Tag: Online poker

Partypoker To Sponsor PGA EuroPro Tour In 2019

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Online poker behemoth PartyPoker has recently announced a new sponsorship agreement with the PGA EuroPro Tour in 2019. The deal which was announced on November 1 will see the renowned online poker company feature at stops on EuroPro Tour which acts as a feeder for the European Tour and the Challenge Tour. In addition to branding during the 2019 season, there will be more “promotional opportunities” with some of the golfers as well as visibility across the organization’s social media channels.

While this sponsorship deal will give Partypoker additional opportunities to promotes its brand, the company has been part of some pretty lucrative partnerships in the past. In 2008, for instance, the online poker company became the headline sponsor for the PGA EuroPro Tour Qualifying School. In the past two years, the company has done quite well for itself by reviving its online poker room, launching more live online poker offering and fostering stronger connections with its growing player database.

“We are excited to come on board with the Euro ProTour for the forthcoming season and further strengthen our relationship with Matchroom Sport,” Partypoker managing director, Tom Waters said. “The tour hosts some of the most exciting events across Europe, and we look forward to supporting Matchroom in their quest to unearth the next generation of golfing stars.”

With the PGA EuroPro Tour sponsorship, PartyPoker hopes to leverage the great reputation that has been created – the tour is essentially a proving ground for upcoming golfers. Billed as the “leading development tour” in Europe, the PGA EuroPro is known for graduating its most successful players onto the Challenge Tour which is just one step shy of being the continents biggest and most lucrative golf tour. The top stop is occupied by the European Tour.

“Our developmental golf tour has become one of the leading circuits for young professionals looking to become tomorrow’s superstars of the sport. I am really looking forward to building on an already strong relationship with PartyPoker and can’t wait to see the benefits it will bring to all involved in the PGA EuroPro Tour,” Barry Hearn, the Tour Chairman commented.

More to It Than Meets the Eye

Partypoker plans to set itself apart from other operators by expanding its presence across all the corners of the globe and putting out massive guarantees. However, in Europe, one of the biggest challenges for poker operators is the advertising restrictions that are imposed on gambling-related activities. By partnering with the PGA EuroPro Tour, PartyPoker will have a golden opportunity to advertise itself to millions of fans.

Midterm Elections Could Affect Online Poker Legislation

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The midterm elections in various states in the US are usually not considered to be very important (even though they are) but this year, you might need to pay some extra attention especially if you are an online casino gamer or poker player. During the forthcoming midterm elections, there are a couple of states that will be holding elections and referendums which are anticipated to have some profound impacts on online poker, sports wagering and online gaming in general. While the elections could mean a step forward for online poker legislation in certain states, there is a huge possibility that it could also mean a step in the opposite direction for some other states.

Nevada

Legal and regulated online poker went live in Nevada in 2013 under the state’s current governor, Brian Sandoval, who also happens to be a proponent of online gambling. Now, for this year’s midterm elections, the problem is that the term limits prevent the governor from running for re-election and in his place will the current Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt who won the Republican party primary in June. Unlike Governor Sandoval, Adam Laxalt has not been shy to express his rather bold stance against online gambling – he has even gone as far as publicly criticizing the state’s online poker legislation.

Furthermore, in addition to adding his name to the list of state attorney generals who are supporting the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, Laxalt has also recently signed a letter addressed to the Trump Administration asking the Department of Justice to reverse the legal opinion from 2011 that states that the Wire Act is only applicable to sports betting.

Obviously, if Adam Laxalty wins the midterm elections next month, legal and regulated online poker in the state of Nevada might meet its untimely end.

California

Hopefully, during the November midterm elections, the long-awaited online poker legislation will be taken off the shelf. Lawmakers in the state have come quite close to legalizing and regulating online poker but everything fell apart after a disagreement about the “suitable poker operator” came up. Since then, they have spent close to two years debating whether various gaming entities including the casinos, horse racing facilities, or gaming sites should be given the opportunity to offer online poker.

Florida

In Florida’s case, one of the biggest issues is Amendment 3, which also happens to be one of the biggest ballot issues in any state this time around. Otherwise known as “The Voter Control of Gambling in Florida”, Amendment 3, if passed, would require that before any new form of casino gaming is set up in the state, it would have to pass a vote with at least a 60 percent approval rate.

