High Roller Monday - This is a No Limit Hold'em Freezeout event taking place every Monday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $530. Stage 1 Satellites are available as ongoing 10-player Sit and Gos for $58 and Rebuy/Add-On Tournaments taking place every Monday at 16:35 GMT for a $55 buy-in.
• $40,000 GP Super Tuesday R/A - This is a No Limit Hold'em Freezeout event taking place every Tuesday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $109. Stage 1 Satellites are available as ongoing 10-player SNGs for $13 and a Turbo events every Tuesday at 16:45 GMT for a $12 direct buy-in.
• $45,000 GP Rebuy - This is a No Limit Hold'em Re-buy event taking place every Monday through Thursday at 18:45 GMT for a $55 direct buy-in. Stage 1 Satellites into this event are available as 10-player Rebuy SNGs for a $6 buy-in and as Rebuy Turbo R/A events every Monday through Thursday at 15:20 GMT for a $6 buy-in.
• $50,000 GP Freezeout - This is a No Limit Hold'em Freezeout event taking place every Saturday at 18:30 GMT for a $109 direct buy-in. An array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event, including MTQ R/A events, Turbo events, regular Freezeout satellites, and of course SNGs. Buy-ins for these satellites range from $8.80 to $24, although most of them are $12.
• Friday $100,000 Guaranteed R/A - This is a No Limit Hold'em Rebuy event taking place every Friday at 20:00 GMT for a $109 direct buy-in. An array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event, including R/A events, Turbo and Speed events, and of course Sit and Gos. Buy-ins for these satellites range from $8.80 to $26.
• $250,000 Guaranteed Big Sunday - This is a No Limit Hold'em Freezeout event taking place every Sunday at 18:00 GMT for a $320 direct buy-in. A wide array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event including R/A events and Sit and Gos. Buy-ins range from $27 to $70.

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All new sign-ups at Bet365 Poker referred by Max Poker Bonus are eligible for a first deposit bonus of 100% up to $500. Interested? You can read the exact details, such as the clearing requirements, about this bonus offer on the Bet365 Poker Bonus page.

In Bwin Poker's new Snowball Sit & Go tournaments the blinds increase slowly at first, only to pick up pace as the game progresses. Specifically, the blinds make start out increasing every 10 minutes, but then go up progressively quicker each time, next coming every 8 minutes, then every 6, every 4, every 2, and at last, when the snowball effect is at its most ginormous (that's gigantic + enormous), they increase every minute.

It won't take long for many of the players in these 10-seater sit & go tournaments to dwindle their 1,500 starting chip stack down to nothing. The top three positions get paid out in these events.

Bwin Poker's Snowball Sit & Go tournaments are available at the following buy-in levels: $1 + $0.20; $5 + $0.50; $10 + $1; $20 + $2.

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Super Secret Poker Freeroll

Also happening now at Bwin Poker is the Super Secret Poker Freeroll, a chance to win cash prizes in a special freeroll tournament with only one entry requirement: a password, hence the "super secret". In order to find out these super secret password you need only listen to the Bwin Poker podcast or read the Bwin Poker blog.

For an example, at the time of this writing, July 14, 2010, there is a YouTube video on the Bwin Poker Blog (which means it's also on YouTube, so we implemented it into this article) called the "World Series of Poker 2010 Secret Freeroll July 13th, 2010". If you watch the video you'll see the password for today's Super Secret Poker Freeroll and you'll learn where, when, and how to use that password to enter.

Party Poker is holding an instant prize promotion called the Card Rush in which players need only play poker online as they normally do at Party Poker and in the process of earning Party Poker Points for their real money play also earn instant cards, each worth some prize amount up to $5,000. Every instant card holder is a winner, and all the fun started on Monday, June 28, 2010.

The Party Poker Card Rush XL promotion runs through July 31st, unless all $1,800,000 in instant cards is handed out before then.

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It only takes 15 PartyPoints to earn a game card, except for your first game card which Party Poker will give you after you earn only 5 PartyPoints.

In addition to the regular prizes being awarded with each Card Rush XL game card, Party Poker will be maintaining a leader board keeping track of players as they win and cash in their instant game cards. The top performing players in the promotion, as determined by their ranking on the leaderboard, will win bonus prizes. This party of the promotion is called the Party Poker Card Rush XL Race.

Players can earn from $1 to $5,000 cash or freeroll entries for tournaments with guaranteed prize pools of $2,000 to $50,000, from each and every game card. Card Rush XL Freeroll tournaments run from August 5 through 8.

In addition to awarding prizes to the top 200 players on the leader board in the Party Poker Card Rush XL Race, Party Poker will also be awarding prizes to every twentieth finish from the 220th to the 2000th. The top 3 of these prizes will be $10K luxury travel packages that include tickets to various big sporting events around the world, including F1 auto racing events.

Each Celeb Poker prize package into the Vilamoura DeepStack Open 2010 is worth €1,300 and includes the €500 + €50 buy-in into the Deep Stack Open 2010 Main Event which sets you off and running with 50,000 starting chips, €460 to apply to 5 nights of luxury accommodations at the Vila Gale Hotel, between September 22 and 27, with breakfast for the player, €275 to put toward flight and spending money, and €15 to put toward handling fees.

Celeb Poker 2010 DeepStack Vilamoura Main Event Satellite Tournaments start on Monday, July 5, with the first of the weekly Super Satellites into the event taking place on July 8. Super Satellites will then run every Thursday at 21:00 GMT as Celeb Poker doles out those €1,300 prize packages.

Stage 1 R/A Satellites into the DeepStack Vilamoura run daily at Celeb Poker at 9:55 GMT for buy-ins of $5.50 + $0.50 and Stage 2 R/A Satellites into the DeepStack Vilamoura run daily at Celeb Poker at 10:55 GMT for buy-ins of $2 + $0.20. Each Super Satellite has a direct buy-in of €80 + €8 and all are rebuy and add-on events.

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The 2010 Deep Stack Open Vilamoura will take place from September 23 to 26 at the Vilamoura Casino.

The Celeb Poker 2010 DeepStack Open Vilamoura Satellites are just one of the many satellite tournament series' that Celeb Poker offers its players. Other CelebPoker satellite tournaments into big money live land-based poker tournament main events include the Manila stop on the Asian Poker Tour (APT Philippines), the Austria stop on the Euro City Poker Tour (EC Poker Tour Vienna), and the Irish Winter Festival of Poker with its $1 million-plus prize pool.

The BestPoker Big Deal ChampionChip $250,000 Guaranteed Tournament takes place every Sunday at 6 pm CET for a $190 + $10 direct buy-in. Alternatively, BestPoker offers numerous ways to satellite your way into the tournament for considerably less.

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The Qualifying Structure for the Big Deal ChampionChip $250K Guaranteed Tournament includes 11 different opportunities.

Three of them are 20-player Sit and Go Qualifiers with buy-ins of $10 + $1, $20 + $1, and $30 + $3, each of which awards 1 ticket guaranteed in the Big Deal ChampionChip tournament. The $33 Sit and Go Qualifier also awards cash prizes of, respectively, $60 and $40 to the second and third place finishers.

Four of them are Mad Tilt Rebuy Qualifiers for buy-ins of $1 + $0.20, $2 + $0.25, $5 + $0.50, and $10 + $1, each of which award 5 tickets, 4 tickets, 10 tickets, and 10 tickets (respectively) into the $250,000 Guaranteed Big Deal ChampionChip Tournament.

Four more satellite opportunities are direct qualifiers, three of which have buy-ins of $10 + $1, $20 + $3, and $30 + $3, and each of which guarantees to award a single ticket in the Big Deal, and the fourth and final of which is a $5 + $0.50 Last Chance Qualifier that takes place on Sundays and awards 50 tickets into the Big Deal.

The Big Deal ChampionChip $250,000 Guaranteed Tournament is just one of the many guaranteed tournaments taking place regularly at BestPoker. The site also hosts a Canadian Daily with a $9K guarantee, a Russian Daily with a $7K guarantee, and an Aussie Daily with a $5K guarantee. There's even a $15K guaranteed Royal Tournament taking place weekly at BestPoker. Beyond that, a $100 Freeroll and a $500 Freeroll are among the other guaranteed tournaments on the regular schedule at BestPoker.

PokerKings satellite tournaments into the 2010 English Poker Open start on Monday, July 5. They will include daily scheduled satellites for both €2 and €4 buy-ins along with around-the-clock Sit & Go Satellites. All players who win any one of these many daily satellites will gain entry into the €20 PokerKings English Poker Open 2010 weekly satellite semi-final, held on Sundays at 17:00 GMT. Winners of these weekly events will, in turn, gain entry into the monthly €215 PokerKings English Poker Open 2010 finals, to be held on July 25 and August 22.

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The PokerKings English Poker Open 2010 is to take place September 11 - 14 at Mayfair, London's luxurious Palm Beach Casino. The PokerKings prize package into the 2010 English Poker Open gives the winners not only the $5,350 buy-in for the main event, but also around €1,500 to put toward travel expenses (the "around" is because exchange rates fluctuate). In total, the PokerKings English Poker Open 2010 prize packages are worth approximately €6,000.

The PokerKings English Poker Open 2010 satellites are just one of several satellite tournament series' that PokerKings offers into major live land-based poker tournament events. Other PokerKings satellite tournament series' include the 2010 Casinos Austria Poker Tour (CAPT Austria) and the 2010 Scottish Poker Open.

The 2010 Casinos Austria Poker Tour is comprised of 6 events, 3 of which have already taken place and 3 of which have yet to occur. The next event on the CAPT 2010 schedule is in Velden, from July 11 to 18. Following that are CAPT Graz, from August 24 - 29, and the Poker EM - CAPT Baden, dates yet to be announced. All of these are €2,000 events, though PokerKings is running satellites now for much cheaper.

The 2010 Scottish Poker Open takes place August 6 to 8 at the Alea Casino in Glasgow and has a main event buy-in of €2,750. But again, there are ample PokerKings satellites into this event happening now.

Starting on June 30 and running every Wednesday thereafter, and starting on Sunday, July 4 and running every Sunday thereafter, until October 31, 2010, Titan Poker will be running Super Satellites into the 2010 EC Poker Tour Vienna main event. At each of these rebuy/add-on events, which have a direct buy-in of €200 + €15 and start promptly at 8 pm GMT + 1, promise to award at least one prize package into the EC Poker Tour main event.

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The EC Poker Tour Vienna prize package, worth €5,500, includes the €3,000 + €300 buy-in into the ECPT Vienna main event, 5 nights of luxury accommodations in Vienna's Meridien Wien Hotel during the tournament from November 10th to 15th (valued at €1,300), €50 for registration fees, a ticket to the players Welcome Party on November 10 at the site of the main event (valued at €100), and flight and expense money amounting to €750.

There are several ways to satellite yourself a seat in one of these ECPT Vienna Super Satellites and avoid paying the €215 buy-in. Satellites into the Sunday Super Satellites go by the name Structure A Satellites and satellites into the Wednesday Super Satellites go by the name Structure B Satellites.

Both Structure A and B Satellites are available in a range of buy-ins and playing styles (meaning Sit & Go tournaments as well as scheduled MTTs). In Structure A there are Stage 1 Sit & Gos running from €21.5 + €4 to €43 + €4. There are also scheduled Freezeout, Turbo R/A (rebuy/add-on), and Speed R/A events.

With the Structure B Sit & Go satellites, one is a 5-player event, one is a 10-player event, and one is a heads-up event. As for the scheduled multi-table tournaments at Titan Poker, there are both Speed R/A and Turbo R/A events as well as a special, €43 + €4 Short Stacked event.

The Party Poker prize package for the winners of these satellites is worth $8,000 and includes not only the buy-in for the 2010 WPT Legends of Poker main event but accommodations during the tournament and cash to apply towards travel expenses.

Party Poker is now holding daily freeroll sit 'n' go WPT Legends of Poker satellite tournaments, awarding the finest fifty players from each a seat in the next level up the satellite ladder, the WPT Legends of Poker Sub Qualifier Rebuy. The Sub Qualifier Rebuy in turn advances winning players to a satellite Qualifier, which in turn advances the winning players to the WPT Legends of Poker Satellites themselves, in which the actual main event prize packages will be given out.

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You can alternatively opt to skip over any of these levels and pay the direct buy-in for the level above. For example, there is a $1 direct buy-in for the daily Sub Qualifier Rebuy sit 'n' go satellites, a $5 direct buy-in for the daily Sub Qualifier Speed Rebuy sit 'n' go satellites, a $46 direct buy-in for the Satellite Qualifiers, and a $430 direct buy-in for the Satellites directly into the WPT Legends of Poker main event. Twenty percent of all players competing in one of these final weekly satellites, taking place on Sundays, will win $8,000 Party Poker prize packages into the 2010 WPT Legends of Poker main event.

Party Poker is the main sponsor of the WPT Legends of Poker and almost all of the stops on the World Poker Tour. As such, Party Poker is constantly holding satellite series that award seats in the various WPT main events as their top prizes. Currently, in addition to offering seats in the WPT Legends of Poker in L.A., Party Poker is also holding satellites for the first ever World Poker Tour main event to take place in London, England, the inaugural WPT London Poker Classic.

BestPoker runs three different feeder tournaments into a Steps tournament satellite series. The three BestPoker King of the Hill Feeder tournaments are either 10 or 20 player events with buy-ins ranging from $1.20 to $25 and that seed players into one of the three Step tournaments.

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Each of the BestPoker King of the Hill Steps tournaments are 10 player events with entry restricted only to player earning a spot through one of the feeder satellites. Prizes for each of the Steps tournaments are seats in higher level Steps tournaments or in the BestPoker King of the Hill Final itself. Additionally, many of the prize winners in the BestPoker King of the Hill Steps tournaments will also win cash prizes on top of their free tournament ticket.

All of these King of the Hill tournaments BestPoker is holding are Sit & Go events, meaning that you can join whenever you have time and soon as 9 (or 19) other players join you, the battle is on.

The BestPoker King of the Hill Final tournament is also a Sit & Go event, also restricted only to players who earn their ticket through one of the earlier Feeder or Step satellites. The winner of the BestPoker King of the Hill Final receives $2,500 while the runner-up gets $650 and the third place finisher gets $350.

The King of the Hill promotion is one of the many ongoing promotions at BestPoker that you can enjoy with no time restriction and no promotional deadline. Of course, the BestPoker bonuses stands out as they offer deposit bonuses in categories that suits beginners to advanced players.

There are several ways players can try to win Bwin Poker's weekly Champion Chip promotion: via Sit & Gos, Scheduled Tournaments, Special Tournaments, and Direct Buy-in.

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You might as well want to read a previous article we have published about Bwin Poker's Champion Chip promotion, where you can read some more detailed about the tournaments' structures, back then still a $250K guaranteed tournament.

Champion Chip Sit & Gos

The Sit & Go route is the most complex, with three choices of entry points: Step Qualifiers, Champion Chip Qualifiers, or Championship Turbo Qualifiers.

Step 1 Qualifiers cost $0.90 + $0.10 to enter and seed players into choice of two Step 2 Qualifiers, one with a direct buy-in of $5.40 + $0.60 and a Shorthanded version for the same price. These seed, respectively into a $23 + $2 Step 3 Champion Chip Qualifier or a $40 + $3 Shorthanded version which in turn seed players into the actual $190 + $10 Sunday Champion Chip Final for the $150K guaranteed prize pool.

Champion Chip Sit & Go Qualifiers and Turbo Qualifiers seed directly into the Champion Chip final for players choice of $10 + $1, $20 + $2, or $30 + $3 buy-in.

Champion Chip Satellites and Special Tournaments

Scheduled Satellites also seed directly into the Bwin Poker Champion Chip Final for player's choice of a range of buy-ins: $2 + $0.20, $3 + $0.30, $5 + $0.50, $10 + $1, $20 + $2, and $30 + $3.

Special Tournaments earn players chips into the Bwin Poker Champion Chip Final include a variety of Mad Tilt Tournaments (in which every hand is All-In), Turbo Tournaments (in which the blinds go up every 3 minutes), and Rebuy Tournaments (which give players the chance to chase chips even faster).

Champion Chip Direct Buy-in

And of course, if you want to skip all the preliminaries and go straight to the $150,000 guaranteed main event, just pony up the $200 buy-in for the Champion Chip Final any given Sunday at 18:00 (GMT + 1) at Bwin Poker.

• Online Poker Tournaments Schedule

As part of the iPoker Network, along with other sites like Titan Poker that are also running similar APT Philippines satellite tournament promotions, Celeb Poker will be sending several players to Manila to play some live high-stakes poker in the Asian Poker Tour Philippines.

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On the Celeb Poker APT Philippines 2010 satellite schedule are $200 + $15 Freezeout Super Satellite events happening every Saturday between June 21st August 14th at 21:00 GMT. Additionally on the 2010 Celeb Poker APT Philippines satellite schedule are $80 + $8 re-buy/add-on Super Satellites happening every Thursdays between June 24th and August 14th at 21:00 GMT.

You can satellite into one of these Saturday or Thursday Super Satellites in the APT Philippines that Celeb Poker is holding for much less money (and even for poker points) through Stage 1, 2, and 3 Sit 'n' Go qualifiers and Scheduled qualifiers.

Prize package winners will receive from Celeb Poker the $2,500 + $200 buy-in into the APT Philippines Main Event, running August 25th through Aug 28th, $750 to put toward a 6 night stay at the luxury Manila Marriot Hotel, for the dates of August 23th to August 29th, $50 to apply to registration fees, and spending cash for airline tickets and such in an amount up to $2,000. The total value of this 2010 APT Philippines prize package is $5,500.

What distinguishes Head Hunter tournaments from other poker tournaments at PokerKings is how the site distributes the prize money amongst the winners. In PokerKings Head Hunter tourneys, only half of each player's buy-in is applied to the actual prize pool and awarded as normal, while the other half is applied toward a bounty prize pool.

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Because as it sounds, a Head Hunter tournament is a bounty tournament, in this case with every player registered having a bounty on their head. The amount of the bounty depends on the number of players registered and the stakes of the Head Hunter tournament. Every time a player is knocked out of a Head Hunter tournament, the bounty on their head is divided up with three-quarters of it going to the player who knocked his opponent out, while one-quarter of the bounty is added to the bounty on the head of the player who just won the other three-quarters by knocking his opponent out.

In other words, the more opponents a player knocks out (and subsequently the more bounties he wins) the higher the bounty becomes on his head.

Head Hunter tournament stakes range from €1 to €22, and some events are Turbo events.

One of the special Head Hunter tournaments on the regular PokerKings schedule is a 10,000 Euro guaranteed event held every Sunday at 17:00 GMT. Satellites into this event are running at PokerKings daily, and range in styles from 1 to 3 seat guaranteed events, from rebuy to freezeout events. And on Sunday's themselves, PokerKings add 1-Handed Turbo Frenzies to the schedule every 20 minutes.

Then on the 1st Sunday of every month, PokerKings holds €100,000 Guaranteed Head Hunter events.

So, the Irish Winter Festival is coming back, on October 22nd through October 25th, and Titan Poker is offering its members many chances to win free seats in the big event.

Each €2,700 Titan Poker Irish Winter Festival prize package includes the buy-in to the main event (worth €1,650), a four-night stay at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, Ireland (worth €280), and €770 for airline, handling, and spending cash.

Titan Poker has three satellite structures players can choose from to win their way into the 2010 Irish Winter Festival.

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Structure A

Super Satellites take place every Sunday at 19:45 GMT for €175. Satellites into the Super Satellites are broken up into Ongoing SNG Stage 1 events (Sit & Gos), daily scheduled events, and weekly events on Sundays.

The Ongoing SNG Stage 1 events have buy-ins of €39.60 for 5-handed games and €66 for 3-handed games, while the daily and Sunday events tout a wide range of buy-ins and playing styles (including freezeouts, Turbo events, Speed events, and R/A or rebuy and add-on events).

Structure A starts May 9 and ends October 10.

Structure B

R/A Super Satellites (or rebuy and add-on events) take place every Tuesday at 19:45 GMT for €66.

The breakdown of satellites into the super satellites is similar to that for structure A except with a few additional choices, including a heads-up Stage 1 SNG, Turbo R/A scheduled events, and short-stack speed scheduled events. Buy-ins into the various satellites into the R/A super satellite also vary.

Structure B starts June 8 and ends on October 5.

Structure C

This structure offers tickets into the Irish Winter Festival only, without the rest of the prize package included. These ticket-only Super Satellites are Freezeout events that run on Thursdays at 19:45 GMT and have a €175 buy-in, start players with 4,000 in chips and raise blinds every 15 minutes.

The variety in satellites into this ticket-only super satellite is similar to the types of variations above, except with fewer scheduled options.

Structure C starts August 5 and ends October 7.

Party Poker qualifiers into the WPT London 2010 are available at all different stakes levels, from daily freeroll tournaments and qualifiers with buy-ins as low as $1. All 2010 WPT London qualifiers at Party Poker lead up to the weekly satellites into the big event itself, taking place every Sunday at 2:15 pm ET for a $600 + $40 direct buy-in, with one out of every 20 players competing securing themselves one of Party Poker's $12K WPT London prize packages.

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The prize packages Party Poker is giving away into this year's World Poker Tour London Poker Classic Main Event include the event buy-in (worth $8,000 or £5,000 + £300), a seven-night stay in 5-star luxury accommodations, and $2,000 in spending money, for a total value of $12,000.

The eight-handed final table of the 2010 WPT London Poker Classic Main Event, the first WPT Main Event ever to take place in London, will be a televised event, of course, which means that Party Poker's own poker ambassador Mike Sexton will be commentating. The 2010 London Poker Classic takes place at Mayfair's Palm Beach Casino between August 30th and September 4th.

Also on the 2010 WPT London schedule is the £15,000 high-roller event, running from September 3rd through 5th.

Already the 2010 World Poker Tour has kicked off to a great start with the WPT Grand Prix de Paris, the WPT Spanish Championship, the WPT Bellagio Cup VI, and the WPT Legends of Poker.

Following the London Poker Classic on the World Poker Tour 2010/2011 season schedule are the WPT Marrakech, the WPT Borgata Poker Open, the WPT Festa al Lago, the WPT Amneville, the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals, the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic, the WPT Southern Poker Championship, the WPT Celebrity Invitational, and the WPT L.A. Poker Classic.

This return of a previous player favorite, the wild and crazy Joker Sit & Go format, features double the freeroll prize pool from $500 to $1,000 and an additional $1,000 added to the total pot, claimable by way of the weekly leader board.

The prize structure for The Joker Sit & Go Tournaments is as novel as the tournament format, with 50% of the prize pool going to the 1st place winner, while 30% of it goes not to the runner-up but to the 5th place finisher, and the remaining 20% going not to the 3rd place finisher but to the player in 9th place.

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For the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th place finishers, Bwin Poker offers as a consolation prize, an I Lost The Joker Freeroll entry granting them access to a $1,000 freeroll tournament that runs weekly at Bwin Poker on Saturdays from June 19 to July 24 at 17:00 GMT.

First, fifth, and ninth place are the only places that pay out leader board points as well, with 3 points going to 1st, 2 points to 5th, and 1 point to 9th. The Joker Leader Board is weekly and runs from Monday to Sunday. First place on any given week's Joker Leader Board gets $500, with 5th place getting $300 and 9th getting $200.

Neither in the leader board race nor in The Joker Sit & Go Tournaments themselves, no players other than 1st, 5th, and 9th pay out.

The Joker Sit & Go Tournaments are all 10-seat events with buy-ins of $2 + $0.20, a starting stack for each player of 1,500 in chips and with a Turbo game structure in which blinds jump every 3 minutes. All Joker Sit & Gos are in No Limit Hold'em.

• $50,000 Daily Guaranteed - The Celeb Poker $50,000 Daily Guaranteed event takes place at Celeb Poker every day at 17:45 GMT.
• $50,000 Guaranteed Freezeout - The Celeb Poker $50,000 Guaranteed Freezeout event takes place every Saturday at 18:30 GMT. The $50K Guaranteed Freezeout has a direct buy-in of $100 + $9. Qualifiers taking place through out the week previous have buy-ins as low as $8 + $0.80.
• $50,000 Rebuy Tournament - The Celeb Poker $50,000 Rebuy Tournament takes place every Monday through Thursday at Celeb Poker at 17:45 GMT. The $50K Rebuy Tournament has a $50 + $5 buy-in, with qualifiers into the event taking place through out the week for buy-ins as low as $5 + $0.50.

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These three types of $50,000 guaranteed tournaments offered at Celeb Poker are in addition to the site's other major guaranteed tournaments, which include a $100,000 guaranteed weekly and a $250,000 guaranteed weekly.

Celeb Poker's Major Guaranteed Tournaments

The Celeb Poker $100,000 Guaranteed Rebuy Tournament takes place each Friday at 18:00 GMT. This Celeb Poker event has a direct buy-in of $100 + 9 (just like the weekly $50,000 Guaranteed Freezeout) with qualifiers into the event happening through out the week prior for buy-ins as low as $1 + $0.10.

The Celeb Poker $250,000 Guaranteed Tournament takes place every Sunday at 18:00 GMT. Direct buy-in into this Celeb Poker event is $300 + $20, although players can win their seat in the event through out the week prior through qualifiers with buy-ins starting as low as $3 + $0.30.

To summarize, Celeb Poker offers a $50K, $100K, and $250K guaranteed tournament weekly, as well as another $50K each day Monday through Thursday, this one a $50K Rebuy, and still one more $50K event (not a rebuy) happening every day of the week over at Celeb Poker.

To participate in the Bwin Poker World Cup Million Dollar Challenge, you simply need to acquire betting tokens during the promotional period and then use those tokens to accurately guess the results of the various matches in the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg South Africa, which just started on Friday, June 11 and runs through Sunday, July 11.

Each betting token qualifies a player to compete in a single One Hand Heads-Up Sit & Go tournament. For each match of the 2010 World Cup, three such Sit & Gos will be held, one for each team competing (which represents that team winning the given) and a third representing a tie.

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A Bwin Poker player places their bet by using the token to enter the respective One Hand Heads-Up Sit & Go representing their bet. Prizes are awarded based on a pair of factors, namely: whether the player entered the right or wrong Sit & Go, and whether the player won or lost the Sit & Go they did enter. The more matches the player accurately predicts the results of, the more money from the prize pool they are eligible to split with the other players who achieved the same accomplishment.

The qualifying period to earn a betting token toward the Bwin Poker Million Dollar World Cup Challenge is two days (48 hours) prior to the start of the game they wish to bet on.

So far in the opening weekend of the 2010 World Cup, Ghana beat Serbia, Slovenia beat Algeria, and the U.S. and England tied. That gives Serbia and Ghana the lead with 3 points each and puts England and the U.S. in second with 1 point each.

Every time a Titan Poker player plays in a real money cash game or tournament at the site, he or she earns Club Titan Points, which provide players with increasing benefits as they advance through various status levels by earning more and more Club Titan Points. These points can be redeemed for tournament entries, Titan Poker gear, and sometimes cash.

Well, for the month of June, in addition to awarding these Club Titan Points, Titan Poker will also be awarding VIP Points to players at the same time. These VIP Points will advance players along in a points race with a part of a $10,000 prize pool at the finish line (which in this case happens to be June 28 and June 29.

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If you finish the period of June 14 - 17 or the period of June 21 - 24 in the top 100 in the Titan Turbo VIP Points Race, then you move on to the Titan Turbo All Points Race, in which the top 400 points earners will compete for $10,000 guaranteed on June 28 and 29. What's more, for each of the above-mention promotional periods (June 14-17 and 21-24) the top 100 points earners will also split a weekly guaranteed $5,000 prize pool.

As an extra bonus for this June's Titan Turbo promotion, Titan Poker is also inviting all Veteran Bronze VIP status club members and new players at Titan Poker to race for double the prizes. All you have to do to double your winnings in any part of the June, 2010 Titan Turbo promotion is be a new Titan Poker player or an existing player still at the starting status level of Bronze, and win first place in one of the respective points races, either one of the $5,000 Weekly All Points Races or the June 28-29 $10,000 All Points Race.

Party Poker's $35K Guaranteed Weekdays promotion is a No Limit Hold'em tournament held each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at Party Poker at 15:00 ET for a $162 buy-in and with a $35,000 guaranteed prize pool.

Players not wishing (or able) to pay the $162 direct buy-in for the tournament can win their way in through one of several different daily qualifiers.

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• The Super Weekday Qualifier for a $44 buy-in in which 1 in every 4 entrants will win a seat in the Super Weekday main event.
• The Super Weekday Qualifiers for an $11 buy-in in which 1 person will win a seat in the Super Weekday main event for every $162 in the prize pool.
• The Super Weekday Qualifiers Speed Rebuy events for a $6 buy-in in which in entrant for every $162 collected in buy-ins will win a seat in the Super Weekday main event.

There is also a Super Weekday Special Qualifier Turbo that takes place at Party Poker every Sunday that has no direct buy-in, and each of which awards 5 seats in any day's Super Weekday tournament of your choice. You can only enter these Sunday Super Weekday Special Qualifier Turbo tournaments by winning your seat through one of the following two ways:

• The Super Weekday 25 Points Qualifiers for a buy-in of 25 PartyPoints in which the top 25 players will win seats in the Sunday Super Weekday Special Qualifier Turbo.
• The Super Weekday 10 Points Qualifiers for a buy-in of 10 PartyPoints in which the top 10 players will win seats in the Sunday Super Weekday Special Qualifier Turbo.

The big twist to the Bwin Poker Sit & Go Chip Chaser format is that there are no blinds, only antes, and the game has a strict time limit. Giorgio might have exaggerated a little bit by saying that this format is "expected to become one of the most popular Sit and Go poker games", however you will definitely have some fun while playing them, and they are a nice addition to mix up your regular poker game selection.

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Chip Chaser Sit & Gos

In Bwin Poker's Chip Chaser Sit & Gos, players start with a chip stack of 1,000 chips. The game is made up of 100 antes, no blinds, and lasts for only 10 minutes and not a second longer. At least, not a second longer within the players' control. Because at the end of the 10 minute countdown, all players in a Bwin Poker Chip Chaser Sit & Go are put all in. From there, players continue to be placed all-in until only two players are left, at which point the player that has the largest chip stack is declared the automatic winner.

The winner of the Bwin Poker Sit & Go Chip Chaser gets 70% of the prize pool and the runner-up gets 30%. Bwin Poker Chip Chaser Sit & Gos are offered with a range of buy-ins: $20 + $2, $10 + $1, $5 + $0.50, and $1 + $0.20. All games are 10-handed No Limit Texas Hold'em.

But even though Bwin Poker is calling the Chip Chaser its new Sit & Go format, the site is only promising to run Chip Chaser Sit & Gos every day until June 28, so if these fast-paced online poker tournaments sound exciting to you, you'd better hurry to Bwin Poker and play.

The PokerKings Freeroll Goal-Fest is structured as follows:

Each night during the 2010 World Cup (that's from June 11 to July 11), PokerKings will be holding a World Cup Goal Fest Freeroll Satellite at 17:30 GMT on July 14 awarding the top fifty finishers in each free entry into an exclusive €10,000 guaranteed freeroll. The top 50 players from each satellite event wins entry into the Freeroll Goal-Fest Final on July 14th at 17:30 GMT.

In order to gain entry into the €10,000 World Cup Freeroll Satellite, a player must have completed a minimum of 10 raked hands of online poker at PokerKings over the 40 hours prior to the start of the given freeroll.

For every goal that is scored throughout the 2010 World Cup, PokerKings will add €25 to the prize pool. That's on top of the €10,000 already guaranteed. In the 2006 World Cup, 146 goals were scored, which if it happened this year would have PokerKings adding €3,000 to the prize pool. Watch the 2010 World Cup games as they happen to see how much will be added to the total guaranteed prize pool this year.

The World Cup takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa and sees the top 32 soccer/football teams from 2010 competing for the world's most prestigious title in the sport: World Cup champions.

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The next upcoming opportunities to place your bets and take your chance at winning a share of €10,000 or more in the PokerKings 2010 World Cup Freeroll Goal-Fest are on matches between Brazil and North Korea, South Africa and Uruguay, and France and Mexico.

The Celeb Poker Soccer Millions promotion is a part-online poker, part-online sports betting contest. At stake is $1 million. The structure of the competition is a little bit complicated, so follow closely.

First, you play as you as always do at Celeb Poker's tournament tables and ring games, all the way accumulating betting tokens. Betting tokens are accumulated based on your level in the Celeb Poker VIP Club (Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum), whether you're playing in a cash game or a tournament, whether you're playing low stakes or medium-high stakes, and whether you're playing Fixed Limit, Pot Limit, or No Limit. Based on all these factors, you will be required to either play in a certain number of raked hands (if a cash game) or pay a certain amount in fees (if a tournament) to earn each betting token.

Then you take those betting tokens and, 48 hours before the start of each given world cup match, place your bet on what the outcome will be. The way you bet is by using that token to register for one of three different Sit & Go tournaments, either for one world cup team winning, the other team winning, or if you believe the teams will tie.

Then you play in the respective Sit & Go against one of the other players who bet the same way as you. Each Sit & Go lasts for a single, all-in hand. Cash prizes and freeroll entries will be awarded to players based on whether or not they bet correctly (by entering the Sit & Go associated with the correct outcome) and on whether or not they won their heads-up Sit & Go, as well as their VIP Club status. Cash prizes range from $5 to $150 and freeroll entries range from $1,000 to $5,000.

From there, players who bet correctly on the outcome of at least one World Cup event will be added to a leader board. At the end of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the players with the most number of correct bets will win even bigger cash and prizes. Bet correctly on at least 7 matches and win a share of a guaranteed prize pool, ranging from $7,500 for 7 correct guesses up to $1 million for guessing right on all 25 World Cup matches.

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There is still time to win yourself a free seat in one of these remaining CAPT events through satellites at PokerKings. But you'd better hurry. They've only promised to run these satellites for this season's CAPT events through the end of June, 2010.

To win one of these remaining Casinos Austria Poker Tour seats - that's CAPT Velden, CAPT Graz, and the Poker EM (European Championship) - CAPT Baden - players have a choice of one of two daily PokerKings satellites to enter, with buy-ins, respectively, of €5 + €.50 and €3 + €.30.

The winners of these daily CAPT satellite tournaments gain entry into the weekly final, held on Sundays at 6:30 pm GMT for a direct buy-in of €32 + €3. The winners of these weekly CAPT satellites then advance to the monthly finals where the CAPT prize packages will be won. These monthly finals have a direct buy-in of €300 + €20.

There may only be one month left to get into one of three remaining CAPT events through a PokerKings satellite, but these satellites will be running all throughout the day, each and every day until the final CAPT satellite final.

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• CAPT Velden will take place July 11-18
• CAPT Graz will take place August 24-29
• Poker EM - CAPT Baden will take place October 4-14

Titan Poker is running a satellite structure awarding players entry into the 2010 Irish Winter Festival. Play in the €165 + €15 Super Satellite to win your seat straightaway, every Sunday at 19:45 GMT. Or satellite your way into the Super Satellite by playing in one of Titan Pokers ongoing Stage 1 satellites or Stage 1 Sit & Go Satellites. Satellites range in buy-ins (€5 + €0.5 - €60+€6), number of players (3-handed, 5-handed, and up), and style (shootout, freezeout, rebuy, add-on, speed, turbo).

Alternatively, you can enter one of Titan Poker's Tuesday Super Satellites, rebuy/add-on events with a €60 + €6 direct buy-in. This Super Satellite has its own structure of satellites with generally smaller buy-ins and a few additional poker alternatives (i.e. heads-up and short-stack events).

