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Merge Offers Bad Beat Jackpot With No Rake

 The Merge Gaming Network suffered a bad beat of sorts when Poker Host jumped ship and moved to the Equity Poker Network yesterday, but that didn't keep the U.S.-friendly network from implementing a new no-rake Bad Beat Jackpot (BBJ) effective today.

Flagship skin Carbon Poker has revealed that the new BBJ is 100% network-funded, meaning that players at any full and 6-max cash tables are eligible to be jackpot winners with no cash taken from each pot. That includes No-Limit and Fixed-Limit action.
The new BBJ will be funded by Merge on a rolling basis starting with $1,000 and adding $0.10 every minute until a player loses a hand holding at least four of a kind. Simple arithmetic tells us that the BBJ will increase at the rate of $144 per day and $1,008 per week.
The requirements to hit the jackpot are that three players must be dealt into the hand and at least two must continue to the showdown stage. Also, both the hand's winner and the bad beat recipient must use both of their hole cards.
Every player seated at the table will grab a piece of the jackpot when the BBJ hits. The player who suffers the bad beat gets the largest share of the jackpot at 38%, while 20.5% will go to the hand winner and another 20.5% will be equally distributed to the other players at the table. The 21% left over is reserved in order to seed the new jackpot.
Bad Beat Jackpots had been quite popular at a number of poker sites years ago, especially among the recreational crowd. However, most employed scooping a rake from each pot in order to fund the jackpot, severely crippling the efforts of players attempting to grind out profits on a daily basis.
Players began taking notice of their reduced bankrolls due to taking a hit on the BBJ rake, including the casual players that the jackpot is geared toward. This caused many to turn away from BBJ tables.
Now that Merge has introduced rake-free BBJ action, even at the tiny rolling amount of $144 per day, it may prompt some players to once again patronize the likes of Aced Poker, PlayersOnly, Sportsbook and Carbon Poker.
 
Author: Ekaterina
09 . 04 . 2014 y.
Betfair Closes to New Russian Players

 Betfair’s withdrawal to regulated markets has taken a further step with the announcement that it will no longer accept new players from Russia.

A company statement to affiliates, seen by pokerfuse, explains that as the result of “recent developments within the Russian market,” the group is “ceasing acquiring customers in Russia as of Friday 11th April 2014.”
The company is also stopping all marketing spending, and removing the Russian language links to its site. Existing revenue deals with affiliates will continue to be honored, so it appears that there is, at the moment, no intention to cut off existing players.
Two weeks ago, a number of gambling sites, including PokerStars, were added to Russia’s general internet domain blacklist. ISPs are required to block access to sites on the list which includes mainly political, pornographic and drug related domains.
PokerStars and 888poker responded to the move with statements along the lines of “it’s business as usual.” Betfair has adopted a substantially more cautious approach to unregulated markets.
It has pulled out of Greece, Germany, Cyprus and Spain to concentrate on what it sees as “sustainable” markets—the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Malta, Gibraltar and the US state regulated jurisdictions. It has also recently been awarded a license in Bulgaria.
The strategy has led to poker revenues falling to the point where they now represent just 2% of Betfair’s business. The last financial report warned that “our increased focus on sustainable markets and subsequent cessation of direct acquisition marketing investment in jurisdictions with insufficient regulatory visibility has continued to have an adverse impact on revenue growth.”
Betfair switched to iPoker from Ongame in January last year and immediately became a top tier site on the network. None of the other major iPoker skins have left the Russian market.
Author: Ekaterina
08 . 04 . 2014 y.
Danny Robison, Poker Legend, Dies

 It came to light yesterday that professional poker legend and World Series of Poker bracelet winner Danny Robison had passed away.

An Ohio native, Robison, who is well-known for being one of the most renown seven-card stud players in the world, moved to Las Vegas in 1973 with his then good friend and partner Chip Reese.
The legend of Robison and Reese found them in Las Vegas, for what was supposed to be simply a weekend in Sin City, with a combined bankroll of $800. The pair began taking 12-hour shifts playing $10/20 Seven-Card Stud at the Stardust.
The weekend quickly became an extended stay and then in two and a half years, the pair turned that $800 into $2,000,000 and earned Robison and Reese the nickname of “The Golddust Twins.”
After the passing of Chip Reese, Robison remained a larger than life poker personality and continued to play in some of the highest stakes stud games available in California being a regular at the Commerce Casino.
Author: Ekaterina
08 . 04 . 2014 y.
Technical Error Results in $260k Overlay for PokerStars Sunday Warm Up

 Due to a “technical issue,” there was no late registration for the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up tournament on Sunday. Only 1,204 players registered before the event began leaving a $260,000 overlay for the $500,000 guaranteed event.