Microgaming Launches Brand New(-ish) Online Poker Software

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Microgaming has recently launched its most revitalized online poker product to date. Prima Poker, the brand new poker software, was rolled out to customers on July 26 and is expected to be fully accessible to all of its customers by July 31.

Designed and built with players in mind, Prima Poker offers a streamlined interface that is very easy to navigate regardless of whether you are playing cash, tournament and casino games. It also includes a blind cash game lobby as well as a simplified rewards system.

If you are very enthusiastic about online poker you may have heard of Prima before. It was one of the biggest online poker names thanks to its very popular high-stakes games that put the likes of Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars to shame. Unfortunately, the platform slowly lost its glory and this eventually led to its rebranding to Microgaming Poker Network.

Fresh Look

The online poker client has been revitalized with a strong focus on enhancing user experience while at the same time promoting responsible gaming with increased transparency. To achieve all this, it features a play history tool that shows a player their overall profits and losses across all game types – this can be filtered for any time period giving players the ability to track and review their gameplay and make informed decisions.

“It is an exciting and pivotal time for the Microgaming Poker Network. The launch of Prima marks another move in our strategy to continue developing products centered around giving players the best poker experience with a more intuitive client, optimized for any device,” Jean-Luc Ferriere, CCO of Microgaming commented.

Microgaming further used cross-platform technologies that allowed them to design Prima in a modular fashion. These technologies also offer the same codebase capabilities which means that Microgaming will, therefore, be able to quickly and easily deploy updates of the client across all of its platforms simultaneously. This is very exciting especially because it not only assures players that new and upcoming devices will be supported but also allows for faster penetration into newer markets.

“This is our biggest and most important poker release and the culmination of a multi-year strategy to revitalize our product and leapfrog the competition. I’m proud of what the team has achieved and I’m so excited about what we are going to build together in the coming months,” says Alex Scott, the head of product Microgaming’s Network Games. “By the end of the year, this new Prima client will have significant new features that the old one doesn’t have. At that point, I want to be really pushing it to players over the old one. This is much more in keeping with what you’d expect as a player in 2018.”

Sweden Welcomes International Online Poker Operators

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Sweden’s love affair with poker has existed for a very long time. However, its growth has to some extent always been impeded by the fact that the market has since the beginning of time been monopolized by the state. Things, fortunately, took a turn for the better in June 2018, when the newly introduced gambling laws did away with the state’s monopoly over online poker. This is exciting news, especially for the Swedish poker players who will soon be able to play online poker on international platforms other than the state-run Svenska Spel, and also play against players from other parts of the globe.

Keeping Up with Reality

Sweden was, in 2013, found to have been in violation of several of the European Union’s law especially with regards to a law that required all the member states to allow international operators to obtain internet gaming licenses. Despite this, as witnessed, it took five years for the country’s authorities to finally open up the market to international poker sites. Still, the state-owned Svenska Spel will continue to operate as it has always done until the ban on international poker and gambling platforms is lifted on January 1, 2019.

One factor that seems to have contributed to this huge decision is the Swedish authorities’ realization that it is almost impossible to enforce such a strict monopoly on the Swedish residents or any other person for that matter. This is simply due to the fact that the internet has always offered and will likely continue offering workarounds that render such laws as Sweden’s internet gambling monopoly useless. In fact, a number of online gambling operators such as PartyPoker, PokerStars, and 888Poker have been active in Sweden all this while without holding licenses from the Swedish authorities.

Sweden also hopes to tackle the issue of criminal activity with this move – it is common knowledge that unregulated gambling activities will more often than not facilitate or foster criminal activities. They hope that creating a more liberal online gambling industry, they will finally be able to curb or at least significantly minimize this particular problem.

More Details

Interested international online poker operators will be able to start applying for the necessary licenses on August 1 and the ones that will be lucky enough to be approved will be subject to an 18 percent tax. Svenska Pel will, however, not be subject to this tax. It will keep operating and supporting the country as usual with the stakeholders hoping that it will remain popular among Swedish online gamblers.

The new laws have now given the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA) more power and it now has the authority to close down any of the online gaming operators that are offering their services without a license.