The Titan Poker 2010 Irish Winter Festival prize package is worth €2,700 and includes the €1,500 + €150 buy-in to main event, €280 for a four night stay at the Burlington, and €770 for handling fees and spending money.

An additional, third and final, satellite structure into the Irish Winter Festival is also being offered at Titan Poker, this for just a ticket into the main event without the accommodation and all the other accoutrements.

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The Irish Winter Festival of Poker takes place October 22 to 25, 2010 at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, Ireland.

Qualifying is easy and painless with three stages to it. Stage one is in two parts: half past the odd hour every day will be €3+€0.03 daily satellites, the prizes being one Scottish Poker Open Weekly Final seat for every €30 collected in buy-ins. The second part is half past the even hours, and is comprised of €1+€0.10 re-buy satellites. The prize is the same: one seat for every €30 collected.

Stage two, the Weekly Finals, will take place on Sundays and costs €28+€2 to buy in directly, with the prize being one seat for the final stage, the €250+€20 Online Finals, for every €270 collected.

There is also a Scottish Super Satellite that takes place every day in which you could automatically win entry into stage three. Stage three is the €250+€20 Online Finals. The Online Finals will take place on May 23rd, June 20th and July18th, 2010. The prizes for each Online Final are 2 seats to the Scottish Open, August 6th through the 8th, 2010.

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As the winner of the Scottish Poker Open prize package, you will win entry to the main event, three nights in the Crowne Plaza Hotel for some pampering after a fun night in the Alea Casino. Also the winner will travel in style to and from the main event with a SPO luxury yacht, and a chauffeur driven limo.

Top poker professional Phil Ivey ended up being defeated in the very poker room established in his honor. David "Chino" Rheem, who had successfully reached the final tables of the main event of WSOP in 2008, took Phil off the table and walked away with the huge bounty of one hundred thousand dollars.

Larry Linton however was able to win the tournament and bagged the first prize of $250,000. Afterwards he engaged in the heads-up poker battle against Phil Ivey for another $250,000 but had to realise that Phil wasn't going to be defeated twice the same day. In his own poker room Phil Ivey dominated the heads-up and Larry Linton was denied the additional $250,000.

The inaugural of the Phil Ivey Poker Room was a grand success, and all the talented poker players who participated in the events enjoyed themselves thoroughly. "Even the croissants served were awesome", as aptly pointed out by Phil Laak. In the meantime, David Williams told everybody about how he is waiting for the day someone would think about establishing a poker room in honour of him.

Phil Ivey was deeply touched by the event and the fact that Aria had established a room in his honor. Recalling that he had come from nothing, he said that he was indeed honoured to have a room in his name.

Prominent guests such as Jennifer Harman, Doyle Brunson, Tim Phan, David Benyamine, and Vanessa Rousso were present for the inauguration of the Phil Ivey Room. The new high-stakes poker room, especially brought into existence for the benefit of rich and influential players, has already gained a reputation for top poker action, a state of affairs that appears to be long lasting.

Phil Ivey, winner of seven prestigious WSOP bracelets and one World Poker Tour title, is considered to be the world’s best poker player. Ivey was also listed as the world’s number one tournament money winner following his runner up finish at the Aussie Millions $100,000 poker event this year.

Annette’s poker career began the day a friend sent her some money to become a funded player at an online poker room. Annette turned out to be so talented at playing poker that she did not have to make another deposit. She found herself winning game after game and was soon confident enough to participate in multi table tournaments. Next, she participated in the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) and claimed the title and the fabulous WSOPE main event prize.

Although Europe openly acknowledged Annette’s talent and allowed her to participate in the WSOP, US laws prevented her from participating in the WSOP because she was underage. But now that she is 21, no law in the world can stop her from dominating the WSOP tables. Annette attracted attention in the poker gaming world not only because of her talent, but also because of her age. Last Sunday, she won $87,000 in the PokerStars Sunday 500, which she plans to spend on the buy-in for WSOP 2010.

Poker buffs are already looking forward to watching Annette’s performance in the WSOP. Annette might be having an amazing record of tournament wins; however, the WSOP brings together some of the toughest poker players in the world. As usual, this year’s WSOP will witness the usual poker pros as well as a sprinkling of amateurs fighting for the titles. One of them will be Phil Ivey, who reached the final table last year, but could not last till the end. This year, the regular pros will have to compete with Annette too.

Titan Poker gives players a chance to compete with Annette and get a WSOP 2010 qualification. The site also offers a cool deposit bonus of 150% up to $500 to all players that sign up through Max Poker Bonus. Bright readers will instantly notice that this offer is 50% more than regularly advertised!

Bwin Poker seeks to reproduce the excitement of this prestigious soccer event by offering a thrilling two-week long poker event called World Cup Warm Up. The site hopes to provide its loyal poker players, who also happen to be soccer enthusiasts, the thrill of competition similar to that of the World Cup Soccer Tournament right in the comforts of home.

The World Cup Warm Up will last for two weeks, providing plenty of poker action and excitement and the unique opportunity for talented Bwin Poker players to fight for the championship title. However, just as a soccer tournament allows only one champion, this Bwin Poker event also permits only one talented poker player to emerge as the champion.

Bwin Poker will first organize 4 World Cup Warm Up Semi Finals at 8 pm on May 5, May 27, June 1, and June 3. These semi finals will help talented players to qualify for the prestigious and lucrative World Cup Warm Up Finals. In the first place, Bwin Poker will classify interested players who wish to participate in eight groups from A to H based on their geographic locations. Four players of each group can qualify for the finals. Each lucky semi final winner will receive an attractive cash prize plus a ticket to the finals.

The World Cup Warm Up Final will be organized on June 5 at 8 pm with a guaranteed prize pool of $50,000. Players who enjoy the competitive spirit of the World Cup can fight for the title of champion at this awesome World Cup Warm Up event organized by Bwin Poker.

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Bwin Poker is also offering exciting promotions such as Chip Chaser Sit & Gos, Weekly Country Showdown, and Contender Series, giving players the exclusive chance to win plenty of cash.

The total World Cup prize package is worth $10,000 and it includes four nights at a prestigious hotel in Johannesburg called Southern Sun Grayson Hotel, VIP services, premium seats at the stadium, refreshments during the match, access to the VIP area, daily breakfast, and a Mercedes for transportation. As per the terms of the package, the winner will set off on July 8 and will return on July 12.

Poker enthusiasts will find it very easy to participate in this promotion. Starting today, interested players must begin by playing as many raked hands as they can. However, players must note that the promotion applies only to No Limit Hold’em games and also that the raked hands commence from a minimum big blind of $0.50. Players can view their progress with the raked hands on the site’s leader board.

The top 40 players who have played the largest number of raked hands will automatically gain entry to the World Cup Package Freeroll, a multi-table tournament, which offers the World Cup prize package to South Africa to the best player. This special poker tournament will be played on June 2 at 19:30 GMT.

Poker players who are eager to witness the exciting football action of the 2010 World Cup Final must first register at Titan Poker if they want to win the World Cup prize package. Registering at Titan Poker is a great pleasure because the site offers some attractive promotions and bonuses, the most popular of which is the 150 percent cash match bonus on initial deposits up to a maximum bonus of $500. Some of the most exciting promotions at Titan Poker include Bad Beat Bonus, Titan Turbo, King of the Ring, and Last Man Standing.

On Tilt Designs Pty. Ltd. and WSOP have entered into a multi-year deal, according to which On Tilt creates poker apparel, accessories, and headwear bearing the WSOP brand. Steve Soffa, the internationally acclaimed jewelry designer, has been selected to design the WSOP bracelets this year.

Steve Soffa, who has created designs for Fortune 100 companies such as Oracle, Sony, Microsoft, and Universal Pictures for nearly 16 years, says that he feels honoured to create WSOP bracelets. CEO of On Tilt Shane McDowall was awed when he realized the prestige associated with the WSOP bracelets. Rightly pointing out that the World Series of Poker bracelet is one of the few things that cannot be purchased with money, he said that he feels honoured to commission Steve Soffa to design unique customized WSOP bracelets.

Each WSOP bracelet will be made of solid 14K gold and will be decorated with round cut and princess diamonds. They will have a design of four card suits featuring black diamonds and rubies. The WSOP Main Event bracelet will be made of 6 ounces of gold and 550 diamonds, weighing a total of 4 carats. The uniqueness of each bracelet greatly enhances its value. The entire collection will be released on May 28, 2010 at the Rio.

The On Tilt Steve Soffa team will be present during the bracelet ceremonies held at Pavilion Ballroom at 2:20 pm the day after each poker tournament. The team will engrave under the faceplate of each bracelet the name of the player and the tournament details. Players who require further customization can stay back and consult with the designers. Specially designed WSOP bracelets will be awarded to the winners of the Main Event, the Ladies Championship, and the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship.

These bracelets are made not only for display, but also for daily wear. The team has created a unique wooden-lacquered display box for each bracelet and its authenticity certificate.

Would you like to win one of these bracelets? Please have a look at the site of our friends over at Poker For Free, who have a continuously updated list of WSOP Satellites wherein packages will be awarded to the winners to participate in the WSOP 2010 Main Event in Las vegas. Yet another option is to search through the articles in our own poker blog, as several of the recommended online poker rooms on the Max Poker Bonus site offer WSOP promotions as well.

Andrew Couldridge, a plumber from London, surprised the poker community with his winning of the UKIPT, proving to everyone that you don’t need a Harvard degree to play poker. He managed to beat a total of 649 players in order to come first in this tournament.

In terms of prizes, Andrew Couldridge walked away with a seat in the £5,250 European Poker Tour, which is the final showdown of the UKIPT. In addition to this, Couldridge also managed to won himself £80,000 in prize money.

The UK and Ireland Poker Tour is new to the UK and there were a record number of participants who took part in the UKIPT, Nottingham leg which was held at the Dusk Till Dawn Poker Room.

This win for Couldridge was a result of poker strategy and luck and seemed to surprise many people at the table. When he got into the last round, which is the 29th level of the tournament, he was placed 4th in terms of chips and had a much lower total than that of Owen Robinson, who was the chip leader at that point. From that point however, within the space of half an hour, thanks to three great hands, Couldridge moved up from 1 million chips to six million. Eventually Couldridge managed to push Robinson to the fourth place where he took Robinson out.

Couldridge was already leading in terms of number of chips at that time. The final hand took place between Oliver Schaffmann and Couldridge and at this point, Couldridge had a chip lead of two to one.

After this, there was no looking back, with Couldridge winning the ultimate UKIPT title after twenty hours of playing poker.

This poker game is a unique offering and is expected to become one of the most popular Sit and Go poker games on the internet as it uses a very different system of blinds that allow new strategies of poker game play. It is believed that this game will encourage poker players to make bold moves and take risks with their game play.

Play at Bwin Poker

Some of the changes made in the format of this poker game include the elimination of all blind structures, which is a very rare format of play. This removes all the stress from the players and allows them to go all-in or play safe according to what they may feel inclined to do. However, to keep up with the general flow of the poker game, the rules of the new Sit and Go game, Chip Chaser, involve regular antes. This means that every participant in this Sit and Go game will have to pay an ante whenever a new round begins in a Chip Chaser game. This is how the game has got its name since the players have to chase each round with chips.

Furthermore, this game also has large antes, and players are usually known to start with a thousand when the game commences, increasing gradually as the game progresses. As a result of this, Chip Chaser will have players spending a lot of money during each round, increasing the size of the pot and making game play a lot more fun!

And if this was not enough, the game requires all players to go all-in after 10 minutes of playing! This means that players have to have a lot of money at their disposal and will need to rack up their chips. The top 2 winners will get the prize, with the first place winner taking in 70% and the second place winner taking in the remaining 30%.

To be a part of the new Chip Chaser Sit and Go game, players will have to first be registered with the Bwin Poker room as real players. To accomplish this players must have already signed up and have made first deposit at the site.

Players can log on to Titan Poker as compete in any or all of these five events and try to win a prize package that will get them to the WSOP, where they will have the opportunity to win thousands of dollars and the title of World Poker Champion. These events have different rules, buy-ins and take place on various days of the week, giving players many chances at getting involved.

New players who are not yet a part of Titan Poker can register at the site and make take advantage of our exclusive 150% up to $500 match bonus given on ones' initial deposit.

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WSOP 2010 Super Satellites into Event #54

The WSOP 2010 Super Satellites are weekly events that players at Titan Poker can participate in to get to the WSOP. The satellite poker games will be held every Sunday in May and will continue on till the 20th of June, this year.

Players will have a chance to win a $13,000 WSOP package that includes the buy-in for the main event and travel and accommodation expenses.

Players will have to compete in this online poker tournament and win their way to the WSOP main event. The prize includes transportation to the venue and the buy-in for the game. This event also features satellite poker games. Winners of this event will also get their travel and accommodation needs met by Titan Poker.

World Series of Poker Main Event Jackpot Sit & Go Package

Titan Poker players will enjoy playing the WSOP Jackpot Sit & Go games that offer WSOP prizes to the main event. This event has an incredible prize of $25,000 for which participants will have to win six Jackpot Sit & Go games in a row to receive. This prize package includes the buy-ins for the main event and the side events and is one of the best WSOP prize packages available online.

Other events include those in the WSOP Warrior League as previously mentioned in a Max Poker Bonus blog related to Bet365 Poker, another site residing on the same network - the iPoker Network - as Titan Poker.

This incredible promotion is a golden opportunity and it is expected that several new players will be signing up at Party Poker just to be a part of the World Series of Poker. This is a unique promotional offer that Party Poker is running for its players.

According to Party Poker, “This unbelievable package is every poker player’s dream prize as they don’t have to worry about qualifying for the Main Event ever again... They receive a Main Event package for life. As an extra bonus for 2010, Party Poker even pays the travel, accommodation and spending money for this year’s Las Vegas extravaganza.”

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Play the WSOP Main Event for Free for the Next 20 Years

Many online poker rooms are currently offering poker packages worth $10k or more to a few lucky players and thus paying they buy-in to the 2010 WSOP Main Event. Party Poker has gone many steps ahead and is offering much more than seats in this year’s World Series of Poker via qualifiers. The WSOP for Life campaign is a promotion launched by this poker giant which allows members to compete with each other for two special prize packages. These packages are worth $14,000 each and are capable of getting the two winners into the WSOP Main Event for a period of twenty years, which is more or less equivalent to a life sentence – hence the term WSOP for Life.

This package covers the $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event and, expenditure for travel and accommodation. The WSOP package will not end here and these 2 winners will receive a sum of $10,000 to make the buy-in at the WSOP Main Events every year, for the next 20 years. This offer will end when the WSOP closes or if the site shuts down.

Mike Sexton, ambassador for Party Poker said: "I think WSOP for Life is a really great idea - I have been playing the Main Event for most of my life! I just wish I had the opportunity to qualify for this but, unfortunately, I am exempt!"

A Party Poker spokesman said: "We've got two WSOP for Life packages to give away and we're making them available to all players via a leader board challenge and a tournament. Normally, the chance to take part in the WSOP Main Event is a once in lifetime opportunity but with this you have a Main Event package guaranteed for life." To win the leader board challenge might be a bit harsh for newbie's, but it's good to know that the top 500 finishers will receive a ticket for the WSOP for Life freeroll where the second package can be won.

Players who sign up at Bwin Poker are not required to make any minimum deposit or fulfil any rake or point requirements to participate in these freeroll series. They only have to register at Bwin Poker. Interested players can access these freerolls beneath the “Tournaments” button on the Bwin Poker website.

The freeroll occurs daily at the site and players will be able to compete for a generous sum of money up to $500 by playing daily. Moreover, the freerolls require a zero buy-in and involves a game of Texas Hold’em No Limit poker. This poker freeroll series sees $500 added to the prize pool, giving players a huge chance to fatten up their bankrolls. Moreover, the freeroll series permit $1 rebuys during the first hour of play. Every add-on will be at $0.25 thereafter.

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Bwin Poker - Much More than Just Freerolls

New players need not worry about getting started at Bwin Poker because the site offers a poker school comprising ample information on how to download the poker client, how to play poker, how to hone their poker skills, and other related information.

Access to the freeroll series mentioned above isn’t the only benefit available for players who register at Bwin Poker. The poker room also offers generous bonuses, lucrative promotions, and attractive offers.

For instance, the Weekly Country Showdown appears to be among the most exciting promotions offered at present, challenging players to beat poker players from their own countries and emerge as the national poker shooting stars. The Contender Series, another current promotion at Bwin Poker, comprises interesting Sit 'n Gos with unusual payout structures and amazing poker action. Players are challenged to use their wits to beat their opponents at the table.

First Depositors at Bwin Poker

The poker room also offers an attractive first depositors’ bonus called the B’Inside Starter Bonus. All newly registered players who make a first deposit at Bwin Poker will receive an attractive cash match bonus of 100% up to a maximum of $500.

This is an exclusive bonus for visitors of Max Poker Bonus, as the site gives away a regular bonus of up to $100, but if you read the contents on our Bwin Poker Bonus page you will notice that we have a bunch of other bonus offers for Bwin Poker to choose from, and that there's always one that will suit you.

The promotions at Titan Poker give players innumerable opportunities to win cash, tickets to live shows, bonuses, and seats to tournaments. However, players must note that the site does not welcome players from the US.

The latest promotions at Titan Poker are Titan Turbo and GUKPT Super Satellite. Titan Turbo is a series of poker races, and players have only 4 days to prove their worth. The first race commenced on May 10th and ended on May 13th. The second Titan Turbo race will be from May 17 – 20 and the third race will be from May 24 – 27.

Players must accumulate points during these days, and the site will reward the top 100 players with a share of a cool prize pool of $5000. In addition, players can keep all the points they have won and exchange them for either cash or tournament tickets.

They will also get a free seat to an exclusive $10,000 poker race, which can be played by only 400 players. The players who finish at the top will get double the usual payout if they happen to be recently registered or VIP Bronze players. This means that now is a great time to register at the site.

The exclusive $10,000 race will be from May 29 – 30. Titan Poker also organized one-day poker races on May 9th, and the 16th and 23rd of the month – and will award cash as well as entries to ECOOP VI freerolls to winners.

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Titan Poker is also giving its loyal players a golden opportunity to participate in the prestigious Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT), which will be held in Coventry from May 20 - 23. Players who are eager to grab a GUKPT prize package must participate in super satellites held on May 17th. The buy-in is only $60+$6.

I discovered long ago that just watching the eyes of your opponent, especially on the flop, you can learn a lot of information.

Eye Before the Flop

When an opponent first looks at their hole cards, you may see the eyes widen, or the eyebrows raise, ever so slightly. This translates to the player being rather thrilled with his or her holdings. Pocket Aces, A-K suited or A-K off-suit are likely.

Eyes On the Flop

Always watch their eyes when the first three cards hit the board. Some players have actually been known to roll their eyes when the flop comes down with an Ace. It’s a very clear sign that the player’s Kings, or some other high pocket pair, were just potentially beaten by whoever may have paired the Ace.

You might even notice some players becoming downright gleeful after the Flop. It only lasts for a very brief moment as they suddenly remember where they are! But it is easily detected by anyone paying just a little attention to a players eyes. Take note of what just flopped and see if you can figure out how it improved their hand. Just assume they have the nuts at this point and you’ll be pretty close, if not dead on.

Take note of any player who takes a second look at his hole cards. It is the sign of a very weak poker player who cannot remember what he was dealt, but it does happen. If the Flop was 3-card suited, his hand is off-suit and he’s looking to see if he has one of the Flopped suit. If there are two suited cards on the board, his hole cards are suited and he’s double-checking to see if he’s hit a Flush Draw.

Eyeing the Pros

Watching a player’s eyes may not be quite as effective against professional or highly experienced poker players, as they’ve trained themselves to be brick walls that do not react visibly to any situation in a poker game. That should tell you something very important right there. What’s the lesson here, boys and girls? Mirror the pros and never let yourself react to any situation in an observable manner.

On a final note, there’s one rather neat experience you may come across when playing a veteran. This occurs when you attempt to read a player’s eyes and find your opponent looking back into your own eyes. This momentary meeting of the eyes causes two things to happen. First, you realize just how attentive this opponent is, so you can assume he’s playing a better game than some complete noob. Second, he gains a much higher respect for you, probably giving you more credit than you really deserve. The benefit here is that he’ll almost always fold when you raise.

The Sixth European Championship of Online Poker will begin in May and continue on till the month of June and will host an extremely generous prize amount of $5,100,000. This amount is guaranteed and players will be able to win large prizes should they make their way to the top positions in this event. Reputed to be the richest poker tourney in Europe, the ECOOP VI will take place on the 24th of May at Celeb Poker. Players will have to win the Texas No Limit Hold'em Freezeout game with a prize of $250,000. This prize is also a guaranteed amount and many players are expected to attend.

Unique Tournaments in ECOOP VI

The Sixth European Championship of Online Poker is a unique tournament event which will host a series of competitions that involve different types of poker games and these include Limit Hold'em, the popular Texas No Limit Hold'em, Pot Limit Omaha, 7 Card Stud and Omaha High Low poker as well. As you can see there are various different kinds of online poker tournaments waiting for you and at least one of them should be down your alley.

This year event 11 ($100,000 GTD NL Hold'em, on June 3) will be played as a Quadric tournament. A Quadric is a special version, where you compete in 4 tournaments. The winners of each tournament will receive 15% of the prize pool while the remaining 40% will go to the players who ranked best in these tournaments on average.

Also new this time around is the Mini ECOOP which will be held just before the ECOOP VI. Buy-ins as well as prize money will be a bit lower in the Mini ECOOP VI. Nonetheless you will be able to compete for $600.000 guaranteed in the 10 days leading up to the ECOOP VI.

Unlike many other poker tourneys, the ECOOP VI is not just about Texas Hold’em and tests the poker skills of players in three other games.

The final event will be held on the 6th of June 2010 and will see the finalists competing with each other for the big poker prize. This is yet another guaranteed poker pot and this game hosts a prize of $1,500,000.

Players who are interested in getting on board the ECOOP VI bandwagon should register at Celeb Poker and participate in the mini tournament games held between May 14th and May 23rd. Players are also encouraged to sit in for the satellite games constantly being offered at Celeb Poker.

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Karnjanaprakorn's decision to donate his poker wins to charity has so inspired other poker players like Annie Duke, world class poker player and Ali Nejad, who is the popular host of Poker After Dark to offer him personal coaching sessions that will train him to be a winner.

Karnjanaprakorn has chosen two charities which he will be donating to, namely, the Langston Hughes Academy, which is a New Orleans’ charter program for elementary and middle school, and the Bad Beat on Cancer. Should he win the WSOP final event, Karnjanaprakorn plans to donate the winnings to a few of his favourite charities and do his part towards making the world a better place.

Michael Karnjanaprakorn is a poker player and entrepreneur from New York who hopes to make his way to the main event and final table in the World Series of Poker 2010. Karnjanaprakorn has vowed “should he win the 2010 World Series of Poker main event, he won’t keep a dime” causing several people to hope that he wins if only for charities sake.

Karnjanaprakorn had made this promise along with Rafe Furst, another poker player, during last year’s World Series of Poker tournament.

Furst, a poker player known for his charitable efforts, has been involved in several awareness campaigns and fund raisers for different causes. Furst has been known to work together with Phil Gordon, and the two of them have raised thousands of dollars for several charities. They have helped raise both funds and awareness for cancer research by Rock Paper Scissors efforts.

Karnjanaprakorn, who may have been inspired by them, has a long way to go to get to the WSOP 2010, the first step of which is getting the $10,000 buy-in. To do this, Karnjanaprakorn may have to participate in one of the many qualifiers events hosted by online poker sites like Bet365 Poker, bwin Poker, and so on. Karnjanaprakorn is currently trying to raise cash for his buy-in and calls this scheme the “World Series of Good.”

• World Series of Good
• Bad Beat on Cancer

Sorel Mizzi will serve as the captain of the poker team and Team Titan will be under contract to the site for a twelve-month duration, for which period of time Mizzi will be leading. Titan Poker has carefully selected these 7 talented individuals to be a part of Team Titan and will be sponsoring their participation in various championship events.

Titan Poker has managed to secure many reputable poker players, several of whom have already made thousands of dollars in wins either in land based casinos or online casinos and have managed to catch the eye of the media as well.

The seven players chosen from different parts of Europe to be part of Titan Poker’s team are as follows:

1. Sorel Mizzi - Canada
2. Marvin Rettenmaier - Germany
3. Jonas Klausen - Denmark
4. Yann Brosolo - France
5. Florian Desgouttes - France
6. Sam Trickett - England
7. Joel Benzinou - Belgium

With the exception of Mizzi, all the other poker players are from Europe. Mizzi had been chosen by Titan Poker to lead the team on account of his experience and extensive record of poker wins.

Mizzi is also known for his good poker skills and strategy which people have seen in action whenever the player has been in a tournament. Although, only 24 years old, Mizzi has been playing poker for a long time and knows the tricks of the game.

Mizzi has recorded poker earnings of over $2.7 million, and of this sum, he has managed to take in over $1,100,000 in poker earnings in the first few months of this year, proving to the world his skill at poker.

Another player on the team who needs to be watched is Jonas Klausen, a poker champion from Denmark, who has won about $841,083 by playing poker. Klausen is one of those poker players who opt to play both online and offline and are capable of excelling at both.

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Variance in poker is the result of the information we don't know in the course of the hand. Variance could also be equated with luck. We can't know how many of our outs our opponents are holding, or how far down the deck that Ace of diamonds that would give us the nut flush is. Three of your outs could have been 'burned' in the course of dealing to the board.

When examining a line graph of big bets won and lost over the course of a significant number of hands, it is not uncommon to find it is riddled with sharp peaks and valleys which represent the natural variance in poker. As long as the upswings and downswings ultimately result in a gradually increasing rise in overall profits, things are going well.

A certain measure of variance in poker is unavoidable. Even when you do everything right, the natural uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with poker will inevitably cause your win rate to fluctuate - sometimes wildly – and there is simply no way to change that. No one wins at poker 100% of the time. What we can do is evaluate hand histories in order to correct mistakes that lead to avoidable losses, which will reduce the amount of variance we experience. But we cannot completely rid ourselves of variance.

It is natural for us to examine and re-examine the huge pots we have lost for clues as to how we might win next time we are faced with that exact situation. However, poker players generally tend to play at the peak of their abilities when the pot reaches a sizable amount. Many players overlook the value of small pots, and, therefore, are less alert when the stakes are relatively low. By taking the time to review the smaller pots that you have lost, you may be able to identify leaks in your game that can be easily corrected.

Part of what makes poker so popular is the element of chance combined with the opportunity to apply a great deal of poker strategy. No matter how much a player has studied the various approaches to each poker form, every hand played is still a gamble. Variance in poker is perfectly natural. The key to earning the maximum profit possible is to make good decisions in every hand, no matter how much – or how little – is at stake.

All these offerings include interesting promotions, poker games that give members more than value for their money and the opportunity to be a part of poker tournaments with large prizes.

Bet365 Poker Bonus

One of the best offerings that Bet365 Poker has for its new players is the sign-up bonus which is a 100% match of the deposit made up to a sum of $500. Players will be able to use the extra funds to be a part of many of the poker games and tournaments hosted by Bet365 Poker and win big prizes.

Bet365 Poker also has an incredible range of poker tournaments for its players that offer a total amount of 20 million dollars in guaranteed prize amounts to the lucky winners. Some of the most interesting tournament promotions currently hosted by Bet365 Poker are as follows.

• Bet365 Poker Review
• Bet365 Poker Bonus

ECOOP VI

This poker tournament is scheduled to take place in May and June. Players interested in being a part of this event should take part in the qualifiers and mini poker games hosted by Bet365 Poker.

ECOOP VI games will run daily on the site from the 14th of May to the 6th of June. It will be a total of 14 events with $4,500,000 standing as the guaranteed prize for this event. Winners will also get a Tag Heuer watch.

WSOP 2010

Bet365 Poker also has packages for the 2010 WSOP and is running qualifier events from the 28th of May to the 17th of July for this purpose.

Lucky players can play at Bet365 Poker and win their way to the main event of the World Series Of Poker 2010. Players who win one of the WSOP packages will receive $13,000, which includes the $10,000 buy-in and $3,000 of travel money to be used for accommodation and transport.

VIP Players

Bet365 Poker also has a very exciting scheme for its members who get to earn points as they frequent the site, play poker and make deposits there. These points can be used to buy into other games.

• Bet365 Poker VIP Program

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The ECOOP VI is now even bigger than ever before, the prize pool by now exceeds 5 million dollars. To be more exact, we are talking about a prize pool of $5,100,000 guaranteed. This 14 day long poker feast will start on May the 24th. Back in 2007 when the first ECOOP was being held the tournament lasted 10 days and had a prize pool of $2.5 millions.

Not only was Titan Poker able to more than double the prize money by now, extend the schedule and add more events, they also introduce the Quadric for the first time. The Quadric is an event that lets you participate at 4 tournaments at the same time and earn your share of the $100,000 that are up for grabs.

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Another new feature will be the so called Mini ECOOP VI that is open to all players and starts on May 14th and goes on until May 23rd. Consider it a warm-up for the big ECOOP VI on Titan Poker.

Qualifying tournaments are already being held 24/7, so if you prefer to not pay the direct buy-in to any of the events you should head to Titan Poker as soon as possible and make sure to play in the satellites and qualifiers for the biggest ECOOP ever!

In case you don't have a Titan Poker account yet, make sure to make use of our special Titan Poker Bonus with enhanced money rewards for you as well as the popular Titan Poker Calculator for free! The calculator will help you enhance your poker game and can well mean the difference between qualifying for an ECOOP VI event or having to pay the buy-in instead in order to compete.

These five MotoGP stars who may be participating in the upcoming Gran Premio Bwin de España, sat down at the poker table to try their luck at cards. Bwin has been one of the official sponsors of the MotoGP for the past six years and hosted this little game aboard the yacht a few days before the race.

These players took jet skis up to the yacht which was in the Puerto Sherry region and an exciting game of poker was started. The game, which was a bout of Texas Hold’em, was won by Colin Edwards from the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team, who proved he was just as good at poker as he was at winning on the race track.

Play Poker Aboard a Luxury Yacht

Last year, Bwin had hosted another game of poker at the Sky Platform where the players rode up to the venue on motor bikes. This year, it was about the sea and poker and allowed the MotoGP stars to relax and unwind away from the race track.

Alvaro Bautista, from the Rizla Suzuki team, said, “This was for sure a good way to fill up with some extra energy, disconnect and get away from the pressure at the circuit for a couple of hours... Here you also have to concentrate hard but in a completely different way. Here you can sit back and think about your next move. On the track it all happens faster, right in front of you.”

Players who want to be watch the Gran Premio Bwin de España and play poker aboard a luxury yacht should get involved in the Poker Night promotion hosted by the site which will take place on Friday.

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Marco Melandri from the San Carlo Honda Gresini racing team seemed to be very enthusiastic about the upcoming race and went on to give out some tips on what he believed to be the outcome of the race.

Why put yourself in a situation where a stellar poker strategy isn’t enough to win the majority of the time. The fact is, highly experienced poker players, maniacs and super aggressive players (a.k.a. agros) are using their own sophisticated strategy, and they know very well what they’re doing.

Sure, you could take them on, have a pissing contest in an effort to take their stack, but what’s the point? It may deflate their ego a little bit, but if you end up on the losing end of the stick, you’ll only be more upset that such a frustrating opponent bested you. And honestly, this player has just as much chance of scooping your stack as you do of scooping his, if not more.

It's usually better to avoid a good player, like they do in the movie Rounders, acclaimed by many as the most realistic movie about poker players ever made.

Spotting a maniac poker player isn’t very hard. They are termed “maniacs” for a reason. They will play any type of hand, from Pocket Aces to T3 off-suit, and they do so with vigor. You simply never know what they’re holding because they mix things up so wildly, betting conservatively one moment, and aggressively the next.

Super agros are also pretty easy to spot. They are much like maniacs but without the incredible range of hands. When they have a good hand, they will play it very aggressively, either scaring everyone else out or taking as many chips as they can along the way. This player will bluff on occasion, but you’ll likely never know it.

This particular poker strategy is best used in cash games. Obviously, it would not do much good in a tournament poker situation, seeing as how you can’t pick and choose your opponents in a tournament.

For tournament play, you’ll simply want to avoid playing hands against the most challenging opponents. When a maniac or extremely aggressive bettor attempts to steal the blinds, let them. Unless you have the nuts, you may easily get outplayed, and at a significant cost no doubt.

In a ring game, specifically at online poker rooms, you can view the statistics of every poker table before you claim a seat.

Statistics alone won’t divulge the exact player types you’ll find at the table, but they will help you to pick a higher potential for more suitable opponents. Once seated, sit back for the first few hands and just observe the other players. Don’t even bother putting chips into the pot unless you’re dealt some immaculate starting hand, like AA or AKs.

If you detect the presence of extremely challenging poker players – maniacs or super agros in particular – don’t waste your time. Depart from the table and keep looking for a poker game with less challenging opponents in the mix.

David Sklansky wrote in his book, Theory of Poker - in a section titled the 'Fundamental Theorem of Poker' – that “Every time you play a hand differently than you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; every time you play a hand the same as you would have if you could see all their cards, they lose.”

What he meant by this was that putting a player on a range of hands allows you to play as if you can actually see their hole cards. Obviously, seeing their hole cards would tell you exactly how to play your hand – Check, Call, Bet, Raise or Fold.

Now we certainly can’t get a real peek at an opponent’s cards, but through keen observation and heightened mental awareness, you can determine a precise range of hands. Assuming your opponent has the best possible hand within that range, you have virtually the same advantage as if you’d seen their hole cards.

From the beginning of a hand, approximating the hand range is more difficult, as you haven’t yet gathered enough information to really narrow it down. But if you consider all available information, you can get a decent range going.

First, how often does this player bet pre-flop? 10% or less is extremely tight, and you can always assume he has an excellent starting hand. Don’t even bother unless you’ve got a premium starter of your own. A player who continues 15%-20% of the time is fairly tight, and easier to take on.

The next bit of information you need is how often he raises pre-flop. Let’s say he plays about 17% of his hands, and raises pre-flop 15%.

If this player raises pre-flop, you can increase his range of hands to as high as A-A. If he calls a raise, but does not re-raise, his hand range falls. Then again, if it’s a multi-way pot, his hand range alters again as there are a lot of hands a tight-aggressive player will not play in a multi-way pot.

For example, you raise pre-flop with QQ, two others limp in and your focal opponent calls. His hand range would be AJ, AT, A2-9s, KQs-o, KJs, mid to high suited connectors, or any pair of 2-J.

We know he doesn’t have a pair of Queens or higher, or AK, because he would have raised to eliminate the multi-way factor.

That’s a pretty wide range of hands, so we’ll need to gather more information after the Flop to narrow it further.

• The Flop: 2c-7h-6h

You open with a sizeable bet of $20 in NL $1/$2. Both limpers bow out but your focal opponent calls without hesitation. We’ve already ruled out high pocket pairs, and we can now rule out all over cards since the flop offered all small cards, so he should have folded them to your large bet. Over pairs like 88, 99 and TT are out, because he should have raised your Flop.

The only things left are draws, weak pairs, two pair and sets. His range now contains 67s, any open-ended straight connectors, any two connected hearts, or a set of 2’s, 6’s or 7’s.

• The Turn: Th

With the high over-pair, you drop $40 into the pot and he pushes all-in over you. Now what? His hand range becomes a lot more defined. Most likely he’s hit a draw hand since he called the previous two rounds. He could also have that low to mid set. His range is a Heart Flush, 6-T Straight or a set of 2’s, 6’s or 7’s.

