Skril is the third brand to sponsor GPTL’s poker tours in 2011, joining playing cards manufacturer Copag and luxury jeweller Shamballa Jewels.

Nikolai Riesenkampff, co-CEO of Skrill Holdings, operating Moneybookers, said: “Skrill is delighted to join the European Poker Tour as its Official Payment Provider Sponsor. Now in its eighth season, the EPT has grown to become one of the largest and most lucrative poker tours in the world. Our headline sponsorship promises to deal a winning hand when it comes to strengthening our position as the leading digital wallet and bankroll management option among the world’s poker players.”

Skrill’s sponsorship deal offers the payment provider with some key brand building and promotional opportunities at EPT events across Europe, where it can meet customers in a 1-1 environment and incentivise them to open accounts.

The movie stars are, allegedly, all facing lawsuits after participating in illegal gambling at underground poker clubs in California.

It seems this invitation only poker web consisted of a number of regular movie stars that allegedly includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as other moneyed celebrities, entrepreneurs, businessmen and even attorneys!

The high stakes games ended in 2009 and Tobey Maguire is noted to have been a ‘very, very frequent’ player at them. Seemingly he won $300,000+ from hedge fund manager Bradley Ruderman.

The trouble doesn’t stop here though as Ruderman had been playing with money allegedly embezzled from the investors of the fund he managed.

Ruderman, now in jail for fraud, reportedly masterminded the exclusive games and hence lost $25m of investor money between 2006 and 2009.

If only they’d all played on Spider-Man’s favourite web based poker room – then they’d have spun out on earning so much rakeback instead!

The primary cause of stress is a hormone called cortisol, which increases blood sugar and blood pressure when released. Cortisol also reduces your immune responses, and all of this causes you to feel more stressed out. But the study found that when you play poker online, your cortisol levels decrease by 17%, which reduces stress levels quite a bit. And while this wasn’t officially involved in the study, there’s no doubt that players who earn lots of rakeback reduce their stress levels even more when playing internet poker.

In addition to the findings on cortisol reduction, the Canadian researchers concluded that the reason why players feel less stressed when playing poker games is because they concentrate on the game so much. As a result, players forget about all of the problems and responsibilities that they have to deal with away from the game.

As if reducing your stress levels while playing poker isn’t enough, the study also showed that poker improves cognitive brain functions and overall mental health. So a healthy dose of online poker every day goes a long way towards making your mind sharper and making you feel happy.

Of course, we all know that you’ll be even happier when you’re earning tons of money, which is why you should learn as many poker tips as possible, and sign up for rakeback deals whenever you join a poker site. Rakeback pays back a large percentage of the rake taken from you, which really adds up at the end of the month!
Tip of the Day: While this study may show that poker reduces stress, sometimes it can cause more stress if you go on tilt (making irrational plays during a bad session). The best way to reduce tilt is by A) learning more strategy for playing after the flop, and B) recognizing tilt, and quitting the session before things get ugly.

The news, which broke on Monday, detailed the inception of the Onyx Cup Series and featured additional introductions by Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan, Gus Hansen and Erik Seidel. The first five events of which will be preliminaries, followed by the sixth Grand Finale event with a $250,000 buy-in.

With the tournaments scheduled to be held across the United States, Asia and Europe the Series will attract the highest calibre of players in the world. The first of the events will take place in Las Vegas on 11 and 12 May where members of Team Full Tilt such as Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Erick Lindgren and John Juanda will be in attendance.

Qualifying for the events will commence on Tuesday 15 March, exclusively on FullTiltPoker.com.

Any players who can meet the six figure buy-in can enter the No Limit Hold’em tournaments. Those finishing in the top three of each event will receive Onyx Cup leaderboard points; after the Grand Finale the player with the most points will take the title,  the Onyx Cup and a luxury sports car. The series is to be televised so there is a great deal of prestige riding on this for the players involved, aside from a serious amount of money.

Visit Full Tilt Poker to find out more

Sign Up for Rakeback at Full Tilt Poker

Redkings.com offers the option of playing online and, hopefully, winning instantly or you can also download their software and give it a try for free on your own PC computer. Many different games are available including Texas Hold’em, 5 Card Draw and all the other online poker favorites. Redkings.com stands strong behind their reputation of being able to offer online players an open seat in the game of their choice at the limit of their selection at any time. The site also features a small casino with some standard casino games if that type of gaming is of your liking.

Redkings poker might be European based but also supports a wide range of languages making the venue a pleasant and accessible venue experience for worldwide players. Players can choose a bonus of up to $1000 upon membership which will easily have them well on their way to enjoying all the site has to offer.

All in all, Redkings poker has enjoyed rave reviews and enjoys being frequented from online gamers based all over the world. While the European poker rooms and players are known for being a tough crowd to rap your mind around they are also a friendly bunch and new members from any region of the online gaming community are always welcome to give the venue their best shot at taking home the big win. Check it out today and try your hand at Redkings poker.

Any new player who signs up at Pacific Poker will get to play poker in seven $500 New Depositors’ Freerolls.  This is totally free poker and all you need to do is complete the poker download of Pacific and make a small deposit.  Once you’ve done this, you will also get to play in a $1,000 Depositors’ freeroll.  That’s eight free poker games you get to play in for a total of $4,500 in freerolls.  But this isn’t all…..

You’ll also get a chance to play in the $50k First Depositors’ Challenge where a $50,000 prize pool is on the line!  Once you’re a Pacific member, all you need to do is go to the poker software at Pacific and click on the ‘Challengers’ tab.  When you’re registered, you will be able to play in the $50,000 First Depositors’ Challenge; the top 20 finishers in this tourney will win a spot in the “Sunday Challenge.”  The Sunday Challenge is where the $50,000 in cash will be given away.

