Online Poker News

Sky Poker have decided to join forces with Gamcare to train all their staff with Gamcares interactive training course that will teach their staff the best way to deliver responsible gambling practices.
Gamcare is a UK registered charity which has become the leading authority providing counselling, advice and practical help in tackling the social impact of gambling in the UK.
Gamcare were also the main charity helping set up the first NSH Gambling addiction clinic in Soho – London last July to run a twelve month trial to tackle the one in five gamblers that become addicted. So with the extensive clinical experience in gambling arena they will be helping Sky Poker’s online poker players the ability to receive counselling, help and support for their addiction from the Sky Poker staff if they ask for it.
Sky Poker have become more socially responsible within the online poker world as they were one of the first to help introduce the ability for the players to self exclude their self’s from poker sites.

Next month will mark the beginning of season five of the European poker tour which has gone from strength to strength from its beginnings in 2004 at the Grand Casino Barcelona, Spain.
Since then the European poker tournament has toured thirteen different countries and held thirty three main events, producing pokers stars from the final eight each year.
The success of the event is credited to the tour been televised globally as well as visiting some of Europe’s premium casinos. The main event buy in has risen from €4,000 to €10,000 over the past four seasons, which attracts more pro poker players from around the globe. The biggest prize so far was taken in season four where a whopping €2 million was paid out at the Monte Carlo final.
This year’s poker tour will stretch just over 1000 miles from the Victoria Casino – London to Budapest’s Las Vegas Casino in the Sofitel Hotel.
As a special event there will be a high roller evening held at London with no limit Holdem game with a buy in of £20,000 + £300 with a assured £1 Million pound prize which will for sure attract the high stake players.
The event kicks off at the Gran Casino Barcelona, Spain on September 10th and will finish nine months later for the grand finale at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort in Monte Carlo on May 3rd 2009.

Schedule for Season Five of the European Poker Tour:

European Poker Tournament

The biggest poker fair in Europe hit London on August 15th – 16th.
The fair was located at London’s Leicester Square outside the front of The Casino at the Empire, which will also host the 2008 World Poker Series of Europe in September.
The event boasted poker exhibitions from the top name poker rooms as well as classic Las Vegas style showgirl entertainment.
Within the Poker Dome free poker tournaments were held on the hour every hour with a professional dealer, giving the poker players a better sense of a professional poker game experience.
Several live poker tournaments were put on by a number of local poker league and broadcast on the festivals Jumbotron for all to see.
The poker academy hosted by the UKs leading poker players gave their advice to novice and armature poker players on how to best play and win the game.
All in all over the two days 25,000 poker enthusiasts attended the event and 2,200 hands were played in the poker dome alone, confirming the how popular the poker scene is in London.

During the steady rise of the online poker community over the past few years there has been a slow decrease in the attendance at live low stake casino tables. To combat this Excalibur hotel and casino in Las Vegas are now in the process of installing twelve PokerPro electronic poker tables from Carolina based company PokerTek which will replace the forty resident live poker dealers.

Excalibur are hoping this move to electronic poker tables will attract the online poker players and also the poker player who feels uncomfortable sat at a live poker table.

CEO of PokerTek Chris Halligan was said to be delighted at Excalibur’s decision to have a 100% ProPoker room on the Las Vegas strip.

Clonie Gowen pro poker player suggests that the speed and accuracy of electronic poker tables beats any manual poker table and it an amazing way to play the game, but the regular poker players at
Excalibur seem to suggest otherwise and that they will go elsewhere to play their poker as the main reason they play poker there was for the ambience.

The new automated Poker tables can seat ten people with individual touch screen showing each player their cards and at the centre of the table lays a forty inch flat screen displaying community cards, stakes and pot.

Post regulatory inspection and approval Excalibur schedule to open the automated poker room to the public from the 22nd August at 6pm.

The world series of poker 2008 (WSOPE) will be hosting the event under the single roof of the Empire Casino, a new club based in London, Leicester Square. This is the second year of the  WSOPE and it is somewhat unusual to find this event hosted in one place. Previous World Series of Poker Europe needed three different Casino locations in London just to accomodate the players.