Perhaps the tournament most people are looking forward to in this year’s Extreme Satellites event is the $5400 World Championship of Online Poker event. It is a $260 qualifier, which is one of the series most expensive. This tourney will provide an extra 25 seats and add $130,000 to the prize pool.

The World Championship of Online Poker is scheduled to begin on September 5th. Sixty-two events will be played and the guaranteed combined prize money pool is incredible at $50,000,000. Individuals interested in when the satellite tournaments are being played can find out at the official World Championship of Online Poker website. The address is wcoop.com. The schedule for this year’s event is posted on the site as well.

Individuals interested in participating in the Extreme Satellites can do so between the dates of August 21st and August 29th. Three tournaments will be played each day within that time frame. Players will need to belong to PokerStars in order to participate. Individuals that are not, must sign up. Right now is an excellent time to do so. New players are eligible for a mega bonus of up to $600. Besides this very generous bonus, members of the website are also eligible for additional promotions and have the opportunity to play at one of the biggest and best poker websites in the world.

Again, if you are interested in playing your way into the World Championship of Online Poker, you need to sign up right away. The last satellite events will be played on August 29th, less then a week away.

There are some who thumb their nose at the concept. These people believe that there is really no need for an all-female poker league in 2010. Obviously, PokerStars feels differently and is proceeding with play. Though women poker players have become more competitive then ever, there is still a wide disparity in live evens. More are beginning to play online but the numbers offline tell a different story.

The Women’s Poker League will play until the end of 2010. Tournaments are already being played. Women have the opportunity to compete for cash and various prizes. PokerStars Ladies Luxury Event packages are being given away to winners. The packages are believed to include entry into an exclusive tournament for ladies only. The details have not yet been announced.

Women Poker League tournaments are being played everyday. Those who would like to participate will find that they need to be available at 1:10 PM (EST) and 8:10 PM (EST). The tournaments start at these times and are played daily. Players who cash and who make it to the finals table will accumulate points. The women who have the most points will win cash and other prizes. Buy-ins start as low as $5.50, which makes the league ultra-affordable and encourages play.

At the end of each month, the top 50 players will receive monies. The woman who has the most points at the end of the year will win at least €1000 and a Ladies Luxury Event Package.

A Women’s Poker League weekly tournament has just been started. It will be played on Sundays. If you would like to join the Women’s Poker League, you can. Simply become a member of PokerStars and sign up for the league.

I wonder how Daniel Negreanu feels about this being one of the PokerStars Stars considering he has advocated against womens only events on his blog for quite a while.

It was after Mallic made his concerns known that other players at PokerStars begin noticing and complaining about the same things. Suspicion began to grow until finally a third party was asked to come in and perform their own research.

PTR conducted an investigation into the 10 screen names accused of bot activity. They found that there were significant similarities in the players’ statistics. Every one of the players would change their table stakes simultaneously, and their betting patterns were exactly alike. Overall, the company compared 28 metrics such as saw flop percentage, pre-flop rise, flop aggression and 3 bet percentages. What they found was that the play variety in terms of style was no more 2.39. To give individuals some perspective, for most players, this percentage is at least 30.

Upon hearing (or seeing) the evidence offered by Poker Stars players, PokerStars kicked out the 10 players accused of bot activity.

Those players were

• 7emenov
• Bakabar
• Crazier
• Feidmanis
• Mvra
• Daergy
• Nakseon
• Koldan
• Kozzin
• and Demidou

PokerStars gave no details about whether or not punishment of nay kind was meted out. However, there is an assumption that no monies owed to the individual who owns these 10 accounts would be paid out.

As poker becomes increasingly popular overseas, poker websites and companies are looking to take advantage by creating tournaments and special events branded with their names and images.

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The Bulgarian tournament is scheduled to take place September 2nd and is to last until the September 5th. The field will include no more then 200 people. The event itself is set to take place along the Black Sea at the Grand Hotel Casino International at the Golden Sands Resort. The buy-in for the event will be €900 + €90. The payout structure has not been determined. However, one prize that will definitely be given out is a seat in one of the European Poker Tour (EPT) events. This prize package has a value of at least 5000 Euros. These regional events make PokerStars presence more well known and allows them to go into localized markets like the recent move into France with the French PokerStars online poker site at PokerStars.fr.

