The Sunday Brawl is a knockout tournament which has a buy-in of $240 plus 16, though players can win their way into the tournament via a qualifier. The guaranteed prize pool for this event is $400,000 so it was increased to $573,000 with 2,865 players competing.

279 spots would be paid and during this tournament a three way deal would be cut. When it got to three way play the last players standing were Wu_Wizard, bigslick166 and MarkFSU1. The players decided to cut a deal which a saw each of them earning a $80,000 pay day. This left just over $6,000 for the first place winner. In the end Wu_Wizard would earn the first place win and the extra cash to go along with the title.

Final Results:
Wu_Wizard – $86,963
bigslick166 – $80,000
MarkFSU1 – $80,000 *3-way deal
MrTimCaum – $41,829
603Lucifer – $29,223
SteveDunkSr – $19,482
bonafidedonkey – $13,179
cityboy8 – $9,168
Black Pete 30 – $6,876

The $750,000 guaranteed tournament had a good turnout as well but did not see the increase in prize pool as The Sunday Brawl did. The tournament had 3,911 players competing which made the prize pool $782,200 and paid out to 522 spots.

This tournament did not see a deal made so play went on as normal. In the end it was The Great Pike and vennerux who made it to heads up play. Both would play their best but it would be The Great Pike who would earn the $138,489 pay day for first place.

Final Results:
The Great Pike – $138,489
vennerux – $83,695
paulhan85 – $54,754
201241643 – $43,177
Shawguysies – $32,383
Scarer – $24,014
fiepigen – $17,991
MS_JUICE26 – $14,080
DeMaci – $10,481

Galfond will be commentating on the ring game action at PKR’s online poker room and it will include footage from a special ‘Galfond TV Cash Game’. Cash game players who are at the top of the leader board will be competing in the four hour ‘Galfond TV Cash Game’. This event will take place on January 24th and have high stakes buy-ins of $1,000 to $5,000.
Galfond will be commentating the event as well as sharing his knowledge of the game. Galfond has been a pro for many years and has major experience in high stakes cash games. Galfond has cashed out in the World Series of Poker six times and has earned one WSOP bracelet.

In 2009 Galfond and Billy Murphy founded Bluefire, an online poker training site. A team of poker pros including Galfond create instructional videos for players to improve their poker game. That same year the site signed a partnership deal with PKR. The online poker room served as the exclusive European Partner for the training site.
Erika Schwartz the Marketing Manager for PKR commented: “We are thrilled to have Phil in the studio to become a PKR TV commentator. It will be fantastic for our players to get someone of his reputation watching the action and giving some advice on their play.”

The Galfond TV Cash Game will be broadcast on The Poker Channel along with PKR TV. The action can be viewed in thirteen countries across Europe.

The Challenge has begun and players will be competing in two rounds of weekly tournaments with twelve different countries/regions competing. The results of the competition will be posted on the leader boards so players can see who the front runners in the competition are.

After the two rounds the top 200 players will qualify for the final eight tournaments. The results and rankings will post on the leader boards. The top 200 players will be determined based on the number of qualifiers per group as listed on the countries/regions table.

After the eight tournaments have concluded, the top five players on the Final Leader board will win a $13,000 Main Event package to the 2010 WSOP. The Tournaments/Groups include: the Americas, Australia/New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands/Belgium, open for all players, Romania, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Titan Poker has specific lists compiled on their website under the World Challenge tab so players can fully understand the schedule. Tournaments will take place each week and players can keep up with the buy-ins as well as dates and times of each tournament at Titan Poker.

The five players who make it to the very end to earn the packages will be greatly rewarded. The prize package will of course include the buy-in for the main event but it will also pay for each players accommodations as well as travel expenses.

Hellmuth will be one of many poker pros that will be participating in the Premier League IV. Hellmuth commented on his participation in the upcoming event by stating: “I am looking forward to playing in the Premier League and starting the new decade off on the right note! After being point’s leader in the Premier League in 2006, 2007 and 2008 I was regulated, and it is time to step up and claim a title!”
This year Party Poker decided to make a change to the event. the online poker room ran qualifiers to find sixteen players who would fly to Vegas to play in the Premier League Poker play-off. The winner of the event would join the eleven poker pros in the Premier League Poker IV. The winner of the play-off will earn a $100,000 buy-in to take part in the Main Event.
One of the sixteen qualifiers will earn the opportunity of a lifetime as Party Poker is giving one player a $100,000 Team Party contract to become a sponsored player. The main qualifiers are already finished but players can still qualify via country specific qualifiers.

The Premier League event last year was won by poker pro J.C. Tran. The poker pro won the $300,000 first place prize when he outlasted the other poker pros at the final table. The other pros who made the final table were Tom Dwan, Juha Helppi, Roland de Wolfe, Peter Eastgate and Tony G.

The play-off and Main Event of this year’s event will be filmed for television and will be able to be viewed by poker fans that cannot make it to Vegas to watch the competition.

Along with Brunson, players will find other poker pros at the $5/$10 tables as well. Five of the Brunson 10 have been sitting at the lower limit tables as well, Alec Torelli, Zachary Clark, Amit Makhija, Dani Stern and Chris Moorman. Todd Brunson and Hoyt Corkins have also been getting in on the low stakes action.

Poker players who are interested in competing against any of the poker pros can search the tables to find them. Simply go to the Ring Games table and then search for the poker tables highlighted in blue. This is a great opportunity for poker fans of the pros as well as those who just want to say they competed against a real poker professional.

