First Deposit & Reload Promos this Weekend at PKR

PKR - Let's Play is offering some sick promotions ONLY this weekend to new and existing players! Join PKR this weekend and you get to choose from one of three crazy first deposit offers including a PKR travel chip set, $20 instant bonus or a $22 entry to the famous PKR OPEN tournament. For the full promotion details head over to PKR and browse to rewards / promotions.

Exiting players receive a nice 100% reload bonus up to $250 this weekend, see bellow for details.

Are you more serious about your game?

Then choose from one of three great PKR bonuses. PKR also give you a host of added free gifts, including seven tickets to top tournaments, Club PKR upgrades and PKR Points to spend in the PKR Shop.

EU Poker League Season 3

In other news.. The EU Poker League has joined forces with Lock Poker for their third season kicking off this weekend. There is again over $500 in cash and merchandise up for grabs in season 3 and the tournament schedule has been announced on the weekend.

To celebrate the new partnership with Lock Poker the EUPL has received a complete new skin to go in hand with Lock and personally I think the site looks awesome! Now you'll say "Of course you do, you skinned it" to which I'd reply "Yes I did" - Shameless plug. ;)

However, I invite you to head over the the EUPL website to join the EUPL Grinders for their third season...and before you ask, yes the EUPL is open to ALL grinders from around the world inclusive US players since the EUPL has no Frontiers!

Bodog's Recreational Business Model

I just came across this news post on the Calvin Ayre's (Bodog) website "Viewpoint – Bodog Network’s Recreational Poker Model". I doubt my comment will be published so let's recab the video here.

Video by Gaming & Poker news - CalvinAyre.com

Jonas Ödman VP of Bodog states that their recreational business model is clearly aimed at the recreational / losing player who deposits a lot. The aim of Bodog here, according to Ödman is to offer players more of a "entertaining poker experience" rather than a real poker grind. When asked what more serious players or poker pros think about the model he replied "They don't like , but we don't care much about that".

WSOP 2012 Satellite Grind on PartyPoker

Been a while since my last blog but I guess today is a good reason to write a quick entry. The WSOP 2012 is coming up and today I headed over to PartyPoker to check out the Qualifying Structure for their WSOP Satellites.

I started grinding out their $9 Sub Qualifier Speed for a seat to the $75 Satellite Qualifier which satellites into the $750 WSOP Satellite Tournament to STAP at one of the $14,000 WSOP 2012 Packages.

Yeah I know sounds like a Satellite to Satellite to Satelllite to enter a Satellite, but it's actually not that bad. It's only 2 steps to the $750 tourney which seems very doable.

The $9 Sub Qualifier Speed appears to me to be the tournament with the best expected value and ROI. The field is (still) pretty small and with a 3k starting stack the 5min blinds aren't to bad to cope with.

I bubbled the first one with only 28 players enrolled and managed to come 5th in the second with 56 players. The 5th paid $16,80 so I almost broke even which is pretty cool and I'm happy with that.

PokerStars Reversed Rake Structure Change

How is this for some positive news for PokerStars players?

After the massive uproar and attempted sit-out strike on PokerStars, during which a large number of palyers had restricitons put on their accounts, PokerStars issued an exclusive statement to PokerStrategy.com announcing that they have reversed the rake structure change back to the "dealt hands" structure.

Here is a quote of the statement posted on PokerStrategy:

PokerStars weighted-contributed rake causes player uproar

So, I think today PokerStars, or PokerShait as I like to call them, has finally hit the tops of being the most ridiculous online poker site out there.

As some of you know I haven't played on their site out of principals since black friday last year. If you still ask yourself "why?" the answer is simple.

PokerStars was involved in money laundering and operating outside of their leagal boundaries just the same as FullTilt and UB were. The only difference between PokerStars and the other sites was that PokerStars was smart enough to keep those funds seperate from their other operational funds which allowed them, after cutting a deal with the DoJ, to return all balances on their site to US based players. Apart from that PokerStars was just as much involved in criminal activities as the other sites were.

Then, a few weeks ago, PokerStars announced that they would make changes to their rake system by introducing "weighted-contributed" rake on January 1st. What this translates to is "the looser you play and the more pots you enter, the more VIP points you'll receive" or in other words "play like a donk, loose your money but hey, we give you points for it."