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Full Tilt Poker has announced that it will not retain former FTP Red Pros as sponsored players at the newly re-launched online poker room. The online poker room sent an email to its Red Pros explaining its decision and outlining future options for them. Dustin Iannotti, FTP’s new Team Pro manager, apologized for FTP’s long silence on the issue of Red Pros and wrote, “The “Red Pro” team is not being continued by the Rational Group and a new team has been launched under the name of “The Professionals”. Unfortunately, we do not have any immediate plans to expand the Full Tilt Pro team at this time. We do not rule this out as a possibility in the future, and because of that, we will keep your contact on file should that plan change at any point.”

The new owner of Full Tilt Poker, which also happens to be PokerStars’ parent company, is The Rational Group.

Later, Iannotti stated in his email, “Other than the non-US player balances, The Rational Group did not assume any liabilities of the previous Full Tilt Poker companies and therefore previous contractual agreements that Full Tilt Poker may have had including with FTP Red Pros were excluded. As such, The Rational Group is not liable and will not pay for any amounts which may have been due to you under your agreement with any former Full Tilt Poker company.”

When it was signing a settlement deal with the US government, The Rational Group did not agree to continue with the contracts signed with the Red Pros. FTP, which is newly re-launched under The Rational Group, does not need to continue sponsoring these pros, especially as the move would not fetch any profits.

Iannotti’s email also mentioned a new group of pros called The Professionals. The first member of this group was Gus Hansen, referred to as Full Tilt Poker’s ambassador in October. Tom Dwan and Viktor Blom soon joined Hansen.

Before Full Tilt Poker pulled down its shutters, it used to sponsor a large number of Red Pros. The 14 core members of the pro group included Dwan, Hansen, Patrik Antonius, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman, Chris Ferguson, and Howard Lederer. Besides, the group also included members of Team CardRunners and Team Limpers, 160 poker players known as Full Tilt Pros, and 34 players known as Friends of Full Tilt.

The Red Pros, however, can continue using their names at FTP.



FTP Refuses to Retain Former Red Pros

The number of gamers using the rescued Full Tilt Poker website plunged 40pc after it relaunched last month, the Irish Independent has learned.

The website, which employs more than 200 people in Dublin through its holding company Rational FT Services, came back online on November 6 after a year in which it was blighted by legal troubles.

Full Tilt Poker was effectively shut down by US authorities but a rescue deal saw the business bought by Poker Stars, its biggest online poker rival, earlier this year.

As part of the deal, Poker Stars, through Rational FT Services, took on the assets of Full Tilt Poker, and Pocket Kings – a Dublin-based business, which provided customer service and support to Full Tilt Poker users.

On its opening day, around 23,000 people visited the site at any one time, while as many as 15,000 people gambled. Now, traffic has dropped to a little over 8,000 at any one time.

Despite the fall, a spokesman said Full Tilt was pleased with the site's performance.

"Full Tilt Poker is back and is the number two online poker site in the world," he said.

Twenty months ago, PokerStars, the biggest online poker company in the world, essentially got kicked out of America. The U.S. government sued the company for operating an illegal gambling business, shut down its U.S.-facing web site, and indicted PokerStars’ founder. The company’s bitter competitors were elated and the publicly-traded stocks of some of them soared in the immediate aftermath. The rich online poker market in America effectively ended.

But less than two years later PokerStars is plotting its return to the U.S. The company, based in the Isle of Man, is on the verge of inking a deal to purchase a financially stressed New Jersey casino, says a person familiar with the situation. The Atlantic Club casino would serve as a beachhead for PokerStars to reenter the online U.S. market, which remains the single most lucrative online poker market in the world. It also continues PokerStars’ new strategy of investing in land-based casinos, like its recently purchased stake in a London casino.

The potential deal, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes with a price tag of maybe $50 million, but for PokerStars and its rivals, like the big U.S. casinos such as Caesars Entertainment, and online social gaming company Zynga, it means a great deal more. If PokerStars gets the deal approved by New Jersey gaming regulators, acquiring Atlantic Club, which doesn’t even have a poker room, would cap a string of victories for PokerStars.