The Mexican tournament will take place on August 19th and is slated to last until August 22nd. Mexico City will play host. Games will be played at the Casino Life del Valle. The First National Poker Tournament will include a maximum of 300 players. The field will eventually be decreased until only 90 players remain. These 90 will duke it out for a chance to participate in the finals, an event which will include only 10 players. The winner will receive the title of First National Poker Tournament champion along with $78,000 (1 million Mexican Pesos).

Each of these events marks an exciting time for Poker Stars.  As their reach increases, the brands gets bigger which begins to attract more players to the website. Individuals interested in participating in either of the aforementioned events can play their way in via the site or utilize the buy-in option.

PokerStars have the opportunity to win one of the most luxurious cars on the planet, the Lamborghini, for free. Along with winning this great car (worth $200,000), the winner also receives $250,000. For weekly final events, $100,000 in cash and prizes is up for grabs.

PokerStars members will be able to sign up for the event at the website. Information to do so can be found under the ‘Tourney” tab, players will then need to click the ‘All’ link. The information regarding sign up, along with a listing of all of the scheduled events should be found there.

The Lamborghini promotion will include 24 daily freeroll qualifiers. There will also be a small number of satellite tournaments. Satellite events will cost the player $1.10 or $11. All players are competing to win the car and the $250,000 in cash. There also a large number of generous cash giveaways throughout the promotion. Each week $100,000 is given away.

This event will likely go down as one of the coolest in PokerStars history. Not only is a tremendous amount of money being given away but the opportunity to win a car as cool as the Lamborghini is pretty awesome. Those who wish to participate will find that even if they don’t win the big prize, they still have to opportunity to win a piece of the $100,000 prize amount, given out each week.

The Lamborghini event looks like another fantastic promotion from PokerStars. Individuals interested in this promotion or others, need to check out the website to see what it currently on the schedule of promotional events.

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The tournament will take place on a gorgeous resort that is popular amongst tourists. Besides great views, the area is noted for its plush golf courses and outstanding amenities. Players and their guests will be able to enjoy lots of treat food from the resorts and local restaurants, beautiful beaches and as mentioned above, plenty of golf.

2009 was the first time the EPT Vilamoura was played. It was a tremendous success. This year it has been scheduled so that players have more time to enjoy the resort’s perks. Last year, approximately 322 players made their way to Portugal to participate in this event. The outcome was an exciting one with a very respected players making to the Final table. Jeff Sarwer, Michel Abecassis and Jan Skampa were amongst the last players standing.

Jeff Sarwer hails from Canada. Not only is a very good poker player but also a terrific chess player. Michel Abecassis is an experienced French player. Jan Skampa is a professional from Czech who has won an EPT event before (EPT-Prague). However, with all of this fire power at the table, it was a local business man by the name of Antonio Matias who ended atop of the fields. He was the inaugural event’s winner and left the table €404, 793 richer.

This year the prize pool is €1.5 million, besting last year’s event and making it he richest poker tourney ever played in Portugal. Individuals can claim a seat via one of PokerStars’ satellite events. Buy-ins are only €5.45. Players can also participate for 50 Frequent Player Points (FPPs).

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French poker pro, Bertrand Grospellier, went on record concerning Pokerstars.fr stating that , “Players on PokerStars.fr will have fantastic new opportunities, not only to play online, but to win seats to famous international poker events like the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas,” Grospellier said.

“These tournaments require players to have the right mix of skill, training, and concentration, and PokerStars.fr will be the perfect place for players to work on that.”

Poker Stars submitted their license to become an online gambling operator on May 19th. They have since been accepted and are now able to offer cash casino games. However, they are unable to offer cash-based poker games, sit n” gos or tournaments. This is due in part to the failure of France to release their regulations governing online poker.