As long as you can learn to play poker online, you should sign up at Pacific Poker for the sake of the $54,500 in freerolls alone.  If you know enough poker strategy and plan on playing at Pacific for a while, you can also take advantage of the amazing rakeback offers.  As mentioned before, you can earn as much as 36% in rakeback just by playing at Pacific Poker!

The promotion gives players a chance to pick the winners of NFL games, and if their picks are correct, they get to play poker in a big freeroll.  These free poker tournaments will be offering lots of prizes including cash, VIP Points, and copies of the video game Madden 11. 

To get started on your way to picking NFL winners and hauling in lots of great prizes, download the poker software for Carbon and create an account.  Once you’ve completed this step, you need to visit the admin area of your account to look at the matchups of the week.  Assuming you correctly pick the winner of one of the featured matchups, you’ll get a coupon to play in a free poker tournament. 

After you’re finished picking NFL winners, you should visit the poker tables at Carbon to take advantage of the rakeback deals offered here.  Assuming you sign up through a rakeback offer, you will get as much as 35% of the money spent in rake back.  Add in the fact that you’ll also be earning VIP Points at the Carbon Poker tables, and you’ll be reaping the benefits of some of the best online poker deals in the industry!

One more perk to playing at Carbon Poker this football season is that you can also get in on the Gridiron Grind (a.k.a. Touchdown).  In Touchdown, you’ll earn lots of extra money just for playing poker hands at Carbon, and you don’t even have to do anything special.

“The Ivey Room” recently opened with a $1 million invitation-only freeroll poker tournament that included such stars as Doyle Brunson, T.J. Cloutier, Barry Greenstein, Eli Elezra, Daniel Alaei, Erick Lindgren, David Williams, David “Chino” Rheem, and of course Phil Ivey.

What really made this free poker event exciting was the fact that whoever knocked out Ivey was going to be the recipient of $100,000.  Chino Rheem was the winner of the $100k as he knocked Ivey out of the tournament when their poker hands clashed.

Even after being knocked out of his own honorary tournament, Phil was still happy as he said, “This has to be one of the biggest achievements of my life.  Having a poker room named after me…..I just can’t believe it, really. When Bill (McBeath) asked me to have the room named after me, I just laughed at him. I was like, ‘Come on, stop joking.’ I really didn’t think anything was going to happen, and then I get a phone call and there’s a date for the tournament.”

As of now, the Ivey Room features one poker table and is only for high stakes players.  The reason why the ARIA built the Ivey Room is because they are trying to lure high stakes grinders who play in the richest poker games.  And the biggest game of all is “The Big Game”, which is held in Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel and Casino.  Many of the aforementioned players participate in the Big Game and millions of dollars are exchanged every day.

Conor Toner and Paul Brady of Portsmouth plan on playing poker games at the top of Mount Snowdon in Wales.  Both of these guys are managers at casinos in Portsmouth, and they want to climb the 1,085-foot Mt. Snowdon in the name of charity.  Their goal is to raise £10,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care, and eventually play some holdem poker at the top of the mountain.

The plan is for Toner and Brady to spend a few hours climbing to the top of the mountain.  Once they reach the top, the casino managers will play a small poker tournament with their climbing team.  There’s no word yet on whether there will be money involved in the poker hands or if the mountain top game will consist of free poker, but even if no money is exchanged this will still be a monumental event. 

The only sad thing about this wonderful charity act is that they don’t offer rakeback in games held at the top of a mountain.  After all, everybody knows that you have to play at the leading poker sites in order to cash in on rakeback deals.  Even still, it will be lots of fun for Toner and Brady to play poker at the top of a mountain.  And it will be very interesting to see if this event inspires other players to seek out odd locations for poker games.

1. Playing poker online and playing at the casino are not the same game. While online gaming rooms and casinos are meant to replicate their brick-and-mortar counterparts as effectively as possible, some things just cannot be reproduced in the online virtual casino world. For example, one unique aspect of real casino rooms are the emotions and body language of the other players. In an online poker game, this just simply isn’t the case. You can be jumping up and down or pulling your hair out at the turn of a card when playing online and your opponents simply have no idea. For all they know you might be calling their bluff while relaxing in your boxer shorts (not your typical concrete casino attire). And you can also get free cashback in the form of rakeback!

2. Pay attention to those who you are playing. Every move that your opponents make, be it body language, playing patterns, or subtle reactions is a key piece needed to put together the puzzle of that player. Watch everything, catalogue everything and remember everything. This may sound like common sense but many players don’t utilize the information their opponents are giving them to the potential that they could.

3. If you are feeling temperamental or demonstrative of your emotions, don’t play. Your opponents are reading you, if you can’t keep your emotions inside and under control they will only work against you both by influencing your own thinking and game, as well as by telling other players visually what is going on at your seat of the table.

4. Some say that you never want to be the smartest person in a room, because then you won’t learn anything from anyone. In poker however, there is nothing wrong with being the best player at the table. Play at a skill level you are comfortable with, don’t jump into a big leagues game just because you recently won in the minors. Moving up in skill levels takes lots of practice, experience and time. Make sure you have all these things before upgrading to a high-roller situation.

5. Poker is a game and games are supposed to be fun. Make sure you are having fun when you play, everyone loses sometimes and everyone wins sometimes, take your turn at each end of the spectrum gracefully. Nobody likes sore losers, but a sore winner can be even worse.