In July, PokerStars resolved its problems with the Department of Justice, agreeing to a $731 million deal to settle the U.S. government’s civil charges that the company used fraudulent methods to process payments and evade U.S. restrictions on Internet gambling. The settlement saw PokerStars forfeit $547 million to the feds and make $184 million available to reimburse non-U.S. customers of Full Tilt, the disgraced online poker company whose assets PokerStars acquired as part of the deal. PokerStars’ reputation among the online poker playing community was enhanced because the company quickly repaid all its players after the feds shut its U.S.-facing web site down, paid back all of Full Tilt’s foreign players, and made enough money available to the Department of Justice to repay Full Tilt’s U.S. players, who have been left in the lurch. In the U.S. meanwhile, the legal landscape changed after the Department of Justice reversed its position on a key law that the government had previously maintained made online poker illegal. In addition, proponents of online poker won a key legal ruling in federal court in Brooklyn.

Despite the efforts of Nevada Senator Harry Reid and others, there seems to be little chance that federal lawmakers will pass any legislation regulating online poker any time soon. But states like Nevada and New Jersey are moving toward introducing regulated online poker within their states, with New Jersey legislators considering a law that would only make the market for online poker players in the state open to Atlantic City casinos. If a big state like California would also join in, there would suddenly be a viable online poker market again in the U.S.

To be sure, PokerStars’ competitors will fight against PokerStars’ efforts to own a regulated casino in New Jersey, probably pointing out that the company’s founder, Isai Scheinberg, remains under indictment and out of the U.S. But the company, which always claimed U.S. law did not bar online poker, remains confident that its civil settlement with the U.S. government does not prohibit it from opening shop in the U.S.



PokerStars Is Coming Back To America - Forbes

Ever since Full Tilt Poker relaunched its site at the beginning of November, a number of top online poker pros lost significant sums of money. According to statistical reports released, three representatives of the site, Tom Dwan, Viktor Blom and Gus Hansen have lost $3.3 million in total over the past month.

Unfortunately for him, Hansen leads with losses of $2.2 million, while Tom Dwan has had a terrible week after losing big against Ben ‘Sauce 1234’ Sulsky. Dwan and Sulsky have been engrossed in a series of 2-8 Triple Draw games, and things are definitely looking up for the latter who continues to pummel his opponents and win big. 25 year old Sulsky, who hails from New Hampshire, was the top earner at online poker sites this year, having won $4 million across all poker sites.

Viktor Blom has also had a bad run this week, and will meet Dwan to settle a no limit hold ‘em challenge for up to $200,000 at Full Tilt Poker, which will no doubt be a crowd pleaser.

There has been some heavy betting action at Full Tilt Poker since it opened its doors again on November 6th, after being out of the loop for nearly 18 months. The heaviest pot of the month was a game played between Sulsky and the Finnish cash game pro, Ilari Sahamies for $457,945. Over his lifetime as a Full Tilt and Poker Stars player, Sahamies has won more than $3 million at these sites.

Numbers show that despite a very strong start at the time of relaunch, the number of visitors to Full Tilt Poker has dropped as much as 40%.



Poker Pros Lose $3.3 million Since Full Tilt Poker Launch

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article over the weekend, reporting that Poker Stars online poker giant is currently involved in negotiations to purchase the struggling Atlantic Club Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City for a price that is under $50 million. Besides the fact that this is a ridiculously low price to pay for a hotel and casino, despite the poor economic conditions in the city, the question now raised is whether this is being done to get Poker Stars in the door of legal online intrastate poker in New Jersey.

When Poker Stars entered into its iconic $731 million deal with the Department of Justice to purchase Full Tilt Poker, analysts said that one of terms of the deal would be that Poker Stars would see its slate wiped clean in that US authorities would not prosecute the company in the future for offering online gambling services to US players. With this type of promise under its belt, would Poker Stars therefore qualify for a license to operate in the strict New Jersey industry when online poker is eventually introduced? Legislation is now in the pipeline to allow Atlantic City casinos to offer online poker and gambling from their premises to local players. Is this the reason behind Poker Stars’ purchase of the Atlantic Club Hotel and Casino?

A spokesperson for the New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement said that all license applicants, including Poker Stars, would undergo “rigorous investigation” before they would be granted permission to offer any potential online poker services. Has Poker Stars been redeemed to such an extent that the New Jersey authorities would turn a blind eye to the hot water that the site found itself in from April last year?

This is an interesting story to follow. Watch this space.



Is PokerStars Eyeing Entry into NJ Online Poker Market?