If you can’t beat the majority of his hand range, you should fold. In this case, you have QQ, which loses to his entire hand range. You would need at least to match his potential 6-T Straight to consider calling, but realistically, if you had this hand, you’d have been making terrible bets up to this point!

Conclusion

Putting your opponent on a range of hands can be the most useful tool you’ll ever add to your poker strategy regime. It is something you should be practicing and implementing in every poker game you play. Ranging hands will help you to make fewer mistakes, translating into less chip loss and higher pot profits at the poker table.

This extremely generous promotion is called the WSOP Warrior and is Bet365 Poker’s way of celebrating the 2010 World Series of Poker, a world renowned poker tournament that ultimately awards the best poker players in the world.

Bet365 Poker has created 10 poker packages for the WSOP that players can compete for during the month of May. These qualifiers will help players buy their way into the WSOP event and will commence from the 2nd of May and go on until the 30th.

The ten packages offered by the popular online gaming site are all not of the same value and range from a $5,500 WSOP Package to the $25,000 grand package prize.

Join the WSOP Warrior Competition

To be a part of the "WSOP Warrior" promotion, players will have to be registered members at the Bet365 Poker site and have made real deposits at the site. Of course, it is also vital to have poker skills and good poker playing strategy as the participants of this event will be required to compete with some poker professionals in the final event.

This ten package promotion under the banner of the WSOP Warrior is an exclusive offering of Bet365 Poker and players who are interested in being a part of this will have to buy-in to this promotion, which is not a freeroll.

To get into this competition, poker players will have to spend $320 to register for each event unless they are able to get into the games by winning the qualifier satellites games hosted by Bet365 Poker. These qualifier games do not require much of a buy-in and players will be able to play thee games for a price of $1.10 or so.

Visit Bet365 Poker Now

Players who win the qualifiers and the WSOP Warrior promotion will be awarded with one of the ten WSOP packages based on at what point of time they leave the final table. Winners of the WSOP packages will also get their travel expenses covered and paid accommodation at the superlative Wynn Resort and Casino based on the Vegas Strip.

Poker tells are any observable behaviourisms, spoken or unspoken, that relay information on a player’s holdings. Poker tells can be conscious or unconscious behavioural patterns or mannerisms.

On the surface, it is generally a bad idea to let any poker tells show in your poker game. But when you can successfully emit poker tells that throw your opponents off, it can be an awesome weapon in card game warfare.

It can be difficult to dupe your opponents in such a manner, as we learned from Mike “The Mad Genius of Poker” Caro in his publication of ‘Caro’s Book of Poker Tells’. Caro stated simply, “strong means weak and weak means strong”. Any veteran poker player knows that a player who is trying to appear weak is hiding a strong hand, while a weak-handed player will attempt to appear strong.

You’ll have to be a bit more deceptive, and certainly more convincing, to pull this off.

The reverse psychology method has been so overused that now days, you may actually have more success by acting like you have exactly what you are holding. Instead of betting aggressively on a bluff, you may have to act like you have nothing, which is in fact what you have. Conversely, play a strong hand tenaciously.

Unfortunately, the success of this plan will have everything to do with your opponents. If they are too inexperienced or weak themselves, they may not even be paying attention enough to know that you are emitting poker tells. If they are too experienced, they may recognize your behaviour before it does you any good.

One of the most common poker tells is the raising of the eyebrows, or widening of the eyes upon seeing your hole cards or the flop. It is so common because too many players simply can’t control their immediate reaction. They know not to let their face show such tells, but it happens so instantaneously, they just can’t always control it. In a live poker game, it can be especially useful to let yourself show a momentary widening of the eyes every once in awhile.

Anyone who is paying attention will think you’re holding Pocket Aces, while you’re smirking on the inside over something like 10-8 suited. Do this in late position and stealing the blinds could be a cinch.

Betting patterns are excellent poker tells to incorporate against more experience poker players. They are always watching for any kind of pattern in an opponent’s game. Allow yourself to be read as a pattern bettor. Bet aggressively with a big hand; more conservatively on draws. Then when you mix things up, they will never know what hit them. Suddenly an aggressive bet becomes a scary situation for them, regardless of what you’re really holding.

Don’t become overly confident in your purposeful poker tells before you can determine whether your opponents are actually falling for it. If they are reacting as you had hoped, then you know they are paying attention, and you’re playing the role of a very good actor. Swoop in for the kill!

Drive the Dream will let you play at being James Bond, without risking your life and running from evil villains and all you have to do is participate in the promotions and qualify in the freerolls. The most exciting factor about this promotion is that players will get to be a part of this while paying nothing, as Party Poker has introduced daily freerolls for members.

All you need to win an Aston Martin is your poker skills and a membership at Party Poker. The site will host Drive the Dream freerolls regularly and players will just have to qualify for the monthly tournaments and then move on to the final event to drive way in their dream car.

According to Mike Sexton, an ambassador and WPT presenter, “A couple of years ago I challenged Paris Hilton to play heads-up for a Bentley but my offer wasn’t accepted – maybe she’d play for an Aston Martin instead? The chance of winning an Aston Martin DB9 Coupe for absolutely nothing is quite some freeroll!”

Drive the Dream Freerolls

These freerolls began this week on Tuesday on the 27th of April and are expected to continue for a few months until the 12th of September 2010. This gives players the opportunity to hone their poker skills before participating in the event, which being a freeroll, means that there is nothing to lose. Players who qualify in the freerolls will be required to participate in the monthly satellite games held on every second Sunday of the month, those gamers who manage to qualify in these games will have to face off in the final championship event which will be held in London on the 2nd of October.

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In addition to the Aston Martin, Party Poker also has special Drive the Dream related prizes for gamers who come in second and third and so on. While the first place winner will get the car, the second place winner will receive a Lamborghini Extreme Driving Academy Package and the third will get a Ferrari Driving Experience Package.

Fourth, fifth and sixth place winners will get a Porsche Sport Driving School Package, a F1 Grand Prix Brazil Package and a F1 Grand Prix Santander D'Italia Package respectively. Other winners will get cash prizes up to a sum of $4,000 or so.

Liv participated in the EPT and beat 1,240 contestants in the poker tourneys to finally take her place in the finals. This episode of the EPT took place in San Remo, Italy and featured players from over 40 different countries.

The final event saw Boeree go head to head with Swedish poker professional whom she ousted from the game with a pair of fives, proving that she was not to be underestimated. Liv who has a degree in astrophysics from Manchester University used her smarts to snag £1 million pounds in the EPT. When asked about her success at the poker table, Boeree claimed that mathematics and logic skills helped her in playing poker. Boeree will go on to play in thus Sunday’s EPT grand final to vie for the £2.2 million pounds that is at stake at the championship event which will take place in Monte Carlo.

"Winning a major event is exactly what I've been working towards. I have been working very hard on my game but I can't believe I have won. I'm over the moon, absolutely over the moon", said Liv Boeree.

Liv has done the UK proud with her win and plans to use the money to buy real estate in Vegas and one cannot help but wonder if she will perhaps continue using her remarkable smarts and lucky streak to win a few more tournaments in Sin City.

Olivia or “Liv” as she calls herself is the ultimate combination of beauty, brains and a poker face and is the third woman in the history of poker to win a million pounds in the EPT. The model/poker player took in a total of £1,087,411 when she won the European Poker Tour. Liv has garnered the nickname the Iron Maiden in poker circles on account of her love for heavy metal music.

Boeree has been playing poker since she was 4 years old and has more experience in the game than many of the players who competed at the EPT. She took up playing poker seriously after she competed in a reality TV show about poker which aired on Channel Five.

Williams first garnered the attention from the poker community when he competed against Greg Raymer in the 2004 WSOP and came in second with a total of $3,500,000 in winnings. In addition to the 2004 WSOP, Williams had competed in some of the poker tourneys over the years but has not managed to secure a favourable position until this year, when he took the WPT to the bank by winning the championship.

This year’s WPT Championship saw David Williams go up against the likes of noted poker stars like Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen and David Benyamine. Williams proved his mettle at the poker table when he triumphed over all other players there and won the poker pot. The WPT Championship is by far the most popular event in the poker tournament calendar and it occupies prime importance together with the WSOP Championship event.

The event had a large buy-in and players were required to pay a sum of $25,000 to participate in the event. Organizers seem to have been disappointed with the turnout as they expected a larger number of players vying for the prize, but believe that the poor visibility caused by the recent volcanic eruption may have stopped many poker players from flying to be a part of the event.

There were a total of 195 poker players who competed in the WPT championship and Williams slowly ousted many of them with his poker skills, until he was one of the last few left standing along with runner up Eric Baldwin.

David Williams, who hails from Dallas, Texas, is also known for his brilliant mind and sharp poker skills and is noted to have secured a 1550 score on his SATs out of a total of 1600. Williams also won scholarships to several Ivy League Universities, which he chose not to attend in favour of the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science.

Using proper psychology can work two ways. When you get into an opponent’s head, you can start predicting his hand, as well as his reaction to different situations. If you let your opponents think they’ve gotten into your head, you can take full advantage of what they think you’re holding.

First things first, successfully reading your opponents isn’t something you can acquire in a single day, by reading an advanced poker strategy article. It is something attained through experience and deep observation.

You will find, over time, that most players fit into a category. Each of those categories come with typical tendencies. For example, there are loose, carefree players who simply love to see the flop, no matter what their starting hand is. We like to call these players “fish”. They are very easy to take advantage of as you can put them on a wide range of hands. You may get duped once or twice, but since you’re playing a more strategic poker game, way more often than not you’ll have the better hand.

Maniac poker players are a lot like fish, but with one key difference. Maniacs are extremely aggressive spenders. A fish isn’t going to risk their stack on a pitiful hand, where a maniac player uses intimidation through high raises. Again, it’s hard to put them on a hand since they are likely to bluff as often as they are holding a monster. The key to maniac players is to take them down tactfully, waiting for a great hand of your own to scoop a large portion of their stack. This will cool their heels faster than anything.

Playing against a tight player is also easy to identify, and much easier to predict their hand strength. Simple, tight poker players are not easy to defeat because they are not going to stay in a pot if they don’t think they can win it. Therefore putting them on a hand is a simple matter of observing the board, deciding what their best hands could be, and noting at what time they chose to become aggressive.

An experienced, tight poker player will either make a move as soon as he’s developed a hand, or on the next card, in an attempt to throw you off his actual holdings. The latter is actually more common. If you can determine the nuts one card prior to his aggression, it’s generally safe to assume that’s his best possible hand.

Reverse psychology works in much the same way. Knowing how other categorical player types react to various situations will allow you to mix up these tactics and fool your opponents. Never let yourself fall into a specific category. As a beginner poker player, a tight strategy is recommended, but as you advance in experience, changing up your game is crucial.

Play tight, play loose, play like a maniac – play every poker strategy in the book. Just don’t ever let yourself fall into a readable pattern. As soon as your opponents think they have you figured out, change your tactics completely. Not only will your opponents be utterly confused, they will fear you. Intimidation is one of the best poker strategies in the book, and the ability to be intimidating without having to wager a substantial amount of your chip stack is incredibly advantageous.

Adopting New Poker Tells Intentionally

Our last intermediate poker strategy article, “Learn your Tells, and Use Them!”, spoke of how to identify the poker tells you are already giving off, and use them to your advantage.

This next section is an expansion on that theory, teaching you how to adopt new poker tells to add to your arsenal of reverse psychology warfare.

Ranging Your Opponents Hands

Something professional poker players do all of the time is putting your opponent on a hand, and most of them are pretty darn good at it!

If you’ve ever watched Daniel Negreanu on NBC’s Poker After Dark, you’ve likely heard him guess exactly what his opponent is holding. While Negreanu has perfected the art, with seemingly psychic accuracy, we’ll at least get you started on the right path by teaching you how to put your opponent on a range of hands.

If you can narrow it down close enough, you’ll at least be able to determine the strongest hand you’ll need to beat before deciding whether to make that next call or raise.

Avoiding Challenging Players

If you find that there is a specific poker player type that gives you a frequently insurmountable challenge, it is not necessary to continue playing this kind of opponent. Shakespeare once said, “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.” Point being, trying to get revenge by repeatedly playing these player types will only come back to bite you in the you-know-what.

The easiest solution is to simply avoid challenging players. We’ll also discuss how to cope with challenging players when they cannot be avoided, such as in a tournament situation.

Variance in Poker

Adjusting to variance in poker isn’t just about the impending swings in your bankroll. Too many poker players think they have to win more than half of the time in order to be drawing a profit.

Actually, just winning a very small percentage of the time can be incredibly lucrative so long as you play your cards right; i.e. don’t filter chips into a lost cause, and use all of the beginner, intermediate and advanced poker strategies you’ve learned thus far to gain as many chips as possible when you’re on top.

It Really is All About the Eyes

In a live poker game, you’d be surprised just how much the eyes can give away. You would naturally assume that any poker player with any kind of experience at all would be very conservative with visible poker tells, especially something so obvious as the eyes. Luckily for you, that just isn’t the case.

We’ll give you a few tips on when and what to look for in the eyes, and of course, how not to let your own eyes get you busted.

There are two types of poker tells – the real poker tells and the fake poker tells, or acting poker tells. Knowing how to distinguish the two is key to winning more poker hands.

What is a Poker Tell?

A poker tell is any indication given by a player as to the strength of his hand. It may be a blatant, physical gesture, a subtle gesture or a notable betting pattern. Poker tells could be observed as a player who always sticks to a specific regiment suddenly altering his game.

Fake Poker Tells

Fake poker tells occur when a player purposely acts in one manner to throw you off what he is really holding.

A player may visibly eye up his own chip stack, mentally counting to see how much he’s willing to risk in order to play through a hand. This poker tell is generally a sign that you don’t want to take this player on unless you have the nuts.

Another player might double-check his hole cards, normally alluding to his possession of a draw hand, such as 4 cards to a flush or straight.

How do you know if the player is simply emitting fake poker tells? It is a matter of noting the opponent’s experience and behaviour up to that point.

A more experienced player would know better than to be so obvious with his poker tells. If he or she has shown no sign of poker tells up to this point, chances are, it is nothing more than an act. They want you to see. They want you to believe they have the best hand. They want you to fold.

Another popular poker tell is the widening of the eyes, or raising of the eyebrows. This is another common poker tell seen in less experienced players. If you see a loose, novice poker player do this, beware. But if a veteran of the game let’s such behaviour slip, it is likely enough that it s a fake poker tell.

Now we’re certainly not encouraging you to risk your entire stack the first time you witness what you honestly believe to be a fake poker tell. But if you can afford to make the move, and have a worthy enough hand to take that risk, it can be a very profitable call in many cases.

Using Fake Poker Tells

Because one veteran poker player recognizes another, it can be hard to use fake poker tells against other experienced poker players. However, if you take a seat with what you know to be skilled, observant opponents, you can let fake poker tells give off the essence that you yourself are a loose, novice player. Your gullible foes will have no idea what hit them when you finally make your move!

Unfortunately, it’s a short-term usage at such tables, and may require frequent table hopping to keep it up with consistent success.

Most amateur poker players enjoy watching poker on TV. We find it entertaining simply because we can relate to it, much like a high school football player enjoys watching the pros toss around the pigskin on a Sunday afternoon. But the best players – those with a potential career ahead of them – are the ones that take more away from a televised game than just a few hours of entertainment.

In fact, professional football players watch footage of opposing teams on a regular basis to improve their game. A team will watch clips from the previous bout to see where their own players may have faltered. They will also watch tape of their upcoming opponents to pin-point any flaws they may be able to exploit. They are constantly learning new tricks and better ways to defeat their opponents on the turf.

TV poker is no different. If you want to play like a pro, and win like a pro, you need to learn from the pros.

Thousands of hands of poker are shown on television every single day. ESPN shows past and current World Series of Poker events at least once a week. GSN (Game Show Network) broadcasts High Stakes Poker every Sunday at 8 EST, with reruns throughout the week. Poker After Dark is shown almost every night on NBC. Europe has a cable network devoted to all things poker - The Poker Channel – carried by over 18 million cable companies.

There is no lack of televised poker on your TV. Each of these poker shows is packed with amateur and professional poker players competing on the felt in cash game sessions and tournaments. That’s an awful lot of hours of tape you could be studying and learning from, day in, day out.

Learning to read poker tells is especially applicable to poker on TV. You get to see each player’s actions and reactions, as well as the cards they are holding. Bring a notepad and pencil to the couch as you watch. Take notes on each player’s behaviourisms, both physical and emotional.

How do they act when they are bluffing as opposed to holding the nuts? What kind of bet/raise will make them fold a winning hand?

Are there inadvertent poker tells being displayed? A nervous player will often touch their face in some way, or become fidgety. They may run fingers through their hair, wipe their chin or scratch their forehead. They could rest their head on one hand contemplatively, or take a second look at their cards after the flop, usually meaning they have a draw hand.

Not only will this help you identify common player types on he felt, you never know when you may find yourself competing directly against one of the very pros you’ve been studying. By recognizing behaviours and betting patterns, you can greatly improve your poker game by simply watching the pros play poker on TV.

Use the following top 5 multi-tabling tips to help you focus more on the games at hand, without getting distracted or confused.

1 - Note Taking

Most online poker rooms come equipped with a note taking feature. It’s there for a reason – use it! When multi-tabling, you’re not going to be able to remember every player at every table. Getting confused can be quite costly. If you think a player is a calling station, and they turn out to be the extremely tight player at the table instead, you could find yourself bluffing your way right out of the game against a nut flush, or worse.

2 - Four-Color Decks

If an online poker room offers the option to view a four-color deck, take advantage of it. You’re going to be switching from one table to the next, playing a little more quickly than you would a single session of poker. That makes it easier to confuse a club for a spade, or a diamond for a heart. The clubs become green, the diamonds become blue. A four-color deck eliminates any room for error. You’ll never make the mistake of betting on a 4-card flush again. If you have a flush, you’ll know it!

3 - Table Organization

Organizing your tables is very important. You must find the best way to organize the tables that you can work with. Some online poker players prefer to stack the windows, while others prefer a tiled view. Sometimes the choice is dependent on the number of tables you’re playing.

If you have a lot of tables open, it might be a good idea to sort them by limits and stakes, going from lowest to highest, or vice versa. In tournaments, sort them by blind levels.

4 - Remove All Table Clutter

Try to keep the tables as clutter-free as possible. If there are avatars at the table, toggle them off. Use the customization options in the poker client to eliminate any possible distractions. Some sites will offer different color schemes as well. Either use the same theme for all tables, or change the design for every table. Just make sure to keep the layout nice and mellow so it doesn’t detract from the game.

5 - Keep the Same Seat

Some online poker software will automatically seat you in the bottom, center seat at every table you join. That’s a great feature really, but unfortunately, too many online poker rooms don’t offer instant same-seating.

Make sure you are seated in the same position at all multi-tables. You may have to do this manually as soon as each table is opened. Be sure to check out the customization options first, though, as several online poker clients offer static seating at all tables when this feature is toggled on.

There are plenty of ways a poker player can get distracted, especially in a live poker room. A lot of noise coming from a nearby table, or the bar in the next room, could be enough to draw your attention away from the table. Eyeing up the waitress instead of the player across from you might get you a wink, but it won’t tell you that your opponent is holding the nuts against your second-best flush.

Even online poker games can carry distractions. Watching television while playing poker on your computer detracts completely from your ability to make reads on your opponents, assessing behavioural patterns for later in the game.

By keeping your eyes on your opponents, you can pick up a lot of vital information. In a live poker game, your focus should be on mental evaluations of each player. In online poker, make use of the note-taking tools to keep track of everyone else at the table. Within 30 minutes, you should be able to label each play as tight or loose, aggressive or passive. You should know who the calling stations are, who the maniacs are, who is playing only the best starting hands.

Multi-tabling is considered one of the best ways to boost your online poker bankroll, but even multi-tabling can be a distraction if you’re not practised enough to make the proper adjustments. Basically, if you play well at single tables, but find yourself faltering during multi-table sessions, perhaps they are creating too much of a distraction.

Poker table distractions won’t just affect your profit margin. They could be disastrous to your chip stack as well. Too often a player will become distracted enough that he or she doesn’t even realize he’s calling too much.

A good poker player knows the difference between a workable starting hand and one that should simply be folded out of the gate. But even a good poker player will sometimes move on with what would normally be a bad hand. It’s not always a bad decision – heck, Doyle Brunson is famous for it. But doing so too often can be quite costly. Before you know it, you will be looking up and wondering where all of your chips went!

One convincing way to put it is this: Have you ever scoured an online poker site for “fish”? You know, those incredibly loose, careless poker players who do wonders for your bankroll? Let yourself become distracted from your own chip stack and you’ll be the fish everyone else is hunting for!

Patience and discipline are the most common terms used to describe the emotional state of a successful poker player, but if you don’t toss in the ability to stay focused, your game will not have the consistency be categorized as a winning poker player. Pay attention, keep your eyes open and don’t let yourself become distracted at the poker table.

The following are three essential poker moves that accomplish just that. Well discuss the “Float” move, the “Check-Raise” and the “Post Oak Bluff”.

The Float

The purpose of the float move is to steal the pot, much like stealing blinds, but later in the hand for maximum profit. The float can be pulled off in one of two ways; before the flop or after the flop.

Using the float after the flop is more common as it is a straight-out bluff. You will float your way through a hand, limping or calling pre-flop, and maybe even again post-flop. Assuming no one is showing aggression, as soon as you like the pot size, post the big raise and take down the pot.

The pre-flop float is best when you have some kind of hand to work with, at least a solid draw scenario. It also requires good position on your opponents. You wouldn’t normally attempt to steal blinds when a lot of players stay in the pot, but when they are limping in, placing the large raise can steal a lot more than blinds. If an opponent is determined to move on to the flop, calling your raise, you still have something to fall back on.

The great thing about the float is that it requires minimal investment before the big raise. It will not be a big loss if you end up having to fold.

The Check-Raise

One of the most common and feared poker moves is the check-raise. The problem for your opponents is they never know when it’s coming, and if they suspect it, it can cause them to underbet the pot, or check a good hand when they should have been tossing chips.

The idea is simple enough. When you have a monster hand, check to your opponent after the flop. This represents you holding a draw hand that the board didn’t help. Your opponent will try to knock you out with a raise, since he doesn’t want you to keep drawing. You come back over the top with a hefty re-raise. He will either fold (the right move) or defend his investment by calling or raising back (the wrong move). Either way, you win.

The Post Oak Bluff

The post oak bluff is a very delayed bluff. All you have to do is place a low bet on the river, equal to about 25% of the pot. Your opponent sees this as a value bet; a calculated bet used to make your opponent stay in the pot so that you earn more chips at the showdown.

Of course in this case, you’re totally bluffing, which means your opponent has to be paying attention. If you’re up against a loose or novice poker player, he’s going to make the call every time. Your opponent has to be the type to recognize a value bet when he sees it.

First off Tony G invited mystery poker pro Isildur1 to compete in the event and according to Tony G, Isildur1 accepted! So we all should find out who the mystery poker pro is, unless he decides to hide his identity. Either way it will be exciting to see the poker pro competing at a live table.

Also competing in the event is Robert Williamson III, Andrew Feldman, Phil Laak and his girlfriend Jennifer Tilly, Roland de Wolfe, Neil Channing, Barny Boatman and Dusty Schmidt. A few young players will be competing as well. Justin Bonomo, Luke Schwartz and Isaac Haxton will be seated at the felt.

Other players scheduled to compete are: David “Viffer” Peat, Bodo Sbrzesny, James Mitchell, Simon “Schnibl0r” Münz, Roberto Romanello, Andy Greekfish, Laurence Grondin, Jake Cody, Sam Trickett, Josh Gould, Richard Wheatley, and Paul Simbler.

The cash game event is going to be very interesting as players get to enter the tournament to their own theme music. Many have already chosen what song they will be entering with and many are very interesting. Jennifer Tilly will be coming out to Man Eater by Hall and Oates while Roland de Wolfe will be coming out to Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf. Tony G has chosen Queen’s Bicycle Race while Schmidt has chosen Kanye West’s Flashing Lights.

Once the poker tournament begins it will really get interesting. Every two hours players who are seated will vote for one player at the table to be banished and replaced by someone else. Someone else will also replace a player once they have been busted until only one player remains. The event is going to be recorded and then televised in Europe later this year.

Bwin WSOP qualifiers are running daily from now until June 6th. The daily qualifiers will see players advancing to the Online Finals at Bwin Poker, which will take place each Sunday from march 28th to the 20th of June. The winner of each Online Finals event will earn a prize package worth $15,000 to the WSOP Main Event.

Bwin is hosting free rolls for the WSOP as well as qualifiers starting at just $2 plus $0.20. This allows players of any bank roll the opportunity to earn a seat to the WSOP. To participate in the WSOP qualifiers at Bwin, simply log on or sign up. Once signed up, go to the tournament lobby and click the scheduled tournaments tab. Then look for the WSOP Qualifiers list. Simply register and wait for your tournament to start. New players, make sure to have a look at our enhanced Bwin Poker bonus offer.

The prize package offered by Bwin is a $15,000 package which pays for the $10,000 buy-in of the WSOP Main event. The package also includes cash for flights and spending worth $2,000 and $3,000 for accommodations.

Bwin is offering players a simply opportunity to win a WSOP prize package. Players simply compete in WSOP free rolls or the daily qualifiers to begin working their way to winning a seat to the Main event of the 2010 WSOP. And who knows... it may be a Bwin player who takes down the event and wins the multi-million dollar first place prize!

You can learn a lot by playing against more advanced poker players, but they are not going to reveal any of their own poker strategies when they’re trying to scoop your chip stack. However, when you’re sitting around having a drink, you can get a lot of information out of them.

Highly experienced poker players can deduce their opponent’s hand, often predicting exactly what they are holding just by being especially observant. If you’ve ever watch Daniel Negreanu on GSN’s High Stakes Poker, you’ve probably wondered if he’s got some special sixth sense of ESP. Many times, he’ll put an opponent on a hand with dead-on accuracy. However, he is not psychic by any means.

If you find yourself playing against an opponent with acute skills like this, invite them to a drink at the bar after a session. Don’t outright ask them how they do it, because they won’t likely divulge too much information at this point. But if you can start a healthy conversation on poker, you may be able to turn the conversation to a particular hand to learn their techniques.

The information you’re looking for is where you made your mistake, and if you made a bad decision, what would the proper choice have been? If your hand was read, what gave it away? Pay close attention and be sure to apply the information to your game in all future sessions.

It may not be as easy as buying someone a drink to get them to open up. All poker players are different. Going back to our previous example, Daniel Negreanu is known to be one of the most open poker pros in the business, sharing his poker strategies and advice with anyone who shows a true desire to better their game.

Other poker players, such as Phil Ivey, are much more reserved and taciturn with their poker strategies. You’re not going to be able to learn much from a player like this, so as soon as you identify a tight-lipped player, move on.

What if you’re an online poker player? Getting into a steady conversation away from the virtual felt won’t be so easy. However, online poker rooms like Full tilt Poker offer a ‘Pro Chat’ session where players can converse directly with Full Tilt Pros, without actually competing against them. This is a great forum for learning from expert poker players.

If you’re willing to shell out a few bucks, joining a top rated poker training school is another great way to get inside the heads of real poker pros. There are a number of quality poker training schools on the internet today. For example, Negreanu runs PokerVT.com, offering a wealth of poker strategies including video tutorials of himself playing real poker games, against real people, and stopping at specific intervals to explain what he’s looking at, why he’s acting in a certain way, and how it works to his advantage.

So often, poker players keep count of only two numbers – the cash they sat down at the table with, and the cash they are leaving with. So you start with $20 and leave with $30; you made a profit, yay! But how long did it take? What game were you playing, and at what stakes? You may remember these answers tomorrow when you go into work and brag to your buddies, but then what?

Let’s say you played $1/$2 NL Holdem for one hour, ending with a $20 profit. You then play $5/$10 FL Holdem for 4 hours, winning $50. At a glance, $5/$10 FL Holdem seems pretty nice, but for the time you put in, the $1/$2 NL Holdem games actually paid off better.

Keeping track of statistics like these will help you pick the best game, at the most beneficial limit and stakes for your playing style. Essentially, it will pin-point all of your strong suits, as well as your faults. By identifying weaknesses in your game, you can work to improve them, or simply avoid situations where they might be exploited.

What You’ll Need

There’s no right or wrong way to keep track of your poker play; so long as you are recording the proper information in some way that you can go back and understand. You may wish to write down your stats on a simple, paper notepad, or a neatly organized Excel spreadsheet. You can even download poker tracking software and import your hand histories for an instant stat tracking.

What You’ll Track

The following is a list of information that should be documented after each poker game session.

• Date of session
• Time you Start playing
• Time you Stop playing
• Limit/Stakes played
• Bankroll at Start time
• Bankroll at Stop time

You may wish to track further data, depending on how you play poker. If you are a member of several online poker rooms, keep track of where you played each session. Perhaps you like a variety of poker games, not just than the standard Texas Holdem format. Recording the game played would be just as vital.

Reading the Results

Obviously it’s going to take some time for your records to reveal any consistently reliable information. Comparing all reports on a month by month basis is recommended as it will show a diverse range of data with more contrasting results. The greater the contrast, the more beneficial your stats can be to the evolution of your poker strategies.

You’ll also want to read a “legacy” report; a complete running total of your overall profits and losses from the day you started keeping records up to present.

Tracking your poker play will give you a clear, outward view of all strengths and weaknesses in your poker game. By avoiding your weaknesses and sticking to the stronger elements, you can easily increase your steady profit margin and minimize losses; the number-one goal of all poker strategies.

What we are talking about here is a unique - and admittedly somewhat weird - poker tournament. It will take place on the 4th of April at 21:00 (GMT +1) and is called the $10,000 Easter Egg Hunt. You can find the tournament in the lobby of bwin Poker by going the the scheduled tournaments. You can register for a buy in of $10+$1. So far so good and still nothing weird about it, right? Well, here it comes:

While you will fight for each and every final position that you can gain in a regular tournament, the pay out structure of the $10,000 Easter Egg Hunt tournament is somewhat different. As in all other poker tournaments the winner will of course get the highest amount of prize money ($1,950) - places 2 to 10 however will only receive $50. If you finish eleventh you will be rewarded with an Easter egg in the form of $1,240! This structure goes on until a finishing position of 161 which will still earn you $80. To make it short: Every tenth position will receive such an Easter egg while all the positions between will earn between $15 and $50.

You will in any case receive more than your buy-in when finishing in the top 161 but you should preferably try to end up at one of the mentioned places to get rewarded with an Easter egg. If you think you can win it all, by all means play for the win. If for you ending in the top 50 is already a big success, why not try going out at 41, 31, 21 ... At any rate this poker tournament is something very different. Give it a try (unless you are out there looking for real Easter eggs that is)!

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3 Essential Poker Moves

There are specific moves one can make in poker to bring in more chips on an otherwise average pot size. The first is the “Float” maneuver; little more than a delayed bluff, but highly effective in the right situation. Next is the infamous “Check-Raise”, goading an opponent into raising the pot only to raise him back (requires a strong hand). Last we cover the “Post Oak Bluff”, a fake value bet on the river to dupe a strategic poker player into thinking you have a monster hand.

Poker Table Distractions

If you want to be a serious poker player, you need the discipline of a pro. Never let yourself get distracted from what’s going on at the table. You should be paying close attention to your opponents in the beginning to get a good read on their game, and maintaining that focus throughout to exploit all weaknesses. Just paying attention to everyone else at the table isn’t enough either. If you’re call-folding too often, you may find yourself looking up and wondering what happened to all your chips!

5 Multi-Tabling Tips

The better poker player you become, the more bored you might find yourself playing a single table, especially if you’re playing a proper, tight poker game. Luckily, online poker allows you to participate in multi-table games, where you could be multiplying your profits and eliminating the annoying waiting period between eligible starting hands. In this section, we’ll give you 5 great tips for multi-tabling at your favorite online poker room.

Using TV Poker to Improve Your Game

If you like the game of poker, chances are, you enjoy watching the pros play in high stakes ring games and major poker events like the World Series of Poker. Televised poker games shouldn’t just be used for entertainment purposes. You can actually learn a lot by watching these guys and gals banter around the felt. In fact, the ability to see the hole cards of each player gives you an even better read on their moves, helping you to see what works and what doesn’t, and when and how to implement more advanced poker strategies.

Learn Your Tells, and Use Them!

Every poker player was a novice at some point. Whether you still consider yourself a novice or not, it’s time to take a close look at your past and present poker game. What poker tells are you giving off, and how are other skilled players reacting to them? If you can give off poker tells accidentally, surely you can implement a few good acting skills to relay poker tells on purpose, giving your opponents a false impression of your holdings. Come on in and have a seat - It’s reverse psychology 101!

Maintaining an awareness of the size of your bankroll will help you to determine what size blinds you can afford to play in order to get the most game out of your money. As a beginner it is important to start off with a more conservative bankroll plan while you develop your playing style.

It is recommended that novices never take more than 10% of their total poker bankroll to the table. If you are playing fixed limit, you should have at least one hundred times the big blind, and four hundred times the big blind for no limit games. So a player with a $1,000 bankroll should take no more than $100 to a single poker game, and start with $0.50/$1 Fixed Limit Hold'em or $0.10/$0.20 No Limit Hold'em. If you only have $50, just start with the lowest limits you can find, and stay there until you build a larger bankroll.

With experience you will learn how much you actually need to compensate for variance in the course of a game. If you play a tight game, your chip stack variance should be relatively low compared to a loose player who will lose larger chunks of their chip stack chasing a strong hand. If you play passively, you won't experience the wild up and down swings an aggressive player encounters.

Bankroll guidelines for a poker beginner strategy will keep the novice player from going broke while determining how much variance must be accounted for in different limits and levels of game play. From there, you can modify your bankroll strategy based on your own experience.

When you move up to a higher blind, go back to your beginner strategy temporarily while you acclimate to the new skill level. Being an alert poker player with proper bankroll management and awareness of your opponents habits will serve you well into the expert levels of poker.

Examining each opponent's playing style will prove tremendously helpful to spotting a bluff, in addition to better preparing you to pull off a successful bluff. In the course of play, try to identify certain characteristics that will enable you to categorize every player's behavior as tight or loose, and aggressive or passive.

The terms tight and loose refer to a player's likeliness to fold a weak hand. Tight players will often fold before the flop in early position unless they have a strong starting hand. Bluffs from tight players will almost always be issued from late position, usually with a mediocre hand that might stand half a chance at winning if the bluff fails. A hyper-tight poker player may not bluff at all. Loose players, on the other hand, will frequently stay in the pot with weak hole cards to see the flop, and possibly the turn and river, as well.

Aggressive and passive describe the betting patterns of poker players. People who often take the lead in opening and raising the bet are labeled aggressive, whereas players who frequently call or place value bets (when they don't fold) are considered passive. Aggressive players generally try to force the rest of the table to fold, as opposed to passive players who, when holding a very strong hand, will not bet more than they think another player is willing to call so as to keep them from folding.

If you spend time analyzing the playing style of each new opponent, you will begin to see a pattern emerge. Loose, aggressive players will bluff often, and though they may lose chips frequently, they make up for it with huge wins when they finally hit a strong hand because everyone thought they were bluffing. Watching such individuals closely may uncover a tell when they actually do have a strong hand. A tight, passive player will rarely ever raise, and will usually fold if they don't think their hand is strong enough to win, slowly accumulating a profit by playing the odds. It is easier to force such a player to fold, but watch out if they call your bluff.

Each player is going to be different, with varying levels of passivity / aggression and looseness / tightness, with some players being downright erratic and unpredictable. Always pay attention to how each hand is played, and especially be alert when a hand comes to a showdown. The showdown is where you learn what a player was willing to ride to the end.

