Online Poker

Ireland's Marty Smyth has arguably had one of the best years of poker of any player on the European continent. On the heels of his double nominations for the 2008 European Poker Awards, Smyth took down the championship in the SkySports Poker Million on December 13th. BoylePoker will hold a Victory Tournament for him tonight. Read more »

This past week saw the fall of Zosoz.com, which claimed it was a legal online poker room in the United States. As of December 14th, the site officially closed its doors after opening on October 15th. No official word as to the reason for the cessation of operations was given, but refunds will be automatically issued to players. Read more »

Early Saturday morning, hand number 1162170993 was dealt on online poker room Ultimate Bet. It featured Phil Hellmuth squaring off against DOUBLEBALLER. However, at the end of the betting, Hellmuth was awarded the pot despite holding the worst hand. Read more »

Online poker network CEREUS is using the final weekend before the Christmas holiday to raise money for the Ante Up for Africa charity, which generates funds and awareness for the ongoing crisis in Darfur. On Saturday night at 7:30pm Eastern Time, the Charity Xmas Bonanza will kick off. Read more »

Staff at the Peak Group Malta Limited spent the day on Friday preparing for the changeover of online poker room Sun Poker as well as Omni Casino and CSCasino to Playtech's software platform. The change, which affects affiliates and customers alike, was scheduled to begin on Friday. Read more »

The recent worldwide economic downturn has affected businesses and corporations in the world in different ways. While the banks of many nations around the world are stuck in a credit quagmire, online gaming seems to be increasing in strength. An Italian poker site recently demonstrated this when it announced its third quarter numbers on Wednesday. Read more »

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, a European Poker Tour event which last year was one of the largest tournaments outside of the World Series of Poker, will be one of the events that kick off the 2009 poker season. Read more »

PokerStars announced Tuesday that the site will be offering a freeroll to all players left in the LAPT Nuevo Vallarta event that was suspended last week. Each of the 89 remaining players will begin the freeroll with the same number of chips they had when the tournament was paused and will play down to the final table. Read more »

Paradise Poker's €1,000,000 Guaranteed Tournament, set to take place on December 14th, will award a minimum of €200,000 to the first place finisher along with sponsorships to the rest of the final table; from a €10,000 sponsorship to any of Team Paradise's live tournament events around the world to a €1500 sponsorship for smaller tournaments for finishing in tenth place. Read more »

The PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) culminates on December 21st. Prizes for the top 100 finishers include buy-ins into the Spring Championship of Online Poker, or SCOOP. Although no details have been released, the event has now been indirectly announced by the world's largest online poker room. Read more »

Ladbrokes officials this week announced that Peter Jepsen has signed a one year sponsorship agreement with the online poker room that will begin on January 1st, 2009. Jepsen, who hails from Denmark, was the winner of the European Poker Tour's (EPT) Polish Open in 2007. Read more »

On Monday it was announced that internet gaming software provider Microgaming, looking to break into the list of the top ten online poker networks in the world, had acquired the rights to the three dimensional technology created by the now-defunct British company Playwize PLC. Read more »

Recently, the world's largest online poker room got a little bigger. PokerStars, which at the time of writing at 12:00 Noon ET on Wednesday has over 107,000 players online, has added Badugi, a popular Asian variation of Lowball. Read more »

Word spread through the online poker community on Monday that popular online poker rooms Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, which merged to form the CEREUS poker network last week, blocked customers in Kentucky from accessing either site. Read more »

The Washington Post investigative team, led by writer Gilbert Gaul and assisted by ESPN poker writer Gary Wise, presented an in-depth story looking into the background of how the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe of Canada became a part of the online poker scene. Read more »

High stakes cash game specialist David Benyamine is no longer a Full Tilt red pro. For the past couple weeks Benyamine has been playing on Full Tilt's site, but his red avatar has been removed and his name is no longer listed on the official homepage with the other pros. While no press release from Full Tilt has been released and Benyamine hasn't commented, it is rumored that he has made a deal with another poker site. Read more »

The third European Championship of Online Poker (ECOOP) is currently underway. Kicking off on Saturday is a $1,060 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha Six-Max tournament with a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool and seated among its many tables will be Antanas Guoga, who is better known in the poker world as Tony G. Read more »

The Party Poker Premier League pitched 12 of the world's top poker players on a league-style competition for a share of $1,250,000. After 3 days, JC Tran and Peter Eastgate are coming out on top, followed closely by Juha Helppi, Vicky Coren and Tony G. Read more »

SQUARE ROUTE won the very first Bad Beat Jackpot on the newly-formed CEREUS poker network, which was born when the player bases of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker were combined on Tuesday. His bad break was worth $256,000 and the total jackpot at the time was nearly $800,000. Read more »

Titan Poker's third European Championship of Online Poker has started, with its largest guaranteed prize pool to date: $4,150,000. The kick off event had 1,420 players vying for the guaranteed $250,000 prize. Less than two years after the inaugural ECOOP, Titan Poker players are showing no signs of slowing down, with ever increasing guaranteed prizes and player fields. Read more »