Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Titan Poker, the largest online poker room in Europe, is scheduled to run the first $10k Monthly Bonanza event of this year at 20:30 GMT on Jan 31. Players who participate in this event stand the chance of winning their share of a huge prize pool of $10k.

Titan Poker offers two ways to participate in this lucrative event. First, players can buy-in to the event directly with 2000 player points. Second, they can participate in one of the three online qualifiers and win a free token to the event.

The online poker room will run the $10k Bonanza Freeroll Satellite for all players, the $10k Bonanza Points Satellite, and the $10k Bonanza Depositors Satellite. While the first satellite is meant for all players, the second satellite has a buy-in of 10 points with add-on and re-buy, and the third satellite is open only to players who made a deposit during the previous week.

The $10k Bonanza Freeroll Satellite is run eight times everyday. Since it is a freeroll, players do not have to buy-in to the event, but they cannot participate in more than one freeroll per day. The players who finish in the top two positions will receive free tokens to the lucrative $10k Monthly Bonanza.

The $10k Bonanza Points Satellite is also run 8 times every day. This is a re-buy tournament with add-ons with a buy-in of 10 points. The players who finish in the top five positions will receive free tokens to the event.

The $10k Bonanza Deposits Satellite is run on Mondays at 19:00 GMT, and to qualify for this event, players need to make a deposit during the previous week. The top 50 players of the satellite will win free tokens to the tournament.

Titan Poker is home to a number of lucrative tournaments, besides the Monthly Bonanza.

Eight online poker players, three of them famous professional poker players, have filed a civil case against Excapsa Software, which used to own Ultimate Bet (UB), a defunct online poker room on the Cereus Network.

The three players are Dustin Woolf of America, Brad Booth of Canada, and Tom Koral of Chicago. The eight have filed a civil case under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against UB Poker.

While Brad Booth is absolutely sure that he has been robbed of at least $2 million, which belongs to him, and huge sums of cash, which he borrowed from other UB players, Tom Koral and Woolfe have also made similar claims.

The players are demanding damages and an injunction in connection with multiple charges including fraud, unfair gambling, negligence, intent to cause emotional distress, and RICO conspiracy, among others. The defendants are Excapsa Software, which is now known as 6356095 Canada Inc, and 10 previous employees of UB Poker. They can respond to the charges made against them individually.

UB was one of the US online poker rooms, the others being PokerStars, Absolute Poker, and Full Tilt Poker, which was cracked down upon by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on April 15, a day commonly known as Black Friday in the online poker gaming community. The event and its results still feature on poker news networks.

Meanwhile, Ira Rubin, who was arrested in April shortly after the crack down, along with 10 other people associated with the above-mentioned online poker rooms, has pleaded guilty of bank fraud. Rubin, who was extradited to the US after being detained in Guatemala, has been indicted on 9 counts, including bank fraud. He used to assist the above-mentioned poker rooms to move gambling funds under the guise of payments made to Internet merchants and had created fake companies for this purpose.

A poker player playing under the moniker of Eulson won a breathtakingly huge Bad Beat Jackpot worth $1 million on the Merge Gaming Network.

While Eulson collected a prize of $$355,092.35 for winning the Bad Beat Jackpot, the winner of the game 123maryc got a prize of $177,546.17. The rest of the players at the table added a cool sum of $25,363.73 each to their respectively bankrolls.

Online poker players are required to lose the game with four sevens of a kind or a better combination while playing at a table marked as a Bad Beat Jackpot table. Each of the players with quads or a royal flush or a straight flush is required to use their hole cards. At least four of the players on the table must have a hand and the total value of the pot must be $5 or above. For every $5 added to the pot, a fraction of $0.50 is added to the Bad Beat Jackpot, which continues to grow this way till it is won.

Whenever a player gets a bad beat and wins the jackpot, 70 percent of it is distributed among players who have received hole cards in their hand. Of this 70 percent, the player with the bad beat holding at least four sevens of a kind will receive 50 percent, the winner receives 25 percent, and the other players at the table will receive a share of the remaining 25 percent.

Of the remaining 30 percent, the house keeps 10 percent as fees and the other 20 percent is used as the seed value of the next Bad Beat Jackpot.

