Poker Blog

Essence, The New bwin Poker Rake Scheme

Posted on by giorgio

bwin Poker has recently introduced a new rake scheme, along with its parent network, the OnGame Network, that went into effect as of July 15, 2010. It’s called Essence, and this is the … well, essence of it:

The official bwin Poker word on Essence, as revealed in a memo issued to its Affiliate Partners, is that it is an improved algorithm designed in such a way that “the player’s overall contribution to the poker ecology becomes a major component to its healthy balance.”

Ordinarily a poker site (or land-based poker room) will have a set rake that the house takes out of any pot (often limiting it only to pots where a flop is dealt). That rake is typically determined by the size of the pot, the number of players dealt cards in the hand, and the table stakes. It’s how the house pays itself.

But with bwin Poker’s new rake scheme, certain new, additional factors will be taken into account in an effort to more fairly personalise the rake requirement on each player.

The Essence rake scheme will take into account each given player’s playing style, their contribution to the pot, their skill level, the effects each player has on all the others over the long term. In this way, bwin Poker hopes to define each player’s value to the site. That value, determined over the past 90-days performance, will be converted into a numerical coefficient that will allow bwin Poker to distribute the rake obligation of players more equitably. At the end of each pot, the rake contributed by each player will no longer necessarily be divided equally. It may be, but if factors are diverse enough among players at the same table, different layers will pay a different rake.

The existing rake scheme for tournaments (which is really just the fee tacked on after the plus sign “+” in a tournament buy-in), will remain unaffected and unchanged by the new Essence guidelines. As will the existing bwin Poker Points system. The new bwin Poker Essence rake scheme only affects cash games at the site (and those of other OnGame Network Poker sites).

Read our detailed info about the bwin Poker Bonus on how this will affect clearing the poker bonus.

Qualify For partypoker’s $300k Guaranteed Sunday

Posted on by giorgio

Each Sunday, a multi-table online poker tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $300,000 takes place at partypoker called, appropriately, the $300K Guaranteed Sunday.

Starting every Sunday at 12:45 pm ET, the partypoker $300K Guaranteed Sunday has several ways to enter. You can buy-in directly for $215 or you can enter one of partypoker’s many qualifiers for much less and win your way in. And now, partypoker has introduced even more $300K Guaranteed Sunday qualifiers from which to choose.

There are both Multi-Table and Single-Table Tournament Qualifiers into the partypoker $300K GTD Sunday.

The MTT qualifiers include the following:

  • $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Speed for $21.50 + $1.50
  • $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Rebuy for $2.40 + $0.60
  • $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier for a buy-in of 50 partypoker Points
  • $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier for $10 + $1
  • $300K Gtd Sunday Qualifier Turbo for $11 + $1
  • $300K Guaranteed Qualifier Turbo for $107 + $9.50
  • $300K Gtd Sunday Qualifier Speed Rebuy for $5 + $1

All of these events guarantee to award at least one ticket into the next scheduled partypoker $300K Guaranteed Sunday, but some of these events guarantee even more, up to as many as 15 seats in the $300K Sunday Guaranteed sometimes being awarded in a single qualifier.

partypoker also offers a $300K Guaranteed Sunday Qualifier Special for $53.75 + $4.25 that you can qualify for through one of its own satellites, $300K Gtd Sunday Sub Qualifier Special Speed for $14.50 + $1.50 and a $300K Gtd Sunday Sub Qualifier Special Speed Rebuy for $5 + $1.

Most of these events are daily, at least 5 days a week, with several being offered 6 and 7 days a week.

As for the Sit & Go single table tournament qualifiers, partypoker offers the following:

  • $3 Sit & Go Qualifier (10 handed)
  • $3 Sit & Go Qualifier Speed (10 handed)
  • $66 Sit & Go Qualifier (6 handed)
  • $26 Sit & Go Qualifier (10 handed)
  • $26 Sit & Go Speed Qualifier (10 handed)
  • $120 Sit & Go Qualifier (2 handed/heads-up)

Let bwin Poker Take You To The Partouche Poker Tour

Posted on by kurt

Partouche Poker Tourbwin Poker is now hosting online satellite tournaments awarding as their top prize a package that includes a free seat in the upcoming Partouche Poker Tour Final in Cannes, France.

