Poker News

In true Christmas spirit, Bodog Poker have launched their festive online poker promotion the ’12 Days of Poker’ tournaments. This fantastic Bodog online Poker promo starts on Sunday 21st December and runs daily throughout the holiday period until Thursday January 1st 2009 and offers a fantastic prize fund of $100,000. The scary Santa heading this Bodog Poker promotion aside, this 45 game tournament will no doubt provide some seasonally exciting stuff with entrants qualifying to play in the final 27 strong player Bodog Poker freeroll. There will be a Bodog Poker Tournament Leader Board where the Top 100 players will be able to track progress and freeroll for an opportunity to be in with a chance to win the Bodog Poker Open 3. The first, second, third and fourth online poker players on the Leader Board will automatically qualify for an entry into the Grand Finale, the fifth to 100th will participate in the semi-final with the top 18 then going on to the final stage, accompanied by 5 randomly picked ‘wild cards’ who have played in at least 5 of the 45 tournaments.

The Ladbrokes Poker Million has finally been won, the poker tournament screened live on Sky Sport 3 on Friday 12th December saw a table of six (4 of which were Irish) play the final exciting round of this tournament. Reminiscent of the movie ‘Rocky’, Marty Smyth of Belfast won the Ladbrokes Poker Million in an outstanding fashion, the bookies had his card marked as the underdog with odds of 66/1 after losing most of his chips early on, but Smyth pulled it out of the bag to finally win the $1m jackpot.

The wrapping is off, the grand opening ribbon cut, Virgin Poker has unveiled its new eagerly awaited revamped poker site which is crammed full of excellent internet poker features. So no matter whether you are a shark or a fish you will enjoy the internet poker experience at Virgin, with superior graphics and a smooth professional finish Virgin Poker make playing at the virtual tables an absolute joy. There are also some first-rate internet poker promotions on offer including a €25k Freeroll and a brilliant Bad Beat Jackpot game where you can walk away with 50% of the cash for losing your poker games! Virgin have spent a lot of time and money honing the gambling poker site to ensure that their clients are completely satisfied when they play internet poker at Virgin.

There is much excitement in the Ladbrokes Poker camp after signing 26 year old Peter ‘Zupp’ Jepsen, the Danish onlinePoker sensation, for a one year sponsorship contract. Ladbrokes are convinced that this latest signing will be another feather in their cap complimenting perfectly Jon Kalmar, Andreas Hoivold, Jeff Kimber, Morten Erlandsen, Roy Brindley, Pasi Heinanen, Des Wilson and not forgetting Jepsen’s great friend, Jonas ‘Nebuchad’ Danielsson who also represent the company.

New dad Arshad ‘Ash’ Hussain of Accrington certainly has good reason to be celebrating, not only on the birth of his first son a few weeks ago but also because he has just been crowned Champion of Champions in the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour main event. Hussain, once European Player of the Year had recently returned to the online poker tables after taking a short break remarked “Having had the best part of a year away from poker, I am delighted to have made my comeback to the game in this manner.” Hussain is keeping the GUKPT success in the family, his brother Zahir ‘Zippy’ Aslam won the same trophy two years ago, so no doubt family pride was also part of the desire to win.

Alarming reports have been received that an estimated $20million has been cheated from players of two online Poker websites, namely UltimateBet and AbsolutePoker over a period of 4 years. It has been alleged that one of those responsible for this poker scam is in fact a previous world champion poker player and although the name of this person is well known in industry circles, the person or persons concerned have never been officially charged with any poker scam offences and effectively have been allowed to walk away from the scandal scot-free. This shocking situation would not occur in traditional brick and mortar casinos but because of the nature of online poker some of the websites are multi-layered with accountability difficult to ascertain, and located in countries where no form of control is exerted by the authorities. The location of UltimateBet and AbsolutePoker is a shopping mall on an Indian Reservation in Costa Rica which is licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, issued to the Mohawk Tribe and registered in Canada as Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG.

One of the most exciting events in the online Poker calendar took place on the 22nd November, the Ladbrokes inaugural LEOCOP IV Masters Event. This invitation only event was available to the top 80 Ladbrokes Poker players on the leaderboard at the end of the fortnight LEOCOP event which attracted over 4,000 poker players and was held in October. The online Poker game tournaments were a mixture of Pot Limit, No Limit and Fixed, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo and Pot Limit Omaha with re-buys and Freezeouts and were the result of buy ins or through qualifying via a weekly final. Texas Hold’em The overall Winner of the Ladbrokes LEOCOP IV Masters event, the very aptly named GamblingPays, or Kevin Allen as he is more commonly known, has now earned a very valuable $120,000 place in the Poker Million VII semi-finals taking place on the 10th December on Sky Sports 2. If Kevin manages to continue his winning Poker streak then he could be playing in the live final with a staggering $1,000,000 prize which takes place on the 12th December, he will be up against old poker pros Ross Boatman, Barney Boatman, Jonas Danielson who is sponsored by Ladbrokes, Kenneth Sorenson, Ryan Fronda, Liam Flood and Ciaran O’Leary.