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Poker Tournaments for You This Week
There is never a dull moment in a poker player’s life. Obviously, the main reason for that is the constant existence of poker tournaments and poker events that one can participate in. These events are not just for making money, but also to have some fun and get better at the game in the process. Several live poker tourneys are lined up for this week and the coming weeks. Here is a note on some of the tournaments you can … Read the rest
2012 PokerStars Macau Poker Championships Announced
PokerStars is one online poker room that never takes a break from hosting tournaments. The poker room recently released details about its upcoming event, the PokerStars Macau Live Tournaments. The Macau tournaments hosted by PokerStars is one of the biggest and richest poker events held in Asia. It includes 4 major poker series – Macau Poker Cup (MPC) Red Dragon, Asia Championship of Poker, Macau Poker Cup Championship or MPCC and the yearly Asia Pacific Poker Tour event at Macau. … Read the rest
The $30,000 Winner Wednesday Dozen Unveiled
Winner Poker has partnered with pokernews.com to bring a new promotion to its new members. The online poker room announced its new promotion called Winner’s Wednesday Dozen Freerolls, which literally lets you win free money. The new promotion is open to all the new players who register with Winner Poker and make a deposit. The promo will run for three months, and all you need to do is play poker and earn as many Winner Points as you can. Here … Read the rest
Internet Poker | The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Saturday, June 14th, 2008 by Phil
Let’s start with the bad; I was watching Poker After Dark on NBC last night and I saw a commercial for Duplicate Poker. I went to check this out a few months ago after a friend told me about it. Here is how the site works…each table is dealt identical cards; the cards that each player receives and the cards on the board are the same for each table. It looks like money is paid out according to how you perform relative to the other players in your seat. The tag line is that this is supposed to take the luck out of poker.
I really didn’t take the time to read much deeper than that. Right away it’s obvious that this type of poker is prone to collusion. If you have a friend anywhere in the tournament, they will be able to tell you what at least 1 other player at the table has. I can think of numerous ways to collude in a format like this. Although it’s an interesting idea, I’m gonna suggest that nobody wastes their time with this one.
Now it’s time to discuss the Ugly. This is sort of a no-brainer in the poker industry. The ownership at Ultimate Bet is becoming notorious for internal scandals that are still being uncovered. It is alleged with sufficient evidence that members of Ultimate Bet’s upper level management have participated in efforts to cheat against their players. This is problem that is unique to UB and Absolute Poker, which is under the same ownership. All of the other major internet poker rooms go through great efforts to ensure things like this cannot happen.
Now on a positive note, I’ve seen some great steps taken in the recent year or so with regards to software and security. The two largest poker rooms on the internet; Pokerstars and Fulltilt poker have emerged as the leading Mac software clients for online poker. Poker stars’ Mac client is nearing the end of it’s Beta phase, but it is running well and helping to bring in fresh money for the players.
Fulltilt has had their Mac client running for a few years now. Their lobby interface is a little bit easier to read than the one at Pokerstars. There is also a forum that the software developers appear to actually read where you can make suggestions about the software and tournament structures. A lot of the unique software ideas at Fulltilt have come from this forum.
As an American player, I’m not able to play on the ongame network or any of the other sites that I learned to play on several years ago. I play exclusively on these two poker rooms and I suggest that anyone who hasn’t set up an account there go and check out these sites.
Edit 10/5/08; Duplicate poker has closed, click here to read about it; Duplicate Poker Closed