The Partouche Poker Tour Final will be taking place between August 29th and September 8th at the Palm Beach Resort in Cannes. The event boasts a guaranteed prize pool of EUR 3 million. The playing field will no doubt include the gamut of players from starry-eyed amateurs to the poker pros themselves, including members of the bwin Poker Team.

bwin Poker is offering its members two different ways to win free seats in this main event: the $15,000 Partouche Finals and the $160,000 Partouche Final.

The $15,000 Partouche Finals will be taking place each Sunday at bwin Poker at 20:00 GMT. At each of these events, at least one Partouche Poker Tour Final prize package is guaranteed to be awarded. These events have a $300 + $20 direct buy-in, although satellite tournaments are running at a rate of twenty per day qualifying players for this event for buy-ins as little as $2. The first of these events took place on the 4th of July. The last of these is scheduled for August 15, 2010.

The $160,000 Partouche Final will be the pinnacle of this promotion at bwin Poker, a 10-package guaranteed event, meaning that at least 10 players in the event will win Partouche Poker Tour Final prize packages. What’s more, $10,000 in cash prizes will also be awarded to the runners-up in this event. Satellites qualifying players for the $160,000 Partouche Final start with buy-ins as little as $1.

The prize packages into the Partouche Poker Tour Final include the $10,500 buy-in into the main event plus $1,300 spending cash, and accommodations at hotel 3.14 for the dates of the event.

bet365 Poker Offering Ongoing Satellites Into Weekly Guaranteed Tournaments

Posted on by giorgio

As part of its regular schedule, bet365 Poker hosts a bevy of guaranteed tournaments each week, and also as part of its regular schedule, bet365 also hosts an equally impressive bevy of satellite tournaments into these various guaranteed events.

Details on the 7 regularly scheduled bet365 online poker tournaments with guaranteed prize pools into which the hosts regular satellites are as follows.

  • $20,000 Double Stack Freezeout – This is a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout event taking place every Friday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $320. Stage 1 SNG (Sit and Go) satellites are $70 for a 5-player game.
  • $40,000 GP High Roller Monday – This is a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout event taking place every Monday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $530. Stage 1 Satellites are available as ongoing 10-player Sit and Gos for $58 and Rebuy/Add-On Tournaments taking place every Monday at 16:35 GMT for a $55 buy-in.
  • $40,000 GP Super Tuesday R/A – This is a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout event taking place every Tuesday at 19:45 GMT for a direct buy-in of $109. Stage 1 Satellites are available as ongoing 10-player SNGs for $13 and a Turbo events every Tuesday at 16:45 GMT for a $12 direct buy-in.
  • $45,000 GP Rebuy – This is a No Limit Hold’em Re-buy event taking place every Monday through Thursday at 18:45 GMT for a $55 direct buy-in. Stage 1 Satellites into this event are available as 10-player Rebuy SNGs for a $6 buy-in and as Rebuy Turbo R/A events every Monday through Thursday at 15:20 GMT for a $6 buy-in.
  • $50,000 GP Freezeout – This is a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout event taking place every Saturday at 18:30 GMT for a $109 direct buy-in. An array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event, including MTQ R/A events, Turbo events, regular Freezeout satellites, and of course SNGs. Buy-ins for these satellites range from $8.80 to $24, although most of them are $12.
  • Friday $100,000 Guaranteed R/A – This is a No Limit Hold’em Rebuy event taking place every Friday at 20:00 GMT for a $109 direct buy-in. An array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event, including R/A events, Turbo and Speed events, and of course Sit and Gos. Buy-ins for these satellites range from $8.80 to $26.
  • $250,000 Guaranteed Big Sunday – This is a No Limit Hold’em Freezeout event taking place every Sunday at 18:00 GMT for a $320 direct buy-in. A wide array of Stage 1 Satellites are available into this event including R/A events and Sit and Gos. Buy-ins range from $27 to $70.

