Written By: RSSPoker.com

Kid Poker has done it again! This past weekend, Daniel Negreanu won the British Columbia Poker Championship. The Toronto born player took down a field of 689 players in this $2500 buy-in, NL Hold’em event at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond, BC.

After the event, Negreanu said “”Being Canadian myself, playing and winning the BC Poker Championships is extra special to me”. On Negreanu’s blog, he wrote…

It might have been a relatively inexperienced final table, but they were all good players. It amazes me how much better players are getting and I love it. Sure it makes it harder to win, but I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of playing high level poker in the late stages of a tournament.
This final table went very well for me.

Daniel has had a decent year, also winning the 20th event of the 2008 WSOP - the $2000 Limit Hold’em tournament. That was his fourth bracelet, the most coveted prize in all of poker. Ultimately, Daniel finished 8th in the Player of the Year race at this years World Series of Poker as well, with a total of over $518,000 in winnings. At the 2008 WSOP Europe, Negreanu finished in 5th place, good for £217,200…about $330,000 USD.

While he ranks just 76th on the Cardplayer, Player of the Year standings, his consistently high finishes this year puts him back on track as one of the elite poker players, rather than just a pitch man. After a couple of years attempting to ‘balance his lifestyle’, then last years divorce, Daniel now seems to be refocused on his actual play.

After closing the doors on his own poker room, Full Contact Poker, Daniel signed an endorsement deal with Pokerstars. While he can be found on a multitude of poker products such as video games and books, there is one particular endorsement deal that made me wonder just what the hell is going through Daniels mind lately. Out here in Las Vegas, there is a popular bar/billiards hall named PT’s. While PT’s owns a lot of these clubs here in Vegas, is this really what Daniel should be attaching his name to? The first time I saw one of these ads on TV, my first thought was “is this guy broke or something”?

Whatever the case, as one of the most popular figures in poker, it’s nice to see Daniel winning again. I don’t care to publish articles titled ‘Daniel Negreanu Endorses New Stripclub’ or ‘Daniel Negreanu Signs Deal with Local Dive Bar’…it’s just not something I consider real poker news. ‘Daniel Negreanu Wins Big Poker Tournament’ is so much more newsworthy.

Sorry for the rant, lets get back to the news at hand.

So, Daniel Negreanu took down the British Columbia Poker Championship. While it may not be a WPT, WSOP, or EPT tournament, this is the largest field Negreanu has beaten…ever! This field drew a number of well known players, including Dennis Phillips who took 3rd place at the WSOP Main Event. Also in attendance were Gavin Smith, Liz Lieu, Brad Booth, Lacey Jones, Isabelle Mercier, Gabe Kaplan, and the biggest bitch at the 2008 WSOP, Tiffany Michelle. Oops, did I say that out loud?

Here are the final table results (Daniel Negreanu and 8 players you’ve never heard of)

• 1/ Daniel Negreanu - $371,200
• 2/ Adam Croffut - $238,191
• 3/ Warren Russell - 150,285
• 4/ Vorakbotgh Eam - $118,335
• 5/ Vincenzo Abate - $97,204
• 6/ Tyler Patterson - $76,580
• 7/ Chad Thomsen - $59,675
• 8/ Christopher Dinson - $46,489
• 9/ Mal Hagan - $33,810

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Written By: PokerSite.org

If you like to play poker and have a good time with friends, you should think about holding your own home poker game. Nothing is more fun than getting a group of your buddies together to have a night of Texas Hold’em and good conversation. However, if you’re a casual player it might be intimidating to set up your first home game. This article will walk you through the steps, and give you tips for having a great poker night.

Game Structure

The first thing you need to decide is if you’re going to have a cash game or a sit and go type tournament. If this is your first home game, I’d suggest hosting a tournament because it keeps things simple. You don’t have to deal with players buying in and cashing out sporadically, and there are less issues with chips being lost or stolen.