Pot Odds

If you have read "Beginner Poker Strategies - Outs", and have practiced identifying your outs, you are ready to move on to determining pot and hand odds. First we will show you how to calculate the pot odds. The pot odds are simply the ratio between the value of the pot and the amount it will cost you to stay in the hand. You don't have to be a math whiz, just follow a simple formula.

Example: The pot holds $45, and your opponent bets $5 - bringing the actual value of the pot up to $50 - so you must pay $5 to see the next card and stand a chance of winning that $50. That puts your pot odds at 50:5, which can be simplified (for future use) by dividing both numbers by the number on the right (our cost). This gives us 10:1 pot odds. Keep in mind that the number on the right is divided by itself; it will always reduce to 1.

Hand Odds

Now let's calculate the odds that you will make your hand. There are a couple of approaches to calculating these odds. Since this is poker strategy for beginners, we will teach you the simplest formula for a beginner poker player to estimate the likeliness that s/he will hit an out on the next card.

The quick and easy way to arrive at the figure we want is to multiply the number of outs we have by 2, the result of which is the percentage rate for hitting an out on the next card. So if you have 10 outs, there is a 20 percent chance that the next card is going to improve your hand. To convert that number into a ratio, simply subtract 20 from 100 to get the percentage rate for failure to hit an out. The ratio in this case is 80:20 – failure:success – which now can be reduced the same way we reduced the pot odds. 80/20=4, which puts your hand odds at about 4:1.

For a more detailed look into the calclulation of hand odds (including the full formula) you may want to check out our Odds and Outs info page.

Let's review:

• Outs x 2 = % rate for success on next card
• 100 - % rate for success = % rate for failure
• %failure / %success = failure rate : 1 odds

Weighing the Odds

The entire point of calculating pot and hand odds is to determine whether or not it will be profitable in the long run to call the bet. In the example above, a $45 pot and a $5 bet from an opponent gives us 10:1 pot odds. If the pot odds are greater than the hand odds, you stand to make a statistical profit in the long run, even if you lose this particular hand.

The example 10-out hand had a 4:1 chance of hitting. Your hand odds tell us that you will hit your hand on the next card every 5 times you play this hand. Calling every 4:1 hand with 10:1 pot odds will – regardless of the outcome of this particular hand – inevitably earn you a return on your bet.

However, if the pot odds are 3:1 and your hand odds are 5:1, you will lose money over time if you consistently call the bet. The profit of one pot, in this example, is less than the value of the bets you will lose over time playing these odds. The pot is worth 3 times what it costs you to call, and over the course of six hands with the same odds, you will win the 3 from the pot once, but lose the 1 you paid to call five times – that's a loss of two calls.

Many strategy guides instruct players to calculate their hand odds on the flop based on the odds of an out hitting on either the turn or the river, instead of confining the odds to the next card. This is done by multiplying the outs by 4 instead of 2. This is great if you just want to know the probability of making your hand anytime after the flop. The fallacy in this is when you use these two-card odds to calculate your pot odds.

A hand with 5 outs will have 4:1 odds when you allow for two chances to hit, but it has 8:1 odds on the next card to land on the board. So if you are betting on a 4:1 hand after the flop, you would likely call an opponent's $10 bet to a $40 pot (5:1 pot odds on a $50 pot). However, if you don't hit on the turn, and your opponent bets another $10, bringing the total pot value to $70 ($60 from the previous betting round - including your $10 call), you are looking at 7:1 pot odds with an 8:1 hand. The odds indicate that you should now fold a hand you just paid $10 for. That is why it is recommended to base your hand odds calculations on the next card when comparing to the pot odds, whether it is the turn or the river.

“Outs” are all of the unseen cards that stand to improve your hand if they are dealt to the board. For instance, there are 13 cards of each suit in the deck. If both of your starting cards are hearts, and the flop produces two more hearts, there are 9 hearts – that's 9 outs – left somewhere in the 47 cards you haven't seen yet. That gives you a 9 in 47 chance that the turn will give you the flush.

When counting outs, it is recommended to start with the outs that will give you the nut hand – the best possible hand that can be formed. Do this by examining the flop for potential flushes or straights. A royal flush is the highest hand that can be achieved in Texas Hold'em, but has very few outs. If you are holding A(h)-10(h), and the board shows J(h), K(h) and J(c), there is one out for the royal flush – Q(h) – and 8 other outs for the non-consecutive flush. You also have 3 outs for an off-suit straight. That is a total of 12 outs that will beat three of kind if someone is holding one of the two remaining Jacks.

Of course, things can shift very quickly, and it important to consider the best hand your opponents can have, too. What if the turn reveals the K(c)? Anyone with two clubs in the hole is looking at the same number of flush outs that you are, maybe even a straight or royal flush.

What's worse, if you have an opponent holding one of the two hidden Jacks or Kings, you will have to beat a full house. In fact, it is possible that one of your opponents may hit four of a kind, if they haven't already. There is only one out that will allow you to beat anything better than a non-consecutive flush in this situation, that Queen of hearts lurking somewhere in the 46 cards you haven't seen. You would need to rely on your other poker beginner strategies - such as your position, your opponents' betting patterns and the size of your chip stack - to determine the best way to proceed.

Keeping a few simple rules in mind will help you get started. Note that an open-ended straight draw (four consecutively ranked cards such as 6-7-8-9) will have 8 outs; four outs at each end of the potential straight. A gut-shot straight (one rank missing from anywhere in the middle of the straight) will have 4 outs. If you have 3-of-a-kind at the flop, you have 7 outs; 6 for the full house, and 1 for the four-of-a-kind.

Counting the outs will become easier the more you exercise the ability. You can train yourself with online Texas Hold'em practice games, or simply by sitting down at the kitchen table with a deck of cards. With a little effort, any beginner poker player can elevate their Texas Hold'em strategy with a good understanding of outs.

Each position at the poker table has advantages and/or disadvantages. This is why the positions rotate after every hand. We will take a look at each position, and the pros and cons associated with them, in order to help you develop a more reliable beginner poker strategy.

Dealer or Button

The position of the dealer is indicated by a button in front of that player. This is considered the most advantageous position. After the flop, the player on the button will be the last to act, allowing that player to evaluate the behavior of every opponent before deciding how to proceed.

The button is the best position to bluff from, especially if it is obvious that your opponents don't have strong hands. A confident raise before the flop will weed out most of the weak hands. Post-flop you are in a position to see how your opponents bet. If everyone checks, it is probably safe to assume that no one has anything stronger than a low pair. A strong raise will usually result in the remaining players folding their cards.

Small Blind

The player to the left of the dealer is called the small blind, and must post a predetermined bet before the cards are dealt; generally half the value of the big blind. Before the flop, the small blind will be the second to last to act. After the flop, the small blind is the first to act (assuming they haven't folded), putting you at a disadvantage. A check or small raise will indicate to your opponents that you have a weak to mediocre hand. If you don't have a very strong starting hand as the small blind, it is generally in your best interest to conserve your chips and fold.

Big Blind

The big blind is posted before the deal by the player to the left of the small blind. The big blind is the last to act before the flop. However, after the flop, the big blind is the second to act (first if the small blind has folded). This is not an ideal position to be in, but it is possible to limp your way to a full house or a straight if your opponents have weak cards.

If you have a mediocre starting hand from the big blind, and no one raises before the flop, you might as well 'check'. If the flop doesn't connect strongly to your hand, you probably shouldn't call a raise. However, if you can check your way to the turn, go ahead - it isn't costing you anything. Same for the river - if you can just check your way along, you could end up with a decent hand. But keep in mind that your opponents' hands could be improving with every card that hits the board, too.

Under the Gun

This is the player to the left of the big blind, and is the first player to take action in the hand. This is considered the worst pre-flop position, but improves a little after the flop if the blinds haven't folded. However, this is still an early position, and only the strongest starting cards stand a chance from this location. If you have weak hole cards in this position, it is recommended that you save your chips and fold before the flop.

Your position at the poker table has a significant impact on how strong your starting cards need to be. Players in early position - the first players to act - will need to have stronger hole cards, as it is more difficult to judge the strength of the cards held by your opponents. When you are in late position - one of the last players to act - it is easier to discern how much faith the early players have in their hole cards. Incorporating position into your poker strategy will have a profound effect on your results at the felt.

Position

Player position is a basic, but very important element in poker play. In some situations, your position can turn a mediocre hand into a solid betting hand. Late position is easily the best seat to be in, particularly on the button.

As a late position bettor, you are privileged to extensive knowledge, including the confidence of all previous bettors. When early and middle position bettors choose to fold, or limp in, you can raise with the healthy assurance that they will fold. If an opponent calls the blind early, they rarely have a strong enough hand to call a follow-up raise. Late position is the easiest place in which to steal blinds.

From early position, the rule is simple enough, bearing in mind that you soon have to face a late position bettor. Either fold your hand, or raise the big blind. If you’re not willing to call a possible raise from your opponents in the late positions, don’t bother betting at all.

Outs

Outs are a poker player’s best friend, and the more you have, the better. An Out is any card that will improve your hand. For instance, a 6 would complete a Straight in a hand of 3-4-5-7. There are four 6’s in a deck, so this hand would have four Outs. Let’s say this hand also contains four Spades. There are nine Spades left in the deck, giving you nine more Outs to a Flush. Every Out you have raises your chances of getting one of the cards you need, thereby raising your chances of winning the hand.

Odds

Pot Odds are based directly on the number of Outs you have to a better hand. By calculating your Pot Odds, you can determine exactly how much you can safely risk wagering. For example, should your hand have 8 Outs (an Outside Straight for instance) after the Flop. That leaves 47 unseen cards, 8 of which can help you. We calculate that to find there’s a 17% chance the next card will be one of your Outs. The proper bet would be 17% of the current pot size. If the pot has $100 in it, you would bet or raise $17. This is called a “value bet”.

You can try to make some odds calculations yourself using the Max Poker Bonus Odds Calculator, or you can even install a tool such as Poker Crusher to help you make proper decisions.

Be Alert

Awareness is a vital skill in poker. You should always pay close attention to how other players are betting, and how they have acted in previous hands. By observing your opponents, you can get a strong read on their behaviour. If a player always bets or raises with a marginal hand, then suddenly chooses to check, they may be attempting the classic “check/raise”; i.e. they have a monster hand. Look for any kind of patterns you can associate with a player and soon enough you’ll be able to predict their hands and upcoming manoeuvres.

Bankroll

As a novice poker player, proper maintenance of your bankroll (bankroll management) is crucial. Knowing what size stakes to play, as well as how much to bring to the table, will help your bankroll to last much longer, especially if you’re utilizing the above beginner poker strategies as well. There are two major bankroll rules to follow.

First, never take more than 10% of your bankroll to the table. This ensures you’ll have at least ten fair shots at a winning session.

The second rule applies to what stakes to play, according to how much 10% of your bankroll is. If you enter a Fixed Limit game, you should have at least 100x the Big Blind bet. For a Pot Limit or No Limit game, bring at least 400x the Big Blind bet.

Titan Poker doesn't like to rest on prior achievements and today, March 10th, announced a new version of their online poker software together with a complete overhaul of their presentation, even including their long time logo! As a designer my heart jumped with joy when I heard they finally got rid of their old logo and replaced it with a somewhat more modern and slick logo... but I realise that most of you couldn't care less about that aspect. It is just a pet peeve of mine. And I apologise for digressing.

Back to the more important changes: The new Titan Poker software, version 9.6, offers an array of new options, features and functionalities including a new game, RAZZ, a variation of Stud poker. But not only PC users - who can install the client - will benefit. Mac Users (and those PC users who simply prefer not to install some software on their machines) can take advantage of an updated and improved Flash version.

Titan Poker also streamlined their new website (and did I mention the new logo?) while adding five new languages to it and their software. For you personally the addition of Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese and Romanian might not seem that important (let's face it, you are reading an English blog) but it means that a lot of new potential players are being targeted by Titan Poker. More players equal more traffic, more traffic equals more and better promotions and tournaments, and all that equals more money to be won.

Additionally Titan Poker developed the so called Titan Poker Academy. The Titan Poker Academy is a poker strategy guide that is aimed at both beginner and veteran poker players. You can learn a lot about poker odds calculations, money management, positioning, bluffing and more. For these purposes you may also want to check out our very own blog in the poker strategies section.

If all that doesn't excite you, we don't know what will. Wait, maybe the Titan Poker World Challenge 2010, where you can earn your $13,000 prize package for the 2010 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas? Or the guaranteed $16,000,000 in monthly prizes on Titan Poker? The Sit & Go Jackpots of up to $100,000?

Or maybe our special Titan Poker Bonus of 150% (instead of the regular 100%) up to $500 - oh, and the fact that we offer the popular Titan Poker Calculator for free?

Well, pick your perfect reason. If you are an existing Titan Poker member simply update your client and get playing. And if you indeed still haven't signed up at Titan Poker yet, make sure to use our special offer.

If you don't have a Titan Poker account yet, be sure to read our Titan Poker Review after you're done reading this blog post, as we have some additional offers waiting for you.

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• $25,000 Sit & Go Leagues - March is the time to start playing in a Sit & Go league at Titan Poker. There will be $25,000 in prizes given out between March 1st and March 31st. Check out Titan Poker now for more details on payouts and buy-ins for these Sit & Go leagues, but be sure to have a look at our Titan Poker Bonus first, before you'll end up with their default bonus!
• Barcelona €500,000 Guaranteed Satellites - This great tournament, the €500,000 Guaranteed EC Poker Tour, is coming right up, so don't miss the satellites to earn a seat to this huge poker tournament at Titan Poker. The tournament is going to be held from March 19th to March 21st in Barcelona. If you don't qualify via a satellite you can always buy-in to the tournament directly. The buy in for this massive poker event is €2,750.
• Irish Open Satellites - For those of you that don't know, one of the premier European Poker tournaments is taking place this coming April. Titan Poker is running satellites to win an entry into this huge tournament. The buy-ins for the satellites at Titan Poker are relatively small, so why not give it a try and earn your spot at the 2010 Irish Open.

As you can see, these are three great promotions that really set Titan Poker apart from many of the other online poker rooms. Stay tuned for more articles on Max Poker Bonus about the great promotions at Titan Poker.

Titan Poker was recently on the big screen for the movie. The movie was written by Luc Besson and was about a CIA who seeks his big break as becoming a mega agent and getting involved with some major action.

The character is played by John Travolta. In the movie, Titan Poker is the location of the characters playing an online poker game. This is the first time Titan Poker has been involved with a Hollywood movie.

Titan Poker is a safe and secure location to play all your favorite card games. They offer several tournaments a day including weekly big time tournaments. Titan Poker is sponsoring an event in Barcelona during mid March that features a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool.

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Some of the top poker players in the country play at Titan Poker, including Fabien Carliez, Jan Bjoersland and Jose Manuel Gomez Rebenaque.

Titan Poker has been a leader in online gaming since for years. They offer a quick download to benefit those players that are ready to play instantly.

One aspect that Titan Poker brings to the table, which many of the other poker places do not is: they offer advice and "how to" on all their wonderful card games. It is always nice for those that are just getting started within poker rooms a little re-fresher course on how to play. Be sure to check out all the games, including the fantastic looking lobby.

Join the gamers at Titan Poker today. Anytime an online poker room gets their big break within the Hollywood realm, they continue to boom from there. Don't miss the opportunity to get involved with many of Titan Poker's wonderful features, including the Titan Poker deposit bonus of 150% up to $500.

There are four VIP levels, they are Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum and the more you play the more your VIP level will increase, plus you can earn rewards on the way.

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There are three parts to Bet365 Poker's the new VIP plan and we're describing them in the following part of this blog post.

Play and Earn

Players earn Merit Points (MP’s) at real money cash games and tournaments. You will earn MP’s automatically and they will start to accrue as soon as you start playing games for real money at Bet365 Poker.

You can see how many Merit Points you have earned under ‘My Account’ in the Bet365 lobby. You can also view your points in real time when you're playing at cash tables, the amount you’ve earned is displayed right above your nickname.

You will earn 15 Merit Points for every $1 paid in tournament fees.

Improve Your VIP Status

When you go up in VIP status, not only will you be able to enjoy the new perks at your new status, but you will also be rewarded on your achievement. VIP levels are updated once a month and are based on how many Merit Points you have earned in the previous month.

Bronze VIP Status - 1MP

• You need only 1 Merit Point to become a Bronze VIP
• Monthly $500 dollar Freeroll
• Bronze Cash Rewards

Silver VIP Status - Need 1,000 MPs

• Monthly $500 dollar Freeroll
• Monthly $1,500 dollar Freeroll
• Bronze and Silver Cash Rewards

Gold VIP Status - Need 10,000 MPs

• Monthly $500 dollar Freeroll
• Monthly $1,500 dollar Freeroll
• Bronze, Silver and Gold Cash Rewards

Platinum VIP Status - Need 25,000 MPs

• Monthly $500 dollar Freeroll
• Monthly $1,500 dollar Freeroll
• Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Cash Rewards

Get Your Rewards

After you’ve done the work and earned the points it’s time to reap your reward. There are cash poker bonuses, tournament buy-ins and other reward options. As mentioned above the more MP’s you earn the better the rewards become.

To claim your reward visit the ‘Get Your Rewards’ page and find the reward you’ve earned and click ‘Claim Now’. Make sure you have the amount of points necessary for the reward or it won’t be awarded.

Recently players at Party Poker were trying to qualify online for the 2010 Aussie Millions Main Event at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia and 43 players made it.

Among the online qualifiers were Tyron Krost, 23 from Bondi, Sydney, took 1st place and AUD $2,000,000 and Frederik Jensen, 27 from Copenhagen, finished in 2nd for AUD $1,100,100.

The two online qualifiers made it through to the final table after outlasting 749 other players and then had to outplay pro’s Sorel Mizzi and Annette Obrestrad among others to take 1st and 2nd place.

Tyron Krost is currently working in his family owned furniture business in Sydney but is now considering making poker his full time occupation.

After winning Kroft said: “This is totally unbelievable - it is beyond my wildest dreams. If it is a dream, I don’t want to wake up! In total I spent $700 trying to qualify for a package and I have managed to turn that into AUD $2,000,000! I got some really good spots on the final table. When I needed a hand I seemed to get it.”

“It just hasn’t sunk in at all how much money I have just won. I have no idea what I am going to with it. I cashed at the World Series in 2008 but nothing like this.”

It wasn’t a dream though and many poker pro’s can attest to that. Krost took out Gus Hansen on his way to 1st place and apparently it was time for a little payback. Back in the 2008 WSOP Main Event Gus Hansen had knocked him out.

How to Qualify

The Cash Ladder is the newest promotion at Bet365 Poker and this promotion isn’t automatic. If you want to participate you will have to opt in. All you need to do is click the opt in logo at Bet365 Poker, and put in your username, password and email to join in the fun.

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Climbing the Ladder

After you’ve opted in you will need to find your starting position on the Cash Ladder and then start to climb. There are different starting points for each VIP level so all players will have the opportunity to earn a bonus.

Points for climbing the Cash Ladder are earned by participating in raked hands or in real money tournaments. You will receive 18 points for every $1 dollars paid in rake or in tournament fees.

Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum players will all have a different Cash Ladder to climb and if you climb your way to the top of the Platinum Cash Ladder before the promotion ends then you can repeat the Platinum ladder as many times as you wish.

If you are a Diamond VIP player then you will start on the Platinum cash level. You can view the different Cash Ladders at the Cash Ladder promotion page on the Bet365 Poker website.

Cash Ladder Bonus Details

You have until 12am on March 2nd to opt in for your Cash Ladder Bonus and then all payments will be credited to all players by 12am on March 4th.

Your bonus amount will increase with every rung you complete. The different VIP levels have higher starting bonuses and if you can move up in VIP status you will earn better bonuses.

If you have a current bonus such as a Bet365 Poker Deposit Bonus or a Reload Bonus you will be ineligible for the Cash Ladder Bonus until your previous bonus is cleared.

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What is a Final Table Sit 'n Go?

Final Table Sit 'n Gos will only be found for No Limit Texas Hold’em. These new tourneys allow you to skip through the hours of playing and just start at the final table.

If you’ve ever played a final table you know what to do, this new game is going to make things more exciting because when you play in a regular Sit 'n Go you have time to get to know how your other players play the game while the stakes are still small.

Now that you’re not going to have that time to figure out a players style it’s going to mean larger risks and more surprises in the game.

How to Play Bwin's Final Table Sit 'n Gos

There are going to be different Final Table Sit 'n Gos offered. There will be shorthanded and regular games plus turbos. The shorthanded games will have a limit of 5 players and the regular game will have 10 players.

Each player will start out with 400,000 in chips and blinds will increase every three minutes in a turbo and every fifteen in a regular game. Blinds will start out at 5,000/10,000 plus a 1,000 ante, and the top three players will win in a regular tourney and the top two players will win in a shorthanded game.

If you’ve ever played Video Poker then you know what I’m talking about. It’s typically called doubling up, you win a hand and you can double it up, or just take the original winnings.

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How Party Poker's Hit or Run Works

Each player that collects 20 PartyPoints will receive a $1 dollar bet on their special Hit or Run Heads Up Game. If you win Party Poker will double your money. You can then ‘Hit’ and get another hand for another chance to double your money or ‘Run’ and just take your money and go.

If you lose at any point you will lose it all. For example you start with $1, double up to $2, again to $4, then on to $8, etc until you decide to run, double up to the max reward or lose it all.

In order to earn Frequent Player Points at Party Poker you must play at real money tables. If you earn over 20 FPPs you will get another chance at the game within an hour.

Hit or Run Rules

You can only successfully Hit 10 times per game, making each game worth $1,024 dollars if you make it all the way through without losing. If you have enough FPPs you can play up to 10 times a day.

If luck is on your side and you win the max all ten times that would be a $10,240 dollar payday. You can play every day since February 1st up to February 28th.

This is a great poker tournament to play in an exclusive casino that usually only open it’s doors to a select few people. Only those among the rich and famous are typically permitted through the doors but this tournament will have the doors open wide.

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Les A Open Prize Packages

If you are one of the lucky that wins a package worth £3,500 you will be on your way. Each package includes the £2,000 + £200 buy-in for the Main Event. Three nights accommodations at the Hilton Park Lane Hotel in London.

Plus £470 for travel expenses and spending money and a year’s free membership at the Les Ambassadeurs Club, worth £1,000.

How to Win

To win your seat at the Les A London Open Main Event you will need to play in one of Bet365’s Super Satellites every Thursday at 20:00 GMT. The buy-in for the Super Satellites is £175 + £14 to enter.

If you would rather not open your wallet that wide, Bet365 Poker is also going to be running satellites that will award seats into the Super Satellites. For dates and times, look at the Sit 'n Go lobby at Bet365 Poker.

Please have a look at our Bet365 Poker Bonus page if you haven't played at Bet365 Poker before.

The promotion is going to run until the end of February and during this time Titan Poker is going to award players with a total of $250,000 dollars in both cash prizes and tokens to their Monthly Million GTD tourney in March. Prizes will be awarded to the players that finish on top of the leaderboards.

There is also going to be a second chance for the players that didn’t quite make the cut. The ‘Bubble Players’ satellite is also going to award players with a token to the Monthly Million in March.

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How to Win

The three leaderboards will be ranking players according to their level of participation in Double Up Sit 'n Go tournaments. The way to climb up the leaderboards is by participating in qualifying tournaments.

Every tournament you play you will receive points for entering and if you win you will receive a ‘Double Up’, more points. The points you receive will vary depending on the buy-in for the tournament.

There is a slight catch the points that you earn are only for the Double Up promotion and can’t be used to attain a higher VIP status or at the Club Titan Store.

To get the full schedule for the month of February, take a look at the Double Up promotion page on the Titan Poker website by following one of the links on Max Poker Bonus.

First, Bet365 Poker has revamped the tables. A sleek new look accompanies the newly added ability to re-size the tables to suit your own preferences. A table tiling option now allows players to automatically re-size up to four tables to fit perfectly on the screen with a single click, providing the ideal, multi-tabling experience. Players at Bet365 will find they can also choose any seat at the table, and the other players will be re-situated as needed.

Also numbered among the new features at Bet365 Poker is the addition of Razz. Razz is an established poker form that has been growing in popularity. A variation on seven card stud, in Razz it is the lowest hand that wins.

There have been several other improvements as well. In answer to a request from their players, Bet365 Poker has improved the betting slider functionality, making it much easier to bet a larger percentage of the pot in online poker games at Bet365. The speed of play has been increased, too, in an ongoing effort to streamline game-play at Bet365 Poker. Players can expect faster load times and improved game speed.

Bet365 has made updates to the favorites section, as well. Players will be able to access their preferred cash tables and tournaments much more easily. Bet365 Poker has also added a new calendar function for convenient scheduling.

One last expansion of the Bet365 Poker software is an observer chat. Now, players can chat and show their support as they rail a friend or poker buddy's online poker game.

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To get the enhanced software, those who already have the existing Bet365 software simply need to open the Bet365 lobby to trigger the automatic update. Those who are new to Bet365 can download the updated software to their PC to start enjoying the enhanced functionality of Bet365. New players are eligible for Max Poker Bonus' special Bet365 Poker Bonus – a 100% match on the first deposit, up to $500.

The World Challenge tournaments are held once a week, and players will compete with others in their country or region for one of 200 seats in the final round tournaments. Twelve regions are represented in the World Challenge. The buy-in for each of the round one tournaments is €5 + €0.50, and €10 + €1 for the tournaments in round two. Competitors can follow their progress, and the progress of others, on Titan Poker's World Challenge Leader Boards.

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The top 200 qualifiers will go on to the three-week final round of tournaments. Starting May 16, eight €15 + €1.50 buy-in tournaments will determine the 5 winners of the $13,000 WSOP Main Event Package.

The 41st Annual World Series of Poker will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Rio Hotel & Casino on West Flamingo Road. The No-Limit Hold'em Championship will be a thirteen day event, beginning July 5, 2010 at 12 pm. The final table is scheduled for November, but the exact date is yet to be determined.

Titan Poker is the leading poker room on the iPoker network, licensed and regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and is owned and operated by Imperial E-Club Limited. Powered by Playtech, the Titan Poker software can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

The buy-in for the event is $10,000 dollars but Party Poker is awarding winning players with LA Poker Classic packages valued at $14,000 dollars for the Main Event.

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How to Win a LA Poker Classic Main Event Ticket

You can win your seat in the LA Poker Classic by playing in daily freerolls and qualifiers at Party Poker. The daily freerolls for the event will start running on February 7th.

Plus there is going to be a $1 million dollar prize pool that is going to be paid if one of their package winners takes the LA Poker Classic Main Event title.

The champion will be taking home an extra $500,000 dollars on top of their tournament winnings and the other package winners will split up the remaining $500,000 dollars equally.

LA Poker Classic Prize Package

Each LA Poker Classic prize package includes your $10,000 dollar buyin into the Main Event. Seven night accommodations and $2,500 dollars for airfare and spending money.

If you make it to the final table at the Main Event then your hotel stay will be extended courtesy of Party Poker.

You could be one of them if you’re a member of Titan Poker. Titan Poker is showing their players the way to the Irish Open. Players can start qualifying now for Irish Open Prize Packages for as little as 40 cents.

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Irish Open Prize Packages

Your Irish Open Prize Package from Titan Poker is valued at $7,200 dollars or €4,800 and includes your €3,200 + €300 buy-in for the Main Event. Plus €350 for five nights accommodations and breakfasts at the Burlington Hotel from March 31st through April 6th.

It also includes €100 for the Irish Open Party held in the Lounge and €50 for the handling fee. Finally there is an additional €800 for airfare and a little spending money.

How to Win

You can qualify for your prize package by playing in satellites and daily qualifying tournaments at Titan Poker. You can enter into ‘1 Hand Stage 3 Sit & Go’ satellites for only $0.33 + $0.03 to work you way into Irish Open.

You can also win by playing in one the Super Satellites every Sunday night at 7:30GMT. They cost $250 + $18 dollars to buy into. If this is too high you can play in satellites for just $2 + $0.20.

Irish Open Qualification Rules

Your prize is non-refundable, can’t be transferred and can’t be converted into cash. You must be at least 18 years of age to qualify and you are responsible for your own travel documents, such as a passport, etc.

There are still more rules the above is just a brief overview of the rules, for the rest of the rules go to Titan Poker. When you visit Titan Poker using one of our links, you will get an enhanced deposit bonus plus a free copy of the Titan Calculator.

The race is on for Points at Party Poker as players log on and play so they can get to Las Vegas, Nevada. The newest points race to hit Party Poker is the Palladium Lounge Poker Points Race.

Party Poker is going to be giving away a total of $155,000 dollars in prizes plus there are also Premier League Poker Playoff prize packages to be won that are valued at $9,000 dollars.

Premier League Playoff Prize Packages

Each Party Poker Premier League Poker package is worth $9,000 dollars and includes the $6,250 buy-in at the televised qualifier where the top player will win a $100,000 entry into the Party Poker Premier League Poker final.

You will also get seven days accommodations from the 7th to the 14th of February at a luxurious hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada plus $2,000 dollars for airfare and spending money.

Party Poker is also going to be awarding only one player with a Team Party contract valued at $100,000 dollars. This means one lucky player will get to be a sponsored play at Party Poker for an entire year.

How to Win

Just play poker keeping in mind that different stakes award a different amount of points, then If you are on of the 250 top Party Points earners between December 7th and January 3rd you will be getting a share of the $155,000 dollars. If you finish first you will get one of the Premier League Poker packages.

If you don’t finish in the top 250 don’t worry because the top 600 finishers will get to play in the Premier League Poker Playoff Freeroll on January 10th. At the freeroll you can win cash and the top two players will win a prize package.

In Las Vegas you could find yourself up against 11 world famous poker pros all competing for the largest share of the $1.5 million dollar prize pool. This isn’t all if you win the playoff you will be winning a whole lot more.

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Premier League Poker - How To Win

The cheapest way to win is by playing in the Premier League Poker Sub Qualifer Speed for $5.20 + $0.80 where one in 10 players will win a seat in the next Satellite Qualifer.

There is also the Premier League Poker Sub Qualifer Rebuy for $2 dollars and there will be one entry into the next satellite qualifier for every $52 dollars in the prize pool awarded.

Satellite Qualifiers will cost you $48.00 + $4 dollars to directly buy into if you don’t win your seat. They run every day at 3:20pm EST and award one player with a seat into the Super Satellite.

Super Satellites are definitely only for those with a large bankroll with a $450 + $30 dollar buy-in and are offered every Sunday at 3:20pm EST. One out of 20 players will win the prize package.

Premier League Poker - What You'll Win

Your Party Poker Premier League Poker Package is worth $9,000 dollars and includes your $6,250 buy-in at the televised qualifier where the top player will win a $100,000 entry into the Party Poker Premier League Poker final.

You will also get seven days accommodations from the 7th to the 14th of February at a luxurious hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada plus $2,000 dollars for airfare and spending money.

Party Poker is also going to award one lucky Premier League Playoff qualifier with a Team Party contract valued at $100,000 dollars. This means one lucky player will get to be a sponsored player by Party Poker for an entire year.

The EC Poker Tour is going to be in Barcelona on March 19th through March 21st in the Catalan capital at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Winning Your ECPT Seat

Satellites are running now at different times and the buy-ins vary so no matter what your budget is you can still try for a seat at Barcelona. If you start playing in the less expensive satellites be prepared to win a few before you actually win your seat.

If you can afford it there are going to be ECPT Super Satellites every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday at Titan Poker. If the price is too high then you can always play in regular satellites that award seats in the Super Satellite.

The Super Satellites not only award players with prize packages but each Super Satellite also has a €500,000 guaranteed prize pool.

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ECPT Prize Package

Titan Poker is offering players a EC Poker Tour prize package valued at €4,800 and each package includes your €2,500 + €250 buy-in for the Main Event plus €1,200 for four nights accommodations at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Barcelona from March 18th through the 22nd.

Additionally all of the rooms at the Ritz are ‘double occupancy’ so you can bring a friend and both of you will get to enjoy a complimentary breakfast every morning. There is also €100 for the players Welcome Party and dinner, €50 for registration fees and the rest is for airfare and spending money.

EC Poker Tour Promotion Rules

This is just a peak at all the rules involved - there are more but most are pretty standard. For a look at all of the rules go to the EC Poker Tour Promotion page.

Your prize package is yours and yours only once you win it. It can’t be transferred or converted into cash or refunded. You can only win one seat at any Super Satellite and only one prize package.

So if you win an entry into a Super Satellite you will have to play in it before you can win another chance. Once you win your package you will need to be prepared to travel.

Each winner will need to have a valid passport and any other documents needed to get to Barcelona.

For Max Poker Bonus this year ends with a lot of promise for the future. We want to thank you all for the continued trust in our project and the support that has helped us improve our site steadily. We are in the fortunate position of having developed a high quality product that enjoys great renown in the poker industry. This effort from our side has in turn translated into excellent offers by our partners for you, our customers (like our special poker bonus offers or the free Titan Poker Calculator to name a few).

We would also like to thank our partners at all our featured poker rooms. We appreciate their effort and their time spent. You guys really earned your Christmas holidays. Actually we all did.

While this year ends on a high note for Max Poker Bonus we also want to make it clear that this is no reason for us to slow down or be content with our achievements. We still have things on our to-do list and have also already come up with new ideas that are being developed and worked on - and some are actually already being implemented as we speak.

If you are a frequently returning visitor (be it to check for new poker bonus offers, to use our Poker Odds Calculator or to read our poker blog) you will have noticed some enhancements to the site over the past few weeks including a dramatic performance increase thanks to Giorgio's magic fingers. He has re-done a lot of our code and vastly improved the speed of the site.

We hope you will find lots of nice Christmas presents under your tree (let's hope you have been a good boy or girl and Santa brings you gifts). And if you feel like giving yourself a present, feel free to participate in the various Christmas promotions.

Everyone at Max Poker Bonus wishes you a merry Christmas and lovely holidays!

Since a lot of us have obligations on Christmas day that don’t include sitting back in front of our pc and playing poker they are holding this tournament a few days before so we can still enjoy a great tourney without getting on the naughty list.

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When is BestPoker's Christmas Tourney?

The Christmas Tournament at BestPoker is going to be held on December 22nd at 7:10 CET. The buy-in is quite reasonable at only $10 + $1 dollar and this tourney is guaranteed to payout at least $60,000 dollars in both tickets and cash.

This tournament has a maximum of only 4,000 players so BestPoker is going to be adding at least $20,000 dollars to the prize pool and all players that finish in the money will get a ticket as well their cash prize.

The exact total value of all the tickets BestPoker offers is $19,980 dollars.

In order to participate you will need to look at your emails or web messages from Bet365 Poker. In the messages there is going to be a target and if you make your target you will get a bonus.

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Unlimited Christmas Bonus Details

Then you just accumulate real money points by playing to reach your target and you get a bonus. If you earn more then your target you will get a bigger bonus, it’s that easy.

If at any time you want to see how much cash you’ve earned you can look at the ‘Total Banked Page’. Just put in your poker nickname and click enter and you will see how big your poker bonus is.

Getting Your Bonus

If you hit your target on any day before December 24th you will be awarded $1 dollar for every 200 Christmas Points you accumulated on that day. You will receive 24 points for every $1 dollar that is paid in either rake or tournament fees.

Every player that wants to participate in this Christmas promotion has to ‘Opt In’ by December 28th at 23:59 GMT or else you won’t get your bonus. All bonuses will be credited to players accounts in one payment on December 30th.