All new sign-ups at bet365 Poker referred by Max Poker Bonus are eligible for a first deposit bonus of 100% up to $500. Interested? You can read the exact details, such as the clearing requirements, about this bonus offer on the bet365 Poker Bonus page.

bwin Poker Introduces New Snowball Sit & Go And Super Secret Poker Freeroll

Posted on by giorgio

bwin Poker SnowballA way to stay icy cool on a hot summer day, bwin Poker’s new Snowball Sit & Gos create an avalanche-like snowball effect from the first deal to the last, meaning it doesn’t take very much time at all from start to finish, and at the climactic end the results are near-catastrophic (for one of the player’s at least)!

In bwin Poker’s new Snowball Sit & Go tournaments the blinds increase slowly at first, only to pick up pace as the game progresses. Specifically, the blinds make start out increasing every 10 minutes, but then go up progressively quicker each time, next coming every 8 minutes, then every 6, every 4, every 2, and at last, when the snowball effect is at its most ginormous (that’s gigantic + enormous), they increase every minute.

It won’t take long for many of the players in these 10-seater sit & go tournaments to dwindle their 1,500 starting chip stack down to nothing. The top three positions get paid out in these events.

bwin Poker’s Snowball Sit & Go tournaments are available at the following buy-in levels: $1 + $0.20; $5 + $0.50; $10 + $1; $20 + $2.

Super Secret Poker Freeroll

Also happening now at bwin Poker is the Super Secret Poker Freeroll, a chance to win cash prizes in a special freeroll tournament with only one entry requirement: a password, hence the “super secret”. In order to find out these super secret password you need only listen to the bwin Poker podcast or read the bwin Poker blog.

For an example, at the time of this writing, July 14, 2010, there is a YouTube video on the bwin Poker Blog (which means it’s also on YouTube, so we implemented it into this article) called the “World Series of Poker 2010 Secret Freeroll July 13th, 2010”. If you watch the video you’ll see the password for today’s Super Secret Poker Freeroll and you’ll learn where, when, and how to use that password to enter.

partypoker’s Card Rush Instant Prize Promo Is On

Posted on by kurt

partypoker Card Rush XLpartypoker has held Card Rush promotions before, but never one so big on prizes as this one, thus the name Card Rush XL, with XL standing for “eXtra Large”.

partypoker is holding an instant prize promotion called the Card Rush in which players need only play poker online as they normally do at partypoker and in the process of earning partypoker Points for their real money play also earn instant cards, each worth some prize amount up to $5,000. Every instant card holder is a winner, and all the fun started on Monday, June 28, 2010.

The partypoker Card Rush XL promotion runs through July 31st, unless all $1,800,000 in instant cards is handed out before then.

It only takes 15 PartyPoints to earn a game card, except for your first game card which partypoker will give you after you earn only 5 PartyPoints.

In addition to the regular prizes being awarded with each Card Rush XL game card, partypoker will be maintaining a leader board keeping track of players as they win and cash in their instant game cards. The top performing players in the promotion, as determined by their ranking on the leaderboard, will win bonus prizes. This party of the promotion is called the partypoker Card Rush XL Race.

Players can earn from $1 to $5,000 cash or freeroll entries for tournaments with guaranteed prize pools of $2,000 to $50,000, from each and every game card. Card Rush XL Freeroll tournaments run from August 5 through 8.

In addition to awarding prizes to the top 200 players on the leader board in the partypoker Card Rush XL Race, partypoker will also be awarding prizes to every twentieth finish from the 220th to the 2000th. The top 3 of these prizes will be $10K luxury travel packages that include tickets to various big sporting events around the world, including F1 auto racing events.