Carbon Poker, flagship brand of the Merge Poker Network, has announced that it will be shutting down one of its own sister skins, PDC Poker, and migrating those players to another skin, Aced Poker, effective immediately.

PDC Poker players were notified in an e-mail about the migration to Aced, with the need to download the Aced client from the Aced Poker home page. The e-mail read as follows:

We would firstly like to thank you very much for your time and loyalty at PDC Poker. However, as of Tuesday, December 11th @ 7:00 PM EST PDC Poker will be shutting down and migrating to Aced.com. Your account will be safely and securely transitioned to Aced, which we are excited to inform you will be your new home for poker and online gaming.

This migration should only take up to 5 hours and you will be able to login to your account at that point.

There will not be any change to your username or password, so you will be able to login with the exact same details you were using at PDC Poker.

You will need to download your new Aced Poker Client to get started so ensure you do that with the links provided below.

The streamlining of Carbon’s flagship offerings likely saves the firm some redundant software and maintenance expense, but comes at the cost of retiring what is probably the longest continuously-running skin on Merge, one which actually predates Merge itself.

PDC Poker began its existence as Poker.com in 2005, and was later renamed to PDC (PokerDotCom’s initials) after the original owners of that domain retained its rights for other purposes. Poker.com was the original site on what would later become the Merge Network, when it was joined by Carbon and many other skins.

Laws and regulations regarding online gambling vary depending on where you are in the world, but the Carbon Poker website has been online for a while helping people have fun with the chance of winning a little money.

Carbon Poker is a part of the Merge Gaming Network, which includes many fine websites. For poker players who love to play online, however, there are a few destinations online that are popular. This is one of them. With a lot of players online at any one time, there's always a game about to start.

"Merge is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing networks in the online gaming industry," according to information released by the company. This is because they are committed to security and safety of their users.

Their proprietary gaming software has undergone strict testing carried out by external third party auditors (including RNG verification) and adheres to all security standards as mandated by the major processing networks.

Their website continues, "Through advanced encryption we ensure all games and features meet the expectations and desires of our players. All player and game information is fully protected to the fullest of our abilities and to the highest degree."

Some safety is up to the players, however.

"CarbonPoker staff will NEVER request your poker account password via email. The only time you will ever be required to enter your username and password is when logging into your poker account," the Carbon Poker website suggests.

Beyond this dedication to security, at Carbon Poker it is all about the games and the technology. At any point in time, they have a number of promotions going for new players as well as VIP perks for loyal customers and players.

Currently, Carbon Poker also offers seven different tournament styles, including Shootout Tournaments, Sit n Go Tournaments and Ladies Only games as well as others. By making tournament play available, the website hopes to continue to draw some of the largest players around the world.

They believe in responsible gaming, but they also believe that players should have fun. This is why they are considered one of the better online destinations for poker players. Started in 2006, Carbon Poker has been offering players all over the world an opportunity to play poker online wherever they have an Internet connection. Over the next six years, they plan on growing even larger as part of the Merge Gaming Network.



Carbon Poker: Your Home For Online Poker Since 2006 | Muncie Free Press

After April last year when the Black Friday indictments forced Full Tilt offline, Phil Ivey had to take his online custom elsewhere and ended up at PokerStars’ cash tables. Subsequently, Ivey went $629k in profit and then down by $224k before eventually finishing in the red by -$57,384 over 62,411 hands played.

With Full Tilt’s relaunch, however, and despite past acrimony related to the $150 million lawsuit Ivey threatened the poker room with, the 36 year-old is now back playing at his previous online home Full Tilt. Things have changed slightly, though, as the player with the most famous name in poker is now playing under the screen name “Polarizing.”

What hasn’t changed is Ivey’s winning ways and the 8 times WSOP bracelet winner is currently showing a profit of $114,000 according to tracking site HighstakesDB. Added to his past winning on the site, Phil Ivey has amassed a total of $19,242,744 at Full Tilt making him far and away online poker’s biggest ever winner.

Ivey’s presence on the site has already created a great deal of excitement as railbirds look forward to the top pro locking horns against Full Tilt’s team of sponsored ‘professionals’ consisting of Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan and Viktor Blom. Nevertheless, in spite of the increase in high-stakes action, sharks on the site may have to get used to seeing a fall in their profits as Ivey helps himself to an ever bigger slice of the Full Tilt pie.