You can get in on the promotion whether you play cash games, tournaments or sit 'n go’s.

This promotion is for all players it doesn’t matter if you’re new or an existing player there is still something to be won.

New & Existing Players Benefit at Titan Poker

To win you can play in $2010 qualifiers every night at 8:10 GMT. The buy-in for the qualifiers is $2 + $0.10 and the top 10 players in each qualifier will move on to the $2010 Monthly Freeroll.

New players at Titan Poker that make a deposit can get four entries into freeroll tournaments that award $2010 dollars in prizes each. Besides this, you will of course also get the incredible Titan Poker Bonus of 150% up to $500 and a free Titan Poker Calculator!

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There is even a bonus for Side Game players, you can get $2010 dollars if you win the races for Lotto Madness and Slots.

What is the International Team Poker League?

The International Team Poker League (ITPL) 2009 is a combination of several land based casino events as well as online qualifiers that is going to end in a Reality TV Poker Tournament.

The ITPL is going to take place over 10 months and will end in the Las Vegas Final where players from all over the world will compete for the title and lots of cash.

There are going to be cash prizes in all of the regular events during the league season and not just for the players that make the final table.

Players competing in these events have a goal and that goal isn’t just too win money but to get through to the Draft Playoff and beyond to reach the ITPL Final.

The ITPL Final is going to take place in May 2010 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino over an 18 days period.

Becoming Part of the League at Titan Poker

Titan Poker is offering a Super Satellite promotion that awards seats into the first land based event taking place in Las Vegas from January 29th through February 1st.

The first Super Satellite was played on November 7th but you have from now until January 6th to win one.

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ITPL Super Satellites at Titan Poker

• Super Satellite Freezeouts run every Saturday at 9:00pm GMT and cost $250 + $18 dollars to buy-in.
• Regular Super Satellites run every Wednesday night at 7:15pm GMT and cost $50 + $5 to buy-in.

International Team Poker League Prize Packages

Your prize package at Titan Poker is worth $6,000 dollars and includes your $3,200 + $300 dollar buy-in plus $1,800 dollars for airfare and spending. Also included are four night accommodations at the Hard Rock Casino and Hotel from January 29th though February 2nd and $100 dollars for Handling fees.

Irish Open Prize Package

The Irish Open Prize Package which you can win at Bet365 Poker is worth $7,200 dollars and includes everything you need and more to make this one of the greatest experiences ever.

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Each prize package includes the €3,200 + €300 buy-in for the Main Event plus €350 for six nights accommodations at the Burlington Hotel from March 31st through April 6th.

There is also €800 to be used to for other travel expenses and spending. You will also get to go to the Irish Open Party, so you can rub elbows with the other players in the event.

How to Qualify for the 2010 Irish Open

In order to get a prize package at Bet365 Poker you need to play in one of the $250 + $18 Super Satellites every Sunday at 7:30GMT. If the buy-in is too steep you can play in less expensive qualifiers to win a seat into the Super Satellite.

For the complete list of satellites including time, buy-in and the prize just login and go to the Bet365 Lobby and click Sit & Go’s. You can also find the Irish Open Satellites in our live tournament schedule.

The Full House of Poker Promotions is actually three different promotions.

The promotions that make up the Full House are the $50,000 dollar Cash Game Race, Full House Jackpot Hunter and $1 million dollar Multi Table Tournament Jackpots.

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$50,000 Cash Game Race

The $50,000 dollar Cash Game Race is made for everyone no matter what game you like to play and is for Party Poker Bronze, Silver and Gold players. The race starts on December 3rd and ends on December 23rd.

The way to win is by earning PartyPoints while playing cash (ring) games to climb the $50,000 Cash Game Race leader board. PartyPoints that you earn while playing tournaments doesn’t count for the promotion.

The higher you are on the leader board equals the more cash you will win at the end of the month. You will receive your cash within 48 hours of the promotion ending.

Full House Jackpot Hunter

The Jackpot Hunter starts on December 1st and runs to December 31st at Party Poker. You could win one of the jackpots totaling in $160,000 dollars by winning five single table tournaments in a row.

The jackpots are $50,000 dollars, $20,000 dollars and $10,000 dollars.

$50,000 Gold Jackpot

• Only one jackpot available to be won by playing in $55 dollar and above buy-in tournaments.

$20,000 Silver Jackpot

• There are three jackpots available to win by playing in $12 to $54 dollar buy-in tournaments.

$10,000 Bronze Jackpot

• There are five jackpots this size to win by playing in $3 to $11 dollar buy-in tournaments.

$1 Million Multi Table Tournament Jackpots

This promotions starts on December 1st and runs to December 31st. In order to participate all you need to do is use your PartyPoints to buy-in to tournaments that run Monday through Saturday at Party Poker.

Each tournament will have $5,000 dollars and only costs 20 PartyPoints to enter.

The top 200 players in each $5,000 dollar tournament will be entered into the $250,000 dollar Grand Final on Sunday, January 3rd. If you want to directly buy into the Grand Final it will cost you 1,000 PartyPoints.

There is still more money to be win with the Full House Jackpot Prizes. If you win two of the daily tournaments you will win an extra $100,000 dollars. Win three and you will take the top prize, a million dollars.

The Aussie Millions are going to get under way in January at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia and there are going to be 18 great events ending in the AUD10,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Main Event.

The Main Event is also going to televised by Fox Sports Net and aired all over the world so not only could you win part of the prize pool but you could also be on TV!

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Aussie Millions Prize Package

Each Aussie Millions prize package includes your $8,800 Main Event buy-in, $1,800 dollar 6 Handed Event buy-in, $2,500 for airfare and spending, and $2,900 dollars for accommodations at the Crown Casino.

Winning Seats at Bwin Poker

There are several ways to win a seat into one of the Aussie Million events at Bwin Poker.

One way is through playing the Aussie Millions Head Hunter Tournaments. Each Head Hunter Tournament will award at least one Aussie Million prize package every week. If the prize pool reaches $32,000 dollars then another prize package will be awarded.

The player that knocks out the most players will win a Aussie Millions prize package worth $16,000 dollars.

The Head Hunter Tournaments cost $20+$2 dollars to buy into and $5 dollars will go the regular prize pool and the remaining $15 dollars goes into the Aussie Millions Head Hunter prize pool.

Aussie Millions Online Finals

You can also win a prize package by playing in the Aussie Millions Online Finals. You can qualify for the Online Finals by playing in one of the daily live event qualifiers for only $2 dollars to win a seat into one of the finals or you can buy-in directly.

The Aussie Millions Online Finals happen every Thursday and Sunday at 8PM CET and cost $300+$20 dollars to buy-in. Each Final will award at least one Aussie Millions prize package.

Aussie Millions $100,000 Freeroll

There are going to be three chances a day to win your seat at Bwin Poker. All you need to do is finish in the top 150 in the daily qualifiers to get a ticket into the Semi Final. Then you need collect one poker point to validate your Semi Final Ticket.

The Semi Finals run every night at 8PM CET from January 4th to January 8th and the top 10 ten of each Semi Final will move on to the Saturday Final on January 9th. Once you make it to the Saturday Final at 8PM CET you will be competing for one of six prize packages.

Aussie Millions Big Bounty

The Aussie Millions Big Bounty isn’t just a tournament that awards prize packages it’s also going to be a great event to play. Players are going to be up against ten Bwin Poker pro’s and if you manage to knock one out you’re buy-in will be immediately refunded and you’ll get an extra $100 dollars for every big player you take out.

These Big Bounty tournaments run every other Sunday at Bwin Poker and they reward three Aussie Millions prize packages.

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How to Win a Jackpot Sit 'n Go

In order to win the €10,000 Jackpot you will need to win six Jackpot tournaments in a row. If you don’t quite make it, PokerKings will also give any player that finishes in 1st or 2nd place in six consecutive Jackpot Sit n Go’s a consolation prize of €200.

Jackpot Sit 'n Go’s will cost you €10+€2 and they are full ring table games. Blinds will go up every 8 minutes and players will start out with 1,500 chips. This promotion is being offered until further notice at PokerKings.

PokerKings Jackpot Sit 'n Go's Rules

Tournaments are considered consecutive if their starting times are all consecutive. All players that qualify for the cash must submit all claims by email and provide dates and times of tournaments within 48 hours of qualifying in order to get their €10,000.

Your six consecutive Jackpot Sit 'n Go wins must all be with a 21 day period. This is just a taste of the rules, there is a complete list of rules at PokerKings.

Being Short Stacked

Let's go with short stacking and then we'll work our way to the chip mountains.

If you've made your way to the final table there are two things I want you to keep in mind. One is if you're in last place, you've already won last place, so don't be afraid to shove your chips into the middle often and with every playable hand.

Whenever there's considerable money in the pot and you have a plausible hand - go for it. Don't let the blinds eat you here, and if you have less than 10 times the big blind, call nothing, shove everything.

Worst that can happen is you'll double up.

However, the second thing I'd like you to keep in mind is that a passive game here may well get you more money. If you get to 3 or 4 players, and you still have a seat, it might be a good time to ask about a chop. (We'll get into making chop deals later in this article.)

Hang onto your seat, it might prove to be quite valuable.

In most cases the longer you stay in the game, the more money you make. Each person sent to the rail usually doubles your money. So you do have last in the bag, and if ever there was a time to gamble, this was it. However, there's also reason to hang onto your chair with all your might. That's why the big bets, they're harder for your opponents to call, and make it easier for you to pick up a few extra pots. This alone can often take you out of last place, and put you solidly into a better position.

If you came to the table with a larger sized stack, then take that last bit of advice to heart. The longer you stay at the table, the more money you make. If you have a considerable chip lead for one you're poised for first, don't donk off that lead thinking it's your job to call every idiot bet.

Use Large Chip Stacks as a Weapon

There are bets that are just equitable calls. However, just because the short stack is short doesn't mean you should call. You'll just bleed off chips if you lose here. With the large stack however, you do have the ability to shove the other players around a bit.

When playing against smaller stacks, they really only need two choices, if you're going to be involved with the hand at all, let them choose, all in, or fold.

As the seats at this table empty, you should also be thinking of chop possibilities. Because with the majority of the chips in your possession, the remaining players should be anxious to chop.

You might for instance suggest that they just give you first place money, and chop what's left evenly. If you have a large stack, and are playing with very inexperienced players, tell them you'll chop, as long as you get 1st place plus an additional 10% to cover your entry fee.

You'll be surprised how often you can get away with that move.

The competition in the Party Poker Monthly Million is fierce, but due to the many qualifiers there's plenty of fish to help your stack grow.

If you manage to finish first, you will receive a nice share of the pot. Depending on the amount of participators this will be approximately $150,000, but even the second and third prize are life changing prizes for many of us.

Win Your Seat

If the buy-in is a little steep you can also win your seat into the Monthly Million by playing in qualifiers that run all month long every month starting at $1 dollar. But if you play in $1 dollar qualifiers you’re going to have a lot of work to do to get to the final prize of your seat into the Monthly Million.

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Party Poker Monthly Million Satellites

Most satellites are offered daily but some of the higher priced satellites only run once a week or once a month. You can choose from Speed Satellites or Speed Rebuys and more.

For a complete list of satellites for the Monthly Million including buy-ins, times and prizes take a look at the Monthly Million qualifiers page on the Party Poker website. You can get there by clicking one of the links or buttons on Max Poker Bonus.

Monthly Million Details

As mentioned above the Monthly Million happens the first Sunday of every month at 12:45 EST. Every player will start out with 20,000 chips and blinds are increased every 20 minutes.

Players will get a 5 minute break after every three levels are played until there is a winner.

However, here at BestPoker it works a little bit different, you can turn your Player Points - that you earn while playing poker - into cash.

In a broad sense, the BestPoker CashBack Program is comparable to rakeback programs offered by some online poker rooms.

How the BestPoker CashBack Program Works

You earn points every month when you play online at BestPoker that you can trade for money at any time. The amount of money you receive depends on how many points you earn during the month.

If you earn 0 - 999 Player Points you will get 8 to 12 percent cash back, 1,000 to 2,999 Player Points will get you 12 to 16 percent cash back, 3,000 to 5,999 Player Points earns 16 to 20 percent and if you earn at least 72,000 Player Points in a 12 month period then you can get 30 to 40 percent cash back.

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Converting Your Points into Cash

Let's have a quick look at an example: If you want to exchange 50 points into cash, you would receive $1. Admittedly that is not a whole lot. If you exchange 500 points you will get $14 instead of just $10, simply because with more points you will be granted a better conversion rate. And guess what, with 5,000 points you will already be awarded $264. So the rate continues to improve drastically.

You need to earn at least 50 points in order to exchange them for cash. When you’re ready to convert your points go to the ‘My Account’ page and click 'Convert to Cash’.

Then in the CashBack tab enter in the amount of Player Points you want to convert into cash and press transfer. There is also a CashBack Calculator you can use to see how much cash you will get before you actually transfer your Player Points.

BestPoker CashBack Rules

You can’t transfer any points that you are collecting towards a running bonus. As soon as you clear or cancel your BestPoker Bonus, you can see how many Player Points you have available for the CashBack Program.

Also, any points that you've earned before March 1st 2009 aren’t eligible for the CashBack promotion. Player Points that are earned in the casino are also not eligible for cash back.

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Who is Eligible for the New Player Freeroll

Without having to make a deposit you will get to check out PokerKings and play in a tournament all without having to make a commitment. Those players that do make a deposit however will be able to rebuy for €1 during the first 60 minutes of the tournament.

After you play in the €1,000 New Player Freeroll then you can play in the weekly €100,000 Guaranteed Tournament on Sundays at 18:00 GMT.

Weekly €100,000 Guaranteed Tournament

As mentioned above PokerKings offers a €100,000 Guaranteed Tounament every Sunday at 18:00 GMT. The direct buyin of €120+€10 for this tournament is quite reasonable, however if you can’t afford to buyin to the tournament directly, PokerKings offers a wide variety of satellites into the €100,000 Guaranteed.

€100,000 Guaranteed Satellites

Players can play in all sorts of satellites with different buy-ins so everyone can afford to play and win a seat into the weekly €100,000 Guaranteed including Freezeouts, Lotto Frenzy, Turbo and Lotto Rebuy tournaments.

Buy-ins for the satellites range from €7+€0.50 up to €15+€1. You can also play in the daily satellite at 19:00 GMT for only €10+€1 where at least 10 seats are awarded guaranteed.

From all angles it looked like online poker player Joe Cada was in over his head today. All the time from the booth, Phil Hellmuth was announcing the kid's plays before they were even made.

Phil Hellmuth would jokingly say “Cada raises 2.5 million from the button” before the cards were even dealt - and then Cada true to form would raise the bet, from the button.

His play might have made sense had it shown results. But usually he’d bet, Moon would call, on the flop Moon would bet out and Cada would fold. We saw this again and again. And again.

And then, before we really know what hit us, Cada woke up and flipped the script.

• Cada makes a raise, Moon raised right back into him. Pretty much another obvious slap in the face from the lumberjack.
• Cada shoves all of his chips into the middle.

The burly logger sits back, he asks for a count, and does something you don’t see every day in a poker tournament. He rubs his belly. Almost in anticipation of a juicy treat to come.

Moon stands up, which is a huge indication of an impending call. Phil Laak said during a commentary provided by Bluff Magazine that it improved Moon’s odds of calling by 8%. Then, he laid it down.

It was amazing really. The entire poker world was on edge, sure he was going to call. This was it!

• And he folds?!

One has to think for a moment, what in the world did Darwin Moon lay down here? Did he realize a bit too late that he was beat, or did he miss his shot at the WSOP bracelet in this single hand?

About 10 hands later, Cada makes a bet, Moon re-raises - this has been his natural reaction all night long, and rightfully so. The board shows 10c 5d 9h.

• Moon is forcing Cada all in.
• Cada makes the call.

Another 10 is dealt on the turn, and Cada bets big into Moon, who immediately shoves all of his chips into the pot. Cada gives serious thought to his next move, after being pushed, and shoved, and punked all night long, Cada decides this IS his spot, and he calls for all of his chips.

Moon shows up with an open ender, no pair. Cada is ahead at this point with a wired pair of nines. Moon needs a jack or six, to end it right here.

Cada needs to avoid Moon’s two straight cards to double up. Good news is he’s holding one of Moon’s jacks. The river is no help to Moon and Cada in this one puts Joey Cada back into the game.

2009 WSOP Finals Winning Hand

18 hands later, in the 88th hand of the night, Moon re-raises into a bet made by Cada.

• Cada having no more of Moon’s bullying shoves his chips in.
• Moon calls without hesitation!

Cada has a pair of nines, and he’s facing Moon’s... Suited Overs!

All Joe Cada has to do here to become the World Series of Poker Main event winner of 2009 is avoid queens, jacks, and a diamond flush. The board shows 8c2c7s. While Joseph Cada was a slight favourite to win the hand pre-flop, he knows his chances have now improved dramatically to almost 80% in his favour. All Darwin Moon can do now is to hope for a Queen or a Jack or possibly a card that gives him an option for a straight on the river (a 9, which would improve Cada's chances, or a T) - the diamond flush is no longer an option.

On the Turn we see the King of Hearts. This card helps no one but it definitely hurts Darwin Moon. This means there are only 6 outs left for him. If the River brings a Queen or a Jack he will win, but any other card will crown Joe Cada the WSOP Champion of 2009...

Everyone holds his breath. The River is being dealt. The card is turned. It is ... a seven of clubs! Joe Cada's cards hold up, and 21 year old Joseph Cada is the 2009 WSOP Champion! Darwin Moon's run has been spectacular but ends right at the final table. Knowing him he will take the positive out of this experience. Especially since his father suggested he better take the buy-in for the WSOP which he won in a qualifier and cash it out. His decision turned out to pay off despite ending up short at the final Heads-Up.

In my last article, Poker Tournament Strategy - Part II, we touched on something I'd like to bring up again.

I've often walked into poker tournaments where that loud and boisterous fellow is bragging about being the sheriff. In fact, often times there are grinders there egging him on. Encouraging him to be the sheriff.

The reason for this is that the sheriff has a job in every game. Yes he steals a lot of pots, and even cashes now and then. He re-raises often when he thinks someone is bluffing, he's the guy that will call your bet just to keep you honest.

Hallelujah for him! We need his chips. He gets them by overplaying a small pair, or a weak ace, and then hitting some amazing stuff, and getting the nits to put all their chips in. Understand me here, he gets rid of the nits, and then he donks off his chips.

The point here is that we do not want to be the sheriff, he's going to play a big part in getting us into the money though. We want to wait until the sheriff has over-bet a few dozen pots, and hopefully taken a few people out of the game, narrowed the field for us, and we want to wait until we catch said sheriff, and smack him over the head with a big bag of NUTS.

Final Stages Tournament Play

During this later portion of the game we really have but one goal. Make money, first and foremost. So if your only goal here is to finish in the money, you can't shove in all of your chips and risk your tournament stake with mediocre hands. That King Jack of Diamonds that Darvin Moon shoved in at the final table of the World Series of Poker, well that's just not going to work consistently.

Basically, if you can find a reason to fold a hand here, unless you are severely short stacked (and we'll cover short stack play later on in another series) fold'em up. Basically you are considered short stacked once you leave the green zone according to Dan Harrington's M-Calculator. Personally I think at this stage of the tournament you should even consider the yellow zone as somewhat safe. Don't start acting panicky yet.

As long as you're comfortable with your stack size here, you really just coast. If the table tightens up, and no one is calling bets, make a few.

If however there's plenty of action, watch the show for awhile. As the money gets closer, and the blinds get bigger, you'll find that the action slows way down.

Now when this happens, and opportunity may present itself for you to do some stack building, and when there are free chips on table, who are we to turn them down.

Stealing the Blinds

Since we're nearing the money, the blinds are of course easier to steal here. We're playing smart and are not risking our own tournament life, but that has nothing to do with our willingness to take advantage of other players' fears.

When playing poker tournaments, watch for weaker opponents, and the ones that know how to lay a hand down. Generally the ones that always bet a big ace will make a few calls if you have the chips to gamble with. I've found that calling pre-flop, just flat out calling, slows them down on the turn if they've missed. Now you've let them see four cards, so this can be risky if they've hit something, but you should have some idea what they're drawing for here.

Making the Final Table in a Poker Tournament

If the turn bet is smaller than what you'd expect, or they check the turn. Cut into them deep. Make a large sized bet, if they missed it this late in the game, they'll lay it down.

Your ultimate goal here is only to make final table, and to make the money. To be a winning tournament player, you need to be consistently making money. You don't always need to win first, but you need to cash.

Once you've made the money, we'll switch things up again, open up our game, and we'll gamble a bit more. But we'll talk about that in another edition.

The ECOOP has grown tremendously since the first ever Championships were held in December of 2007. The first ECOOP was played over 10 days and awarded players $2,500,000 dollars.

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This year the European Champion of Online Poker is going to be awarding players $4,550,000 dollars in cash and prizes starting on November 23rd and finishing on December 6th with the Grand Final.

Players can compete in a variety of events including No Limit Hold’em, Limit 7 Card Stud and more. If you need to win your way into one of the events you can play in qualifying satellites at Titan Poker.

You can also find all ECOOP V tournaments listed in our live poker tournaments schedule.

Party Poker Australia Ambassador Stewart Scott is the defending champion and commented:

"I’ve been playing at PartyPoker.com for five years. These great packages are an amazing opportunity for other players to play in this huge tournament. Claiming the Aussie Millions title has been the highlight of my career and I’d love to see another PartyPoker.com player take the title."

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25 Aussie Millions Prize Packages

You can win one of Party Poker's 25 luxury Aussie Millions Main Event packages by playing in one of two $600+$40 Aussie Millions Qualifiers on Sunday, December 13th.

The 1st satellite is for players in Australia and New Zealand and will award five prize packages worth $12,000 dollars each.

The second satellite is open to players from all over the world and will award twenty prize packages worth $15,000 each. There are also less expensive satellites you can compete in that award a seat into these satellites if the $640 buyin is too steep.

Aussie Millions Satellite Tournaments

There are also other ways you can win a Aussie Millions Main Event prize package. You can use your PartyPoints, choose to participate in freerolls or play at small satellites with buy-ins starting at $1 to make your way into a tournament that awards seats to the main event. If you are from Australia or New Zealand you can also opt to play in special Stewart Scott Bounty Hunt Tournaments.

As of November 1st you can play against the defending champ Stewart Scott in the $64+$6 buyin Aussie Millions ANZ Satellite Qualifiers at 4:05ET every Tuesday and Thursday. The player that knocks out Stewart Scott will win his $70 dollar bounty. Keep in mind that this opportunity is meant for Australian and New Zealand players only. While there has been mentioned that anyone can participate and win one of the Aussie Millions prize packages this way we have no official statement by Party Poker. We also want to emphasise that the packages won this way have a value of $12,000 unlike the Aussie Millions Main Event prize packages for the rest of the world that are valued at $15,000 - mostly due to the higher travel expenses.

You can win more then just $70 dollars in one of these tournaments, you can also win a seat to one of the Aussie Millions Qualifiers. First place will get a seat at the $640 dollar qualifier, second place takes a seat at the $128 dollar qualifier and third will win a $70 dollar qualifier seat.

You don’t have to necessarily leave home empty handed if you’re not one of the top 3 players there are also cash prizes awarded and of course the $70 bounty on Stewart Scott.

Those with a larger bankroll can also play in the Stewart Scott Highroller Aussie Millions Invitational on Sunday, November 22nd at 3:05ET for a $250+$20 buyin. The First place winner will be awarded a Aussie Millions prize package. If you finish second you will be awarded your $640 ticket for the Aussie Millions Final.

The qualification method for the rest of the world is via various satellites. If you do not wish to spend any money and still qualify for the Aussie Millions, you may choose to play in the daily freerolls or use your PartyPoints as buy-in for the first level satellites. Or you may want to play in the low buy-in satellites starting as low as $1. You actually have a lot of different options as to which satellite you prefer and depending on your bankroll you may want to participate in the more expensive satellites (additionally to the afore mentioned freerolls you have the option of $1, $8, $30, $70 or $140 buy-ins) in order to avoid having to play all those crazy people you will find at low buy-in satellites.

All these satellites take part on a daily basis. Alternatively you may of course choose a direct buy-in to the big Aussie Millions Final on December 13th. The choice is yours. Just make sure you don't let this chance go by without at least giving it a shot. Honestly, with these low buy-ins and the option to qualify via freerolls you simply can't go wrong.

The Champion Chip winner is assured of a huge payday of more than $50,000 on a buy-in of just $190+$10.

This tournament was a monthly affair until February this year, when Bwin Poker decided to make this a weekly event due to popular demand from its players. Now every week, approximately 1,300 to 1,500 players buy-in to have a shot at their share of the $250,000 guaranteed prize pool.

The Champion Chip Final starts with every player having 2,500 chips and levels are of 20 minutes each.

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Qualifying for the Champion Chip Finals

Players can either buy-in directly to Sunday's final by paying $190+$10 or can try to satellite their way into the final for as low as $1+0.20.

Bwin Poker runs regular Sit&Go Qualifiers and scheduled tournaments providing entry to this dream tournament.

Sit&Go Champion Chip Qualifiers

Bwin Poker runs three different buy-in Sit&Go Champion Chip Qualifiers. These tournaments start as soon as the required number of players on the table have registered.

• $10+$1 Buy-in
  20 Players Sit&Go
  one seat to the winner.
• $20+$2 Buy-in
  10 Players Sit&Go
  one seat to the winner.
• $30+$3 Buy-in
  10 Players Sit&Go
  one seat to the winner and prize money to runner ups.

These Sit&Go qualifiers are available 24 hours a day.

Scheduled Tournament Champion Chip Qualifiers

Bwin also runs 30 special Champion Chip qualifiers daily. The buy-ins to these qualifiers start from as low as $1+0.20 to a maximum of $30+$3. All these qualifying satellites payout as many Champion Chip tickets worth $190+$10 each as the total prize pool allows with the remaining cash also being distributed to the winners.

Champion Chip Mad Tilt Rebuy Qualifiers - Daily

• Everyday, 6 qualifiers with buy-ins of $1+0.20 or $2+0.25 are offered by Bwin Poker based on the popular Mad Tilt format. All players start with 100 chips each and blinds go up every 3 minutes. The rebuy period lasts only 10 minutes, making it a fast paced game with lot of action every hand.
• Each of these 6 Champion Chip qualifiers guarantee 5 tickets to the finals.

Champion Chip Rebuy Qualifiers - Daily

• For players who like to play rebuy qualifiers but not the Mad Tilt kinds, Bwin Poker offers 6 tournaments daily with buy-ins of $5+$0.50 or $10+$1. These tournaments allow rebuys for an hour as well as an option to addon.
• There are total 10 Champion Chip tickets guaranteed in each of these satellites.

Champion Chip Qualifiers - Daily

• For players who believe in their poker skills and do not like the fast paced action offered by the rebuy games, Bwin Poker offers 6 tournaments each everyday with buy-ins of $10+$1, $20+$2 and $30+$3 respectively.
• Each of these tournaments offer one seat on a minimum to the Champion Chip finals on Sunday.

Champion Chip Last Chance Qualifier – Sundays

Every Sunday, just two hours before the Champion Chip main event, Bwin Poker offers all its players a last chance to have a shot at playing that day's finals. Players can buy-in for $5+$0.50 to this biggest weekly satellite to the Champion Chip. This rebuy tournament offers 50 Guaranteed seats worth $190+$10 to the $250,000 Champion Chip Finals.

Choose your path to the finals by playing the qualifiers or just directly buy-in. You are assured of one hell of a tournament and a huge payday if you make it deep in the Bwin Poker's $250,000 Guaranteed Champion Chip Tourney every Sunday at 18:00 CET (17:00 UK).

Bwin Poker is one of our most recommended online poker rooms. If you are not registered on Bwin yet, download Bwin Poker today using one of our links and take advantage of one of our three first deposit bonuses for Bwin Poker, $100, $250 or $500 respectively.

Once you’ve reached say the 4th or 5th blind level, even just stealing the blinds now and then can add valuable chips to your stack.

Something to keep in mind is that picking up the blinds once per revolution keeps you even. Don’t dwell on it, or feel overly compelled to obsessively make a stab at the blinds every revolution, but do keep it in mind. For instance, say you’re hanging in, waiting to wake up to a decent hand. The play is soft for a bit, so you pick up a couple mini-pots, and then the next revolution a new player comes to the table and changes the tables dynamic.

Players seem to be in the mood to get their money into the pot. This new comer to the table is pushing, and your table mates are bored and enjoying the action. Feel free to sit this spell out, floating along on the chips you gained from earlier steals.

In fact, whether or not you’re able to snag a few pots during the slow periods, one thing you want to avoid when playing a poker tournament is premature pressure to act.

Many players realized they’ve lost all their ‘big chips’, or they’ve lost half their stacks, or for whatever reason they’re playing with less chips than they would prefer to be playing with at some point. As long as you’re holding at least 10 big blinds, just wait.

Wait for a hand, or your blind, an opportunity to set a trap, wait for a real hand. Don’t shove at the site of an ace. More often than not that action will send you on your way to the rail, quite prematurely.

Patience is Key in Poker Tournaments

If you’ve ever played the 440 man tournaments on PokerStars, and cashed, you’ve probably realized that this entire tournament can be played in as few as four hands. A player can play that tournament folding nearly every hand that is raised before it gets to them, and then towards the middle of the game, play a hand or two doubling their chips, a couple strong plays at the last stretch, and first or second place is pretty much a given.

What’s to be learned here is patience. Fight it out with the bullies, only when you have the nuts. With that point made. Pots at this level when the blinds are steadily increasing really add some weight to your stack.

The time to gamble with lower suited gappers and the like is pretty much over. You might see a flop with a QK suited if the play at your table hasn’t been overly action packed. Aside from that, it’s a good idea to remain seriously particular. Strong hand selection is a MUST.

Once you opt to play a hand, dig in. But remember, a bad beat is a lot worse when you’re on you’re way out the door. There’s no river that you HAVE to see. Look for signs that you’re beat. Fold when it’s time, but until it’s time, shove on.

Of course we all know how hard it is to get a Royal Flush - Party Poker wouldn't give away a million dollars for a pair or three of a kind. However - while they may not pay you the sought after million dollar amount they do reward you for a pair, two pairs, a triple and so on. For example, if you manage to complete a Flush with these special cards, this feat will earn you an instant $100 extra.

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Make sure to go to Party Poker now and possibly earn extra money for free while playing your regular poker games. And who knows, maybe you can beat the odds and complete the Royal Flush. That certainly would be the easiest $1,000,000 ever earned. Party Poker even gives you the first card for free.

In case you are not a member of Party Poker you should definitely check out our Party Poker Bonus info and use one of our links to make sure you get the best out of your chosen poker bonus. No matter whether you are a new player at Party Poker or a Party Poker veteran, make sure not to miss out on this great opportunity. And be aware, the promotion only lasts until October 31st!

Also let's not forget why the Final is called Big Bounty Final - you will be able to knock some of bwin's poker players out of the tournament and collect a $100 bounty for each. Well, technically you will get the chance to do so - whether or not you are actually able to kick them out depends on you and your game. Be warned, these guys know what they do at the table. They have proven their worth in some of the world's biggest and toughest tournaments so if you think you are the shark in this particular fish tank, you may want to reconsider.

The Big Bounty Final is played every other Sunday

The $100 bounty equals your buy-in if you decide to enter the tournament directly. However don't let that blind you - these players know very well that everyone is after them. If you make the wrong move they might instead take you off the table. But even if that happens you will be able to plan revenge, sweet revenge. After all the Big Bounty Final at bwin Poker is a bi-weekly event and every other Sunday you will be able to show how much you have improved over the past 2 weeks.

Don't delay and kick them out today. Or at least as soon as the next Big Bounty Final takes place.

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When the World Series of Poker 2009 began, there were nearly 6,500 participants in competition for the title and the bracelet. Over a 12 day period, these players were eliminated from the competition leaving only a final 9 who were triumphant and are now ready to compete in the November 7th finals for 2009’s Word Series of Poker!

The grand prize for this year’s WSOP Championship is a mouth-watering $8 Million, and the final players, coined the November Nine will make sure that the competition heats up!

A Mix of Pros and Amateurs at the Final Table

The final WSOP Table will boast and interesting combination of players with varying levels of experience. Despite the large number of professional poker players who were among the initial participants, a few amateurs are leading the way in chip totals from the earlier games. Among the November Nine are 4 players who are new to the series, and in many cases, the offline world of Poker in general.

In fact, the chip leader, Darvin Moon is a logger by trade and was surprised to snag a seat to play in the WSOP at all, but now finds himself in a precarious place in the final table with 58,930,000 chips to his name going into the final stretch of the competition. Also amongst the amateur rankings of the November Nine are Steven Begleiter, a financial businessman; 21 year-old Joseph Cada, the youngest in the competition; and Antoine Saout from France who has had no previous experience playing in the live Poker game.

Mixed in amongst the amateurs are professionals that could certainly step up the competition, which could lead to a disappointment for those rooting for the amateurs. The November Nine also consists of Phil Ivey, a name that’s well known in the Poker world for his past winnings of 7 World Series of Poker Championships where he took home the bracelets and approximately $10 million in winnings total.

Also playing are James Akenhead, a popular professional player from the UK; Kevin Schaffel, with his 51 years of age the oldest player with a history of wins; Jeff Shulman, player and editor of Card Player Magazine; and Eric Buchman, a younger player with a small fortune in Poker winnings.

Taking place already, are daily satellite poker tournaments that can qualify players to enter the next round; one of the semi-final tournaments that are also taking place daily from which 1 in every 10 players will be invited to play in the Party Poker World Open 2009. For the initial satellites, players can choose to play in one of the $3 Qualifier Speed Rebuy which are happening daily which will move players forward to the next round of the competition every time there’s a total of $75 in the prize pool. There are also daily Qualifier Speed Satellites which don’t give players the opportunity to rebuy, but could send more players to the next round with 1 in every 10 set to move forward.

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Prize Package for Amateur Players

Since Party Poker wants to give all players a fair chance at competing in the Party Poker World Open 2009, they’re offering prize packs to those who try their hand in the satellite tournaments in order to qualify for the event. 1 in 20 set to move forward will win a prize pack which will cover their initial entrance fee of $650 plus $50 rebuys with the $10,000 awarded for buy-ins; plus a week’s accommodation for a luxury hotel in London and $1,000 of pocket money to make the time spent internationally even more of an experience.

Check out the satellite tournaments to qualify for the Party Poker World Open 2009, and play at the esteemed event alongside poker pros like Mike Sexton, Ian Frazer and other Party Poker alumni; the $48,000 prize pool up for grabs isn’t too shabby either!

The beginning of a poker tournament depends a lot on what is already going on at the table. For instance, if you've sat down to a multi table tournament online where many players are all in every hand, you probably want to just sit back and watch the show for awhile. Even if you're dealt pocket aces, you want to fold here.

I know that seems like crazy advice, but the fact of the matter is that if you're playing at a table where maniac fever has taken over, you need to preserve your tournament life. That usually is only the case in micro stakes game and free poker games.

If you're playing at a bit higher stakes, you will still want to take it a bit easier during the lower blind rounds, getting in as many hands as possible, for the cheap price, but really playing the other players, paying attention to tells (there ARE tells whether you're playing live or an online tournament). A big part of these early rounds includes either drawing to the nuts and getting paid off big, or picking off some small pots and keeping your blinds plaid up.

This is also the portion of the tournament where you can really start observing other players. Be on the look out for players that make unusual bets, not the normal 3/4 times the blind amounts, as that's one sign of an inexperienced poker player. Also, pick out the rocks from the calling stations. Rocks play the big big hands, and often use the chat box to talk badly about players that call a raise with anything less than big slick.

