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PokerStars to Sponsor the Mammoth Poker Festival

Online poker giant PokerStars will be sponsoring the Mammoth Poker Festival scheduled to take place at the Bonnington Hotel in Dublin, Ireland between 29^th May and 4^th June 2018 resulting in the festival being bigger and better than ever.

The Mammoth Poker Festival is running for the second year and features six tournaments, including a €150,000 guaranteed Main Event that costs €120 to enter and a €50,000 guaranteed High Roller event that requires a buy-in of €500.

The inaugural Mammoth Poker Series Main Event was won by Lee Egan in June of last year when he came out on top of a 1,468-strong field to win an amount of €15,250.  A deal was struck among the final seven finishers, with the second-place finisher down to seventh each taking home an amount of €10,000.

This year’s edition of the Mammoth Poker Series Main Event features a guaranteed prize pool of €15,000 for the same buy-in of €120 (€100 + €20).  However, Pokerstars’ sponsorship will see the winner also securing a PokerStars Players Championship Platinum Pass worth $30,000, which will add extra spice to the tournament.

The winner of the High Roller will also be awarded a $30,000 Platinum Pass by PokerStars, making both tournaments must-play events.

The Schedule for the 2018 Mammoth Poker Series –

Players may re-enter once per flight in the Main Event, with each Day 1 playing down until 15% of the field remains.  Players making it through to Day 2 are guaranteed to be in the money places.

Day 1 of the High Roller plays 10 levels with late registration available until the start of play on Day 2.  Day 2 can be bought in directly even if players have not played a starting flight.  The starting flights allow one re-entry per flight.

Satellites for the Mammoth Main Event are available online at PokerStars from as little as €5.50.  €22 buy-in qualifiers guarantee between one and three €120 seats to the Main Event.

Winamax SISMIX Heads to Es Saadi Marrakech

The fifth edition of the Winamax SISMIX is due to take place at the fabulous Ed Saadi Resort in Marrakech from 5^th to 13^th May 2018.

Previous editions of the Winnamax SISMIX have been great fun as they combine a crowded poker schedule with daily parties, scrumptious food and popular Djs.  Players looking for an enjoyable live poker tour are well advised to look no further than the Winamax SISMIX.

Although there are more than two dozen tournaments scheduled for the 2018 Winamax SISMIX, it is the Main Event that all participants will want to win.

The currency for the tournaments, including the Main Event, are in Dirhams (MAD).  The Main Event comes at a cost of the equivalent of €550 to enter with everyone sitting down at six-handed tables armed with 50,000 chips and playing to 40-minute blinds.  Players are allowed to re-enter once per each of the three starting flights.

Players will find that most of the Winamax SISMIX side events have a unique twist as they can purchase a Dealer Bonus before play commences to receive more chips in their starting stack.  In the festival-opening Warm-Up event, players can pay an additional 100 MAD and receive an extra 2,000 chips to take their starting stack to 20,000.

Attendees at Winamax SISMIX will, as usual, find a busy schedule of activities away from the tables with everyone who registers for a SISMIX tournament, with the exception of satellites, receiving a bracelet that allows them to have free access to the ritzy pool parties, access to the Theatro nightclub as well as all of the SISMIX activities for the duration of the festival.

Open from 11.00 p.m. until the early hours of the morning throughout SISMIX, the Theatro nightclub will have a minimum of 12 Djs playing throughout the festival.  These include Dj Angelo, Bakermat, Dj James, Duel Beat, Stone Van Broken, Nicolas Monier, Ayanne, Sara Lugo, Dj Kol, Mymy, Miss Owl and Super Mana.

The SISMIX Hub Social Club will also serve as a sports bar throughout the day and feature an American food court where players can get involved in quizzes, betting challenges, beer pong and more.

Cash Game Festival Returns to Tallinn 25th to 29th April 2018

The Cash Game Festival that consists of five days and over 120 hours of nonstop cash game poker action will be returning to the Estonian capital of Tallinn between 25^th and 29^th April 2018 at Olympic Park Casino.

Players will find games available in many formats with stakes starting as low as €1/€1 and the sky is the limit in terms of how high.  Prior festivals offered poker variants that included no-limit hold’em, Sviten Special (aka Drawmaha), pot-limit Omaha, Open-Face Chinese poker, H.O.R.S.E., Super Dealer’s Choice and many more.

The social aspect that the Cash Game Festival encourages sees players making friends easily and feeling part of a family after attending just one event.

The Cash Game Festival not only offers a bar and lounge area for players to hang out when they are not playing but also offers hospitality packages to those players that won a high hand promotion in prior festivals, as well as satellite winners from its online poker partners that include OlyBet, Unibet and 32Red.