The good news, however, is that they may soon have the opportunity to redress the balance by gaining some unique insights into his game. Only recently Ivey set-up an online training website called Iveypoker-com, and as he explains:

“A lot of that [reading players] comes with experience, but a lot of it can be taught as well. A lot of my feel comes from observing other players, so at IveyPoker-com, I’m going to teach people how to observe other players and do it in the correct way. I’m going to teach them how to make adjustments off the things they observe. I think I can teach some of it, but a lot of it does come with experience, so if people put in their work, they can get there one day.”





Phil Ivey Back Playing At Full Tilt Poker

PokerStars is planning to expand its brick-and-mortar presence with the addition of the poker room at the Casino Gran Madrid, Spain, Azar Plus has reported. Following a complete makeover that will create “a new décor for the new era,” live tournaments should start early in the new year.

The joint venture follows a series of similar deals announced recently. PokerStars is partnered with the historic Hippodrome casino in the centre of London’s West End, Circus Groupe in Belgium, Grand Waldo in Macau, and is reportedly bidding for the Atlantic Club Casino in New Jersey.

PokerStars is the overwhelming market leader in Spain’s nationally regulated online poker market with approximately 70% market share.

The company already sponsors live tournaments in exotic locations around the world as a global marketing venture. Permanent homes in famous casinos in the major capital cities can provide a glamorous venue for these tournaments as well as a mechanism for communicating the brand to a wider audience of potential customers.

The Casino Gran Madrid is located 18 miles outside the city center in Torrelodones. It is currently the largest casino in Spain, although Sheldon Adelson’s recently approved EuroVegas project will take that honor if and when it is built.

A PokerStars employee apparently gripped by pseudo-religious, end of the world beliefs managed to spam an undetermined number of the site’s customers on Friday, forcing the company to issue a public apology and institute heightened controls on its emailing practices.

The spam, sent out via the pokerstars.eu mail servers by an employee in the company’s Isle of Man headquarters, included links to a small new-age website that warned visitors that the Age of Pisces would be ending on December 21, to be followed by three days of darkness when normal “electrical or metallic objects will [not] work.”

The resumption of normal electrical services, according to the website, would occur on Christmas Day, also supposedly the start of the new Age of Aquarius.

Presumably, this would have had an adverse effect on the December 23 edition of the Stars Sunday Million, in addition to other rake lost due to the electrical calamity.

Stars officials at first refused to believe that the spam in question had originated within their company, before checking out information posted at a debunking forum, godlikeproductions.com, that showed the small website’s owner was also listed as being employed in “Business Intelligence at PokerStars,” in addition to having misappropriated the use of the 'Stars mail server.

PokerStars soon after released an apology, admitting “one of our employees violated internal policies by accessing our marketing database and sending an unauthorized communication to a small number of player email addresses.”

“We identified the method that he used to circumvent our policy, and immediately implemented measures to ensure that no individual in the company can repeat this,” continued the email to affected customers.

An internal investigation has been launched, and “the specific employee’s access to any of our internal systems” has been temporarily revoked.

Stars also assured its customers that no sensitive personal data was released or accessed by the employee, and urged recipients to treat it as they would other spam—that is, to delete it.

“New Age” and Mayan-prophecy beliefs continue to draw attention in advance of the December 21, 2012 date when something is supposed to occur, despite extensive debunking of these claims by astronomers and historians around the globe. The weekend episode at Stars represents the first known instance of such belief systems forcibly interacting with the poker world.

Since relaunching on November 6th, Full Tilt Poker’s traffic has continued to slide and is presently a massive 53% off its highest recorded peak of around 8,000 cash players.

The good news for the online poker room, however, is that with a seven-day average of 4,300 cash players it still has clear daylight ahead of its nearest competitor for the second spot behind PokerStars. By comparison the iPoker Network, which includes the likes of Titan Poker, William Hill, Bet365 and Betfred, is averaging 2,750 cash players with a fourth place ranked PartyPoker not far behind, either, averaging 2,650 cash players over a seven day period.

At present, Full Tilt is running its tournament series FTOPS, which this year hosts 35 events between December 2nd and 16th. It is also proving as popular as ever and so far with 21 events completed all but two events easily reached their guaranteed prize pool. Unfortunately for Full Tilt, however, tournament play rarely has much impact on cash game traffic.

