The April 2011 issue of Poker Europa will be its grand finale after 12 years of an earnest attempt to unite the European poker industry and grab it some attention from the big boys on the other side of the pond.

The Old World’s first poker media source was always published in both English and German. It was always free and ran under the slogan, “Uniting Europe,” or, “Europa Rückt Näher Zusammenthe,”. It was launched on 1^st January 1999 with the primary objective of uniting Europe’s poker scene. It has been well respected for providing information, news and events listings as well as providing results and tournament coverage.

As a free publication it relied on advertising revenue to survive, the global financial crisis has hit us all and now the rise in production and distribution costs for print publications have become the major culprit for a founding poker source’s demise.

Founding editor of Poker Europa, Nic Szeremeta, recent winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Poker Awards, explained the reasons for his magazine’s closure: “We have always depended on advertising for our revenue and since the recession this has declined by over 60 per cent.

Even though the magazine has been successful in its field, it cannot compete with the online world: “Mergers, acquisitions and closure of online card rooms have weakened our potential market and the bright young things who now promote and market poker prefer to use the Internet rather than print media. Operators of bricks and mortar poker rooms are also cutting their budgets. The situation is not helped by the fact that some operators seem to think they can get away with not paying their bills.”

According to Szeremeta, and its readers, Poker Europa did succeed in uniting European poker, “However, the increase of such information on the Internet, supplied as it happens, now makes print publications almost irrelevant.”

In the style of a great player, and rightly so,  Szeremeta concluded: “One thing I know about poker is when to quit the game and this is it.”

The action happened last Friday morning. A relatively short session of 780 hands included a  $127,000 super-pot as the players stride on the the head-to-head action. The Million Dollar Challenge is open to any member of the poker community except Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and stipulates requires to play Dwan over 50,000 hands of $200/$400 or higher on four tables at a time. If a player drops below 75 big blinds in their stack at any point, they must reload. At the conclusion of the Pot Limit Omaha or No Limit Hold’em hands, a winner will be crowned. If Dwan is ahead by $1 or more, his opponent must fork over $500,000. If Dwan’s opponent is ahead by $1 or more, the youngster has offered to pay $1.5 million. The winner will also get to keep the winnings from the sessions.

Cates made $270,000 from this session ansd is now up $1.2 million overall with 18,236 hands having been played – 32,000 more hands still remain in this, the second of the durrrr challenges. The 780 only took one-and-three-quarter hours and was played at 4:15am ET to 6:00am ET with Dwan appearing to be on a plane at the time.

Cates held on to four of the five largest pots for a combined haul of nearly $400,000. This Challenge is now 18-sessions old and was begun in August 2010.

Michael O’Sullivan today won the Paddy Power Poker Irish Masters poker tournament, winning a first prize of €143,000 and outlasting the 397 other players taking part in the €1,650 buy-in No Limit Holdem main event.  The 24-year old Irish student is a well-known player who focuses on online cash, as well as having a respectable string of live tournament results to his name.

O’Sullivan started the Irish Masters slowly, but on Day 2 of the tournament started to accumulate chips at a rapid pace and was comfortably positioned by the time play ended.  On the final day, he made some big calls and some bigger laydowns, finally winning the bulk of the chips in play heads-up when his Ace-King overthrew Michael Murphy’s pair of Jacks when an Ace fell on the river.

O’Sullivan has no immediate plans for his winnings and commented that the victory “hasn’t sunk in yet.”  He plans to concentrate on completing his studies and to devote more time to athletics.

Murphy won €88,500 for his 2nd place finish, with Irishman Gary Mealy receiving €55,300 for third place and Slovenian Matej Kokalj winning €44,800 for finishing fourth.

Tenth place finisher Paul Dooley became Paddy Power Poker’s IWF Sole Survivor by outlasting 61 other Paddy Power Poker online qualifiers, winning a prize package worth €20,000.  The Irish Winter Festival Sole Survivor promotion was created solely for players who qualified for the Irish Masters via Paddy Power Poker’s online satellites. Each online qualifier was automatically entered into the Sole Survivor promotion; all they needed to do was outlasted all other online qualifiers in the Irish Masters to win a €20,000 package.

The tournament began on Saturday, 24th October and featured a total prizepool of €597,000.  The buy-in for the tournament was €1,650 and 40 players won cash prizes.  A live webcast and comprehensive updates were available throughout the weekend on the Irish Winter Festival blog.

In the month of August Rummy Royal is giving away over $2000 to the best Rummy players in the world! The top 3 players can win prizes as much as $1000, $500 and $250.

In addition to that Rummy Royal has extended this offer further and al of the players who are taking part in URC would be invited in a $500 tourament for free.

Any player sho playes at least one URC game during the time of competition would be eligible to register.

Join RummyRoyal on September 1st, at 19:30 GMT and play for $500 cash prize!

Prizes

1st place: $1000

2nd place: $500

3rd place: $250

Tables

Where to find Challenege table? Well that is very easy, it is located in the game lobby under the “real money” tab in the “single tourney” section and named as challenge tables

Player Ranking

The ranking in URC is decided according to the number of wins. The following simple formula describes the ranking

Ranking = Number of wins – number of loses

Only those players which get positive ranking would appear on the scoreboard, players with negative ranking would not appear on the scroeboard. The scorer board is updated regularly with the ranking.

Examples

Suppose you played 21 games, out of them you won 18 and lost 3, your ranking would be 15 (18-3=15).

If you played 20 games, and out of them you lost 19 then your ranking would go in negative (1-19 = -18) so you will not appear in the ranking.

Scoreboard

Rummy Royal’s website offers up to date scoreboard which can be seen on http://www.rummyroyal.com/promotions/urc1.html.