It's really easy to put these guys on a hand when you're involved in a hand with them, and it's generally easier yet to bet them off a hand when they miss the flop. But we'll get into that later on.

The loose players or calling stations are easily identifiable as the guys that tend to see every flop, or even a large percentage of flops. Another player to look out for is a player that shows his hand, that's (1) a sign of inexperience and (2) free information for you.

Early Tournament Play - Hand Selection

During the first 3 levels of a tournament, you want to play very strong hands, as well as experimenting with some drawing hands when you're in a good position. At this point for instance, a suited 9T would be a decent hand to play from the button as well as from the blinds. I wouldn't recommend raising under the gun with it, however, as long as you're in a late position and the tables been playing pretty 'friendly' (i.e. more calling than betting going on) go ahead and give those smaller suited connectors a shot.

Now this is not the time in the game to do much bluffing, or even semi bluffing. When making a flop you want to have at the very least top pair, preferably two pair. Remember, at this stage of the game it's not uncommon to have four guys call with nothing, meaning if you bet a pair of 8's, there's a pretty good chance there's going to be a few overcards left in the hand.

Early Tournament Play - Betting The Flop

When you do have a strong hand, dig in. Bet it, and bet it big. Early in the tournament as a rule of thumb, bet 1/2 the pot, to all of it. If there's a good draw on the table, and I'm not drawing for it (for instance if you hit to pair, but there are two spades on the table, and your cards are not spades) bet the whole pot.

Remember, you're still watching your opponents, look for the 'sheriff', the guy that likes to pay off his opponent at showdown with ace high "Just to See". The new players can double you up, or with dumb luck alone, they can take you out. If someone's brand new, you're not going to bet them off a draw, or a hand if you're hugely over-betting, and they're calling. Back off a bit if you're vulnerable.

Play strong when you play, and coast your way into the bigger blind levels, which... we'll talk about in a future article here on Max Poker Bonus.

Also the reason for you to go there is to participate in one of Europe's greatest live poker events as part of the bwin poker team. Estoril is home to Europe's biggest casino and you will find out that this doesn't only show in the magnitude of the event itself but also the amount of money that you play for. With a buy-in of $1,400+$100 you can count on not only a nice prize pool but also fierce competition.

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No need to worry for you however. You don't need to pay the buy-in, bwin will do that for you. They will also pay for your trip to Estoril as well as your accommodation for 5 nights. And on top of that you can use the remaining money of the $3,600 Estoril Live Poker Package as your personal spending money.

Another reason why you shouldn't worry is that if you are able to compete at the Estoril Live Poker Event as member of bwin's prestigious poker team you will have proven your worth by besting thousands of other players. See, bwin doesn't simply give everyone a $3,600 package to go to Estoril as you may have imagined. They do offer you the opportunity to qualify for one of these packages however.

You may enter one of the 10 online finals for a buy-in of $300+20 and compete directly for your personal $3,600 poker package. Or you may choose to make use of one of the many qualifiers each day starting at as little as $2+0.20 and make your way to the finals. Whatever your choice is, make sure to keep an empty spot in your calendar for November 7 - 10 cause that's when you will be playing in Estoril.

In an Estoril that will be too fresh for spending the night at the beach. But honestly, who cares?

In order to compete at any of the 15 daily events (starting September 27 until October 11) you can either opt for a direct buy-in (ranging anywhere from $50+4 up to $500+25) or you may participate in the daily qualifiers. Once you secured your place in any of the GSOP III Events you will also be able to earn points for the Grand Slam Final Leaderboard that may earn you a much sought after ticket for the $300,000 Guaranteed Grand Slam Final. Of course if you win any of the 15 events you are automatically qualified.

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If you don't want to play in the 15 tournaments of the GSOP you may still compete in the Grand Slam Final. How so? You can either play in specific Grand Slam Qualifiers or choose to show your commitment by going for the direct buy-in of a whopping $5,000+0. Yes, you heard right. Five Thousand Dollars! Those qualifiers look like a pretty nice option all of a sudden, huh?

And for the thrill seeking high rollers among us the GSOP III will offer a side bet option again. The GSOP III SideBet basically makes it even more interesting for serious players who have confidence in their abilities and plan on competing in most or all events. You can place a bet of $1,000 on yourself before the start of the series and if you are among the top finishers of all side betters in the GSOP III Leaderboard you will get your share of the loot. The payout structure of course depends on the amount of participants. We do not recommend the GSOP III SideBet to anyone who only wishes to participate in a few events (or maybe even just one).

For those of you who are already poker players at BestPoker, don't delay, qualify today! Those who are not yet familiar with BestPoker take your time to check our detailed BestPoker review as well as our info on the recently changed BestPoker bonus for new depositors. As always you can of course contact us if you still have questions about the poker room or any offers.

In September however a lot of these already nice promotional offers will be improved even more. Dedicated bet365 players will know and look forward to the monthly $250,000 Guaranteeds - in September (and we may give it away already, also in October) this tournament will be improved significantly. You will play for 4 times the amount. Guaranteed. And yes, the quick brains among us already know that this equals 1 million dollars!

And since a catchy name has always been the darling of promoters these tournaments are now known as the Monthly Million Tournaments. You may choose to either make use of a direct buy-in of $500+35 or instead opt for one of the many daily qualifiers starting with buy-ins of $1+0.10. It is up to you how you want to make sure to get your part of $1,000,000.

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Of course you will also benefit from all the other promotions such as the weekly 100,000 Merit Points New Depositor Freeroll. After making your first deposit at bet365 you will receive a token that allows you to compete in this tournament that can help you boost your Merit Points tremendously. Additionally the top 100 finishers of this tournament will qualify for the Monthly New Depositor Freeroll where you will compete with a maximum of 499 other players for your share of $2,000. And all this completely free of charge.

Also let's not forget the Monthly Luxury Holiday Draw for poker players of VIP Level Gold or above (you may opt to cash it in instead and receive $2,000) - and you don't even have to register for it, you will be added into the pool automatically once you reach the Gold Level. Additionally there are various monthly freerolls depending on your VIP Level, starting at a $500 freeroll for VIP Level Bronze. And you are actually a VIP Level Bronze player with just a single Merit Point per month!

If you aren't a bet365 poker player yet, take this opportunity to check our detailed review and our bet365 poker bonus information. As always, take your time in making up your mind whether this poker room is the right one for you (and don't base your decision solely on the poker bonus) and if you think it is, just use our link to make sure you get the best experience out of it. And if you are an existing bet365 poker player enjoy the fact that you may now exchange the rain outside for a cash-rain while sitting in your warm and comfortable chair.

Max Poker Bonus Features (1-8)

• Online Poker Rooms - A list of our recommended online poker rooms. We have the policy to never promote more than 10 poker rooms at the same time. Because of this "quality over quantity policy" we are able to provide an up to date portal at all times. All poker rooms in this list are rooms where we would play at ourselves. We have selected these online poker rooms because of their quality, reliability, bonuses and promotions. If you click further to a poker room, you will be presented with a comprehensive review that includes screenshots, traffic (fetched live), the next 10 tournaments, payment options, features and more.
• Poker Bonus Offers - This page lists all our poker bonuses and their bonus codes where applicable. You can clearly see which of our poker bonuses are better than the ones advertised by online poker rooms themselves. From the list you can click to a specific poker bonus page to see the details, such as restrictions and clearance requirements.
• Max Poker Bonus Calculator - Here you can submit the exact amount of money you plan to use when making a first deposit. You'll be presented with the available bonuses for your deposit, how much bonus you will receive, how much time you will have to clear them, how many player points you will get for playing cash games and per dollar buy-in fee for tournaments. You can click through to the bonus details page as well. A demo of our bonus calculator can be seen in our YouTube channel.
• Deposit Methods - The table displayed on this page shows the five most common deposit methods used by poker players. You will see which poker room offers a specific deposit method. In the column on the right you customize the table and deselect and select (by checking the check boxes next to a payment option) another deposit method which will then automatically appear in the table. From here you can as well follow a link to a payment option review. On a payment option review page you can see all the details regarding a payment option, such as how to create an account, information about transfers and fees, and the minimum and maximum deposit limits per online poker room. By clicking withdrawal methods, you will basically see a similar page as deposit methods. The only difference is that you will now see which poker rooms offer a specific withdrawal method, instead of deposit methods.
• Online Poker Tournaments - All upcoming tournaments by the poker rooms listed on Max Poker Bonus. We have created an automated script that fetches data from online poker rooms every hour for 24 hours in advance. You'll be presented an up-to-date poker tournament schedule with tournaments that have buy-ins starting from $10. The list can be completely sorted, as well as filtered (right side column) on buy-in from, buy-in to, poker room and game type. By clicking on info you will see the tournament details and the time it takes before a tournament starts.
• Poker Odds Calculator - Use our own poker odds calculator to recalculate your chances before or after a hand. Very handy for evaluation purposes and fine tuning your personal poker strategy.
• Dan Harrington's M-Calculator - This tool helps you to determine your M (everybody who has read Dan Harrington's tournament strategy books knows what I'm talking about) and adjust your tournament strategy according to the different zones. Besides a precisely calculated M, you will also see a calculation of your effective M and the exact zone you're in.
• Max Poker Blog - An interesting poker blog with several new poker related articles per week. These articles may contain the latest news from online poker rooms recommended by Max Poker Bonus, including bonus updates and the latest poker promotions, as well as general articles about our website, our poker team and poker industry related items. Furthermore you can read Max his poker strategy articles for beginners and somewhat advanced players, pro poker players and information about poker tournaments and events, either online or land based.

Best Offers on Max Poker Bonus (9-12)

• Titan Poker Bonus - Because of the fact that we only list a maximum of 10 online poker rooms, we can concentrate on getting better poker bonuses for our visitors. We offer an enhanced bonus from Titan Poker which isn't only higher as advertised by themselves, but is also 50% higher as advertised by most other poker related portals. Signing-up at Titan Poker through Max Poker Bonus gets you a first deposit bonus of 150% up to $500, instead of 50% up to $200 (or 100% up to $500).
• Everest Poker Bonus - Another improved poker bonus is the one that we offer for Everest Poker. Instead of their own advertised bonus of $200, we offer an additional lump sum bonus of $500 (bonus code 500MPB). We have seen quite an amount of big players sign-up for this bonus offer specifically, and would highly recommend it to any player playing at least medium stakes cash games starting from $2/$4. Beginning poker players are advised to go for the $200 incremental bonus, which can be seen as a very fine bonus as well (bonus code 200MPB).
• Titan Poker Calculator - Another very cool (and profitable) offer, next to the bonus offer from Titan Poker we have just mentioned, is the free Titan Poker Calculator. This tool (prized $89,95) is given free to all players signing-up through the Max Poker Bonus website or using poker bonus code MPB150 and is really useful for poker players relatively new to the game who want to learn about odds and probabilities.
• PokerStars Bonus - Last but not least, the new bonus offer from PokerStars. This bonus is not better than advertised on other poker portals, but is recently improved to 100% up to $600 (from 100% up to $50) and very much worth while mentioning. It's an incremental bonus and gives you a very good reason to sign-up at PokerStars, in the rare circumstance that you haven't got an account at the biggest online poker room in the world yet.

Recommended Blog Articles (13-15)

• Meet Team Max Poker Bonus - This article introduces all members of the team behind Max Poker Bonus. You will see that Kurt and I are working together with a group of poker enthusiast spread all over Europe and that we even have poker players representing us in live poker tournaments and events.
• How Secure is Online Poker - Part I - One of our most popular articles so far was this one about security in online poker. A must read for all players that believe online poker may be rigged. Part II is the follow up article. In case you're worried about online poker's honesty after reading these two blog posts, you can rest assured that all online poker rooms recommended by Max Poker Bonus have been screened thoroughly for fairness and integrity.
• Sit&Go - Flop or Drop - This is one of Max (Markus) last articles about playing Sit&Gos. It's an article focussed on beginners, but maybe an advanced player might find it worthwhile reading as well. I advice players new to the game of poker to also read the other poker strategy articles written by Max.

Top 5 Poker Websites Besides Max Poker Bonus (16-20)

• Wikipedia - Poker - Internet's largest encyclopaedia is the place where to find everything there's to know about the game of poker and all its variations.
• Poker For Free - Since Max Poker Bonus is a site dedicated to the best poker bonuses, we don't offer anything for free. Our sister site, PokerForFree.org, is the one you should visit if you're interested in free poker bonus offers and free poker bankrolls.
• Online Poker News - Another great site is 4Flush.com. They offer the latest news from the poker and casino industry. Several articles are published daily and their RSS is a must read for every poker enthusiast. The articles vary from news about poker players, promotions and strategies. The site also has a forum.
• Online Poker Strategy - Steve Badger's site may not look the prettiest, but it is one of the most complete strategy resources that I've ever seen. PlayWinningPoker.com has helped me to develop my game over the years and become a better poker player. I am positive that it's a extremely valuable resource to anyone into poker.
• Poker Site Reviews - Additionally to the rooms offered on Max Poker Bonus we can recommend our friend's site PokerSite.org. They provide great reviews and have rated all sites individually, which can be selected per category.

New Bwin Poker Client

As Bwin Poker introduced their new poker room about a month ago, and they are the rightful owner of the Ongame Network, it means that other poker rooms on the network, such as BestPoker, will also benefit from it. This includes the possibility to download and install a Mac client.

The biggest change to the software is that the new poker software has an improved lobby. Besides a Quick-Seat option, you can filter the games and tourneys in stakes and types, as well as hide empty and/or full tables and hide running and/or finished tournaments.

Another very nice new feature is the table/tournament lobby - mini mode. You don’t have to activate the game or table to see what’s going on, as you can already see all the data just by selecting it. For cash games it means that you can see the players, their stack and position at a glance, and for tournaments it means that you can see all information related to the tournament you have selected. This is inclusive the time it takes before the tourney starts, how many players are registered, game type, starting stack, prize pool, etc. etc. From the lobby – mini mode you can activate the tournament lobby with extra information, such as levels, prizes and a player list. The days that you had to find all these details in a browser are finally gone – a much welcome improvement!

Still one of the biggest cons for Bwin Poker’s client that I can think of – and one that still isn’t fixed to date - is the cashier, which is only accessible in a browser. It would be much better if this was integrated into the poker client.

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Party Poker Client Upgrade

Party Poker came with a completely new version of their renowned online poker room about a year ago. With that specific release they’ve introduced a great piece of poker software, one that can compete with any other online poker room in the world. There have been numerous of upgrades between the first release and the last. Each and every time they try to improve their poker room and come up with innovative ideas – and so, also this time…

First and foremost, as Max Poker Bonus is a site about online poker bonuses afterall, Party Poker changed their bonus system. You are now able to stack bonuses and prioritize them as you wish. For instance, if you are playing to release your Party Poker bonus once a new bonus becomes available, you can choose to put the first bonus on hold (without loosing it, as long as its not expired) and work on the new one.

Further new features in Party Poker’s software include: Hand histories up to the last 100 hands on a table (this should be unlimited IMO), 9-Handed Single Table Tournaments (STTs) and Omaha Tables, and Super Speed Games where you only have 9 seconds to act when its your turn.

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Other Poker Room Updates

New software releases happen all the time. Only a few days ago, Titan Poker introduced a Flash Client (<- more info), which finally enables Mac and Linux users to play poker on the iPoker Network too.

Everest Poker has changed (and improved) their VIP Summit Club, with more rewards for all players at all levels. They have also introduced live support for players who have reached up to Camp II (third level), so you can contact them instantly when you have something on your mind. All levels give you different options for freerolls, starting at $1,000 weekly up to $25,000 monthly, and much more…

So here we are, it's August and we are happy to announce yet another 8x reload bonus offer by BestPoker. Don't let the 8x confuse you though, you won't receive an 800% bonus, the 8x simply stands for the fact that you will only need 8 Player Points per bonus $ - a novelty at the time as you needed up to 11 points prior to the new poker bonus. However you will be able to select which reload offer you prefer and claim it with a minimum deposit if you wish - very uncommon for a reload bonus. Just like in April you can choose between various bonus offers (which by the way are all incremental):

• $100 (10x$10, 45 days) - bonus code: bpreload100
• $300 (6x$50, 45 days) - bonus code: bpreload300
• $600 (6x$100, 60 days) - bonus code: bpreload600

Attention: This particular reload bonus offer is restricted to certain players who have been inactive for 2 weeks. Please make sure to contact BestPoker before using the reload codes to make sure you qualify for that offer!

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We would like to remind you once more that these reload bonus offers are incremental (just like all the new BestPoker bonus offers for first depositors) and require a mere 8 Player Points per bonus $ to be cleared. You can read here about the BestPoker bonus offers for much more detailed info on how to clear it.

If you are an existing player at BestPoker make sure to take advantage of this reload bonus promotion while it lasts. And if you are not a BestPoker player yet, take the time to read our review and the details about their bonus offers to help you make up your mind whether this is the right poker room for you.

As Titan Poker is currently the only online poker room on the iPoker Network recommended by Max Poker Bonus with a Flash version of their software, this is the first choice to play at if iPoker rooms are your favourite poker hangouts.

There is really no excuse why you shouldn't try Titan Poker anymore, but let's list all the benefits once again:

• Titan Poker Bonus: 150% up to $500 (Exclusive bonus for Max Poker Bonus. Incremental and very easy to clear.)
• Developer Poker Software: Playtech (State of the art software. Public company listed on the London Stock Exchange.)
• Software Features Include: PC and Flash version, four colour decks, folded cards, graphical hand history, buddy list, notes, detailed statistics, etc.
• Poker Network: iPoker (Titan is the leading poker room on the iPoker Network. Traffic up to 50,000 players, 20,000 on average.)
• Reward Program: Club Titan (Read all about Club Titan.)
• Poker Events: European Championship of Online Poker (Returning event over multiple days.)
• Other: Titan Poker runs satellites for all major land based poker tournaments, such as the WSOP, EPT and APT.

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Not sure yet? Please have a look at our detailed Titan Poker Review or Titan Poker Bonus for more information. Remember, our first deposit bonus for Titan Poker is 50% higher than advertised by the average poker related website!

Since July 1st Club Titan has become even more beginner-friendly and also manages to reward their dedicated and advanced players even more. But how so? For starters the limit that is needed to advance to the second VIP Level has been lowered from 2,000 to 1,000 points which will be a welcome change for new players. A beginner will now be able to benefit from the advantages of a higher VIP Level much easier and sooner.

Enjoy Point Boosts

At the same time the rewards for advancing in VIP Levels have been improved. The VIP Level Point Boost for VIP Level Silver (1,000 - 4,999 points) has been doubled to 20% instead of the previous 10% which means that at the end of the month each VIP Level Silver player will automatically be rewarded with those additional Club Titan Points. Those of us who manage to reach VIP Level Diamond (35,000 Club Titan Points) - admittedly not an easy task - will even be gifted with a staggering 120% of our points at the end of the month.

But even the average players among us will profit from the improved VIP Level Point Boost as it has been raised at all VIP Levels throughout. So don't worry too much about having to gain lots and lots of points in order to profit from the new and better Club Titan. This means that while every player will receive the same amount of points for the same amount of play in the end dedicated players will be rewarded extra at the end of each month through the point boosts.

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More Points = Better Rates

All your Titan Club Points can be used to purchase merchandise in the Club Titan Shop, for buy-ins or in exchange for cash. When opting for the cash keep in mind that the more points you use the better the exchange rate. For example using 20,000 points would give you $150 while 80,000 points won't bring you $600 but $800 instead. Cash rewards can be earned for as little as 2,000 points. Titan Poker can rightfully claim to have the world's most rewarding online poker VIP Club.

Titan Poker allows you to quickly assess how many Club Titan Points you are likely to gather with your preferred games and time spent playing. Simply use the Points Calculator on Titan Poker website and you will see how many points you are estimated to earn in the course of 12 months as well as when you will be able to use your points for cash rewards. Of course it is only an estimation but nonetheless should give you a good clue. You can also alter some factors (for example the amount of tables you play at) and watch the graph change accordingly which lets you get a better feel for how this affects your points.

If you do not have a player account at Titan Poker yet you will be pleased to hear that Max Poker Bonus is able to offer you a special Titan Poker Bonus. If you sign up at Titan Poker through our site you will receive 150% up to $500 for your first deposit. Additionally to that we offer you the popular Titan Poker Calculator worth $89.95 as a gift. As usual we advise you to take the time and read our detailed info about the Titan Poker Bonus so you can make up your own mind.

Didn't qualfy for the WSOP? Don't worry, because we are organizing our first poker league, the Summer Survival League, during the months of July and August. This league exists of a series of low buy-in events with extra money added to the prize pool. All games will be played at Titan Poker.

There will be one No Limit Hold'em Event every Wednesday night at 21:30 CET where you can earn points for the leader board. The top 10 players of July and the top 10 players of August will qualify for the final.

The Summer Survival League final will be played on the 2nd of September, when all qualifiers will compete against each other for a share of $1,000. A total of three prizes can be won, to be exact $500 for the winner, $300 for the runner up and $200 for the third.

In a nutshell: 8 qualification tournaments with totally $400 added to the pot + buy-ins. A total of 20 players will qualify for the grand final on 2nd of September where they will play against each other for a share of $1,000. All events will be held at Titan Poker.

How to participate?

Participating is simple! All players who sign-up (or have signed-up previously) through Max Poker Bonus will have access to the Summer Survival League events.

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Summer Survival League Schedule

Max Poker Bonus' Summer Survival League starts on the 8th of July and ends with a final on the 2nd of September. We will add an extra $50 to the prize pools of each event, on top of the buy-ins. You can find the entire schedule just below.

• Wednesday the 8th of July: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 15th of July: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 22nd of July: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 29th of July: $5+$0.50 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 5th of August: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 12th of August: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 19th of August: $1+$0.10 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 26th of August: $5+$0.50 buy-in ($50 added)
• Wednesday the 2nd of September: final ($1,000)

Our best bonus!

Max Poker Bonus has built up a superb partnership with Titan Poker, hence we can offer you the Summer Survival League. But that is not all we've got to offer! Did you know that we are among the few poker sites that have been granted an extended poker bonus? Our bonus is 50% better than average:

• Titan Poker bonus offer: 50% up to $200
• Other poker related sites' bonus offer: 100% up to $500
• Max Poker Bonus offer: 150% up to $500

Need to know more? Make sure to read our detailed description about the Titan Poker bonus first. But there is more... as we offer a free poker calculator (valued at $89.95) on top of the first deposit bonus mentioned above.

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Additionally to the already generously enhanced Titan Poker Bonus offer available when signing up through our site you will receive 5 free tokens to the monthly New Depositors Freeroll where you will have the chance to claim your part of $20,000.

As if that wasn't enough, Titan Poker will also offer you 4 tokens to satellites that will allow you to qualify for the amazing Peugeot 207cc Freeroll on June 5.

Yes, you will compete for a luxurious Peugeot Coupé Cabriot worth a stunning $30,000. And don't worry - if you don't have a driver's license (sorry, no chauffeur included) or if you simply don't want the car because you prefer taking the Ferrari out of your garage before it gathers dust (yeah, right) - why not take the cash instead? Titan Poker makes it possible.

Maybe you would like to keep that car secret, so your wife, husband or kids won't borrow it constantly? Our advise in that case: contact a close friend or a person you can trust (you can always contact us - we promise to take good care) so they pretend it is their car. Again, we will be really careful. Honestly!

All in all you will be treated to amazing tournaments with prizes worth $50,000. Oh wait... didn't we mention $63,000 before? We nearly forgot a small little something called the World Series of Poker! Upon making your first deposit at Titan Poker in May you will be rewarded with a token to one of the Thursday night satellites that will award 5 seats to the WSOP Main Event Super Satellite. The winner will receive a 2009 World Series of Poker package worth $13,000.

Ah yes, now we are at $63,000 - the $20,000 New Depositor Freeroll, the Peugeot 207cc Freeroll worth $30,000 and last but not least the $13,000 WSOP package. If you haven't deposited at Titan Poker yet, make sure to do so in May. And if you want to make sure to get the best poker bonus make sure to register through our link (or use our 150MPB code).

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For more details on how to qualify for the WSOP check our Qualify Online for the 2009 WSOP blog post.

Additionally all our players who reached at least 5,000 points will qualify for a $500 freeroll. So if you managed to collect 20,000 points that means $300 plus a $500 freeroll. You may want to read about the details on the Rake Race - in any case if you like playing poker on William Hill this is your chance to maximise your profit.

On your marks ... get set ... GO!

Nearly 45 and still in puberty

Phil Hellmuth will turn 45 on July 16, 2009, and yet still displays childish and ill-mannered behaviour that at times would put adolescents to shame. He ascended to fame by winning the WSOP Main Event in 1989 at the age of 24 (the youngest player to win this title until Peter Eastgate in 2008) and to infamy for his insulting and over the top tirades at the poker table. He doesn't only insult other players, for example by calling them idiots, but sometimes even the card dealers. According to him he is "the best Hold'em tournament player in the world" and "if luck weren't involved, I guess I'd win every [tournament]". This arrogance leads to him being viewed as common enemy by some players and the audience and you will sometimes hear taunting after he lost a big hand. This in turn aggravates Phil and so he and the rest of the world sometimes find themselves spurring each other on.

Due to his sometimes rude behaviour and many curse words (on several occasions more than 50% of his words had to be bleeped in TV when he went on a rampage) he also earned another nickname: Hellmouth. Many people claim that nowadays Phil manages to time his outbreaks perfectly and there is always a camera around when he goes on another rant. Others think that he indeed is convinced that he is the best poker player (or at least better than anyone at the table) and thus has a hard time losing. Especially if his opponent is not one of the big names or plays a different or unconventional style.

You may think what you want about his fits of rage and his arrogance - it is a fact that Phil Hellmuth is a poker icon and one of the most famous poker players in the world. And definitely one of the most successful. He has ended up in the money at the WSOP more often than anyone else, ended up at the final table at the WSOP more often than any other player and has a record number of 11 WSOP bracelets so it comes as no surprise that he is a member in the Poker Hall of Fame.

TV directors of all poker related TV broadcasts love him because he guarantees entertainment and controversy. It is said that away from the table the father of two is actually a likeable person. He is involved in various charitable foundations and puts a lot of emphasis on family values. Accordingly he once answered a question about his favourite celebrity "Any celebrity that keeps their family number 1."

Success at the table and away from it

Phil holds various WSOP records (see above) and is said to have won more than $10 million in poker tournaments so far. Additionally he writes articles for poker magazines, is the author of several books, co-operates with Oakley on special, signed sun glasses, has started his very own clothing company (fittingly named Poker Brat Clothing Company - this man surely knows how to maximise marketing) and has various endorsement deals including his debated connection with the somewhat shady Ultimate Bet.

According to Phil he could earn as much as $400 million next to playing poker. At least that's what he claimed in an ESPN interview. Even taking into consideration his usual exaggeration you can be sure that he would not end up poor if he indeed decided to quit playing poker all of a sudden. But anyone who knows him couldn't imagine him quitting the game he loves so much that it sometimes seems to eat him up inside. And if he ever quits then expect it to be with a loud bang! After all we are talking about Phil Hellmuth, Poker Brat by name, Poker Brat by nature.

In November 2008 Nico Behling finally reached a final table in a big international tournament. In season 5 of the European Poker Tour (EPT) he managed to advance to the final table where he would stay until the bitter end. And bitter it was in a sense because he eventually lost to the Portuguese Joao Barbosa - but once again the money probably helped ease the pain. He proved a fair loser as he immediately congratulated the Portuguese and in the course of the following interviews managed to see the good - the amazing sum of €205,270 which he could take home. Yes, winning a lot of money definitely makes it easier to accept defeat.

For the young German who qualified for this event once more online at Everest Poker playing some of the numerous satellites, this was actually his ninth appearance at the heavily contested EPT - and the first one that saw him end in the money. And impressively so. This fact probably also helped accept the second place. We are looking forward to hearing more from Nico Behling in the future. And if he stays active for as long as the ingenious grandfather of poker, Doyle Brunson, we will be able to cover him for more than half a century still!

The mentioned bwin Poker MMOP package for PokerIsland doesn't only include staying at a luxurious mansion (and "luxurious" definitely is no exaggeration here), fascinating night-life and exclusive clubbings but also all sorts of trend sports activities at the wonderful beach, sailing boat trips - and let's not forget your participation in the MMOP semi-final being played in front of the cameras where you can prove yourself versus 6 opponents. Each of the already mentioned events will give you lots of extras to make sure you have a once in a life-time experience.

How can you qualify for an MMOP event?

Of course you will have to show you have what it takes before being able to secure one of these spectacular VIP packages. Whether you choose to use the daily freerolls in order to qualify for the online final or whether you prefer Sit&Go tournaments is up to you. You can also opt to go for the direct buy-in for a modest $40+4 and take a seat at the online final this way. The prize pool is a guaranteed $30,000 with the first 3 players qualifying for the respective MMOP event and the remaining players in the money taking their share of the remaining $9,000.

Another way to qualify for the MMOP event of your choice is to participate in the Leaderboard Final. In order to qualify for that final you merely need to participate in one MMOP (Magic Moments of Poker) Leaderboard tournament of which there are 2 each day. After that any scheduled tournament will earn you points for the leaderboard. To make scheduling easier for you, you can check our list of tournaments and filter them according to your preference. If you are an active tournament player you should be able to end up in the top 100 of the MMOP Leaderboard which will automatically qualify you for the participation of the Leaderboard Final.

In case you haven't registered with bwin Poker yet, take advantage of our bonus codes (poker bonus offers up to $500) that can be found in our bwin Poker Bonus section. You will also find all the details on how to clear your poker bonus. As always we advise you to inform yourself in detail about the bonus details before selecting your preferred poker bonus in order to maximise the benefit and choosing the right one for your playing style.

Don't let your chance to have an unforgettable poker experience go by. The MMOP event PokerIsland will take place from July 3 - 7, in August you have the chance to win the FC Bayern München special package, September will allow you to be at the FIBA 2009 and October brings a "Meet and Train" with Real Madrid. Choose your favourite Magic Moments of Poker event - or simply take part in all of them. The cards are dealt, play with them.

The poker pro and author of numerous poker strategy books that are referred to as poker bibles among serious players is 75 years of age. He was born on August 10, 1933, in Longworth, Texas. He can look back on more than half a century of experience as a professional poker player. He was the first player who managed to win the WSOP Main Event in consecutive years, the first to earn more than $1 million playing poker, one of only 4 players to win the WSOP Main Event more than once, has won 10 WSOP Bracelets (tied for second place with Honny Chan in that category) and the first of 5 players so far to win a WSOP Main Event as well as the World Poker Tour Title. It should not come as a big surprise that he is one of the most famous poker pros and has been inducted to the Hall of Fame as early as 1988. And he doesn't show any signs of slowing down, let alone quitting the game!

Doyle Brunson used to be a very good athlete as he grew up in Longsworth, a small town with approximately 100 inhabitants. He had early success as a basketball player as well as long track runner and showed a lot of promise. However an accident while working forced him to wear a cast on his leg for 2 years and he had to abandon any dreams of a career in sports. From that moment on he concentrated on his studies and poker and found out that playing poker came very easy to him. After finishing his studies he realised that he could earn much more than his regular monthly salary in just a few hours of playing poker and decided to become a professional poker player.

Early career and a misread name

He started earning his first money by participating in illegal games in Fort Worth, Texas, and later also travelled to neighbouring states. Due to poker generally not being legalised back in these days he happened to find himself in some tricky situations on several occasions. Doyle Brunson was on the wrong end of a gun more than once, was held up, beaten up or robbed - you name it. After many turbulent years he eventually ended up in Las Vegas. By now his name is known not only for his poker skills but his much heralded books. One of the most famous of them is the popular Super System (as mentioned by Max in his blog post Sit&Go - Position and Starting Hand Requirements) which is being regarded as the poker bible by many poker players. Even though he claims that he lost a lot of money because of this book because now other players improved their game, he nonetheless managed to win more than an impressive $5,500,000 in live tournaments.

Some people wonder how he got his nickname Texas Dolly - in fact it was a very mundane mistake committed by Jimmy Snyder, an American sports commentator who simply misread Doyle's last name and introduced him as Texas Dolly. From that moment on he was simply referred to as Dolly by many of his poker friends. His son Todd is also a poker pro and managed to win a WSOP Bracelet in 2005 playing Omaha Hi/Lo. This made Doyle and Todd the first father and son to win WSOP Bracelets.

If we talk about poker legends we will not be able to omit the name Doyle Texas Dolly Brunson - he is arguably one of the players who can claim to have influenced and shaped poker over the past few decades, be it as player or author. And it seems if he has his way this will continue for many years to come. And there is one thing that I really enjoy when he sits at a table: a lot of the usually chatty and noisy players decide to tone it down a bit and show some respect instead. Respect for his age? Rather respect for pure quality and style of one of the poker greats of all time.

For those of you already familiar with BestPoker you know that their first deposit bonus comes in several flavours and so does their reload bonus. You can choose between a reload bonus of 200% up to $100, 300% up to $300 or 300% up to $600. Why would you settle for anything less than the 300% up to $600 offer? Because the steps to clear the bonus will grow with the amount of bonus.

Visit BestPoker Now

While you will be able to clear the 200% up to $100 bonus in steps of $10 (80 Playerpoints) you will have to clear the next higher bonus offers in steps of $50 (400 Playerpoints) and $100 (800 Playerpoints) respectively. If you have already played for some time on BestPoker you should be able to estimate pretty well how many points you will be able to earn in the 45 days that you will have to clear the reload bonus. In case of the 300% up to $600 bonus offer you will have an additional 15 days, so all in all 60 days. But even if you fall short of clearing the whole deal you need not worry - that is the beauty of incremental bonus offers.

In order to qualify for the according reload bonus, simply enter bpreload100, bpreload300 or bpreload600 when you make your next deposit. Keep in mind, this is not a first deposit bonus but a current promotion by BestPoker to reward their loyal players on their next deposit.

Chris Ferguson manages to dominate a table quietly simply through his presence and analytical abilities. I also have a lot of respect for his approach to the game itself. He claims that the money is not the most important aspect for him, he likes the challenge and primarily plays for prestige, honour and the satisfaction of having achieved something big when you are the last to stand up from the final table.

This is also the reason why he prefers playing tournaments rather than cash games. He once explained, "I just don’t like taking money from people after figuring out how they play. That’s just not my style. But once they put their money down for a tournament, it’s all over. Now, that money’s gone. I’m out to win the tournament. There’s something to shoot for in a tournament. More than money, I think."

Of course this is an easy thing to say considering his success so far: 5 WSOP Bracelets and 2 WSOP Circuit Titles - and all in all more than $7,000,000 of prize money won. That sounds like a whole lot - and it is. Especially considering that this is a man who stated in an interview that poker is just something he does for fun and he wants to make a living in analytics and the stock market.

Christopher Philip Ferguson was born on April 11th, 1963, in Los Angeles. His parents have doctoral degrees in mathematics, his father teaches game theory and theoretical probability at UCLA. Chris himself has earned his Ph.D. in computer science. His analytical background shows strongly in his game and works to his advantage. He has researched the game of poker intensely and the photographic memory that he is supposed to have surely helps as well. This man has his built-in Odds Calculator.

How could you not recognise Jesus?

When Chris Ferguson is at a table you would have to be blind not to recognise him instantly. His poker outfit includes a cowboy hat and sun glasses - add to that his charismatic long hair and beard and you have a very unique looking poker player. But not only unique looking ... he once started an experiment where he would have to build his bankroll of $0 (nothing, zip, void, nil, zero,...) up to $10,000 - which he did successfully after 16 months of online poker. For him this was merely to satisfy his own curiosity and it was during that experiment that he came up with his already famous bankroll management rules.