John Cynn Claims WSOP 2018 Main Event Title, Wins $8.8M

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The 2018 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event spawned one of the most epic heads-up battles in the history of tournament poker and poker in general. The 10-hour long marathon eventually ended when John Cynn defeated Tony Miles heads-up thus winning the main event on Sunday morning and walking away with the crown of poker’s world championship and a whopping $8.8 million in prize money.

While still coming to terms with his epic win, Cynn made it clear that while the amount of the prize money was indeed overwhelmingly large and would significantly change his life, he does not want it to change who he is as a person.

“The money is very significant, but I do like to think that I don’t need the money to be happy,” he said. “But at the same time, practically, it’s going to make things a lot easier — things I want to do in life … even to my parents, this is money that they never could’ve imagined. It’s definitely going to be life-changing.”

When he was entering the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event, John Cynn who is from Indianapolis had a little less than $1 million in career prize money. This did not stop him from having a pretty good run at the event which eventually brought him to the final table and it was then that he became assured that he would walk away with a huge win.

A Record-Breaking Showdown

Cynn’s and Tony Miles’ heads-up battle lasted over 10 hours but this was not the only record that they broke – the showdown also set the record for the most hands played  heads-up to close at a WSOP main event as well as the most total hands at a WSOP main event final table, that is, 199 and 442 respectively.

Even though Miles entered the day as the chip leader, he failed to outwit John Cynn but all was not lost as he still managed to walk away with $5.5 million for his second-place finish. He was, however, clearly disappointed with the result. Still, he had a perspective of how special the Main Event was for the poker industry as a whole.

“We’ve been playing on little to no sleep — the nerves and the angst that you feel at night, it’s almost impossible to get a good night’s rest,” Miles commented after the event. “Then you come in here and you have to battle for 12 hours heads-up. It was a war, and it was amazing. I’m sure it’ll go down and be chronicled in history as one of the best heads-up matches ever. I have a ton of respect for him. He’s going to be a great champion, and I’m really happy for him.”

The Final Table Results

1: John Cynn (US) $8,800,000

2: Tony Miles (US) $5,000,000

3: Michael Dyer (US) $3,750,000

4: Nicolas Manion (US) $2,825,000

5: Joe Cada (US) $2,150,000

6: Aram Zobian (US) $1,800,000

7: Alex Lynskey (AUS) $1,500,000

8: Artem Metalidi (UKR) $1,250,000

9: Antoine Labat (FRA) $1,000,000

Poker Central Rescues Poker Players Alliance and Rebrands It

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The Poker Players Alliance released a statement last Wednesday announcing that the organization had been revived by funding from Poker Central, a company that deals in offering poker new and live event streaming via its PokerGO app. Also, as part of the new arrangement, the Poker Players Alliance has since been rebranded to Poker Alliance, but its goal of advancing poker on behalf of the poker playing community in the United States and around the world remains intact.

Formed in 2005, the Poker Players Alliance began its activities by lobbying against restrictions such as the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act in Washington. Unfortunately, prior to being picked up by Poker Central, the group has had a rough couple of months that even included being dropped by PokerStars, one of its earlier corporate backers at the end of 2017. This subsequently led the lobbying group to a bit of a hiatus as donations got scarcer over the years.

New Leadership

The rejuvenated Poker Alliance will take on the activities of its predecessor albeit under new leadership – the new president is Mark Brenner, a “longtime business development and government relations executive.” Still, the group will retain two of its formers presidents, Rich Munny and John Pappas, as members of the Poker Alliance’s advisory board for at least three months.

“I’m very optimistic about Poker Alliance’s potential to bring new innovations and a different skill set to the fight for poker, serving its membership and consumers in general. Along with my fellow advisors to the new leadership, I look forward to advocating for the great game of poker as part of Poker Alliance,” Rich Muny commented while confirming his new role.

It will certainly take some time to develop a definitive direction for the Poker Alliance but for now poker enthusiasts can rest assured that there will be a tight focus on poker. Also, even though the organization is removing the “Players” from its name, it will still very much try to uphold its core values that are supported by most poker players.