“PokerStars apologizes for the lack of a late registration period in the Sunday Warm-Up. This was a technical issue, and was not deliberate,” a PokerStars representative told pokerfuse. “PokerStars will honor the guarantee of the event.”
PokerStars Steve Day posted a wry apology to players who were unable to register after the event started, noting that “there is also a 'small’ financial motivation to ensure this error isn’t repeated in our other tournaments later today.”
In effect, each player who entered got an unexpected bonus in terms of their expected value in the event. Their starting chip-stack had an expected value of almost twice what they had paid for it.
Once a tournament’s registration has closed PokerStars is unable to reopen the event, so at the time, they had to let the tournament play out and take the loss.Despite the technical problem, the guaranteed prize pool was still paid out in full.
Including entry fees, the players who were there at the beginning of the $200+$15 tournament paid a total of $258,860. PokerStars’ actual loss ended up being ‘only’ $240k—so that’s alright then.
Author: Ekaterina
07 . 04 . 2014 y.
PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst Takes on Rafa Nadal in Monaco

 Top earning female poker player and PokerStars Team Pro Vanessa Selbst will go heads up against PokerStars sporting ambassador Rafa Nadal in Monaco.

The smart money will be on Vanessa, as the match will be heads up poker, not clay court tennis. The “King of Clay” managed to win his first €100,000 charity poker tournament at the EPT Prague, with Daniel Negreanu as one of his opponents, so the smart money may not be quite so confident this time.
Even though his tennis tournament schedule is notoriously brutal, Nadal has found time to indulge his enthusiasm for poker and perform his ambassadorial duties for PokerStars.
On March 19 he played an hour of play money poker on PokerStars’ Facebook app. The Zoom poker session meant that any and all comers were welcome and given an equal chance of playing against the sporting superstar. For every hand Rafa won, PokerStars donated $100 to Care International.
Spanish players got a similar opportunity, for real money, at the end of January, as Rafa played 60 minutes of $2NL Zoom on the Spanish regulated PokerStars site. PokerStars put up €3,000 as a prize, with the money going to a Rafa nominated charity if he ended up on the session. Again he defied predictions, and his chosen charity pocketed the €3,000.
The match against Vanessa Selbst has been organized for April 11 to take advantage of Rafa’s presence at the ATP Monte Carlo Masters where he is hoping for his ninth victory. “It’s a game of skill that requires mental strength and the ability to out-think your opponents… and now I’m looking forward to the challenge of playing against Vanessa,” commented Rafa.
Selbst is currently looking for backing to play in the WSOP Big One for One Drop which has a $1m buy in.
Author: Ekaterina
07 . 04 . 2014 y.
GTECH Manages Orderly Shutdown of Dot-com Poker Network

 As GTECH gets closer to closing its dot-com International Poker Network (IPN), commonly known as Boss Media, it has ended its bad beat jackpot promotion. The funds in the existing jackpot prize pool will be distributed via a series of freeroll tournaments.

Between April 2 and April 30, there will be five freerolls—four with €25k in prize money, and one, the first event, with €45k—in order to pay out the €145k available.
To ensure the money goes to players on the network, each event will be limited to a maximum of 5,000 players, all of whom must have played at least one raked hand in the previous 365 days.
As pokerfuse PRO exclusively revealed last December, the network will close in May and the shutdown is being handled in as orderly a manner as possible. GTECH is not going out of business, but shifting its attention to its B2B business and to its presence in regulated markets.
The company provides the software for Svenska Spel and the Canadian Poker Network, for PokerClub Italia and the Spain Poker Network. It has also been contracted to produce a new online gaming platform for OPAP in Greece.
Existing skins on the dot-com network have begun to operate alternative skins on other networks to ease the transition following the IPN sutdown. Of the larger skins, Poker Heaven will offer options on Ongame and MPN, Redbet and Paradise Poker will transit to the Ongame network.
Full details of how the transfer of VIP points and other incentives will be managed are likely to be left to individual rooms on the network to communicate with players.
IPN is expected to be closed, and all transitions completed, by the end of May.
Author: Ekaterina
04 . 04 . 2014 y.
WSOP, 888 New Jersey Release Android App

 WSOP.com New Jersey and 888 New Jersey have both released Android mobile apps.

