Full Tilt Poker to Renew Espana Series

The first round of live poker tournaments in Spain was so popular for Full Tilt Poker that they have decided to keep it going for a second season. As a result, the Full Tilt Poker Espana Series is now back with at least four different dates being run.

The first tournament will take place in Gerona starting on April 25th and running through the 27th at the lovely Casino Castell de Peralada. Following on the heels of that will be a tournament in Malaga at the Casino Torrequebrada starting on June 4th and running through to June 6th. At that point, the series will pause in deference to the World Series of Poker, the main live poker tournament series in the game.

It won’t pause for long however as the Spanish capitol of Madrid will host a tournament at the Casino Gran venue that starts on August 27th and runs through to August 29th. Bringing up the rear and therefore rounding out the second season of Full Tilt Poker Espana will be the Barcelona Grand Final starting on December 2nd and continuing through to the 5th of the same month. The Casino Gran de Barcelona will host that event, giving the brand two out of the four events listed so far in this season’s Espana Series.

As with all good live poker tournaments sponsored by online poker sites, satellite tournaments are available for all of the Espana events. There is a $216 satellite tournament that gets players into a tournament with three prize packages offered and a $535 satellite tournament with 5 prize packages offered. The former will be held every Tuesday and Thursday while the latter will run on every Sunday.

For players that do not want to pay that much money for a chance at one of the seats, Full Tilt Poker naturally offers super satellite tournaments as well. The lowest buy-in at the moment is $5 and players will have to parlay that into multiple victories if they want to make their way into one of the larger satellite tournaments and win a prize package from them. It is harder, but of course it can be done.

WSOP Tournament of Champions Reborn

It was run in 2004, 2005 and 2006 as a meeting of the greatest poker players of the time. However, it wasn’t really thought of as an all-important all-star game but rather more as a fun way to celebrate the end of another successful World Series of Poker.

Now however, with live tournament poker looking for ways to increase its image through marketing, the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions will return to Prime Time and this time will be billed as an All-Star Game that will feature the best players at the time fighting it out for poker supremacy and all the bragging rights.

The 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions will feature a field of the 27 greatest poker players in the world today. Included automatically in the list will be Annie Duke, Mike Matusow and Mike Sexton, the respective winners of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 iterations of the event. Also included will be 2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada and 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event champion Barry Shulman. Two sponsor exemptions to be determined at a later date will round out the first 7 players in the field and the final 20 will be chosen through online balloting by all of the fans in the world of poker.

The main reason for the lion’s share of players being chosen by the fans is quite simple. The WSOP Tournament of Champions from 2010 onwards is going to be run like an All-Star Game. No matter what sport you look at, be it baseball, basketball, football or hockey, you will see that the top North American leagues in the sport all have All-Star Games where the attendees are chosen by the fans. The WSOP Tournament of Champions is attempting to follow in those footsteps and that is where this entire idea comes from.

For that reason, the Tournament of Champions will also be broadcast on ESPN as part of their WSOP coverage. The first part of the tournament will take place June 27th and the last on July 4th, but the actual broadcast date on ESPN is August 3rd.

Test Your Cash Game Might at Party Poker

While everyone else has been running around trying to find out who the best online tournament poker player is, Party Poker is more interested in finding out who happens to be the best online cash game poker player. It is in the spirit of gaining that information that they have announced the first Online Cash Game Championship. The OCGC for 2010 will go from March 1st to April 2nd and will feature more than $250,000 in prizes given out by Party Poker to the best cash game players around.

In total, there are going to be seven levels run for the championship, each cutting players out of the running. In all of the levels, you need to play at least 400 hands to qualify for consideration and the best performers over 400 or more hands will be able to advance to the next level. Players will start on level one from March 1st to 5th with the best players advancing to level 2 which will be played March 8th to 12th.

Successful players will win $50 and advance to level 3 which will be played March 15th to 17th. This time successful players get a cash prize of $200 before playing in level 4 from March 22nd to March 23rd. Success here is worth $400 in prize money and a spot in level 5 from March 25th to March 26th. Players that are successful here will advance to the final two levels and gain $1500 in prize money at the same time.

These secondary prizes are nice, but they pale in comparison to what players can win on April 2nd if they make it to the final table of the OCGC 2010 event. The highest stack at the end gets the grand prize of $40,000 while the runner up gets $20,000 and the third place finisher still nets an impressive $10,000.

If the event is successful, Party Poker has certainly not ruled out the possibility of coming back with an annual or even more than once per year version of the OCGC for its players to compete in.

2010 WSOP Main Event Prizes Available Through Titan Poker World Challenge

Titan Poker is interested in any big major poker tournament that usually holds a large European continent. The Main Event at the World Series of Poker certainly falls under that banner and that is why Titan Poker is getting a jump on the competition by offering five prize packages for the 2010 WSOP in this early series of promotional tournaments.

It’s called the Titan Poker World Challenge and it will see the best from each country face off against each other until only five people remain. Those five, ostensibly the cream of the Titan Poker crop, will then represent Titan Poker as members of the team that they send to the 2010 Main Event.