The festival will also host two televised feature tables daily at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on a 20-minute delay with hole cards exposed on the Cash Game Festival Twitch channel.

Andrew “Picasso” Hedley and Herny Kilbane, two prior commentators of the festival, will team up for analysis of the action together with friendly banter among themselves, guest hosts and viewers in the Twitch chat.

The Cash Game Festival will award a trophy to the best performer at all of the televised feature tables of the event.

Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk, the Co-Founder of the Cash Game Festival, won the fifth-ever Cash Game Festival trophy during the last stop of the festival at Banco Casino Bratislava on 4^th to 8^th April winning €1,563 (781 big blinds) at a €2/€2 pot-limit Omaha table.

Von Zweigbergk feels that winning one trophy is not enough and is challenging everyone to keep him from winning it again to become the first player to win back-to-back Cash Game Festival trophies.

World Series of Poker Circuit Debuts in Russia from 13th May 2018

partypoker LIVE has signed a four-year agreement in terms of which it will become the major partner for live poker tournaments at the Casino Sochi, Russia with the partnership kicking off in style with partypoker helping to run the first-ever World Series of Poker Circuit event in Russia.

The festival is scheduled to run from Sunday, 13^th May to Sunday, 27^th May 2018 at the spectacular Casino Sochi where there will be seven “ring events” rewarding their champion a sought-after WSOP Circuit ring during these dates.  A massive amount of P243 million is guaranteed to be won during the festival which equals to approximately $4 million.

The Main Event features the biggest guarantee with the P66.000 ($1,100) buy-in tournament seeing P120 million ($2 million) guaranteed that is bound to attract select poker players from Europe, Russia and all over the world.

Yet another ring event that comes with a large guarantee is the P16.500 ($275) Colossus event which has P60 million ($1 million) up for grabs.  Other ring-awarding events include the Super High Roller, High Roller, Monster Stack, Closer and Pot Limit Omaha.

Players can choose from a total of eight Day 1s in the Main Event that includes two that are to be played online at partypoker.  These run on Tuesday, 1^st and Sunday, 20^th with the live Day 1s starting on Tuesday, 22^nd May 2018.

partypoker will also be hosting an online Day1 and online Day2 for the Colossus.

Satellites to the WSOP-C Russia Main Event are available online at partypoker.  Feeder tournaments start at a mere $0.50 and feed into $22 buy-in Semi Finals which award seats to the $215 WSOP-C Russia Finals running on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday guaranteeing between 15 and 30 x $1,175 seats.

Unibet Open Partners with Cash Game Festival and Unibet Deepstack Open

The team at Unibet is pleased to reveal that it will be partnering with the Cash Game Festival and joining forces with the Unibet Deepstack Open in conjunction with Casino Malta for the first time.

The Cash Game Festival takes effect today, Wednesday 4^th April 2018 at the next stop of the year – the Banco Casino Bratislava in Bratislava, Slovakia -and will continue until Sunday 8^th April 2018.

The Cash Game Festival includes over 120 hours of consecutive live cash games at high and low stakes as well as two televised feature tables a day.  The festival also hosts lots of thrilling activities outside the felt for online qualifiers and those that take part in the hospitality package.

The Unibet Open will also be partnering with the Unibet Deepstack Open in conjunction with Casino Malta for the first time in May of this year at the Intercontinental Hotel in the dazzling area of St. Julian’s, Malta.

The festival will commence with the two-day €330 Unibet Deepstack Open Cup on Wednesday, 16^th and Thursday, 17^th May 2018 with the final day streaming on the Unibet Open website.

The Unibet Open Malta will feature 10 action-packed events in total that will be highlighted by the €1,100 Unibet Open Main Event.

The schedule includes the €220 NL Turbo Bounty tournament, a €330 Deepstack tourney as well as a special €110 Ladies Event hosted by Daiva Byrne.  Other Unibet ambassadors include Rauno “Estonian Jesus” Tahvonen, Espen Uhlen Jorsad, two-time Unibet Open champion Dan Murariu and The Chip Race podcast hosts David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney.

The €10,000 invitational “Battle Royale” freeroll is yet another highlight to the festival in Malta that will see eSports stars competing for a top prize of €5,000.  During the last Battle Royale that took place at the Unibet Open London in February 2018, Dutch player Thijs Molendijk won the title with Phil “syrinxx” Schpenebaum coming in at second place and Scott “Sco” McMillan cashing in third place.