Celeb Poker Hosting Vilamoura Deep Stack Open Satellites

Posted on by giorgio

DeepStack Open Vilamoura 2010Celeb Poker is hosting satellite tournaments into this autumn’s biggest live deep stack tournament anywhere, the DeepStack Open Vilamoura.

Each Celeb Poker prize package into the Vilamoura DeepStack Open 2010 is worth €1,300 and includes the €500 + €50 buy-in into the Deep Stack Open 2010 Main Event which sets you off and running with 50,000 starting chips, €460 to apply to 5 nights of luxury accommodations at the Vila Gale Hotel, between September 22 and 27, with breakfast for the player, €275 to put toward flight and spending money, and €15 to put toward handling fees.

Celeb Poker 2010 DeepStack Vilamoura Main Event Satellite Tournaments start on Monday, July 5, with the first of the weekly Super Satellites into the event taking place on July 8. Super Satellites will then run every Thursday at 21:00 GMT as Celeb Poker doles out those €1,300 prize packages.

Stage 1 R/A Satellites into the DeepStack Vilamoura run daily at Celeb Poker at 9:55 GMT for buy-ins of $5.50 + $0.50 and Stage 2 R/A Satellites into the DeepStack Vilamoura run daily at Celeb Poker at 10:55 GMT for buy-ins of $2 + $0.20. Each Super Satellite has a direct buy-in of €80 + €8 and all are rebuy and add-on events.

The 2010 Deep Stack Open Vilamoura will take place from September 23 to 26 at the Vilamoura Casino.

The Celeb Poker 2010 DeepStack Open Vilamoura Satellites are just one of the many satellite tournament series’ that Celeb Poker offers its players. Other CelebPoker satellite tournaments into big money live land-based poker tournament main events include the Manila stop on the Asian Poker Tour (APT Philippines), the Austria stop on the Euro City Poker Tour (EC Poker Tour Vienna), and the Irish Winter Festival of Poker with its $1 million-plus prize pool.

partypoker Launches 2010 WPT Legends Of Poker Satellites

Posted on by kurt

WPT Legends of Pokerpartypoker has just launched online satellite tournaments awarding players entry into the upcoming 2010 World Poker Tour Legends of Poker main event, which will take place in Los Angeles, CA from August 18th until August 24th.

The partypoker prize package for the winners of these satellites is worth $8,000 and includes not only the buy-in for the 2010 WPT Legends of Poker main event but accommodations during the tournament and cash to apply towards travel expenses.

partypoker is now holding daily freeroll sit ‘n’ go WPT Legends of Poker satellite tournaments, awarding the finest fifty players from each a seat in the next level up the satellite ladder, the WPT Legends of Poker Sub Qualifier Rebuy. The Sub Qualifier Rebuy in turn advances winning players to a satellite Qualifier, which in turn advances the winning players to the WPT Legends of Poker Satellites themselves, in which the actual main event prize packages will be given out.

You can alternatively opt to skip over any of these levels and pay the direct buy-in for the level above. For example, there is a $1 direct buy-in for the daily Sub Qualifier Rebuy sit ‘n’ go satellites, a $5 direct buy-in for the daily Sub Qualifier Speed Rebuy sit ‘n’ go satellites, a $46 direct buy-in for the Satellite Qualifiers, and a $430 direct buy-in for the Satellites directly into the WPT Legends of Poker main event. Twenty percent of all players competing in one of these final weekly satellites, taking place on Sundays, will win $8,000 partypoker prize packages into the 2010 WPT Legends of Poker main event.

partypoker is the main sponsor of the WPT Legends of Poker and almost all of the stops on the World Poker Tour. As such, partypoker is constantly holding satellite series that award seats in the various WPT main events as their top prizes. Currently, in addition to offering seats in the WPT Legends of Poker in L.A., partypoker is also holding satellites for the first ever World Poker Tour main event to take place in London, England, the inaugural WPT London Poker Classic.

bwin Poker Champion Chip Promo Offers $150k Weekly

Posted on by giorgio

bwin Poker Champion Chipbwin Poker offers players a variety of fun and wacky ways to win large sums of money for little investment. One of them, bwin Poker’s ongoing Champion Chip promotion, gives players the chance to win a share of $150,000 weekly guaranteed.