Prior to France agreeing to make changes to its online gambling policies, all online gambling was state-run and operated. All of that changed in April of 2010. The French Parliament made the decision to open things up and the country has since, done exactly that. The ARJEL was created to provide regulation for the industry and to dispense licenses as they saw fit.

Besides PokerStars, the ARJEL has distributed licenses to a number of other groups. They include, but are not limited to, Everest Poker, Gaming Illiad, BWIN, Partouche Gaming France SAS, BetClinic and Electraworks SAS (Party Poker). Microgaming has applied for a license but is waiting for approval.

To be clear, according to Eastgate, this retirement may not be permanent. However, as of right now Peter’s heart just isn?t in it. On his PokerStars-sponsored blog he wrote, “When I started playing poker for a living, it was never my goal to spend the rest of my life as a professional poker player,” the 24 year old Eastgate states. “My goal was to become financially independent. I achieved that by winning the WSOP Main Event in 2008.”  He continues, “In the 20 months following my WSOP win, I feel that I have lost my motivation for playing high level poker along the way and I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

The 2008 WSOP Min Event Eastgate references earned him more then $9 million dollars. He followed up that win by taking home the top spot at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $5,000 No Limit Hold?em prelim event, and $343,000 in the process. This is addition to the $68,000 he won in the 2009 WSOP Main Event where he finished in 78th place. Sure, this was a let down from 2008 but he was still managing to earn cashes and he still had his sponsorship deal with PokerStars as he has remained on the site’s professional team right up until his recent announcement. As it stands, Peter Eastgate has no immediate plans but according to him, is looking to concentrate more on his person then on poker.

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David Williams has been playing lights out in 2010. He took home $1.5 million after he won the World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship. This appearance was his fourth in a WPT final. The team at PokerStars he is joining is an all-star one, a “who’s-who” of the pro poker world. He will now be teammates with Barry Greenstein, Joe Hachem, Joe Cada, Greg Raymer, Peter Eastgate and Daniel Negreanu as well as some of the French PokerStars reps at PokerStars.fr. Williams has proven to be an excellent live player and somewhat of a television star. He has made appearances on numerous poker related television show and tournaments, including Poker After Dark which aires on NBC, High Stakes Poker on GSN and the Big Game.

Though David’s representatives have confirmed his addition to the PokerStars roster, the company has yet to make an official announcement nor did they mention the move during their weekly roundup. However, surely word will come concerning his addition soon. PokerStars is arguably the top poker website. There’s no debate about it being the largest poker websites and continues to grow. This ability to retain and attract new customers makes it a great place for a poker pro to join. Obviously Williams saw the value of partnering with the company. William’s successful and profitable 2010 makes him a pretty good catch as well.  Take a look at our PokerStars Download Guide for instructions on how to get started playing at PokerStars yourself.

Until July 18, Poker Stars is running daily freeroll qualifiers called Million Dollar Challenge Daily Freerolls, taking place four times each day. Finish in any of these Million Dollar Challenge Daily Freerolls in the top twenty and as your prize you earn the right to submit a casting video (a la YouTube) to the Poker Stars Million Dollar Challenge casting team to be screened for possible inclusion on the program.

In other words, be one of the top 20 in any Million Dollar Challenge Daily Freeroll between now and July 18 and you get to audition to play live poker on TV and the chance to face (and beat) Kid Poker Daniel Negreanu for a $1 million payday.

That’s one million dollars for a zero dollar investment.

The upcoming season is Season 2 of the Million Dollar Challenge, which FOX and PokerStars were both happy to bring back to players and audiences after such a successful Million Dollar Challenge Season 1, when Mike Kosowski of New York beat Negreanu for the $1 million top prize.

If you are one of the lucky (and camera ready) faces to catch the casting directors’ eyes, you will be flown to the LA Studios and possibly get to play in the Million Dollar Challenge with two friends along to cheer you on as you face off against various Team PokerStars Pros like Daniel Negreanu of PokerVt training course and other well-known poker stars, earning money all along which you can ultimately put all at risk for the shot at claiming the $1 million grand prize from Daniel Negreanu.