“Poker Alliance will be a dedicated voice for the millions of Americans who support expanding the sporting world of poker, in particular, the players seeking to enjoy safe, well-regulated, and fair games in myriad locations and formats. The revamped association will prioritize advocating for consumer protection and states’ rights in the context of poker and internet gaming,” reads the Poker Alliance press release.

Considering Brenner’s neat management and lobbying portfolio, and the experience of John Pappas and Rich Muny as advisory board members, the Poker Alliance is certainly bound to spawn a new era for the poker community.

NY Legislative Session Ends with Online Poker Still in Limbo

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The state and future of online poker in New York was subject to a whole lot of speculation even though 2018 seemed like the best bet for the activity after two years of cautious optimism. However, it turns out that this year was not the safe bet that New Yorkers were hoping for after all.

The New York Assembly ended the legislative session on Wednesday at 11 p.m. thus pulling the plug on the possibility of any online poker or sports betting legislation getting passed this year. This is starting to become a norm and, therefore, in retrospective, this outcome is more of a variation of the same story that the Assembly tells every year – regardless of the fact that a number of changes have been introduced to the process, the end result is always the same.

Was 2018 All About Sports Betting?

Naturally, following the US Supreme Court ruling that repealed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), there was a lot of buzz and hype around the sports betting. As a result, online poker was once again relegated to the sidelines just like it was in 2016 when it was daily fantasy sports that were a big deal – it still is.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the sports betting proposals stole the show at the state legislature and seemed to have support from both sides, unlike daily fantasy sports lawmakers were not able to reach an eleventh-hour consensus when it came to online poker. Sports betting joins a pile of other unfinished business – including online poker – which will hopefully be finished during the 2019 legislative session.

Still, there is no absolute certainty that the legislation will go as expected in 2019. This year, it was quite evident that the chaos in the legislature, especially the Senate, was starting to get out of hand – it was even worse as the session neared its end. This is probably one of the reasons why the online poker and sports betting bills were not passed even though New York was a favorite to pass at least one of these legislations this year.

What Now?

There is almost absolute certainty that the New York legislature will revisit the sports betting bill come next year. This is mainly because passing on sports betting will undoubtedly put the state at a competitive disadvantage to other states such as Delaware and New Jersey who have already legalized sports betting. Reportedly, the Assembly was just a little less than ten votes shy of a majority and the idea of adding online poker into the mix had been floated around earlier this year.

For the most part, until the 2019 legislative session begins, the leaders have plenty of time to carefully craft legislation that majority of the lawmakers can agree on. For now, we will just have to wait and see the developments that await.

 

Kevin Pahl Set to Represent Global Poker at the WSOP

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The Global Poker Rattlesnake Open may be over, but the leaderboard winner, Kevin ‘BUYMEDINNER’ Pahl, just got a brand new opportunity to add on to his winning by representing Global Poker at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). He will be the third player in history to represent Global Poker in the live arena, and he is going at it in a big way.

Following a great series of runs at the Global poker Championships Rattlesnake Open, the poker pro made his way up the series leaderboard and eventually finished first earning himself a $5,000 live tournament package that will cover buy-ins, travel, and accommodation.

Pahl not only intends to turn his prize package into real money winning by cashing in at WSOP, just like his predecessors did, but also to become the first person to play on behalf of Global Poker to win the coveted WSOP gold bracelet. He will be using his Global Poker tournament package at the WSOP Event #48: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em MONSTER STACK that will begin on June 23. After this, Pahl also plans to participate in the $1,100 buy-in $1 million guaranteed event at the Wynn Summer Classic that is scheduled for June 28.

“When I first started on the site, I had heard good things about Global Poker so I wanted to give it a go. I played around a bit and at the start of the year, I had SC$10 on the site. I played some SC$1 SNGs; these were going well so I moved up to the SC$6 ones. I worked on my game and before I knew it, I was playing the 20’s and am now playing a wide range of the SNGs quite regularly,” he said.

A college soccer coach by day, Pahl started small on the Global Poker site and slowly built up the stakes in sit ‘n’ go’s, a game that he particularly enjoys especially because of its ideal pace and structures. The pace and structure aside, Pahl also says that he loves playing at Global because of the camaraderie with other players

“Global Poker has been great to me,” he adds. “I am really happy. Sure, there are other sites out there but I don’t really like them. Global Poker has been 100 percent fantastic! As well as the games being good, the people on Global Poker are really friendly. I chat with a lot of people on the site when I play and it makes things really enjoyable, everyone seems really nice.”