Meanwhile, PokerStars continues to remain firmly entrenched right at the top of the industry with an average 23,400 real money ring game players visiting the site. PokerStars may have seen its traffic decline by 10% last week, but this was more due to its 90 billionth hand promotion finishing. According to PokerScout, the online behemoth reported 93,168 cash game players the day the hand was hit, with the lucky winner being “m1sspiggy,” who earned $66,380 while five other players received around $14,000 a piece.

Finally, the recently re-branded Microgaming Poker Network, now known as MPN, enjoyed a 20% boost to its player traffic and, after initial glitches during its transition, is looking good to make further progress up the poker traffic rankings.




Full Tilt Traffic Slides 53% Since Relaunch

PokerStars has just announced the addition of Russian poker pro Tatiana Barausova to their roster of professionals known as Team PokerStars Online.

Tatiana first got interested in poker after spending hours watching her brother play online. Soon after she decided to give the game a go herself first starting at the microstakes level, and within months her talent allowed her to progress to medium-stake ring games. The young Russian now earns a healthy living plying her trade at the cash tables ranging from $3/$6 tables up to $25/$50, and in 2011 and 2012 also achieved Supernova Elite status.

Known as ‘Mysters_Y’ online, HSDB currently shows Tatiana Barausova as having earned $61,987 at PokerStars from games played at the $25/50NL and above level during 2012. Her overall winnings will be considerably higher.

This year, Tatiana also found some success while playing online tournaments and during March even managed to reach two final tables at the $215 Sunday Warm-Up and the $109 Sunday Rebuy for a grand total of $35,787. As a member of Team PokerStars Online, she says she now intends to spend more time playing tournaments and is hoping to give her tournament results a good boost.

The Russian poker pro can now be seen playing under the screen name ‘Mysters_Y’ with the PokerStars’red spade icon next to her name. When she’s not grinding online, Tatiana Barausova enjoys physical activity, such as snowboarding and working out at the gym. She also has a keen interest in traveling.





Russian Beauty Tatiana Barausova Joins PokerStars

PokerStars confirmed last week’s report that it was partnering with the Casino Gran Madrid to build a PokerStars-branded poker room in the casino.

The room will specialize in hosting tournaments and is planned to open early in 2013.

There will be over 20 poker tables with a total capacity of more than 200 players, according to the PokerStars press release issued Thursday.

Construction work has already started on the ambitious project which Paula Arriaga, Deputy General Director at Casino Gran Madrid boasts will “take poker to a new level.”

“Our ambition is to create an amazing atmosphere to play poker,” she explains, “adapting the lighting, the seats and the audiovisual support to the needs of the poker player.”

Plans include special monthly and quarterly events with a wide range of buy-ins. Marketing tactics will involve the room hosting educational sessions, high roller events and visits by celebrities and top professional players.

This deal is the latest in PokerStars’ new strategy of establishing partnerships with B&M casinos.

It announced this year a similar partnership with the historic Hippodrome casino in the centre of London’s West End, with its poker room also set to open in early 2013.

It is also reportedly in talks to buy the struggling Atlantic Club Casino in New Jersey.

PokerStars owns the European Poker Tour (EPT) and through such partnerships, it can market its brand to a wider audience as well as provide deluxe venues for live tournaments.

PartyPoker announced the launch of a mobile app for Android devices Wednesday, a long-anticipated move to help spur the growth of the site.

The app offers a single table experience for hold’em cash games, in both real money and play money, and provides options for multiple languages.

Non-hold’em games, tournaments and SNGs are currently not available in the app.

Players can register on the app for a play money account, but must be registered on the desktop client to play for real money. Deposits and withdrawals are not currently allowed on the app.

The app supports both Android phone and tablet screen sizes. There was no mention of a forthcoming Apple equivalent in yesterday’s announcement.

After last year’s merger of bwin.party and PartyGaming, the company also worked on building social media and launching its own fast-fold tables in order to boost traffic.

The FastForward technology, which debuted in August, also is available on the app.

Earlier this week, bwin-com moved its player base onto the PartyGaming platform, sharing the player pool with PartyPoker. Bwin also debuted with the new mobile application following the software change.



PartyPoker Launches Android App | Pokerfuse Online Poker News

That's very good news.

Since the November 6 relaunch of Full Tilt Poker, there has been a continuous slide in traffic and presently, the online poker room is recording a massive 53% off its record of 8,000 cash players while at the highest peak.

