Online Poker News

The place to be last week was undoubtedly Edinburgh, not just because it is a beautiful city with hundreds of attractions, but because it was the venue of the UKIPT and it certainly attracted a huge crowd for this leg of the event.

There were 401 players in total, which made for a £200,500 prize pool that paid out the last 56 players. So when it came down to the final table action, which as you would expect, was dominated by UK players, the final duel found none of them left, only Mantas Puidokas of Lithuania and the eventual winner Nick Abou Risk the Canadian. Risk ultimately won the poker tournament and took home £50,000 to go with his trophy, as well as a seat into the UKIPT Grand Final, which is also known as the EPT London that is coming up on September 29th 2010.

Friday the 13th was not unlucky for online poker star Mickey Petersen, who hails from Denmark, took his second Full Tilt online poker series title. He came out on top of the field in a $216 limit Hold’em Rush event number 27 and he banked $37,000. 72 players walked away with cash from a total of 778 players. Petersen won his first FTOPS jersey came back in April, when he won a $216 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament for $86,000.

Mickey Peterson quickly made his mark on the Top 100 Worldwide Rankings beginning in 2009. His 3rd place showing in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up was good for $69,350 in June ‘09 and he also placed 2nd in the Titan Poker $250k Guaranteed for $30,000 a month earlier.

The latest online poker tourney was unleashed and this is the 17th instalment of the popular Online Poker Series (FTOPS) from Full Tilt, by Wednesday they had already awarded $4 million in prizes over 10 winners. They are to offer a total of 34 tournaments through August 15th with more than $19 million in guaranteed prize money.

RPM Poker pro Brent Roberts was the first FTOPS jersey winner, taking down the $216 No Limit Hold’em Event for $164,358. Roberts, who has more than $1.2 million in online tournament winnings and close to $1 million in live earnings, came out the best of a field of 4,591 players and a tough final table that included Sam Grafton. The series, which began in 2006 and has run between two and four times per year, will offer a total of 34 tournaments through August 15th with more than $19 million in guaranteed prize money.

No we have not got it wrong, Steve Davis is going to challenge you to online poker not snooker as you would imagine. Ladbrokes Poker are launching a monthly night in with Snooker legend Steve Davis. Each month Steve will play in a special bounty tournament at the start of the evening, so get those snooker and poker questions ready to fire at him in the chat.

Remember you will need to turn on your poker room messages as Ladbrokes will send system messages to let you know which cash or sit and go tables Steve joins; the successful players who join the table will get a £13 Cruise Steps Tournament ticket credited to their accounts which you can use to try and win a £4,000 Ladbrokes Poker Cruise setting sail in January 2011. It should be an interesting diversion from Steve’s safety play at snooker!

There has been some great news for online poker buffs last week, their preferred casino game is on the up again which suggests that a recovery may well be underway. Although the gain was only 1.3 percent, the news was especially satisfying, with the World Series of Poker still on-going and the card rooms looking toward the traditional late summer increase in player activity.

The strong upturn comes at the perfect time for online poker, as the industry has been in a gradual decline for most of this year. The recent upswing is in spite of the on-going WSOP, suggesting that sustained growth may be returning. With the back-to-school increase in poker traffic and events like PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker coming up, things are starting to look promising for the industry once again.