Away from the tables he doesn't wear his hat. It is simply his way of getting into the mood and concentrate on playing poker. He probably earned his nickname Jesus because of his long hair and the quiet, contained demeanour he displays. He doesn't use this nickname himself but it doesn't bother him if others do. He is in general a shy person and prefers it if people walk up to him and start a conversation. He is even such a nice guy that he feels guilty when he is in a hurry and a fan chats him up and he has to cut him short.

If you ever happen to be at a WSOP Event (they are his favourite tournaments) and you see a long-haired cowboy, don't be shy. Chat him up and get to know the person behind the sun glasses. And keep in mind that this quiet fellow is more than just a poker player, you may want to ask him about his success in Swing Ballroom Dancing - yes, he became champion in that discipline.

Chris Ferguson is a man with many interests besides poker. That alone is very impressive for a man as successful at professional poker as he is. To be honest it is hard for me to find any flaw in this man at all. It is very rare to see a man who has had such tremendous success and earned so much money playing poker merely as an extended hobby, who is the center of so much attention anywhere he goes and who still is so down to earth.

After long hours of research and lots of reading I finally found something that I had to disagree with and for the love of mankind I sincerely hope you are with me on this. When asked for his favourite movie Chris Ferguson answered 'Monty Python's Holy Grail' while we all know the correct answer would have been 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' - so close, Mr. Ferguson. Close but no cigar. That proves that no one is perfect, not even Jesus.

WSOP Satellites at Party Poker

My personal favourite this year is definitely Party Poker, not because they offer the best Main Event package, but because their qualification structure seems to be the easiest (and most cost effective) amongst all. They run a variety of Single Table Tournaments (STTs), Multi Table Tournaments (MTTs) and even a WSOP Freeroll Qualifier.

The actual WSOP Satellite, which gives away one Main Event package valued at $12,000 per 20 players, has a buy-in of $600+$40 – which by all means is a pretty low buy-in. Of course getting into this satellite tournament through one of the sub satellites is more interesting.

I suggest the following sub satellites and sub qualifiers if you want to qualify online for the 2009 WSOP at Party Poker:

WSOP Satellite Qualifier Special (MTT)

• Buy-in: $172
• When: Daily
• Tickets: 1 in every 4 players will gain entry to the WSOP Satellite ($600+$40)

WSOP Sub Qualifier Special (MTT)

• Buy-in: $47
• When: Daily
• Tickets: 1 in every 4 players will gain entry to the WSOP Satellite Qualifier Special ($172)

If you rather keep your spending limit low, there are several other WSOP Sub Qualifiers to choose from. The buy-ins start as low as $2 and $4, both of these tournaments having 1 ticket available for every $70 in the prize pool, or for the buy-in of $8 there’s a ticket for every 10 players.

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WSOP Satellites at Everest Poker

The best WSOP package is offered by Everest Poker, the official sponsor of the WSOP last year. The standard package is worth $13,000, but there is more...

Everest Poker runs a promotion called the $1 Million Match, which simply means that the total winnings at the 2009 WSOP of all their qualifiers will be matched up to $1,000,000 and will be redistributed equally over all qualified players. Basically, this means that you don’t even have to end in the money – to get money!

On the other hand, they allow every qualifier to bring a friend and share the experience of the World Series of Poker circus. Everest Poker will cover your friend’s air fare.

Besides all of the above, you will officially be part of Team Everest Poker during the 2009 WSOP, meaning you will get gear to wear, but also be able to get VIP treatment just about everywhere you go, i.e. the Everest Poker lounge and penthouse – but more important at the Everest Poker annual WSOP Party.

Here’s how to qualify for the WSOP at Everest Poker:

Everest Poker offers you the possibility to qualify for the WSOP online, playing Steps Tournaments. You can start at Step 1 for just $2.70+$0.30 or you can buy-in directly at Step 6 for $1650+$78. Naturally, you can enter anywhere in between. The WSOP Steps Tournaments have a regular steps structure, where generally the best two players advance to the next step, third and fourth try again and fifth (sometimes also sixth) bounce back one step.

Besides a package for the WSOP Main Event, Everest Poker also offers a Side Event package valued at $3,500. After Step 4, you will have to choose if you want to play for the WSOP Side Event, or advance to Step 6. Direct entry on this level is $473+$30.

If you climb all the way up to Step 6 you will see that only the winner will get a WSOP package. Finishers from second to fifth will receive a cash prize, $1,500, $1,000, $500 and $500 respectively.

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WSOP Satellites at Titan Poker

The third room for a World Series of Poker qualification that I suggest is Titan Poker. As everywhere else, you can qualify for the No-Limit Hold’em Main Event ($10,000), No-Limit Hold’em Side Events #28 plus #34 (both $1,500), but also for the WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha Championship Event ($10,000).

Ongoing sub satellites for all WSOP Super Satellites run daily. Direct buy-in for the Main Event Super Satellites is $500+$35, direct buy-in for the Side Events Super Satellites is $200+$15 and direct buy-in for the World Championship of Pot-Limit Omaha Satellites is $500+$35.

No-Limit Hold’em Main Event Package

• $10,000 buy-in to the Main Event
• $850 for accommodation at the Rio – 7 nights, July 4th - July 11th 2009
• $250 WSOP registration fees
• $1,900 travel and spending money

No-Limit Hold’em Side Events Package

• Buy-in to WSOP NLHE Events 28 and 34, both with a buy-in of $1,500
• $950 for accommodation at the Rio – 8 nights, June 11th - June 19th 2009
• $250 WSOP registration fees
• $1,800 travel and spending money

World Championship of Pot-Limit Omaha Package

• $10,000 buy-in to the Main Event
• $650 for accommodation at the Rio – 5 nights, June 18th - June 23th 2009
• $250 WSOP registration fees
• $2,100 travel and spending money

Visit Titan Poker Now

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but Max Poker Bonus is a lot more than just the site you’re looking at. We have franchises (sites that carry our name) in several languages, respectively German, English, Dutch – and soon also even French and Spanish.

There are a few people involved in getting these sites up and running – and even more important, keeping them up-to-date. Here below you can read some information about them and their responsibilities.

Kurt is the creative genius behind the Max Poker Brands. His excellent designing skills melt perfectly together with the special features on our sites. Yours truly, Giorgio, is the one responsible for all the development – from caching XML files to comprehensive server scripts.

When it comes to poker, we have Markus on our team, a.k.a. Max, who is the writer of all the strategy related content on Max Poker Bonus. He is a semi-professional poker player who competes both online and in live tournaments and offers us his insights and expertise as a player.

Of course all sites must have their own manager. Personally, I manage the Dutch site and all that comes around. Kurt’s job is to take care of the German site and both of us together make sure that our site for the United Kingdom stays in good shape.

Additionally, we’re more than happy to introduce a new member to Team MPB, as of past Friday. His name unfortunately must be kept confident for the time being (due to contract restrictions) but he brings a lot of experience from "the other side of the table" due to his employment as a consultant for several online poker rooms in the past. You can rest assured that all of us - especially you - will benefit from his vast experience and network. He will also be responsible for the French and Spanish Max Poker Bonus sites.

All of us work from our home-based offices, backed-up by our families. Some of us also have daytime jobs. Kurt and Max live in Austria, I live in the Netherlands and our latest team member lives on Gibraltar. As you see, we’re all over the world and very enthusiastic about poker!

We’re extremely excited about what we have managed to build up in such a short period of time. If you knew even a small part of our plans for the future you’d be amazed. Having such a varied audience brings a lot of opportunities. Soon we will introduce our membership section which will give members access to exclusive Max Poker Bonus features. This will also open the doors to special events that will only be available for our members.

Sponsorship

Since this spring we started to officially sponsor a Dutch poker player. Theo will be playing several live tournaments in Dutch casinos and I, Giorgio, will be lucky enough to take part in some of these events myself. If you happen to meet some players with Max Poker Bonus gear, approach them - chances are that it is Theo and me. We will be more than happy to have a chat and invite you to a drink.

The first tournament we will compete in will be the Twente Classics in Holland Casino Enschede. We will both participate in the €300+30 NL HE freezeout tournament on Sunday May 17. You can expect a full recap to be written in this blog afterwards. We are looking forward to meeting you!

You can climb your way to the top by entering one of the 3 types of qualifiers - you can either choose to take part in Feeder 1 where you compete in a 20 seat SnG for a buy-in of $1+0.20 with the top 2 players advancing to the next round or Feeder 2 which is a 10 seat SnG for a buy-in of $3+0.40 which sees the top 3 players advance. While Feeder 3 has a higher buy-in of $20+5 you will be able to enter the structure directly at the last step prior to the Final if you finish first or second of the 10 players. If you come up third you will win another $20+5 ticket for the tournament.

How do I become King of the Hill?

There are 3 Steps leading up to the grand King of the Hill Final and in each of these 10 seat SnG tournaments you will not only be able to qualify for the next level but also win cash. So even if you should not make it to the top you will be able to win money by competing in this BestPoker promotion. Let's take a look at an example:

You decide to go with Feeder 2 and pay $3+0.40 as buy-in. You finish anywhere in the top 3 of 10 players and advance to Step 1 where you finish 1st, earning you $10 and a token for Step 2. Basically you already have a profit of $6.60. Now you come in 2nd at this level of the tournament, which earns you the token to the final Step 3 together with another $25. Even if you don't manage to end that step of the tourney in the top 3 (which you will have to at any step in order to advance) you will have won $31.60 on the way.

So you can see that while we all strive to be the King of the Hill and take home $2,500 (plus all the winnings on the way up there) you don't need to win the Final (also keep in mind the second place receives $650 and the third $350) or even advance to it in order to win some money.

Collect Your BestPoker Bonus

If you do not have a poker account with BestPoker yet we would like to point out our special deal that not only gives you more time to clear the poker bonus if you sign up through us but also ensures that you need considerably fewer points in order to clear it. You will find all the details at our BestPoker Bonus information. As usual we as you to take your time and make sure to choose the poker bonus fitting your playing style best as all the different offers are lump sum deals which means you will have to clear the whole bonus in time or end up losing it.

Also for all players still fairly new to poker we strongly recommend to check out our beginner's SnG strategy guide, starting with the Sit&Go Preparation up to the Sit&Go - Flop or Drop blog post. You may also want to read up on our Satellite Strategy as this tournament combines both SnG and satellites.

You will now get the official Titan Poker Calculator for free (regularly advertised for $89.95), in addition to our already better than average Titan Poker Bonus of 150% up to $100. Technically spoken you'll get three deals in one. Three? Yes three! You will be able to play with a superb poker bonus and benefit from playing with the Titan Poker Calculator, as well as making additional profit because of the free poker calculator!

How does the Titan Poker Calculator work?

Once downloaded and installed, the Titan Poker Calculator will automatically attach itself when you open up a poker table. It will instantly show you all odds and probabilities plus extra game information that may help to improve your game.

In a nutshell, Titan Poker Calculator displays a lot of information (numbers and percentages), which should help you to execute an action, e.g. make a choice to fold, check, call, bet or raise a hand. These numbers are based on your active table and contain your odds and outs. Pre flop, you will get advice on what you should do, based on your position, your hole cards and of course the pot size. Post flop, you will get the exact calling odds. Calling up to this amount will always be profitable in the long term.

Deck Card Probability
The probability for a card to be dealt that improves your hand on the flop, turn and river.

You versus Best
Your probability to reach up to a certain hand (pair, two pair, trips, straight, etc.) versus the strongest player's probability.

Rival Catch
The probability that one of your opponents holds a specific hole card. Pre flop, as well as post flop based on the community cards.

Game Info
The numbers of opponents in the hand, as well as the total number of hands on the active table. It also shows your strongest hand combination.

Tips for using Titan Poker Calculator

• You must enable "Player actions" in the table's "Chat options" for Titan Poker Calculator to work properly.
• It's advisory to use a "four colour deck" and enable the "show folded cards option. Both of these settings can be adjusted after clicking the options button on the table.
• Make sure you set the proper strategies, for limit, no-limit and pot-limit - but also for tournaments and heads-up situations.
• All windows contain a small question mark. Click on it to read help for a specific window.
• Titan Poker Calculator comes with a comprehensive support manual. It is in your personal benefit to read it and understand everything there is to know about Titan Poker's calculator before you actually start playing.

All you have to do is qualify in one of the already mentioned satellites. Each satellite gives away 50 seats for the $20,000 guaranteed freeroll so if you play it smart you should have no trouble reaching that goal at least once in your 5 attempts. If you are still new to poker, this is an excellent chance to practise your game for free. Also make sure to read up on our guide about how to play in satellites in our Satellite Strategy blog post.

Be aware that this promotion is restricted to new first depositors. If you consider signing up and depositing at Titan Poker make sure to check the details about our improved Titan Poker Bonus and how to clear it.

The promotion itself will start on the 1st of May 2009 and go on for a whole 2 months until midnight of the 31st of July 2009. In these 2 months all the points that you earn while playing poker at William Hill will be taken into consideration. Any of our players who pass the 20,000 points mark in these 2 months will be awarded a $300 cash prize to their player account. Of course you will keep the points and are able to use them to your discretion additionally to that reward.

Effectively this means that as a Max Poker Bonus player at William Hill you have the opportunity to clear $300 additionally while playing and thus clear these $300 at an even better rate than the William Hill Poker Bonus for first depositors. Let's assume you sign up through Max Poker Bonus, deposit $300 at William Hill and are thus eligible to receive a 100% poker bonus which equals another $300.

In order to clear the first depositor bonus you have to earn 700 William Hill Points per $10 (it is an incremental bonus). If you want to clear the whole bonus you will have to gather 21,000 points. Once you clear 20,000 points however you will already be awarded our special Points Race bonus of $300 as an extra bonus! 1,000 more and the entire regular bonus will also be yours. Effectively this means you can improve your first deposit bonus by another $300.

This promotion is indeed very interesting for both new and existing players at William Hill Poker. We advise you to make most of your William Hill experience by signing up through us and being eligible for this great event.

Even if you should not manage to clear the whole 20,000 points in the time-span mentioned you need not despair. For all our players who reach at least 5,000 points in this event there will be a $500 Freeroll (that includes all the players who managed to clear the 20,000 points).

Make sure to use our bonus code (600MPB) when signing up at William Hill - you may also want to read about our in depth William Hill Poker Bonus offer prior to signing up.

The ECOOP IV is once again bigger and better and allows you to compete for your part of the imposing $4,550,000 that are waiting in the total prize pool. The first of the 14 events will be held on May 25 and each day there will be another tournament that allows you to win your part of the $4,550,000 as well as your ECOOP IV bracelet.

After 2 weeks of playing different poker variants (Texas Hold'Em, 7 Card Stud and Omaha) the Championship will culminate in the main event - a NL Texas Hold'Em tournament for a stunning $1,500,000! This final event will be held on June 7 and has a buy-in of $1,500+$80. Alternatively you can of course qualify through satellites prior to the event - this option is available for all the 14 different events of the ECOOP IV.

The ECOOP IV is being hosted on the iPoker network and all poker rooms that are part of it offer you the chance to participate. It is your choice whether you want to play on William Hill, Titan Poker or Bet365. Choose whichever room is to your personal liking (maybe you currently have to clear a poker bonus on one of these rooms and are thus able to kill two birds with one stone).

If you aren't yet a player at one of the rooms you may want to take the time and check the details of our special William Hill Poker Bonus, Titan Poker Bonus and Bet365 Poker Bonus offers. As always we urge you to take the time and compare the various poker bonus offers before signing up with a poker room in order to find the best deal for your specific situation and frequency of play.

If you want to be amongst the first to receive information about promotions like this in the future we suggest you make use of our RSS Feed for our blog.

This extraordinary event takes place on the 13th of May in Sweden's lovely capital (well, actually not so much 'in' as 'above'). BestPoker offers you several different ways to qualify for this Poker In The Sky. You may opt to participate in a so-called Extreme Satellite with a buy-in of just $3+0.30 where you can qualify for the weekly final. The winner of said weekly final will receive $100 and a seat for the monthly final that will see you play for a ticket for the main event.

You will also be able to qualify for this spectacular event simply by playing your usual games at BestPoker. You won't even need to register for the event beforehand as every BestPoker player participates automatically. And if you are a new player that means that not only will you be able to clear your BestPoker bonus due to high activity (make sure to check out our special BestPoker Bonus Offers in detail in order to make most of your money) but at the same time you will gather points in the race to qualify for the poker event above Stockholm's roofs.

The main question now is: Are you scared of heights? If you aren't there is no excuse not to give it a try and maybe drive home on your new Kawasaki ER-6N. You can click one of our links above to find out more details about BestPoker and our special Max Poker Bonus deals that we can offer or you can go directly to BestPoker.

All that is part of the Million Dollar Race spectacle lasting until April 28th. Titan Poker thus wants to celebrate their new loyalty programme Club Titan that rewards active and dedicated players even more than before.

If you are not a Titan Poker player yet, the introduction of Club Titan makes this the perfect time to start benefiting from Titan Poker's new VIP programme. And when signing up through Max Poker Bonus you can also take advantage of our special Titan Poker bonus offer. Instead of the regular 50% bonus we offer you a 150% bonus up to $500 to get the most value for your first deposit. And since the Titan Poker bonus is paid in increments of $5 it even fits players who only play occasionally and who might not be able to clear a lump sum bonus.

So to reiterate, every player earns the same amount of Merit Points for the same accomplishments. Fair is fair. In detail that means that each player will earn up to 10 points per rake and the buy-in fees will be rewarded with 15 points per $. Higher VIP levels are nonetheless a big thing as you will be able to take advantage of additional offers (like exclusive $1,500 freerolls or monthly luxury holiday draws) as well as better rates when converting your Merit Points to cash. Platinum Members will even be able to exchange their Merit Points for a WSOP package worth $16,000!

Advancing through the various VIP levels is quite easy and regular players will find that reaching Silver or Gold status is a task which is easily achieved. In order to become a member of the Platinum VIP level you will have to show your dedication and prove that you understand the game. And if you want to become part of the elitist Diamond Club you will have to be one of the big players. You cannot simply gather a certain amount of points to reach that level - the Diamond Club is an honour that can only be achieved through an invitation by Bet365. Once you get there however you will enjoy exclusive service as well as lots of benefits and special offers that will cater your needs and wishes.

If you are new to Bet365 make sure to sign up through Max Poker Bonus and secure yourself not only the impressive 200% poker bonus up to $600 - you will find details on our Bet365 Poker bonus page - but also the right to compete in one of the weekly New Depositor Freerolls for $1,000. And as if that wasn't enough, the top 100 of the weekly freerolls will qualify for the monthly New Depositor Freeroll for $2,000. Additionally there will be a Bet365 Bounty Player in each of these tournaments and if you are the one taking him from the table you will be rewarded with an additional $22 Tournament Token for use in the event of your choice.

So what Bet365 will do is to pay you 2.5 times the payout that you would normally receive when finishing the month of February as one of the top 300 point earners. The only thing you have to do to qualify for that is to earn your points on Bet365 Poker. If you are a dedicated player on Bet365 Poker this turns the Febonanza into the Million Dollar Mission. A Mission Possible we believe.

However that is not all! At Bet365 you can also win an extra jackpot with every millionth hand played in February. If you participate in any millionth hand played you will receive a share of the Millionth Hand Jackpot (depending on the limit of the table up to $3,000) - and if you win one of these hands you will also get the whole jackpot sum for yourself. And there is still more to come: As a winner you will automatically qualify for the Jackpot Hand Super Showdown that rewards the highest winning hand with an additional $30,000 while the lowest winning hand will get a $20,000 bonus.

If you are a dedicated poker player you will find that playing at Bet365 Poker will reward you a lot in February. Make most of this opportunity and cash in on your poker games. Each hand counts. If you manage to put your name onto the leaderboard you will reap the benefits of Bet365's prize increase. As Bet365 Poker player you will earn a whopping $1,875 for ending up last while a regular player who ends up 26th of the 300 top players will still receive less money than you with his $1,500. If you compete in this leaderboard event in a different poker room, you only have yourself to blame. If you are not a Bet365 Poker player yet check out our Bet365 Poker bonus page and take advantage by signing up through Max Poker Bonus. And if you are already signed up at Bet365 - get playing!

Keeping that in mind it doesn't surprise that more and more poker players who qualify online end up on the final tables of these tournaments. The winner of the EPT Deauville is yet another online qualifier. Moritz Kranich was able to win it all and take home €851,400. The German managed to beat Frenchman Arnaud Esquevin who was accompanied by 4 countrymen at the final table, Tristan Clemencon, Jonathan Azoulay, Bruno Launais and Thomas Delattre. Italian Andrea Bellini who was able to bring home €219,800 as fourth, and Jorn Walthaus (6th, €142,400) from the Netherlands completed the final table. Esquevin received €495,400 for ending up second and proved to be a fair loser when immediately congratulating 28 year old Moritz Kranich.

Kranich was actually the second oldest player at the final table which had an average age of just 24 years. The youngest poker player at this table was 19 year old Frenchman Tristan Clemencon who surely will be delighted about third place and €284,800 but maybe feels a bit disappointed at the same time knowing that he went into the final stage of the event as clear chip leader.

With another EPT online qualifier winning an event a trend that has been recognisable for some time now continues. More and more online poker players develop into strong and steady live tournament players and a lot of them are able to become poker pros. No matter whether you actually want to become a professional poker player or not, you still can enjoy the thrill and excitement of such a huge event as the EPT by qualifying online at Everest Poker or BestPoker in one of their many satellites. The next EPT stage will be held from February 17th - 21st in Copenhagen - seize your chance to participate in the EPT Scandinavian Open.

If you opt to qualify for the EPT at BestPoker and have no poker account there yet, take the time to check our special BestPoker bonus deals in detail. There are a lot of variants and depending on your activity level and dedication you can choose the one fitting you best. And as unique service for our players we can offer far better conditions: You will need less points to clear the bonus no matter which offer you prefer and 2 of them even give you an additional 15 days to do so!

Up until now we were able to offer a 100% poker bonus which already was a remarkable improvement over the regular bonus but we were not satisfied yet. Our name obligates us to strive for the best poker bonus deals for you at all times. We hope that you will make use of our new special offer while it lasts. We are of course continuously working on improving our existing poker bonus offers in order to always supply you with the best deals available.

You may choose to go directly to Titan Poker in order to take advantage of the 150% bonus or you may decide to go to our Titan Poker bonus page first to check out all the details. It really is one of the most customer-friendly offers in online poker: with the introduction of Club Titan it has become easier for dedicated new poker players to gather points. Furthermore you have 3 months for clearing your poker bonus and will get paid in increments of $5. It can hardly be any fairer and easier to clear a bonus.

Can Something Like This Happen Again?

To be blunt: Yes. There can and will be attempts of fraud no matter whether we are talking about poker, buying cars or whatever else. Wherever money is involved you will find crooked people who try to take advantage. This has been the case forever, the internet simply provides more and easier means to do so. In the case of online poker this doesn't necessarily have to happen with superusers (as discussed in How Secure Is Online Poker? - Part I), there have been and will be enough other attempts that are however in general prevented by the poker rooms before they happen or at least caught when they do take place. This is also a reason for some of the restrictions that players have to endure when playing at some online poker rooms - they don't simply want to annoy you by letting you wait for your money when cashing out for example, it is simply an added security measure for everyone involved.

So should you abstain from online poker? Well, that comes down to your personal discretion. It should be mentioned however that you can do your part trying to avoid getting ripped off. First of all you need to decide whether a poker room is trustworthy. At Max Poker Bonus we do not present any poker room where the integrity has been questionable at any point. We also clearly advise against rooms like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet (UB just recently had a software flaw - as was the official statement - where a certain Phil Hellmuth ended up winning a Heads Up despite having the worse hand and as it turned out this wasn't the only time this happened). We would like to make it known that these things remain the absolute exception (no pun intended) in online poker. If you steer clear of dubious rooms with a questionable reputation the danger of getting cheated is indeed very small.

What Do The Poker Rooms Do About It?

Personally I am convinced that in general all the well-known and so far respectable poker rooms are virtually fraud-free. The big poker rooms will usually invest a lot of money and time to make sure no cheating takes place simply because they want to avoid their name being connected to any fraud. It is nearly impossible (as well as very expensive and time consuming) to restore one's image after such a scandal. Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet thrive on the lack of information of new players which also the affiliate industry is to blame for. There are still a lot of affiliates who put their own profit ahead of their customers' security and well-being and who still actively promote poker rooms like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Some of the bigger and older affiliate programmes even list them in their Top Ten - simply because they get great deals from them (otherwise no one would list poker rooms with such bad reputation on their site). We want to put as much distance between those kind of affiliates and us which is one of the reasons that we only accept a poker room in our listing after careful research and talks with responsible personnel as well as active poker players.

An important factor concerning the security of online poker is the huge poker player community. Often times people don't realise how much power and means of control this crowd of poker players actually possesses. The prime example for this is once again the Superuser Scandal mentioned in the previous blog post - while the management denied and disavowed everything as long as possible the community prevailed despite havin limited tools and access. The fraudulent actions were being monitored by thousands of poker players and eventually proven step by step. It is nigh impossible to keep something hidden from thousands and thousands of people, some of whom spending more than 10 hours playing online poker each day.

How Secure Is My Poker Room?

Unfortunately it can be very difficult for new players to assess the security situation of a specific poker room. Even more so when some rooms pretend to be above all speculations by using some famous professional poker player as their figure-head. Ultimate Bet for example uses Phil Hellmuth to promote and no matter what you may think about him as a player or a person, he has high profile and sells very well. It is just a shame that in this case he seems primarily interested in making money (which we assume he doesn't really need anyway) regardless of how it affects his reputation among some of the long-established poker players (some may say that he obviously never cared about his reputation his whole life the way he behaves on and off the poker table). Be that as it may, it still is a very big selling point for Ultimate Bet.

To be upfront: There are no guarantees. It is hard to guarantee the honesty and integrity of other people. We can ensure you however that we do very thorough checks (which sometimes drive our contacts at a poker room crazy) before adding an online poker room to our list. Therefore our limit of 10 poker rooms on Max Poker Bonus at any given time. We want to distinguish ourselves from most other affiliates by offering you quality over quantity. Yes, we could offer a hundred rooms but we would not feel comfortable telling you that it is a good idea at a poker room that we are not completely certain about. And if you profit from our quality and thoroughness we will profit as well because we thrive on being mentioned with a positive image. Which is why we have no interest to be connected to rooms like Absolute Poker or Ultimate Bet. We can only wish for more fellow affiliates to advise their customers against dubious poker rooms instead of presenting them on their website and hush up all the existing problems.

So please read up on the poker rooms that you might be interested in and trust your instincts when they tell you that something sounds to good to be true (because usually that will be the case, not only in online poker). We would also like to take the opportunity to suggest you contact us if you think that there is something shady going on in any poker room (it doesn't even have to be one in our current list as we will archive everything for future reference) or if you have to wait too long for a withdrawal, the client support is unfriendly or incompetent,... We count on you to let us know so we can take the appropriate action and confront the responsible people as well as reconsider whether this room deserves a spot on our list.

At this point we would also like to thank the players who have sent us information thus far. The negative as well as (so far) overwhelmingly positive feedback really helps us evaluate the poker rooms presented on Max Poker Bonus. The community of poker players lives on relaying of information in order to effectively take measures against equivocal poker rooms.

We would also like to once more direct your attention to our RSS Feed that will keep you informed at all times, be it about serious topics like this, promotions, special bonus offers, info on tournaments or players,...

Just like anywhere else there have been various accusations against specific poker rooms, some incredible incidents have since surfaced and tens of millions of dollars had to be paid in compensation to deceived poker players. The biggest and most famous incident so far was clearly the scandal that involved so called superusers - Absolute Poker as well as Ultimate Bet were the two poker rooms where players were cheated out of millions and millions of dollars.

The fraudulent action was practically identical as in both poker rooms so called superusers cheated in online poker games and made a huge profit at other players' expense. In both cases the deceived players got their money reimbursed but only after the players could gather enough evidence through their own research. These scandals showed that the U.S. ban on online poker caused companies like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet to simply open some shady back doors. They registered their companies offshore and since then pay continuously for "official" licenses from companies that do not much more than simply sell them a seal that basically means nothing but feigns a false sense of security for players. When the superuser scandal became public everyone realised that these "official" control organs did anything but control the poker rooms in question and that they actually had neither the desire nor the possibility to prosecute anyone for their fraudulent behaviour.

What is a Superuser?

Generally speaking a superuser is someone who has more access rights than a normal user and thus gains advantage. In the case of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet these superusers could see all the Hole Cards on the table. You don't have to be a genius to realise that even the worst player will become a great champion if he knows his opponents' cards. The incident involved huge amounts of money and the first accusations of cheated players were labelled as defamations and whining. After a closer inspection however the community of poker players was able to gather more and more indications and was able to track an odd player behaviour after watching thousands and thousands of the hands in question.

When those suspicious facts became too many to simply let the whole thing die down, lady luck played her part: A player requested a hand list of the suspicious user and an inexperienced Absolute Poker employee sent a file that had the hands with all the cards visible. That made judging the plays and the whole situation so much easier as that player now had the ability to see the table as they suspected this superuser saw it. It all clicked and finally, after months of denying, the Absolute Poker management had to admit to the fact that there was a superuser and fraudulent action had taken place. While this superuser account was only able to watch tables he simply passed on his information to his accomplice who played with a normal user account.

Looking back there were more than just a few obvious indications for Absolute Poker to assume the accusations that had been brought forward were justified (for example the fact that this superuser and his partner in crime always switched tables together) - nonetheless the management did what they could to dismiss this all as conspiracy theories. Eventually they had to admit that two very senior employees (Scott Tom and AJ Green) were guilty of these accusations and while Absolute Poker complied with reimbursing the cheated players their money, they also saw to it that no law suits were filed against those two. Up until now no one has been arrested or brought to trial. This whole situation showed that a legalisation of online poker in the U.S. would not only allow them to profit financially due to the taxes paid but also help to be able to effectively control and monitor online poker companies and eventually bring responsible people to justice. As of now none of the deceived U.S. players can really sue the people responsible because they themselves were not allowed to play online poker in the first place.

Coming Soon...

The second part of this blog topic will take a closer look at the current situation of online poker security. While several poker rooms simply proved their reliability and integrity over many years or are operating in a very clearly and strictly defined legal environment (like bwin Poker - situated in Austria where online poker is legal and state-controlled) there are unfortunately still enough online poker providers that have a bad reputation among insiders, be it because of shady business in the past or the fact that judging by the number of players over the past few years they should not be able to sustain themselves let alone gain money.

We will examine how likely fraudulent behaviour is for (so far) respectable rooms and what you can do to help defending yourself against possible fraud. We will also take a look at how safe your preferred poker room might be and whether security can actually be guaranteed when a famous professional poker player stands for the quality of a poker room with his name.

Don't forget to make use of our RSS Feed in order to stay up-to-date at any time and to make sure you won't miss any news in the future.

Club Titan is the new Titan Poker VIP programme that offers many rewards to new players as well as those who consider themselves to be professionals (and anyone between). Poker players will be able to earn up to several thousands of dollars each month depending on their activity level (Titan Poker even mentions tens of thousands of dollars - however you will probably have to be as close to being a pro as possible in order to achieve that). But for "normal" players like us even a mere $100 extra each month are very tempting.

The principle of Club Titan is simple: Titan Poker wants to give you as many incentives as possible in order to have you return to the tables as much as possible. In return they will award you with additional prizes and Titan Points (that can be turned into real money amongst other things). You will simply gather these points by playing your games. And the great thing: If you stay active and earn 1.000 points or more per month you will get additional points in the so called Loyalty Points Bonus. Effectively you will receive a certain percentage of points added to the points that you actually earned.

While there are still various different VIP levels you will earn the same amount of points regardless of your current level, which will be especially appealing to new Titan Poker players. They simply made it easier to gather points when still at lower VIP levels thus enabling you to level up faster. With each VIP level you will be able to profit from various extras and special offers. Titan Points will be awarded to all the participating players on a table as soon as there is a rake of at least $0.04. Of course you will also receive points for tournament fees. These points can be used in the shop or as buy-in for tournaments - you can also opt to cash the points in. It is up to you.

Our Max Poker Bonus tip: Check the table for cash rewards in order to see how many points will give you which reward and consider saving your points instead of turning them into cash as soon as possible. You will find out that for example cashing in 80.000 points will net you more money than cashing in 20.000 four times.

Update: Max Poker Bonus just closed an enhanced poker bonus deal with our partners at Titan Poker that allows us to offer you an even better bonus than before. As of now our bonus offer is an incredible 150% up to $500! Take full advantage of that special Titan Poker bonus while it lasts!

So we have decided to call or raise pre-flop. Our pre-flop raise will be an impressive one in the first few blind levels of our micro limit SNG. We don't simply raise to three or four times the BB but for example to ten times the BB. In our virtual SNG with the 10/20 starting blind level and our 1,500 chip stack such a raise thus would be around roughly 200 chips. Our general strategy aims to build up big pots even pre-flop. Whenever there is a flop we want to get the most out of our opponents. Therefore the blog title Flop or Drop - we invest chips in order to help the pot grow quickly.

Let's assume our pocket cards are QQ - according to our last article we will either raise (if we see no raise before it's our turn), reraise (if a player raises before us) or fold (if there are two or more raises). So our raise here would be 200 chips. But how high would our potential reraise be? That basically depends on the value of the first bet on the table - we will count all the chips in play and reraise to twice the amount or slightly more. So if a player before us raised the BB to 200 we will reraise him to at least 460 chips (200 chips + 20 BB + 10 SB = 230 chips, therefore twice the pot amounts to 460 chips). Our reraise must never be below the sum of our regular raise (according to our rule above) and the current pot.

Example: Pocket cards QQ, 10/20 blind level, a player raises the BB to 50 chips - we won't reraise to a mere 160 (50 + 20 + 10 = 80, 80 x 2 = 160) but our regular raise amount (200) plus the current pot (50 + 20 + 10 = 80), which equals a total of 280 chips. We will always use the higher amount when deciding which of our two rules to use (double pot or raise + pot). If the reraise amounts to more than half of our stack we can decide to either go all-in or fold our cards. Under no circumstances do you want to see two thirds or more of your stack on the table and then see an ace on the flop which pretty much hurts our QQ - at that point you'd already be committed and would have to play the hand to the end anyway.

What is a good flop for us?

Lets take a look at your potential starting hands and the according flops that we want to see:

• Pocket Cards: A Pair
  Let's assume your pocket cards are a Pair. Once you see the flop check for a third card for your Pair. If you don't hit the Set the next thing you want to check is whether you have the Overpair. In both of these cases you have a strong hand that you should play accordingly.
• Pocket Cards: No Pair
  You see the flop with AK, AQ, AJ or KQ - what should you hope to find in the first 3 community cards? Well, preferably your highest card - 3 times. Presumably your opponents will however drop out with your first best in that case. The next best scenarios would be - in declining order - Full House, Straight, Triple, 2 Pairs or 1 Pair. A finished Full House or Straight on the flop is of course much less probable than hitting at least a Pair. So when should you continue playing your hand and when should you fold and drop out of the current hand? If you don't hit on the flop you will either check or fold. If you hit a Pair and it is not the Top Pair you will either check or fold. In all other cases you can basically go for it and build some pressure by betting or raising.

