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The PokerNews Alpine Cup is going to be held in Europe in March 2009 and you now have a chance to win your seat for free in our special freeroll that is only open to players at FullTilt Poker who created their account using the referral code EASYTILT. If you have yet to create an account at FullTilt we suggest you do so using the referral code EASYTILT and you will be able to play in this freeroll and many more to come.

This freerolls will be held at FullTilt Poker the 1st of March 2009, 14:35 EST (GMT -5) and it has a total prize pool of $8000.

The tournament winner will receive a PokerNews Alpine Cup package worth $7800 which includes Main Event entry plus many nice extras.

The additional $200 will be distrubuted over the remaining players in the tournament according to the FullTilt Poker tournament payout schedule. All you need to do in order to participate in this tournament is to create an account at FullTilt Poker using the referral code EASYTILT and generate 200 player points and you will be able to register for this freeroll. If you already have an account at FullTilt you will not be able to take part in this promotion but dont worry, we have a lot of freerolls coming up at other poker rooms as well in the coming weeks.

Full Tilt Poker player Gus Hansen may have a better poker CV than Theo Jorgensen but when it comes to boxing Jorgensen proved to be the better side. It all started when Gus Hansen proposed a bet that Theo could not turn down. He challanged Theo to a boxing match where he would get $35 000 from Gus if he won but if he lost on the other hand he would have to give $25 000 to Gus. Seing that all the bookmakers online made Jorgensen the favourite to win this match you have to be happy for Gus that he did not decide to become a bookmaker.

After 3 rounds in the boxing ring it had to be decided by the judges who would win. And when it was all said and done it was Theo Jorgensen who won by points in this game and could take down the nice prize of $35 000 from Gus Hansen.

This boxing match was mainly a ploy to promote the launch of Hansen’s new website GusHansenTV.com but there are rumours circulating the internet that there might be other poker players who would be interested in fighting other poker players in prop bet matches.

The online poker site PokerHost.com announced that they will be leaving the Microgaming Poker Network and instead join the Cake Poker Network. This means that PokerHost are making the exact same move as DoylesRoom did a month ago. This move is due to the fact that the poker rooms located on the Microgaming Network are no longer able to accept US poker players which means they had no choice but to move to a network where US players are allowed.

As from Monday this week PokerHost is officially located on the Cake Poker Network and all players are requested to download the new software when they open the old Microgaming Poker client.

At the Cake Poker Network you can find poker rooms like DoylesRoom.com, Cake Poker, Sportsbook.com, PlayersOnly.com and many other of the major poker rooms on the market.

On a side not we can report that Ladbrokes Poker and Carlos Poker recently made the move over to the Microgaming network, Ladbrokes Poker was using the Microgaming software but was not a part of the network before and Carlos Poker joined the Network after being thrown off the iPoker Network together with NoIQPoker.

Poker legend Chris Ferguson reached the final table in LA Poker Classic. Out of the 696 players that participated in this tournament there are now only 6 players remaining with a chance to take down the first prize of $1.7 Million.

The WPT event LA Poker Classic is currently being played in Los Angeles. After five days of play 690 player out of the original 696 that started the tournament has been knocked out.

One of these players is the Team FullTilt Poker member Chris “Jesus” Ferguson who currently has $1.56 Million in chips which makes him the short stack at the final table.

In the lead we find Chris Karagulleyan who has already won a WPT title back in 2002 when he won the Legends of Poker event on the World Poker Tour circuit. Karagulleyan has over $4 Million in chips and in second place we find Mike Sowers with $2.4 Million in chips.

It will be very interesting to see if Chris Ferguson will finally manage to win his first WPT title.

Phil Ivey lost a coin flip against the Finnish poker profile Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies that cost him $128 000 but he still managed to end the session with a $1.1 Million profit.

Ivey had a really good day yesterday when he ended up winning $1.1 Million dollars at the high stakes tables at Full Tilt Poker. Most of the money came from Tom “durrrr” Dwan. He could have won even more though but a coin flip against “Ziigmund” would end his day.

Both players decided to go all in before the flop no matter the cards they were dealt and the pot reached $258 000 after they both went all in. Ivey was dealt the hand 2d, 2s, 2c and 7d which is a really poor hand in Omaha. Ziigmund had Ivey completely dominated when he flipped over his hand showing 4d, 4c, 7c, and Jh. The flop, turn or river did not bring any help to Phil Ivey who ended up losing this $258 000 pot to Ziigmund.

I still think Phil Ivey was pretty happy leaving the table when it was all over and adding $1.1 Million to his already huge bankroll.

It is now possible for you to buy a deck of playing cards that were actually used during the 2008 World Series of Poker. With a deck of cards like that you can really be sure that you will impress your friends at the next home gome.

You can buy these card at the GamblersGeneralStore.com which is a Las Vegas based store for everything you need for that perfect home game.