All is not gloomy for the poker room though. The good news is that with an average of 4,300 cash players in seven days, Full Tilt Poker is still in the range of its closest competitors, coming second behind PokerStars. It is comfortably ahead of the iPoker Network, which includes Bet365, William Hill, Titan Poker, and Betfred and has an average of 2,750 cash players, as well as PartyPoker which is not far behind in fourth position with an average 2,650 cash players every seven-day duration.

The FTOPS is even back at Full Tilt Poker.

In the meantime, PokerStars continues to reign over the industry, boasting a multitude of real money game players averaging at 23,400.

Last week PokerStars may have seen a 10% decline in traffic, which is probably a result of its behemoth promotion finishing. According to the PokerScout, 93,168 cash game players were reported on the day the 90 billionth hand promotion’s hand was hit. $66,380 went to “m1sspiggy”, the lucky winner, while $14,000 went to each of five other finalist players.

Lastly, Microgaming Poker Network (MPN), which was recently rebranded, enjoyed a boost in player traffic by 20%, and is now looking set to continue making strides in the poker traffic rankings following the initial hitches experienced when transitioning.



Full Tilt Is Back and Thriving

To online poker room, PokerStars-com, has announced they have now added a new pro to their Team PokerStars online. On Christmas Day, Tatiana “Mysters_Y” Barausova was added to the online poker team and will be representing the site from now on. Tatiana now joins the long list of players who call PokerStars home.

Tatiana is somewhat unknown on the live tournament circuit but is well known in online game play. The pro began playing online a few years ago and started at micro-stakes games only to move on to medium stakes just a few months after starting playing online poker. Tatiana is now a very successful online poker player at the $3/$6 tables and enjoys playing stakes as high as $25/$50.

Tatiana has played at PokerStars for some time now and over the past two years has earned Supernova Elite VIP status. The poker pro is planning on hitting the same status in the New Year, especially now that she is signed with PokerStars as an official Team PokerStars Online player.

According to the PokerStars Blog, Tatiana does well in cash game play and she has done well in several PokerStars online tournaments. Tatiana did well in a previous Sunday majors back in March when she finished at the final table during the Sunday Warm-Up and the $109 Sunday Rebuy, which earned her just over $35,000 in one day!

The beautiful poker pro doesn’t just hit the felt. She also enjoys snowboarding, working out, traveling or driving around in her car. When she does hit the felt, Tatiana focuses hard on the game and is working hard to prove that she has the skills to compete. Players can find Tatiana online under the screen name Mysters_Y and hopefully representing PokerStars at live events very soon!




PokerStars Adds New Online Pro

PokerStars have announced they have reached an agreement with Casino Gran Madrid, the biggest casino in Spain, for a new state-of-the-art PokerStars-branded poker room at Casino Gran Madrid, which will deliver the highest-quality live poker experience.

PokerNews, an online poker portal, has a slew of New Year bonuses, benefits, and offers for its loyal customers. Right now, PokerNews is encouraging poker players to sign up a real play Full Tilt Poker account through the PokerNews link and become a member of Team PokerNews, which is associated with a number of bonuses and benefits. Full Tilt Poker, which was forced to pull down its shutters after the gambling regulatory body in Alderney suspended its licenses, was finally acquired by The Rational Group, PokerStars’ parent company, as part of a $731 million settlement deal with the US Department of Justice (DoJ). PokerStars re-launched its one-time rival as a separate brand in the European online poker market early in November 2012. Full Tilt Poker became the number two online poker room in the world within just a few hours of pulling up its shutters.


Full Tilt Poker succeeded in becoming immensely popular within just a few hours of its re-launch because of its extraordinary new player welcome package, which new customers found very difficult to resist. The online poker room offers a first deposit cash match bonus of 100% up to $600, spread over players’ first three deposits. Since the bonus is spread over players’ first three deposits, players do not have to deposit $600 immediately to claim the maximum bonus. They can do it in installments of three as the online poker room gives players 60 days within which they can deposit funds and claim their bonuses.

The new player bonus package at Full Tilt Poker also includes 10 free tickets to the $50,000 First Deposit Freerolls, giving players the chance to take part in 10 $5k freerolls, which will be played on Sundays at 6:00 ET and 14:30 ET.