The tournaments have already started, but due to the large number of them it is still possible for you to get in on the action and show the world what kind of skill you have. They are broken down based on geography and that means that people from the same country and the same region will face off against each other multiple times in order to see who rises to the top. In total, there are 18 weeks of tournaments to play, each of which will contribute to the overall leader board that Titan Poker will have for each country.

The winner of each region and country at the end of those 18 weeks will then go through a final 8-round tournament flurry at which point the top five players will become readily apparent. Those five players will then receive $13,000 prize packages to go to the 2010 WSOP. Those packages include airfare and accommodations in Las Vegas as well as the $10,000 Main Event buy-in.

Because of the gruelling nature of this tournament and the fact that it lasts more than 18 weeks, we won’t know who these five players are until April. If you want to be one of them however, you need to get started now. After all, you can’t claim to be the best in your country unless you can prove it over an extended period of time.

All You Wanted To Know About High Stakes Poker

High Stakes Poker is a television program involving high stakes of cash in the poker game. The cable TV network of GSN broadcasts this novel program across the US. The type of poker game played on this show is the no limit Texas hold ‘em kind and as of now, the television series has finished the fifth season.

A brief history
The very first season of this high profile game of high stakes poker was taped in Las Vegas in the Golden Nugget. The show was first broadcast during January of 2006 and comprised 13 episodes. The show was hosted by the comedian turned poker professional Gabriel Kaplan and A.J. Benza. The second season of high stakes poker comprised more episodes 16 in number and was taped at the exotic Palms. The third season was filmed inside South Point Casino and started being broadcast on January 15th of 2007. There were a couple of new poker players included in the third season and these included Phil Ivey, Jamie Gold, Patrik Antonius, Chris Ferguson, David Benyamine, Paul Wasicka, Brian Townsend etc. Of course, the poker players of the previous seasons were also there in the third season.

The best hands
The season five of high stakes poker showed some really neat hands being played amongst the poker players. One such poker player by the name of Tom Dwan earned a massive pot totalling 919,600 USD against Barry Greenstein. Whilst earlier seasons such as the season 2 where Gus Hansen got 575,700 USD along with four different fives beating Daniel Negreanu, were historic moments on the show. During the episode aired on 12th November of 2007, Patrik Antonius won a massive pot of 743,800 USD against Jamie Gold. One of the biggest pots in the show high stakes poker has to be the one between Antonius and the other poker player Sammy Farha. This pot totalled 998,800 USD and was aired on 26th November of 2007. Antonius decided to go all in once the flop was over and Farha decided to call. Whilst the odds were quite even, Antonius won.

Successful bluffs
High stakes poker has seen many instances of bluffing, some amasing and some gone terribly wrong. The most successful bluff happened during the third season of the poker show and happened with Brad Booth bluffing Phil Ivey with King of Hearts and King of Diamonds. The flop soon followed and Ivey soon bet followed by Booth raising to 300,000 USD. This was when Ivey folded and Brad won. However, in the series of bluffs, which happened off and on in the high stakes poker shows, the most unsuccessful one happened between two amateurs Brian Brandon and Antonio Salorio. This bluff went all the way to raised flop with 7-2o as well as K-K in succession. As Brandon flopped the best hand, Salorio continued betting and lost over a 100,000 USD and finally gave up.

High stakes poker is an amasing poker show which every poker enthusiast should watch.

EPT Berlin Created for 2010

Typically, the European Poker Tour (EPT) has a stop in Dortmund where many of the best German poker players in the world take a shot at a large pot of Euros. This year however, in an effort to boost the number of entrants on the German leg of the EPT, the organizers have instead opted to move the tournament from Dortmund to the country’s capital in Berlin in the hopes that this will drum up more interest.

Another thing that might drum up interest for the new EPT Berlin event is the prize pool. For the first time on the German leg of the tour, a whopping grand prize of EUR 1 million is guaranteed to the person that wins the tournament. This will be good news for Sandra Naujoks, a member of Team Poker Stars Germany and the defending champion of the EPT Dortmund tournament that took place last year. She won over EUR 900,000 for her efforts and this year will get a chance to improve on that cash.

Joining Sandra on the EPT Berlin will be the rest of Team Poker Stars Germany as well as a few other players that frequent the online halls of that hallowed online poker site. In addition to poker professionals, famous celebrities like Boris Becker and Jan Heitmann are scheduled to make an appearance at the tournament.

Last year, the EPT Dortmund event was blessed by 667 players entering the tournament. This year, even with a somewhat hefty entry fee of EUR 5000 + EUR 300, it is expected that the EPT Berlin event will draw many more players. This is indeed what the organizers were hoping for when they made the switch, but the larger field also means that in order to successfully defend her title and get the higher cash prize, Naujoks will have to wade through a field likely much larger than the one she defeated at Dortmund in 2009.

The tournament will begin on March 2nd, 2010 and will run through to March 7th, 2010. Satellites for entry into the tournament are already available at various online poker sites.