For only $15 you will get 2 decks of cards that were actually used during the 2008 WSOP and with the pack you will get a certificate of authenticity and the cards have the signature of Jeffrey Polack.

If you enjoy playing live poker and arrange home games this is really a great item for you and if you are looking for a good gift for another poker friend of yours this is a really good option.

In January 2009 the player with the alias plyboy_binni at PokerStars used his Frequent Player Points to buy a brand new Porsche in the PokerStars VIP shop.

Hiding behind this alias is former table tennis player from New Zeeland but his real name is not made public.

In order to be able to buy a Porsche from the PokerStars VIP Shop you need to have reached the SuperNova Elite status which means that you need to have generated at least 1 000 000 FPPs during the year. This sounds like a lot of points to generate in a year but keep in mind that you will earn more FPPs the higher your VIP level is. But it is still an amazing achievment.

The total price of the Porsche is 3 000 000 FPPs when you buy it in the VIP Shop so it is not just enough to reach the SuperNova Elite status, you will need to earn another 2 Million points in order to buy the car.

This is what the happy owner of a brand new Porsche had to say about his latest purschase:

“In the end I’ve found it’s best if the majority of my friends don’t know how much I make”. “They just know that I make enough to not have to worry about buying drinks.”

If he should have too many of those drinks one day I dont think he needs to ask people twice to drive him home. With this new car I am sure they will be begging him to get to drive it.

When you see players like Phil Ivey and “Ziigmund” at the tables at FullTilt Poker you know you are in for a real treat.

Last weekend they really did not let down the hundreds of railbirds watching the table where they were playing.

After playing for a couple of hours Ziigmund asked Phil Ivey if he wanted to make one flip. They decided to flip for what they had in front of them and since Ziigmund had $200.000 at the table and Phil Ivey had him cover they decided to flip for $200.000 each. This means that there was $400.000 to be won in that pot.

Here is the chat where the decided to make the flip:

Ziigmund: lets take 1 flip
Phil Ivey: how much?
Ziigmund: what do u think
Ziigmund: ????
Phil Ivey: what u have in front of u?
Ziigmund: when i flip i really flip
Phil Ivey: hahaha
Ziigmund: ok all in
Phil Ivey: k this hand for what u have in front of u
Ziigmund: ok gl m8
Phil Ivey: thx u2
Ziigmund: 247Q
Phil Ivey: j10 6 4

With the cards they had on hand Phil Ivey was a slight favourite to win the pot but only be a very small margin.

The flop gave Ziigmund 2 pair and on the river he completed a full house and took down the $400K pot.

After the hand was over Ivey told him that drinks would be on Ziigmund next time they meet but something tells me that this does not really hurt the pocketbook of a man like Phil Ivey.

Online poker rooms are popular allover the world and people are winning more than half a billion US Dollars in a single day. The UltimateBet has become more popular since the Bad Beat Jackpot graph is showing a steady rise in the top speed since the time it has joined hands with Absolute Poker. It is the king in the CEREUS poker international network. The Bad Beat Jackpot crossed the $500,000 limit which was recently cashed by a fan of online poker.

Few days ago a teenage boy logged in to the website with the user name “QUANTOM47” and busted the $534,132.92 jackpot of UltimateBet! When he signed in he had only dreams with him to support and the positive thoughts but he never had the wildest thought of leaving the room with more than half a million US Dollars in his account.

The “QUANTOM47” was playing on the Texas Hold’em Tables which qualified for the Bad Beat Jackpot; the teenager from Ontario, Canada got the luckiest hand of all to win $173,693.20 which was even unbelievable for him as well.

The winner got a hand of Quad Queens which was a sure shot winner of any Poker table in the world. The opponent player was “RUSTY1” who showed a starling Royal Flush against the four glamorous ladies and the game was out of “QUANTOM47’s” hand. He had an extraordinary bad luck waiting for him that day. “RUSTY1” got prize money of $86,796.60 from UltimateBet as the winner of the table.

Other players of the table also benefited from the bad luck of our unlucky player. All of the participants of the Bad Beat Jackpot got their share of prize money. The total numbers of participants were 373 at that point of time. Few of the players got $232.69 only for being there on the table.

65% of the Jackpot amount was distributed among the players. The rest 35% of the prize money was utilized for reseeding the next Bad Beat Jackpot and a percentage was delivered back to the UltimateBet as their administrative fees which was $53,413.29.

Steve Martin is probably well known to all of you who have seen movies like “The Three Amigos“, “Roxanne” and the later versions of “The Pink Panther“.

On the David Letterman show on Monday he revealed that he used to play poker on the internet “when it used to be legal“. It is still legal to play online poker in the US but that is for another topic.

After one long session of online poker he needed an Ambien to help him get to sleep. As a result of this drug he went on a mean winning streak and he made a lot of profit from his “Ambien Experience“.

I have included a link to the clip in this post for all of you to see how to become a profitable poker player.

Steve Martin Talks about Online Poker