General notes: Carefully check the flop in order to see whether it might be dangerous. If there are 3 cards of the same colour or 3 connected cards (like 8-9-T) on the table you risk running into a Flush or Straight. In that case you will probably be better off to be on the safe side and fold your cards if someone before you bets - unless you have a card that gives you a Flush Draw or Straight Draw (or even better, you actually hit the Flush or Straight right at the flop yourself). If you bet after the flop your bet at your typical micro limit SNG should be around 2 thirds of the pot - at this limit most of the players should be tempted to call.

We hit on the flop - what now?

If you are lucky enough to have hit something like Four of a Kind or a Straight right at the flop you should try and play it slowly in order to not frighten your opponents. You want to keep them in the hand so they can help build the pot. With pocket cards of AK and a flop of AAA even the craziest maniac will probably fold if you bet half the pot or more. Instead you can decide to simply check and with a bit of luck one of the other players will bet, either in order to attempt a bluff or because he has a pair in his hole cards. You can still decide to play the hand on the turn (and even then still pretty soft) and hope for one or the other player not to believe you have the Quad.

On the turn we stick to the same principle as on the flop: First make sure that the community cards are not dangerous and bet approximately two thirds of the pot (or go all-in if your remaining stack is only marginal). We want our opponent to either pay us big time or fold his cards.

Usually most players will fold before a potential river because at some point they should realise that we have a strong hand. If you actually happen to see the river and lost to someone with two pairs (for example AA88) keep in mind that a player who is willing to pay that much pre-flop with A8 had a much worse hand than you and will end up losing that hand more often than not which means he is a losing player in the long run. This player will make this mistake again and again and he will end up paying you out considerable amounts of chips most of the times. Of course you may even end up losing with your pocket aces to someone with 72 but our aim is to become a long term successful poker player. Unlucky defeats and bad beats are just part of playing poker and there is no use crying over spilt milk. Just keep in mind that you did everything right and lady luck sometimes just smiles upon someone else.

With all the focus on tournament play (be it multitable or Sit & Go) I feel the "original" type of poker, the cash game, is being somewhat neglected. Here you sit at the table and play for real money. Just as you see in every mainstream wild west movie. Fortunately however you don't risk staring into the barrel of an opponent's gun.

When playing cash games your aim isn't being the last player sitting at the table
nor is your evening over when you have lost all your chips (you can simply buy new ones) - it is over when you want it to be, either because you simply had enough poker for one evening or you have reached your goal (or - heaven forbid - you have squandered your whole bankroll). The chips that you receive when sitting down at the table represent the exact amount of money you used to buy yourself into the game. And the money you will receive when leaving the table is vice versa the exact amount of money represented by your chips at the table.

Be warned, playing cash games can be risky when you are new to the game and have not had any experience with playing for real money. I strongly recommend you play for play money first and handle it like playing with real money (even though some of your opponents may not do the same and play a bit wild) or play some tournaments, be it Sit & Go (I urge you to read Max' posts on Sit & Go Strategy even if you will not play SNG tournaments as you will find a lot of tips that are generally useful for new players) or multitable tournaments as you will simply pay the buy-in and the tournament fee and will not risk losing more money than what you invested in the first place.

Ready to Rumble?

Now that you feel you are ready to play your first cash game I advise you to ease into it by playing very low limits at the beginning. Start from the bottom and work your way up slowly once you think you mastered a certain limit and manage to win on a constant basis. Keep in mind that your opponents will be tougher with the increasing amount of money that you play for. Always keep an eye on your bankroll and make yourself aware of what you can afford to lose. Nothing is worse than playing cash games with money you cannot afford to lose except maybe playing with borrowed money. This is something you should never do when playing poker - on the one hand it is simply a bad idea in general but on the other hand it is strongly frowned upon by poker players. You either have the money to play or you better don't play at all.

If you manage to get a feeling for cash games and can emerge a winning player in the long run you can make some serious money. Looking at the amounts of money that people play for at cash game tables makes it easy to understand why more and more players who consider themselves to be better than the average player enjoy playing cash games instead of tournaments. You can make a lot of money in a short time - but you can also lose a lot of money in the same time!

Information is Key

Poker is a game of patience - and of gathering as much information as possible. Even before the actual game itself. I advise you to check and compare poker tables prior to taking a seat there. Compare the average pot, the percentage of flops seen and so on. Most poker rooms allow you to gather this information while waiting in the lobby which helps you determine whether there are many loose players or not (the higher the percentage of flops seen, the looser the game) and whether you are comfortable with the average size of the pot. Most of the poker rooms nowadays will offer you this basic information in the table overview inside their lobby.

Keep in mind that even though you are not bound to a strict time schedule as in a tournament you should not try and "squeeze" a quick cash game in if there are other matters on your mind that have to be taken care of. Take your time when playing poker or the quality of your decisions will suffer tremendously from lack of concentration. And you better focus when you play for money.

In my next post I will talk about position and pocket cards and will explain to you why you should never play KQ unless you should do so. Confused? Then there is still quite a lot that you should learn about - but don't you worry, it is not that difficult to become a competent cash game player as long as you remember a few things and make sure to stick to your bankroll management at all times (this is something that I simply cannot emphasise enough). It helps to always have a general financial plan that decides the amount of money that you use as your bankroll - especially when playing cash games - and that you manage to slam on the brakes immediately when necessary.

How can you qualify for The Grand Final? You will not have to compete in satellites or any qualifying tournaments, you will simply play your usual cash games at bet365 and be rewarded for the rakes you produce. Each week the 40 players who lead the list by accumulating qualifying raked hands will get rewarded with cash prizes. Additionally to that the top 5 players will receive a seat for The Grand Final. If one of these 5 players is already qualified he will be rewarded with an additional 3,000 chips for the final tournament up to a possible total of 9,000 chips! So it really pays off staying dedicated after you have qualified.

The Grand Final takes place on January 19th 2009, the qualification will end after December 28th 2008. And in order to give you a chance to be part of the final tournament even if you don't have the time to play each and every day bet365 holds a special tournament each week for the top 100 players where the winner gets rewarded with a seat in The Grand Final.

While this Leaderboard Race Challenge by bet365 is an excellent idea to reward cash game players for their activity and dedication we strongly urge you not to start playing excessively just because of that (or any other) promotion. Stay at your limits and play according to your personal bankroll, avoid playing on tilts or playing for too long in one session with your concentration waning. If you manage to be in a promising position in the leaderboard by playing your regular game you can still increase your playing frequency a bit. But it would be the wrong approach to throw your whole usual concept of poker over board simply for a promotion even if it is as tempting as this one.

The EPT currently resides in Prague (December 9th - 13th) which means that we have reached half-time of season 5. The buy-ins of the tournaments usually are set at around €5,000+250, not really the kind of money your everyday amateur poker player is willing or even able to spend. This is why you will find a lot of really big and famous names at the various tournaments like for example the freshly crowned WSOP champion Peter Eastgate. The Dane who wrote history by becoming the youngest poker player to ever win the WSOP main event in 2008 is presently competing with other poker professionals as well as amateurs at the EPT in Prague.

Amateurs? Indeed... While a direct buy-in at a EPT tournament usually is too expensive for the likes of us (let's face it, most of us likely cannot afford to there is nonetheless a great opportunity to be part of it. Several online poker rooms offer the possibility to qualify for the EPT by playing satellites for low buy-ins. The recent EPT Warsaw for example saw the young German Nico Behling end up in second place, earning in excess of €200,000 - and he qualified by playing satellites on Everest Poker. This wasn't the first time for him, but the first time that he ended up in the money and then even at the final table.

While the EPT initially had a hard time coming up with the well-known names you can now find some of the best and most famous poker pros at the tournaments. And all the players that qualify for a tournament of the EPT through an online poker room and manage to find themselves in the money, maybe even sitting at the final table, will take away not only lots of cash but also a lot of experience and interesting meetings and talks with some of the big time poker players. Some even manage to acquire a good sponsorship deal in addition to their poker earnings.

If you ever wanted to breathe the same air as the world's most famous poker pros you now have a great chance of qualifying by playing one of the many daily satellites at Everest Poker, starting from buy-ins as low as $5+0.50 (we strongly recommend taking a look at how a satellite strategy differs from for example your regular Sit&Go strategy). You may also decide to directly compete in the Winner's Choice Tournament on Wednesday's where you can win one of the weekly $12,000 Everest Poker EPT Packages, the buy-in being $200+15 for that tournament. You can of course also decide to use your Everest Poker Summit Points instead of money for your buy-in, as usual.

If you do qualify for the EPT let us know and simply contact us. We are always keen to know how our players are faring and how they are doing. We of course also like to hear from you if you don't qualify, be it praise, criticism or simply a story about a great hand (or a bad beat) that you would like to share. We wish you a lot of success and luck playing poker!

While bwin Poker started out as a comparatively small brand and was not taken seriously in the beginning they managed to push their poker branch immensely at the end of 2006 and by now they are one of the best and biggest online poker rooms of the world. This was no easy task but one that has been done in an impressive manner and with a lot of planning and thinking.

The merger of afore mentioned poker rooms to bwin Poker equals more tournaments, more players, more money, more opportunities to qualify for various big live tournaments,... As a poker player you are guaranteed to profit, even more so when considering that bwin has become a huge brand offering online casino and sports betting as well (which you can all access from one account). Having a strong brand name like this allows bwin Poker to haul in very good deals (and if you keep in mind the international advertising you know that they think big indeed) and that in turn means even better offers for you as a player - be it qualifiers for the famous Aussie Millions or the monthly $750.000 guaranteed Grand Series.

One cannot help but end up wondering why bwin hasn't combined their poker rooms before. On the other hand it is better to do it late than never and when examining the development of bwin as a brand name, you must admit that the people responsible for management obviously know what they are doing. So make sure to make most of the numerous advantages offered and check our bwin Poker review to find out whether this poker room is for you. We have also listed the bwin Poker bonus offers that are available through Max Poker Bonus and taken a closer look at them so you can make up your mind which offer suits you best. As always we urge you to take the time and carefully consider which bonus to take as the best and highest bonus doesn't do you any good if you are not able to clear it!

Let's stay at our example of the $500 buy-in tournament. A typical satellite for this tournament would be a $50 buy-in. Now the poker room will wait to see how many players sign up for the satellite and then determine how many seats for the $500 buy-in tournament will be made available. In our case you would normally get 1 seat per 10 particpants as this would equal a buy-in of $500 (10 x $50). Let's assume at our satellite there are 100 participants, therefore we are playing for 10 seats in the big tournament.

But why did I call this blog post Satellite Strategy? Does the strategy for a satellite really differ from a regular multi table tournament strategy? And if so, how? Well, you can argue that you should play a satellite just like any other tournament up until a certain point. The main difference is that in our fictitious satellite tournament 10 people will receive a seat for the tournament that we want to qualify for. And it doesn't matter at all whether you finish first, third or tenth! Therefore you will want to play it very safe as soon as you are getting close to the bubble and have a decent stack as opposed to a regular tournament where you will still want to increase your stack.

In our example, if you are currently placed 4th and there are only 12 players left, do try to avoid showdowns for big stakes. What good is an all-in with KK or even AA if your opponent with a bigger stack makes a call and hits a straight or flush? The result: You ended up outside of the top ten and failed to qualify (which was your only goal for that satellite to begin with). Better let others make that mistake and wait patiently for them to exit the satellite until there are only 10 players remaining. That is definitely the biggest difference between a satellite and a regular multi table tournament.

Personally I play aggressively at the beginning of a satellite in order to build my stack quickly so I can live off it in the final phase of the tournament. So from the start up until the middle of the tournament I play as I would in any other tournament - but the longer the satellite lasts and the better my current overall place in the tournament, the more careful and conservative my game. With the tournament reaching the final stages I weigh my position at the table more and more and usually will try to play only out of late position and usually avoid trying to steal the pot.

In short: At the beginning of a satellite simply play your normal game that you are comfortable with but the further the tournament proceeds the more you have to keep in mind that it really doesn't matter whether you end up winning it or ending up at the last position that still qualifies. Your only goal when playing a satellite is to end up winning a seat for the next tournament and preserve your bankroll doing so.

I wish you the best of luck!

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Our SNG starts and every player receives a starting stack of 1,500 chips. The blinds are being raised every 10 minutes and the first blind level is at 10/20 (that means a small blind of 10 and a big blind of 20 chips). This and the next blind level will mainly consist of us focusing on our opponents' playing style. Who hardly plays any hand if any at all? Who only plays from late position? Who likes to raise? Who hardly raises? Who keeps calling? Do we have a maniac (wild player who plays a lot of hands, raises a lot and possibly attempts many bluffs)? If we come to see a showdown who has played which hand and how? That is already a lot of information to be gathered and remembered and if it is too much at the beginning of your young poker career at least try filtering the players willing to play risky!

We will play a TAG style (as explained in my last blog entry Sit&Go Preparation). In order to effectively do so it is important to realise what position we are in. Position refers to where we are seated in regard to the Dealer Button (BU). With 10 players at a table you divide the position up as follows:

1. Small Blind (SB)
2. Big Blind (BB)
3. Under The Gun (UTG)
4. Under The Gun +1 (UTG+1)
5. Under The Gun +2 (UTG+2)
6. Middle Position 1 (MP1)
7. Middle Position 2 (MP2)
8. Middle Position 3 (MP3)
9. Cut Off (CO)
10. Button (BU)

The 2 player left of the dealer (SB, BB) are referred to as the Blinds. The 3 following players (UTG, UTG+1, UTG+2) are also called Early Positions. Seated after them are the players in Middle Position (MP1, MP2, MP3) while the final two players (CO, BU) are referred to as being in Late Position.

Why is the position so interesting? Well, the more players acting after you the bigger the chance that one of them has strong cards that we don't know about yet. The position defines the order of betting in all betting rounds which makes the Button the best position because - with the exception of the first betting round, the pre-flop - this player will always be able to make his decision after everyone else. If a player is seated further to the right of the button than you, you "have position" over that player in the poker lingo. This is a great advantage because whenever you get to decide what to do you can adjust to what he did and act accordingly. Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson (a poker icon if there ever was one) noted in his famous book Super System: "In No Limit Hold'em position is... well, it's the name of the game. It's everything. If I had position all night, I could beat the game... and I'd never have to look at my hole cards." We however will take a look at our cards and will make sure only to play the following hands in this early phase of the SNG:

You will fold all other pocket cards during the first three blind levels! While this may seem overly conservative or even cowardly I strongly recommend that you stick to the table strictly in your early SNG career. To quote myself: "Wanting to be a winning SNG player in the long term we will have to make it our primary goal to be among the remaining last 3 players on the table." We haven't gained anything finding ourselves in an all-in situation with AQ and 8 remaining players on the table when an opposing player shows us his AK and takes us off the table. In a tournament your goal is to survive. Don't let the fact that someone at the table already doubled his stack change your playing style. In the very next tournament this player might exit very early thanks to his playing style.

In my next blog entry Sit&Go - Flop or Dropwe will take a look at which flops we would like to see with our carefully chosen pocket cards. Until then I hope you will find a lot of aces under your pillow!

Taking a look at the payment structure of a typical SNG with 9 participants we will see that only the first 3 places will be paid (1st place 50%, 2nd 30% and 3rd 20% of the total prize pool) while the remaining players will end up with nothing at all. Wanting to be a winning SNG player in the long term we will have to make it our primary goal to be among the remaining last 3 players on the table. While this sounds like a very obvious thing to do, my experience taught me that a lot of players in the micro limits do not heed that and very few players actually approach their SNG game accordingly. As a thoughtful poker player you will thus be able to gather experience without risking a lot of money at the micro limit SNGs and you will more than likely have success very soon and quite easily. The key to success lies in the choice of playing styles. Here is a quick listing of the 4 main categories of playing styles:

1. Loose-Passive (lots of hands played - more calls than raises)
2. Loose-Aggressive (lots of hands played - more raises than calls)
3. Tight-Passive (hands played are well considered - more calls than raises)
4. Tight-Aggressive (hands played are well considered - more raises than calls)

We will play the tight-aggressive style (TAG). This playing style is the safest for inexperienced players and also most likely to end up in the money.

The next decision we will have to make is whether we want to play a Turbo/Speed SNG which is a very popular variation in all online poker rooms. Turbo or Speed refers to the blinds being raised quicker in this SNG than in a regular SNG which means that it will come to an end sooner. A tight-aggressive player will have an additional advantage here as Turbo SNGs with a low buy-in tend to be infested by poker players who display a lack of skill paired with very low patience which equals money for others. Seeing as how the TAG playing style demands good pocket cards I would nonetheless skip the Turbo SNGs for the time being and focus on SNGs with blind levels of 10 minutes or more. The reason is simple: I don't want you to become one of the impatient players simply because you didn't get any decent hand for the whole last blind level. At normal SNGs you will have more time to wait for good pocket cards and nonetheless find enough players at the table who are willing to commit with mediocre hands. The advantage of micro limits is obvious - you will find weaker players and they will not bother to assess other players' behaviour on the table or simply don't know how to do so. We will try and take the opposite approach and make it a habit of watching other players closely right from the start regardless of whether we are involved in a hand or not.

This leads us to the final step of the preparation for SNGs. The playing style I suggested and that I will focus on more in the following blog entries demands patience and a certain amount of concentration to be able to observe your fellow players. If you are new to the game of poker I strongly recommend that you play at one table only instead of various at the same time. Turn off the TV even if it may be nice at times to have some additional source of entertainment at times. If you want to listen to music while playing, fine - but make sure you manage your playlist before the game so you don't have to rummage through your mp3 directories looking for 'that song' during your poker game. You can see where I am getting at. If you play poker, you play poker. Your whole focus and attention should be directed at your game. Otherwise you give away a big advantage over your opponents on this table, an advantage that you didn't even have to work for - and it is not often you will come across those so make the most of it when you can.

Now that we know what and how we want to play and managed to focus all our attention on the table we will jump right into the action in my next Sit&Go blog entry that will be all about the early phase of SNGs and the choice of pocket cards that we will play according to our tight-aggressive playing style. Until then I wish you a lot of fun on the Max Poker Bonus website and lots of pocket rockets!

As I have previously mentioned in our blog we were able to get a special deal with BestPoker enabling Max Poker Bonus players to clear their poker bonus much faster than usually. We have received a lot of positive feedback on that matter which of course in turn assured us that we are heading down the right road and will continue to put our efforts into negotiating new and better deals with our poker rooms for our visitors.

But that is not all. Additionally to our already well known Bonus Calculator and Poker Odds Calculator we also added another feature, the M-Calculator. This new tool allows you to immediately calculate your M-Variables according to Harrington and adjust your playing style depending on the zone you are in. For those of you not familiar with mentioned "M" - you will find an explanation with our calculator. In few words, you should adjust your playing style in a multi table tournament according to your stack size. Professional poker players do it so why shouldn't you? Of course there are more factors to consider but your own stack is the pre-dominant factor that determines what you can and should do.

We are of course constantly trying to bring you new features and information as well as poker bonus offers. You should make sure to use our RSS Feed in order to be up-to-date and informed as new things develop. We are looking forward to hearing from you if you have any concerns, questions or ideas. Simply contact us and we will get back to you.

May the poker gods be with you and steer you clear of bad beats!

There are 2 main reasons for me succeeding despite that. On the one hand the amount of quality players was quite low when I started playing compared to now and you could be sure to find some easy prey on any given table. On the other hand I have always been a mathematics freak in school and poker invites you to put your mathematics knowledge to good use. I probably don't need to point out that back then I have calculated all the chances for each hand with enthusiasm (and pen and paper and lots of spare time).

I remember at one point simulating poker games for nearly a month (and I am not talking about a computer simulation - I simply dealt the cards for several non-existing players and tried to roughly evaluate my hand). Of course that method was somewhat painstaking and tedious and by no means perfect but nonetheless I managed to find basic values of various pocket card combinations (I had no specific literature on this topic nor access to the internet - even if I had I doubt at that early stage I would have found any useful information on poker odds).

This exercise brought a certain confidence to my game because my little "experiments" made me aware of the simple fact that a winning chance of 60% meant nothing else than statistically losing 40% of the time. Not the perfect condition to bet all my money unless I am forced to since according to the laws of mathematics I would lose it all 2 times out of 5. You will have to decide for yourself where the magic number lies for going all-in, I personally usually draw the line very clearly above the mentioned 60%.

So how can you determine the odds of you winning? Well, of course it helps tremendously to know the hand of your opponent. There are various ways to draw some conclusions if you have paid attention to your opponent and his actions (for 5 card draw the amount of drawn cards is of course a huge factor, but in general you should pay attention to a lot more - and I am not talking about blinking, humming, clearing one's throat and such). But even apart from my opponents' betting behaviour it is important to know my chance on getting a certain hand. What good is it that someone else only has a small pair if I don't even have that?

At the same time you should be aware that solely concentrating on your own hand can end badly. A good poker player "knows" the hand of his opponent. Take a close look at TV poker events. A lot of the time the remaining two players of a hand can guess pretty much what cards the other one holds. The poker pros usually guess correctly and that has to do with a lot of experience, instinct and intuition and of course the fact that they are experts in studying people before and during a tournament. While I am still an amateur in that area I already profit from that in most of the tournaments and cash games that I participate in.

Try this little exercise: whenever you have only one or two opponents remaining in any given hand that you play try to conclude what cards they hold and play accordingly. Whenever it comes to a showdown check whether you were right with your educated guess. Making yourself aware is the first and very important step. Even if you may have been wrong the first few times you will notice that you will be able to assess your opponents' hands better and better with time and eventually you will be able to avoid stupid losses - at least if you have the strength to fold a hand and accept the loss of the money that you have bet so far.

In order for you to practice assessing pocket cards I urge you to try the Poker Odds Calculator - use any pocket cards that you like and try to evaluate the odds for each in your head or from your guts and then look at the calculated odds. Once you manage to get a rough grip on that you will realise that your game improves dramatically. I promise!

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Of course we are in constant negotiations with all our partners in order to make sure to continuously offer you such special deals as this one!

Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Five Card Stud, Razz, Five Card Draw - these are variants of poker. If a professional player is successful in just one of them he will be commonly referred to as One Trick Pony by his colleagues. However you aren't born a successful poker player and therefore should concentrate on one variant to begin with. We will decide to focus on the one that is most popular at the moment in order to find tables to play at any given time. That obviously makes Texas Hold'em the game to play. Texas Hold'em itself is played in several varieties, Fixed Limit, Split Limit, Pot Limit and No Limit. Based on the previous principle of going with the most popular game we will focus on No Limit Hold'em (NLHE). The final decision will be whether we want to play Cash Games (also called Ring Games) or Tournaments. I found out that for most new poker players Tournaments are more fun than Cash Games (additionally they are safer as you can only lose your Buy-In and the Tournament fee). And since fun is our main objective - even more so while still learning the game - we will play No Limit Hold'em Tournaments.

In my previous blog entry about bankroll management I mentioned a special form of Tournaments, the Sit&Gos (SNG). Buy-Ins for SNG Tournaments can range from a few cents up to several thousands of dollars. They don't have a time schedule but will commence once a certain amount of players have registered for the Tournament. This amount can vary from 2 up to a few hundred players. A very common variant are the Single-Table SNGs. You simply register at a Single-Table SNG which usually will consist of 9 or 10 players. The Buy-In is for example $5+0.50 and ten players are seated at the table. That means $5 will go to the prize pool per player which makes it a total of $50. 50 cents per player will stay with the poker room as the so called Tournament fee (the equivalent to the rake in Cash Games). Each player now receives a set amount of chips - once you lose all your chips (stack) you are out of the game. The SNG is over when one player has won all the chops at the table. The pay-out structure will usually be 50%, 30%, 20% for the top three positions which in our example would amount to $25 for the winner, $15 for the second and $10 for the third place.

Let's now look at a Multi-Table SNG in our next example. You are playing in a SNG with 45 participants. In this case this would mean 9 players per table on 5 tables. The Buy-In is set at $3+0.25, so the prize pool will be at $135. Again each player will receive the same amount of chips at the start of the Tournament and play commences. Once the first people start dropping out the remaining players will be re-seated every now and then in order to make sure the amount of players at each table will be approximately the same. At one point there will be 9 players left in the Tournament who will be seated at one table, the Final Table. Just like in the Single-Table SNG the Tournament will be over once one player has won all the available chips. Typically the pay-out structure for a Tournament like this would be $6 for the 7th position, $9 for the 6th, $12 for the 5th, $15 for the 4th, $21 for the third, $30 for the second and a nice $42 for the winner.

As beginner it can be a comfortable feeling to know that you will not lose more than a pre-determined amount of money instead of getting caught in a losing spiral in a Cash Game. This alone can (and probably should) be a reason to concentrate on SNG Tournaments early on. In the upcoming blog entries I will shed some light on what to keep in mind in order to successfully play this kind of Tournament Poker. I still enjoy playing SNGs very much and my results there have been very satisfying for a long time now despite my early mistakes due to a lack of knowledge. It took me quite some time to manage to get back to break even after a bumpy start into my poker life but now SNG Tournaments are part of a winning and fun poker experience.

And even though I run the risk of repeating myself: Poker shall be fun right from the start!

Chris Ferguson who in the year 2000 was the winner of the main event of the WSOP decided to take an interesting challenge in the year 2006. He wanted to earn $10,000 in the course of a year without depositing even a single cent. First things first: he successfully completed his own challenge. The hardest part for him proved to be the many freerolls he had to compete in in order to get a handful of dollars to enable him to build a bankroll in the first place. In the course of this experiment Mr. Ferguson set up the following rules for himself:

• I will never buy into a cash game or a Sit&Go with more than 5% of my total bankroll (exception for the lowest limits: I am allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less).
• I will not buy into a multi-table tournament for more than 2% of my total bankroll and I am allowed to buy into any multi-table tournament that costs $1.
• If at any time during a NL (No Limit) or PL (Pot Limit) cash game session my money on the table represents more than 10% of my total bankroll I must leave the game when the blinds reach me.
  
  Please note that I used Dollars as a currency for these rules because I took them straight from Chris Ferguson and didn't want to pretend he used Euros for his calculations. I will use Euros for the remainder of the article though.

Only 3 rules but very well thought through and in my eyes very user friendly for beginning players.

Let's look at an example to make it clearer: let's assume your first deposit in a poker room is €100 and you are planning on mainly playing Sit&Go. That means your bankroll is exactly €100 (unless you receive an instant bonus on depositing), 5% of the total bankroll are €5. Therefore you will play Sit&Go games with a maximum buy-in of €5. You are not able to find a Sit&Go for €5 or less, but one with a buy-in of €5.50 - are you still allowed to play?

Well, it is your bankroll and of course you can decide to play. If you want to know my answer however it is a clear and loud "NO!". Despite you needing only €10 more (so you have a €110 bankroll) so you don't breach the 5% rule with that buy-in of €5.50 I would still advise you not to compete in the game.

We have put these rules up in order to successfully manage our bankroll and we do not circumvent or overrule them when we feel like it. To be a winning poker player in the long term means that you have to have a lot of discipline. Even and especially when dealing with your bankroll. In our example you are exactly €10 short of being allowed to play in the €5.50 Sit&Go according to our rules. Play in €3.40 Sit&Go tournaments and compete there until your bankroll reaches €110 or more and then change your limit and try your luck in the €5.50 tournaments.

Let's assume you haven't played your best poker or were simply unlucky and lost ten of the mentioned €3.40 tournaments in a row. Your bankroll has been diminished to €66 and 5% of it would now be €3.30. You know what that means, right? :-) Exactly! Your bankroll doesn't allow for €3.40 Sit&Gos anymore so you have to switch to €2.50 Sit&Gos until your bankroll is at least at €68 again (5% of €68 equals €3.40).

One of the main side effects of consequent bankroll management is that you will be able to find the limit that suits your current ability. You will change limits several times, I guarantee you that. The rewards for your discipline and consequence will be manifold:

• You will soon be playing at a limit that allows you to enjoy success and a sense of achievement.
• You don't play for money you can't afford to lose without even noticing.
• In the long term you will always play limits according to your skills.
• You do not risk losing your bankroll at once and the risk of losing it at all is reduced to a minimum.
• It is a fun and a great sense of achievement to realise you can beat a limit and are approaching a higher limit cent by cent and Euro by Euro.

The main advantage is that you can enjoy the game of poker much more relaxed with those rules. Poker shall be fun right from the start!

Before playing my first hand I used to watch poker on TV casually. At first I was merely intrigued by the amount of money being at stake and changing owners so quickly. After a few broadcasts I watched more intensely and managed to reach some awareness of the rules of the game and the rank of hands as well as some general idea of odds and probabilities of poker. The game became more and more fascinating but I was yet to touch the cards and play a hand.

I owe it to a good friend of mine that I would eventually play my first hand in a real card casino because he persuaded me to participate in a NL Texas Hold'Em Tournament simply because we didn't have anything else planned that evening.

So after paying my €20 I found myself sitting at a poker table and quickly realised that it is so much more complicated to draw the right conclusions and make the right calls when you have no clue of your opponents' hands. So I decided to try and avoid simply handing my chips in nice portions to clearly superior players who outplayed me with ease on the flop on a regular basis and instead make big bets and raises with good pocket cards and subsequently go all-in if the flop didn't look dangerous or I hit it. At the time I had no idea that this was the basic idea of a short stack strategy.

To cut the chase, at the break I had taken six players from the table and found myself in the top five at the chipcount - and ended the game 4 positions away from the money ranks due to absolutely no experience in the game of poker. On my way home I kept thinking about how I could have won over €100 if I had simply survived four more players and if able to survive the remaining other 14 I would have won the tournament and taken home more than €2,000. And in the end it seemed quite simple getting into the top 20 (more than 130 players were thrown out before me). The game proved to be a fun experience and along the way you could earn quite a lot of money - no question, I will go on playing for sure!

So I decided to play tournaments in card casinos about twice a week and after some time I also started playing online. Sit&Go, Cash Games NL €0,50/€1, Tournaments, you name it. And I was able to cash in with some small successes like winning a Sit&Go.

After a bit more than half a year of regular poker I knew two things for a fact: I love the game and I am €2,200 in the red. :-)

So now I had reached a point where the game started hurting me financially, I had lost more than a month's pay check in half a year. I knew it couldn't go on like this especially seeing as the losses became bigger each week. Looking back I can claim to have made about every single mistake that a poker player can commit. I am not proud of it but neither am I ashamed - I simply didn't know better at the time.

Today however I do know better. I obey to rules that partly originate from professional poker players and partly from my own slightly painful experience. With another deposit of €70 and lots of discipline and patience and discipline and patience and ... I managed to win back the original loss of €2,200 after approximately a year. It was a slow way back marked by small but more or less steady winnings. There were the occasional bad streaks that sometimes seemed to last for an eternity but all in all I could see a trend for the better and never lost heart. The game still is tremendous fun and finally I can also enjoy looking at my bank account again. And that is - in a nutshell - the main essence of poker for me: having fun and winning!

And now I would like to help you, dear visitor of Max Poker Bonus, who maybe just made the first deposit, avoid such a bad start into the game of poker and give you some guidance and tips in my upcoming blog entries. I want you to be able to learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself as this might prove to be expensive. Poker should be fun from the first hand you play!

While this may sound boring let's just consider this: do you honestly think that all the successful and professional players started playing for high limits? A new player is a losing player, simple as that. There may be the occasional exception where a spectacularly gifted person really starts winning straight away but I very much doubt that you or I know anyone who fits that description - even remotely. So I think it is safe to assume that none of us will be that Wunderkind Of Poker that the world has been waiting for. So do play on low limit tables and the smaller poker tournaments when new to the game - I can't emphasize this enough. Know your limits!

I know, I know... if you play at a 5c/10c table your poker life can seem pretty boring. What does it matter if I win or lose 50 cents? Maybe in a whole evening I will win or lose up to €10 or €15? So what? Well, keep these numbers in relation to the limits in mind and let's now have that example with a €5/€10 game. That would mean you would lose or win €1,000 or €1,500 in an evening of poker. And believe me - when you are new to the game you will lose more than you win at those medium limits. Why? Because at these limits you will meet much more experienced players than at the lower tables. There are quite a number of players actually counting on people to overplay their limits and they will have a great time helping you lift all the burden that money puts on you... I have been there on both sides of the table and I can tell you it is an experience you can really live without when you are on the losing end.

Once you are ready for higher limits you should of course seize the opportunity and elevate your game. Be prepared however to go down to lower levels again if your bankroll forces you to unless you want to lose all your money. The switch from low limits to medium and high limits can be a tough one. You will notice that the flow of the game is very different simply because a bet, raise or re-raise will weigh much more. In a low limits game with a pot of 40 cents a bet of 30 cents followed by a raise of €1 still is a low amount of money and a lot of opponents will call that raise as they don't really care about losing a few Euros that night. However a game with €400 in the pot and a €300 bet followed by a €1,000 raise looks very different all of a sudden. Bluffing suddenly becomes an art in the higher levels as you will pay a dear prize if caught on the losing end of it. I have noticed that at really low levels you will always find players who simply call just about anything as it doesn't matter anyway. So you will not be able to bluff as effectively as in higher levels. But there are many more differences.

You will notice at higher limit games that often there will be an aggressive player who pushes a lot and makes it very expensive to see the flop. If you haven't learned to assess and fold your hand accordingly you will hand over your money very quickly. Same goes for your style of play. While at lower limits you will usually not have to worry about changing your personal style you will find out that at higher limits people will start to read your game quickly - so unless you are prepared to change gears every now and then and do something unexpected (and no, going all-in with 27 pre-flop is not unexpected, it is stupid) you will be an open book in no time.

That's why it is vital to play at low limits first and learn about the game, learn to evaluate your hand, try to make an educated guess about your opponents' hands based on their behaviour, assess the situation in combination with the community cards and the probabilities of various hands, learn about your own strengths and weaknesses, be able to adjust your game styles, learn to avoid playing on tilt,... If you still want to start playing at €10/€20 tables from the very beginning of your poker career be my guest. Just make sure to drop me a note telling me which table you will be playing at, I really want to meet you.

We are proud to have the backing of some of the really big names in the industry and we will ensure that you as players will get the best deals and support so you can simply focus on playing poker. If at any time you have suggestions, ideas or complaints of any kind we will be more than happy to hear from you - simply contact us with anything that is on your mind (well, poker related if possible... although we might be happy for you purchasing that new car that you always wanted we feel that you should rather tell your wife about it even if you risk her asking you for a diamond ring afterwards).

As mentioned the CAP was very successful for us and our project and despite all the exhaustion of that busy weekend we will make sure to update a lot of info in the upcoming days as well as implement the last few missing pieces of the English site (payment methods and our glossary). In the meantime we encourage you to check out some of our other features like our already famous Max Poker Bonus Calculator, Poker Odds Calculator and our constantly updated Tournament List. Having said that we already have a lot more planned - people who know us from our German Max Poker Bonus website already know that this is never an empty promise and we will live up to it. Look forward to not only a full implementation of all the features already in use at the German version but additional features as well as some fine tuning on already existing ones in order to make comparing poker rooms, bonuses and other interesting information even easier and more accessible.

On a side note: another thing we learned in Barcelona was to cut down on our sleeping hours drastically and learn to sleep while commuting on the metro to and from meetings. We will try to perfect this to a point where we actually "anti-sleep" and will be able to get 28 hours of work stuffed into one day - our goal is not a 24/7 work ethic but to reach at least a 28/8.

A lot of our future plans have now become reality and we are of course very excited about that. We will not be running out of ideas any time soon (or ever) which for you means that there are good and interesting times ahead indeed. If you are serious about playing poker you have come to the right place. We will make sure to provide you with our Austrian semi-pro poker player's (who coincidently is called Max) blogs and tips that have already proven valuable to many other players. We are convinced you will like what you see and you will profit from our offers.