Spanish Online Poker Revenue Spike Amidst EU Liquidity Deal

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In January, both France and launched an effort to pool their online poker players so as to revive the industry following its decimation by some ring-fenced policies that both countries’ governments have adopted in the past. One of the effects of this development has been a significant spike in the Spanish online poker revenue in the first quarter of the year.

According to the first quarter financials that were released last week by Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), the Spanish regulator, the total revenue for online gambling in the country hit a whopping $190.5 million – this, in comparison to the revenue statistics from the same period last year, represents a mind-blowing 28 percent revenue jump.

Sports betting boasted of the lion’s share of the profit having generated $95.3 million, which is nearly half the profit. This particular sector also went up 15.9 percent from the same period last year. However, when compared to the gains from online poker, the revenues from sports betting turn out not to be as impressive.

The country’s poker revenues hit a record $25 million, with the cash games actions going up 30 percent to $9.8 million. Tournament revenue went up by a whopping a 50.2 percent to $15.2 million. In addition to this, total expenditures on the Spanish cash games went up 19 percent while the tournaments went up 40.4 percent.

Is Shared Liquidity Paying Off?

From the revenue statistics, this appears to be the case. Spain is just the latest benefactor of the new shared liquidity agreement that comprises of four EU companies: Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy. France and Spain become the first to get into the agreement and the French online poker industry has also equally benefited from the agreement as there was an immediate improvement in the gross gaming revenue – it went up 8 percent in the first quarter of 2018.

Portugal joined the pool in early May and this, in turn, pushed the profits of the pool even higher. GameIntel reports that cash game traffic on the share liquidity online poker network saw a 27 percent boost in the first week of after Portugal joined in.

More Competition

Being the first online poker operator to share its Spanish, Portugal and French online poker players, PokerStars managed to get an early head start in the new shared liquidity landscape. However, this is bound to change very soon as now a number of new players are eyeing the lucrative opportunity that the share liquidity agreement presents.

Some of these online poker operators that are going to give PokerStars a run for its money are Winimax, which will kick off their offerings with Spain and France later this year, and PartyPoker which is expected to connect its Spanish and French poker player on June 4.

CoinPoker to Launch First-Ever Crypto Series of Poker

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CoinPoker, a unique online poker room built on blockchain technology, is about to revolutionize the concept of online poker with the launch of the world’s first Crypto Series of Poker (CSOP). The poker room that has always reiterated that it is built on trust and transparency announced that the daily tournaments of CSOP will take place as from May 27 to June 3 and will feature a total prize pool of ten million CHP (the operator’s in-house cryptocurrency).

“Join in on a week of daily tournaments taking place between May 27 and June 3. The series kicks off with a quarter and half a million CHP prize pools, and ends with an epic final event where 2,500,000 CHP is yours for the taking,” said CoinPoker spokesperson from.

The company through its spokesperson also added that the unique poker series is being launched to give back to the poker room’s early adopters who have, without a doubt, contributed immensely to the growth of CoinPoker. However, every other player will also get to enjoy the best of what the platform has to offer.

Online poker has certainly grown in popularity over the past few years, players still have to put up with a variety of complex problems that include the lack of control over the funds, problematic withdrawal services, and lack of transparency as well as high burn rates for recreational players. CoinPoker found a way of going around all these problems by utilizing a fully decentralized set of contracts – the platform operates on the Ethereum smart contract based cryptocurrency protocols.

CoinPoker’s ambitious new venture is however not the first time that the platform is commanding a lot of attention from poker enthusiasts. The company has previously been part of partnerships with some of the largest poker tournaments such as the Japanese Poker Association (JPA) for 2018’s Japan Poker Cup that begun in April and is set to continue till later in August.

 “On top of the benefits for online poker players, our collaboration with multiple poker leagues in the form of online satellites make live poker events accessible to players in different corners of the world,” says Paulius Mikaliunas, CoinPoker’s Head of Poker Operations. “The release of our upcoming mobile app will help boost these efforts, alongside ambitious plans for diversifying the games on our platform to ultimately give CHP investors and CoinPoker players more value.”