If players use the PokerNews link to register at Full Tilt Poker, they will instantly become part of Club PokerNews, which is associated with benefits such as invitations to exclusive promotions.

Poker players who download the Full Tilt Poker software today will get the opportunity to take part in Mini FTOPS XXI, an online poker tournament series that is scheduled to begin on Jan 6. It includes 35 online poker tournaments with a guaranteed prize pool of more than $3 million. In Dec 2010, Kristy Arnett of PokerStars converted a $50 bankroll into $31,344.40 in the twelfth FTOPS event. Poker players can try following in the footsteps of Kristy Arnett this year.



Full Tilt Poker Announces Bonuses and Tournaments

The 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is off and running at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and they have chosen to start the tournament in style. The first day of the $100,000 Super High Roller is in the books, smashing last year’s attendance numbers.

Of course, with such a high buy in, only the crème of the poker world would have the audacity to step up to such a challenge as the Super High Roller. Every table was replete with some of the biggest names in the game and, moments after the cards were in the air, Phil Ivey would join their midst. Jason Koon welcomed Ivey rudely by chopping about 22K in chips from his 250K stack moments after Ivey sat down at the felt.

The first significant move of the tournament came during a battle between Vanessa Selbst and Sam Stein. On a 5-3-10-A rainbow flop and turn, Selbst would lay out about 25K in chips and, once Stein made the call, the twosome saw a seven fall on the river. Selbst once again fired from under the gun, this time for slightly more than 58K in chips and Stein went into the tank. After some deliberations, he made the call but mucked once Selbst unveiled pocket threes for a flopped set; the hand pushed her up to the 350K mark and Stein’s stack shrunk to 125K.

With unlimited rebuys throughout the day’s action, players drifted in and out in a very laid back manner. Phil Hellmuth, who normally makes a late entrance to any tournament he is in, didn’t even show until after the dinner break. Making his first ever appearance at the PCA, Hellmuth probably should have waited even longer; within an hour of dropping his $100K in the pool, he was eliminated by Philipp Gruissem after Gruissem flopped two pair and turned a boat against Hellmuth’s flopped pair of nines and turned trips.

Gruissem, who had been previously eliminated and used a second bullet on this event, would use the knockout of the reigning World Series of Poker Europe Championship Event winner to end the night with a nice chip lead:

1. Philipp Gruissem, 771,500
2. Scott Seiver, 729,000
3. Dan Shak, 650,000
4. Tom Marchese, 638,500
5. Vivek Rajkumar, 608,500
6. Jason Somerville, 604,500
7. Nick Schulman, 580,000
8. Steve O’Dwyer, 527,500
9. Eugene Katchalov, 514,500
10. David “Doc” Sands, 505,500

Other players who aren’t among the Top Ten are Jason Mercier, Daniel Alaei, Tobias Reinkemeier, Antonio Esfandiari, Mike “SirWatts” Watson, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Jonathan Duhamel, Erik Seidel and Selbst, who are all over the 300K mark in chips.

A name that you don’t see on the leaderboard in the 2013 Super High Roller is its defending champion, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom. Blom, whose first major tournament victory was in this event last year, explained his reasonings early this morning for not attending the PCA this year: “I made more than what I cashed for last year (at the PCA) on Full Tilt Poker (Blom, along with Gus Hansen and Tom Dwan, is a member of “The Professionals,” the new sponsored pros on Full Tilt) the last three days!”

Although the final numbers for the tournament aren’t in yet (players can enter/re-enter until the cards fly this afternoon), it appears as though the 2013 Super High Roller will easily eclipse last year’s numbers. 32 players entered in 2012 and, so far this year, there are 57 entries on the big board (47 players and ten reentries). 37 players are left in the tournament after Day One and, once the Day Two proceedings begin, a firm number on both the players, entries and payouts for one of the biggest tournaments during the tournament poker season will become known.

While the Super High Roller will continue today, there are a few other events on tap for those who don’t want to bask in the sunshine in the Bahamas. A super-satellite to the $10,000 PCA Main Event (which begins on Monday) will be held with a buy in of $1100. There will also be two turbo tournaments – one with a $2150 buy in, the other with a $300 price tag – which could provide for players to get in their poker AND some beach time on Sunday!



2013 PCA $100,000 Super High Roller Day One: Philipp Gruissem Uses Two Shots To Take Lead