There are several ways players can try to win bwin Poker’s weekly Champion Chip promotion: via Sit & Gos, Scheduled Tournaments, Special Tournaments, and Direct Buy-in.

You might as well want to read a previous article we have published about bwin Poker’s Champion Chip promotion, where you can read some more detailed about the tournaments’ structures, back then still a $250K guaranteed tournament.

Champion Chip Sit & Gos

The Sit & Go route is the most complex, with three choices of entry points: Step Qualifiers, Champion Chip Qualifiers, or Championship Turbo Qualifiers.

Step 1 Qualifiers cost $0.90 + $0.10 to enter and seed players into choice of two Step 2 Qualifiers, one with a direct buy-in of $5.40 + $0.60 and a Shorthanded version for the same price. These seed, respectively into a $23 + $2 Step 3 Champion Chip Qualifier or a $40 + $3 Shorthanded version which in turn seed players into the actual $190 + $10 Sunday Champion Chip Final for the $150K guaranteed prize pool.

Champion Chip Sit & Go Qualifiers and Turbo Qualifiers seed directly into the Champion Chip final for players choice of $10 + $1, $20 + $2, or $30 + $3 buy-in.

Champion Chip Satellites and Special Tournaments

Scheduled Satellites also seed directly into the bwin Poker Champion Chip Final for player’s choice of a range of buy-ins: $2 + $0.20, $3 + $0.30, $5 + $0.50, $10 + $1, $20 + $2, and $30 + $3.

Special Tournaments earn players chips into the bwin Poker Champion Chip Final include a variety of Mad Tilt Tournaments (in which every hand is All-In), Turbo Tournaments (in which the blinds go up every 3 minutes), and Rebuy Tournaments (which give players the chance to chase chips even faster).

Champion Chip Direct Buy-in

And of course, if you want to skip all the preliminaries and go straight to the $150,000 guaranteed main event, just pony up the $200 buy-in for the Champion Chip Final any given Sunday at 18:00 (GMT + 1) at bwin Poker.

Enter Celeb Poker Satellite And Win A Seat In The Apt Philippines

Posted on by kurt

APT PhilippinesThe Manila Philippines stop on the Asian Poker Tour is coming up August 23 to 29, and a bunch of successful online poker players will be going there courtesy of Celeb Poker.

As part of the iPoker Network, along with other sites like bet365 Poker that are also running similar APT Philippines satellite tournament promotions, Celeb Poker will be sending several players to Manila to play some live high-stakes poker in the Asian Poker Tour Philippines.

On the Celeb Poker APT Philippines 2010 satellite schedule are $200 + $15 Freezeout Super Satellite events happening every Saturday between June 21st August 14th at 21:00 GMT. Additionally on the 2010 Celeb Poker APT Philippines satellite schedule are $80 + $8 re-buy/add-on Super Satellites happening every Thursdays between June 24th and August 14th at 21:00 GMT.

You can satellite into one of these Saturday or Thursday Super Satellites in the APT Philippines that Celeb Poker is holding for much less money (and even for poker points) through Stage 1, 2, and 3 Sit ‘n’ Go qualifiers and Scheduled qualifiers.

Prize package winners will receive from Celeb Poker the $2,500 + $200 buy-in into the APT Philippines Main Event, running August 25th through Aug 28th, $750 to put toward a 6 night stay at the luxury Manila Marriot Hotel, for the dates of August 23th to August 29th, $50 to apply to registration fees, and spending cash for airline tickets and such in an amount up to $2,000. The total value of this 2010 APT Philippines prize package is $5,500.