The release was promised in December last year, and now brings the number #2 and #3 operators in line with the market leading network, partypoker, whose skins were the first to release an Android client in late February.
WSOP and 888poker NJ were, conversely, the first to get their iOS app into the iTunes store. Party and Borgata joined in January 2014.
In the US, Apple mobile devices continue to have around a 40% market share, but Google’s Android has now overtaken iOS with approximately 50% of the market. Worldwide, Android has 77.8% market share while iOS has just 17.8%.
Real money gambling apps are not permitted in the official Google Play store, but users can download installation files directly from operators’ websites.
With mobile gaming becoming an ever greater source of revenues, the impact of adding an Android client could well show up very quickly in both revenues and cash game traffic numbers.
WSOP Head of Poker Bill Rini, discussing the release publicly on 2+2, stated that the release had come “after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.”
Although the app, provided by 888 Holdings, already exists in dot-com markets, each client needs to go through a testing and approval process for the New Jersey market.
 
Author: Ekaterina
04 . 04 . 2014 y.
Unibet Adds “Challenges” VIP System in Latest Upgrade

 Unibet’s latest software upgrade has implemented its innovative “Challenges” VIP system. The upgrade includes a number of other improvements to the newly released proprietary poker client.

The Challenges VIP system does not base rewards solely on rake paid. As players complete “steps” they are awarded points based on the stake level they are playing and then are challenged with new steps.
Minor steps are all pre-flop and include objectives such as “raise a hand and win preflop 10 times.” Major steps are postflop and include things like flopping sets, or seeing certain cards on the flop. Each time a step is completed, points are awarded and a new step is issued.
The innovation applies to cash games; however, tournament and Sit and Go players use the standard system of receiving points per €1 of rake. As soon as players have earned enough points they get a bonus payout.
The Unibet “mission” for April has been designed to introduce players to the Challenges VIP scheme.
Other features of the upgrade include the facility to spectate at a table, a new table background, and the ability to open a hand history directly from the table. A few software bugs have also been fixed.
Author: Ekaterina
03 . 04 . 2014 y.
Online Poker from Greece’s OPAP Will Have to Wait for Sportsbetting Development

 The Greek semi-monopoly OPAP—Greek Organisation of Football Prognostics—has released its annual report for 2013 and said that the first online gambling that will be produced by its deal with GTECH will be sportsbetting.

Under a complex existing structure, Greece has issued temporary licenses to 24 operators, which is the legal umbrella under which online poker is currently offered. For example, PokerStars has a commercial relationship with Diamond Link, one of the licensees, so can legally offer services from its PokerStars.GR domain.
OPAP has been given a semi-monopoly, in a controversial and provisional authorization by the EU Commission, and it is now developing an online sportsbetting, casino and poker platform with GTECH.
The announcement in the annual report suggests that online poker will not be provided by OPAP until after sportsbetting has been developed. OPAP’s semi-monopoly has been granted until 2030, long after the “temporary” licenses for other operators are due to expire.
Short a successful legal challenge in the EU courts, in a few years’ time OPAP will be the monopoly poker provider in Greece.
 
Author: Ekaterina
03 . 04 . 2014 y.
Comcast Denies Bovada Block

 The issue reported yesterday of Comcast users being unable to access the Bovada site is not the result of Comcast blocking a poker room.

An email from Comcast’s National Engineering & Technical Operations denies their responsibility.
“These claims are incorrect; Comcast is not blocking that or any other site and would not do so,” the email, shared by a customer, reads.
“When we observe similar issues it has been a problem with the site owner’s authoritative DNS servers or records,” it adds.
Bovada themselves have tweeted that the problem should be resolved within 24 hours.
The Comcast email links to a site where users can validate DNS data to determine if a site is blocked. Bovada.lv shows up as accessible on Comcast servers.
 
Author: Ekterina
02 . 04 . 2014 y.
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