Doyles Room has seen higher traffic since the poker pros have taken to the smaller buy-in games. The site has also seen the no limit ring games averaging around a 20% increase in the prize pots, which is something I’m sure the players are excited about.

Player feedback helped create the new software and it will introduce many new features that are designed to enhance game play. The graphics will be improved greatly while the new version will also have an increase in game speed.

A new favorites system has been added as well that allows players to find their tables quickly, which every player should appreciate. The game of Razz has been added as well as seat selection. Resizable tables have been added as well to the poker room.

“The new features are excellent and will put bet365 firmly in front of the competition. We have listened to our customers and produced software of the highest standard creating an interface to compliment the superb liquidity on the iPoker network and bet365’s unsurpassed customer service,” commented Steve Ibberson, the managing director of gaming at Bet365.

Bet365 Poker will be celebrating the launch of the new software by offering their players four free to enter tournaments. Each tournament will pay out $1000 and will run at the same time. This way, players will be able to test out the resizable tables by downloading the software and registering for the tournaments.

Regulars to the cash game tables at VC Poker who do well at the tables. The email read:
“If you are not already aware iPoker will be implementing a new policy in the New Year which will categorize players depending upon certain criteria. The new policy will also impose penalties upon card rooms that in essence, have a high proportion of winning players in relation to losing players.

Regrettably therefore, we are being forced to restrict a number of accounts in order to comply with the new policy and to avoid penalization by iPoker and it grieves me to inform you that we have no option for the time being other than to restrict the cash game stakes at which you can play on Victor Chandler Poker.

We sincerely regret having to take this action and hope that the policy will change in the future so that you may once again enjoy playing cash games at Victor Chandler Poker. In the meantime, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this action will cause but know that you can still play in our tournaments and on any other of the Victor Chandler suite of products.

Yours sincerely,
Victor Chandler International”

Essentially the new rules created by the iPoker network are that their rooms will now be focusing on bringing in more causal players, which are typically the losing players. The rooms that have more winners than losers will have to take action as VC Poker has done to be following the new rules of iPoker. It also means that a rakeback will have to be taken away as well which could be detrimental, though some poker rooms operate without a rakeback an use a rewards program instead.

From San Diego, California, Jotun665 was a regular at the cash game tables and was a regular winner of the Gold Card Race, which takes place weekly. Jotun665 was able to earn the most complete deck of Gold Cards at Cake Poker, which helped him win the $52,000.

In a recent Cake Poker blog, Jotun665 was asked about his poker skills as well as his experiences at Cake Poker. The poker player told Cake Poker in the interview that he was going to use his new found winnings to take a vacation to Europe and remodel half of his house.

Jotun665 has been playing at Cake Poker since 2006 but exclusively since 2007. In the interview the player was asked what his biggest win was and it was around $1,200 a far cry from the $52,000 that he won during the Gold Card Jackpot. But once in a cash game the player said he won a $21,000 pot at the $25/50 tables at Cake Poker.

So overall Cake Poker has been a great place for Jotun665 to play over the years and now he has earned a nice large prize to show for his hard work. Gold Cards are back for 2010 and currently players can earn them faster as they are going to show up twice as often for the next few days. Players have until the 9th to participate in Gold Card tournaments which will offer over $100,000 in prize money totals. I’m sure Jotun665 will be competing as well as thousands more, trying to see who will earn the most cards for 2010.

This was an increase of $29,500 for those without a calculator. Twenty seven spots were paid during the tournament and first place would take home just over $33,000. When the competition got down to three way play it would be online players THEBUBBLE1, LOLPWNU and MATTGRAHAM left to fight for the first place prize.
THEBUBBLE1 would make a move but it would be the wrong decision and he would go out in third place. After some time, both LOLPWNU and MATTGRAHAM would go all in on the final hand. The cards would be in MATTGRAHAM’s favor and he would take home the first place prize.

Satellites for the $100k tournament start at just $1 and players can participate daily. So even if it takes a few tries, players who earn their spot via a qualifier can save money in the long run. The satellites run daily and players can find more information such as start times and buy-ins by clicking on the tournament schedule under the $100K guaranteed tournament page.

Final Results:
MATTGRAHAM – $33,670
LOLPWNU – $20,073
THEBUBBLE1 – $14,245
NATALIEANN05 – $10,360
DOUBLEDAVE22 – $8,482
KEJULES10 – $7,123
BILLY_KOPP – $5,828
MAZELUCKY – $4,533
ROLLEMM – $3,238

When the tables were added poker players at the site were very excited, so much so that they packed out the tables. The new $25/$50 PLO tables quickly generated long waiting lists. Once the players were lining up to compete, Party Poker decided to introduce new tables for players to enjoy.

“Demand meant we recently introduced a new $25/$50 Pot Limit Omaha table but since then we have had to open up more tables for high stakes action. We used to have big limit games but this is the biggest game we have had at PartyPoker.com for a long time. The high stakes action has picked up,” stated a Party Poker spokesperson in a recent press release.

Players who visit Party Poker to enjoy the new Pot Limit Omaha tables will find that new software upgrades have improved game play at the online poker room. The Omaha tables have become quite popular and Party Poker recently changed the way player statistics are shown and players can now specify which game they want to examine their stats for including the Omaha tables.

Players will be able to view how often they check, raise, bet, call and fold. It is unclear if Party Poker will be adding any additional higher stakes tables. Compared to other poker rooms the $25/$50 is not the largest stakes available but maybe in the future the online poker room will add larger stakes such as $50/$100 and $100/$200 tables.