To set up the actual structure of your poker tournaments, I’d suggest taking the common structures from online sit and go tournaments. Most sites start each player with 1,500 in chips, and 10/20 blinds. Blinds increase every 10 minutes, but you might want to stretch it out to 20 minutes since the dealers will be slower then at an online game. Here is a good example of a structure for a home poker tournament, including starting stack, blinds, antes, and breaks:

Also, for payout structure you should again look to the online poker sites, because they have it down. For a 10 person sit and go, the payouts are usually 50% to first place, 30% to second place, and 20% to third place. However, if you have more players you’ll have to adjust accordingly.

Setting up for the Tournament

Your first task to host the game is to find players. The best way to do this is to invite your close friends or family, because you don’t want any shady characters around, especially if there are significant amounts of money involved. Also, since it’s your first tournament there will probably be a few hiccups, and you don’t want strangers there who might get more upset than they should.

Next you need poker chips, a poker table, and chairs. I suggest setting this all up beforehand, including counting out starting chip stacks for each player. Make sure to have enough tables for all the players. If you’re going to have less than 10 players, you can all sit at one table, and for each increment of 10 more players coming, make sure to have another table with chairs available. The reason to count out chip stacks before hand is to reduce any risk of chip stealing. Put each chip stack in a plastic bag, and give them to the players when they pay you as they arrive.

Make sure to keep all the money on you or in a safe place at all times, especially if there are players at the game who you don’t know well. You might want to pick up a pizza or two and have drinks on hand, just to keep everyone happy especially if the tournament runs late.

Explain the Rules

Before the tournament starts, make sure to explain the rules to all of the players. Tell them about the structure, when blinds will go up, what each color of chip is worth, the payouts, if the dealer has to cut the deck before dealing, etc. It’s important to explain all of this beforehand so there are no issues after the tournament has started.

After the tournament has started, just enjoy it, and give yourself a pat on the back for setting up a great poker tournament. Have fun!

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Written By: PokerBonusRoll.com

More people then ever are connecting to online poker sites to play card games against other poker enthusiasts from all over the world. And with this increase in players, online poker sites seem to be setting up bigger and bigger poker tournaments. Online poker sites often use their “flagship” tournaments in marketing drives to lure in players, and it often helps! Take PokerStars for example, they are renowned amongst online poker players as the first internet poker site to run a weekly tournament that guaranteed a million dollar prize pool. Since then PokerStars has grown considerably and has now increased this prize pool to a guaranteed one and a half million dollars.

Poker players will notice that many of the sites “flagship” tournaments take place on a Sunday afternoon. The US friendly poker sites such as PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker, start these tournaments at a US friendly time, which often makes the tournaments start very late for European players.

Poker sites not accepting US players such as Titan Poker, PKR Poker and Party Poker schedule the tournament start times around European poker players, as European players are the players they’re trying to attract.

PokerStars Sunday Million

The largest weekly poker tournament, the PokerStars Sunday Million, starts at 9:30PM GMT every Sunday. With a $215 entry fee, it may be a little pricey for most players, but PokerStars offers hundreds of daily satellites to this event which include rebuy tournaments, double shoot outs, triple shoot outs and many other formats. So with a little searching around you should be able to find a cheap satellite offering seats at this prestigious online poker event!

As well as multi table satellites pokerstars also offers sit and go satellites which attract hundreds of players with their eyes set on the elusive Sunday Million seat. The cost of entering these sit and go satellites range in size from $2.20 up through to $70. You can even use your FPP’s (Frequent Player Points) to play in a sit and go satellite. PokerStars offers a number of formats for these sit and go’s including turbo, shoot out and the standard PokerStars sit and go tournament format.

Titan Poker $250,000 Weekly

European poker players looking to participate in a big weekly poker tournament should look no further than Titan Poker. This tournament kicks of at 6:00PM GMT every Sunday, which is ideal for players from the UK and other European countries. With a buyin of $320 you’ll have to have deep pockets or a big bankroll to part with the cash, although there are plenty of satellites running daily.