Reliable online poker rooms such as Carbon Poker, Poker View, and Lock Poker form part of the Merge Poker Network. Currently, the Bad Beat Jackpot at Merge Gaming Network is worth over $219,000.

Gus Hansen, the Danish professional poker player, has already made an impressive profit of US$3.86 million at the big money games in Macau. The poker player had arrived at Macau a few days back and is soon scheduled to participate in the Aussie Millions.

Poker King Club of StarWorld Macau has been hosting the HKD $10k/$20k or US$1,300/$2,600 poker games for the past several weeks and a number of rich Asian entrepreneurs are playing for recreation against top professional online poker players such as Andrew Robl, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, and Gus Hansen.

Fortune has been smiling on Hansen ever since he sat down at the tables, and he has already raked in profits of US$258,000. Pleased with his own performance, Gus intends to stay back in Macau for a few more days before heading over to Australia.

According to his latest blog post: “This session was more up and down than the previous 2 sessions and at one point I found myself holding Aces – unfortunately I was also holding Jacks vs. Queens in another huge all-in hand. At first a Jack hit the flop, but a Queen came sailing in on the river.”

According to his blog, Gus is in high spirits right now. Moreover, he is feeling more than ready for the competition in Melbourne. Simultaneously, he also said that he is amazed at the high energy level of the other poker players in Macau and stated that he was one who had to quit the game and go to bed, leaving the others playing till the wee hours of the morning.

Hansen also expressed his appreciation of the big money games hosted at Poker King Club. He stated that the games are being played in an excellent spirit with plenty of laughter; while simultaneously, the players respect one another, the dealers, and the staff.

British poker players who had accounts at Full Tilt Poker before the online poker site crashed have been advised to complain to their local police if they consider themselves to be victims of a crime.
In a statement issued recently, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC), which revoked Full Tilt Poker’s licenses to provide online gaming services at the end of June last year, stated that UK poker players who had accounts on Full Tilt Poker must approach their local police if they have not yet been refunded.
AGCC has issued a statement regarding Full Tilt Poker after a number of months, but this statement makes no mention of the acquisition deal signed between the online poker room, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), and Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT), the French investment company, according to which GBT will soon purchase Full Tilt Poker for $80 million.
Once the acquisition is completed, DoJ will take up the responsibility of refunding Full Tilt Poker’s US players while GBT will refund Full Tilt Poker players in the rest of the world. However, no details have been revealed regarding the exact procedures the DoJ and GBT intend to follow while refunding the players.
Here is what the AGCC statement says: “At the request of the police, AGCC will continue to log incoming player complaints: these records will be made available to the police. However, following the revocation of the licences, AGCC no longer has authority to intermediate or arbitrate on player issues or disputes with Full Tilt (excepting for players registered under a Swiss address)”
The statement also says: “It is understood that a number of civil actions have been initiated by players against Full Tilt, some as class actions representing multiple players by UK, US and Canadian lawyers. Details of the firms concerned can be found through internet search.”

Team PokerStars pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom was not a grand success at online poker tournaments last year, but he surpassed all expectations at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure 2012. This year, Blom’s performance was spectacular, and at the end of the event, he emerged as the online poker winner of a large prize of $1.2 million.

Commenting on his spectacular victory, Blom said: “This was more fun than winning the same amount in a cash game. I’m not used to making it this far in a tournament. I didn’t expect it. It feels great – very different to playing online.”

Blom played against a field of 30 players. While it is not a great achievement to buy-in to the event with $100,000, winning the $1.2 million prize pot is the greatest achievement ever. Blom has earned the online poker community’s respect forever with his great win. While stating how terrible he felt when he participated in the PCA last year, Blom said: “It feels so good to succeed. I really appreciate this win, and I love the Bahamas.”

Blom knocked Galen Hall, the champion of the PCA 2011 main event, when he was in the third position, after which he systematically knocked off Dan Shak and Humberto Brenes.

The other players who raked in profits at PCA 2012 were Jonathan Duhamel and Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu, who finished in the second position in 2011, was knocked off in the fifth position this year. He collected a cool prize of $250,900 for his efforts. Duhamel, who is still recovering the recent assault made on him at his residence, finished fourth and collected a prize of $313,600. Later, Duhamel posted a tweet on Twitter, stating “Yeah that was a good rebuy.”

Poker fans are now looking forward to the super high roller events of Aussie Millions, which is round the corner.