So what are you waiting for CLICK HERE to download Rummy Royal and participate in the URC to qualify for the $500 Cash Prize

Paddy Power Poker today announces that its new Summer Cash Dash cash race will kick-off at midnight on Sunday, 7th June.

The poker room’s summer cash race promotion will award over $64,000 in cash and prizes over the course of twelve weeks, with over $5,000 cash on offer each week.

The promotion is open to every Paddy Power Poker player and positions on the leader board will be determined by the amount of hands played, the table stakes and the time players spend on the tables.

“It’s summertime and the living is easy up in Paddy Towers!” said Paddy Power, Communications Manager for Paddy Power Poker. “We’ve been busy getting ourselves in shape for the summer and we think our players will be impressed by what they see; our swimming shorts are fit to burst with all the cash we’ve stuffed in, ready to hand out to our lucky players!”

Paddy Power Poker today launches its biggest summer promotion to date, the Paddy Power Poker Pro. With over €100,000 in packages to be won, players at all levels will have the opportunity to live the life of a poker professional. “Everyone dreams of jetting around the world, playing in the biggest tournaments against the biggest players and we’re really excited to be able to make this dream a reality for one lucky player”, said Paddy Power, Communications Manager for Paddy Power Poker.

Partnering with Paddy Power Poker in the search to find the newest star is poker publication Bluff Europe. Editor-in-Chief Michael Caselli is relishing the opportunity to unearth the next big poker pro; “There is nothing better in the world of poker than to be one of its stars. This promotion will transform an ordinary player into an extra-ordinary poker pro, which is really thrilling!”

Eric Booth, Head of Paddy Power Poker also commented, “This promotion aims to make the Poker Pro lifestyle accessible to everyday players and we’re delighted to have Bluff on board to help us in our search for the first Paddy Power Poker Pro. There’s no doubt but it will be an exciting summer.”

The Paddy Power Poker Pro promotion will culminate in a Live Grand Final to be broadcast live from Citywest Hotel at the paddypowerpoker.com Irish Winter Festival on October Bank Holiday weekend. With a top prize of €60,000 (approximately $85,000), one lucky player will take a free run at some of Europe’s largest poker tournaments within the next year, and those who do not qualify for the top prize will be in with a chance to win a variety of other packages worth €40,000 in total.

As you may recall, Party Poker was the largest and most successful online poker room before the UIGE Act came into play. While some companies decided to risk it and stay with the US market, Party Poker pulled out. At the time, Mitch Garber was the CEO of Party Gaming. Harrah’s has pulled out all of the stops and has hired Garber as the head of their new subsidiary, Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, Inc., to lead the way into a new era of online gaming.

The move makes perfect sense. While the move to pull out of the US market can be questioned, the success of the company up to that point in the US is unquestionable. He will have the advantage of knowing the ins and outs of the industry and will also be able to launch their site in European countries while US legislation is still in question.

There can be little doubt that if this legislation goes through, Harrah’s will immediately take over as the major online poker room in the United States. They will have one advantage over any other site as they are actually a brick and mortar casino and a lot of the packages that they will be able to put together should far surpass anything that any other site can do the satellites into the WSOP. They have the ability to add food, beverage and lodging in a way that no other site can do.

While the other sites have to get more entries for a $20,000 package, this stuff can literally be comped off by Harrah’s to make their site the most attractive on the net. When you also add in the fact that a US company will finally be involved in the gaming industry, it reeks of success.

US players have been longing for a company that they could trust 100% and that would be regulated by the United States to get involved in the online poker industry. While European players will have the advantage of seeing the product first, it is hard to imagine that any other site will be able to match the product that they will develop. This is welcome news to United States players and will definitely change the online poker world in a positive way.

Avid poker players will enjoy double rewards for their game play in May. Players will receive instant cash bonuses, issued to them as they generate Titan Poker Points. Special player benefits for May are up to $2,000 per player. In addition, players will be able to use these Points to make purchases at the Club Titan Store.

“It is certainly worth my time to play exclusively at Titan Poker,” commented one of the poker room’s most active VIP players. “When I do the calculation of the return on investment for my online gaming activities, I see that the best benefits are available to me at Titan Poker.

In January 2009, Titan Poker launched Club Titan, the most generous rewards program available to keen online poker players. The Club Titan VIP program is easy to use and rewards all of its players, novices to big-time poker enthusiasts alike.

The excitement was palpable as players arrived at the new five-star Alpine Palace Card Casino. Players mingled pre-tournament in first class accommodation that included an open bar gala party, with acclaimed Fashion TV photographer Erwin Gabriel.

On April 4th, day three of the tournament, the top 9 players put on their best poker faces and took their seats at the Final Table. It came down to two players – Andreas Schmidt, from Germany; and Jacob Chen from Australia.

After a heated battle, Jacob Chen emerged as champion of the ECPokerTour Salzburg 2009 with a prize of 47,302 Euros. Chen, who previously represented www.titanpoker.com at the Asian Poker Tour in Macau, was barely able to contain his excitement and his only words were: “I am breathless.”

Review the complete report on the ECPoker Tour website: ECPoker Tour

After his win Pierpaolo said: “This is after almost a year of trying…I thought it was impossible, but it happened! Five consecutive Maui Jackpots in order to pocket $99,000 was really fantastic! All thanks to a big dose of chance and above all to Titan Poker… many thanks!”

In offering advice to his fellow poker players, Pierpaolo says that “I am not an aggressive player and I try to study the competitors during the game….but you need to believe that it’s possible to win.”

Titan Poker’s jackpot sit ‘n’ go tournaments are extremely popular and attract veteran and novice poker players alike. The Maui is a ten-player, $5 + $1 Sit ‘N Go tournament. The game begins once ten players sit down at the table. As this is a progressive jackpot tournament, the prize money grows larger every week until there is a winner.