Titan Poker runs a 6 man sit and go tournament which costs $70 to register for, from here the winner takes away a seat at the $250,000 event and second place wins back their $70 buy-in. This satellite tournament is set up incorporating a quick format, seven minute blinds and fifteen hundred starting chips. Titan Poker also offers numerous other satellites; turbo, rebuy and the standard tournament structure are all offered through the Titan Poker client.

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In this video Daniel Negreanu talks about his schedule, Poker After Dark, Charles O’Barkley Obama, and a Las Vegas show called The Real Deal that requires audience participation. Daniel also talks about an upcoming taping of Poker After Dark and the tough field of players except for the “sucker”, Phil Hellmuth. He also mentions partying with Antonio Esfandiari, getting plastered, and showing up to an airing of Poker After Dark hungover. It sounds like Daniel is adjusting to single life pretty well.

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Written By: RSSPoker.com

Yesterday, tabloid site Gambling911.com ‘reported’ that Ultimate Bet, Doyles Room, and Cake Poker domain names had been turned over by GoDaddy.com to the state of Kentucky. Coming from Gambling911, the heading might as well have read “ET: The Extra Terrestrial - New Jockey for 2009 Kentucky Derby”. As most true poker aficionados will agree, Gambling911 isn’t the most reliable source. Had this information come from Pokernews.com, or even Cardplayer.com, today might’ve gone down in history called ‘The Holy Shit Heard Around the World”.

On Monday, Gambling911 published two articles claiming that the domain names of UltimateBet.com, DoylesRoom.com and CakePoker.com had “been seized by the commonwealth of Kentucky”. As of today, that appears to be untrue (shocker). We do know that the state is attempting to seize these domain names, along with 138 others related to the online gambling industry.

This started a somewhat rigorous conversation at the largest poker affiliate forum in the world. When Gambling911 ran an article yesterday titled ‘UltimateBet.com, Cake Poker Domain Names Seized’, there was little belief within the poker community. Some of the comments made by members of the forum:

This is coming from G911. Take it FWIW. If they’re wrong I will just shake my head and laugh……..

Scary if it is true, god I wish it was someone else other than G911 reporting this.

I really hope G911 is BS’ing like usual though. This would be terrible.

I have been talking to a few people tonight that have domains involved and nobody can confirm anything right now. If G911 is wrong, I think any credibility they have as far as true reporting will be decimated……after all Doyle is still not in jail………..

its kind of like dividing by zero….

Yeah, I’m calling BS as well, I don’t believe it.

Will wait for tomorrow but I am not concerned and G911 I think is full of BS and if anything is trying to just capitalize on the buzz.

If everything that gambling911 is putting up proves to be made-up, wow, disgusting.

As of today, it appears that some of what Gambling911 reported is true, and some of it isn’t. While it doesn’t appear that the domains have actually changed hands, the case is currently in a Frankfort, Kentucky court where Judge Thomas Wingate will give his decision on the case within 7 days. The ramifications of the forthcoming decision could have a major impact beyond online gaming.

Does this open the door for anyone to capture the domain names of online businesses that sell a product or provide a service that isn’t legal somewhere else in the world? There are countries where pornography is illegal. Can that country come in and seize the domain names for every porn site that exists and offers (possibly by accident) their service to citizens of that country? What about a website that teaches women how to become nurses? Sounds innocent enough right? Well, there are countries that don’t allow women to go to school. Can those sites be seized? There are literally thousands of situations that could be effected by the ruling of this case, lets hope they don’t screw it up.

I’m not an attorney, and since this is the Poker Gossip area of our site, I’m not going to speculate or get into the details of the case here. There are plenty of other places online to get more details if you’re so inclined. There will be seven days for speculation and rumors to spread. Just remember, take everything you read with a grain of salt. Soon enough, we’ll have the final answer.

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