Grosvenor Casino’s Full Schedule for 2018

Grosvenor Casinos has released its full schedule of live poker events for this year which includes details of the 12^th season of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT), namely the Goliath, the popular 25/25 Series and the UK Student Poker Championships.

Last year’s GUKPT featured 10 legs and awarded  £3,698 throughout the year.  The coming season’s schedule has been reduced by one leg with GUKP Walsall having been removed from the calendar.

The first leg of the 2018 GUKPT took place in London between 28^th January and 4^th February 2018 with a £1,100 buy-in Main Event and a £200,000 guarantee.

The tour heads to Manchester from London then to Edinburgh, Reading, back to London for a £560 buy-in tournament and a £100,000 guarantee then to Leeds, Luton, Blackpool, finishing off the year with a £2,140 Grand Final with a massive guaranteed prize pool of £400,000.

The 2018 GUKPT Schedule is as follows –

The Goliath was the biggest live poker tournament held outside the USA during 2017 when 6,385 entries were processed.  This year’s edition that runs from 26^th July to 5^th August 2018 could increase with the eventual champion being guaranteed to win at least £100,000 for an investment of £125.

Grosvenor’s 25/25 Series is a well-structured tournament that players can play for a low buy-in cost of £225.  It offers guaranteed prize pools of £25,000 and heads to 30 casinos between 11^th January and 9^th December 2018.

The Grosvenor Casinos UK Student Poker Championship takes place from 4^th to 8^th April 2016 at the Grosvenor Casino Coventry in the Ricoh Arena.  The Main Event is a £37 buy-in.

Unibet Poker Announces UK Poker Tour Season 3 Dates

Unibet Poker has announced that it has once again partnered with Caesars Interactive UK for the third season of its UK Poker Tour.

A £220 buy-in Main Event that features in each of the four stops boasts a £40,000 guaranteed prize pool with players having an opportunity to win their way into it cheaply, online at Unibet Poker.  Unibet has made a number of changes to the Main Event’s structure following feedback from the tour’s players.

One of the biggest changes is doubling the starting stack from 25,000 to 50,000 chips that should result in deeper stacks as the tournament progresses.  There is also a huge change in the introduction of what Unibet Poker is calling the “flexi-clock” that sees blind levels range between 25 and 45 minutes depending on the stage the tournament is in.

It will still be possible for players to re-enter once per starting day and play in Day 1a as well as Day 1b, taking their largest stack through to the final day.

Unibet UK Poker Tour 2018

Unibet is due to run two” last longer” promotions at each UK Poker stop. A €2,000 Unibet Open package will go to the online qualifier who lasts the longest in each Main Event and an additional €2,000 Unibet Open package will be awarded to each stop’s champion.

Players have a chance to win a €500 package online at Unibet Poker.  Unibet Poker will also run a three package guaranteed final each Saturday at 7.00 p.m. GMT where players can secure the Unibet UK Poker Tour Main Event buy-in as well as some spending money.

David Lappin, an Ambassador at Unibet, revealed that he is a huge fan of grassroots poker that it is players’ responsibility as pro’s to support it whenever possible.  He added that the UK Tour travels to great venues, guarantees tasty prize-pools and this year, it is introducing a world-class modern innovation with the “Flexi-Clock” – a dynamic intuitive structure that promises meaningful poker from the start and more play at the end when it counts.

Ambassador Daiva Byrne will be hosting a Ladies event for UK players on the final day of each stop and they can also enjoy a free poker seminar at each event run by Ian Simpson, the former Irish Open Champion.

The Big Game to Return with PLO Edition at partypoker Millions Germany

Partypoker’s The Big Game, which is one of the most famous televised cash games around, will be returning next month for its very first PLO edition.  The eight-handed €50/€100 game is scheduled to take place during the €12.5 million guaranteed MILLIONS German series at King’s Casino in Rozvadov.

The cash game will run for 36 hours straight, starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday, 10^th February and ending at 6 a.m. on Monday, 12^th February 2018.  There will be a minimum buy-in for the game of €20,000 and players will have an opportunity to buy in for a maximum of €40,000.

Numerous interesting players, which include leading pros and businessmen, are expected on the scene, many of them the usual experts, namely partypoker Ambassador Sam Trickett, actress and WSOP Ladies Event winner Jennifer Tilly, Dusk till Dawn owner Rob Yong and accomplished businessman known as “The Wolf” Yair Bitoun.

International poker experts Phil Laak, Philipp Gruissem and Viktor Blom will also be attending as well as another figure who has been instrumental in attracting the multitude of viewers to The Big Game – Lithuanian poker pro-turned-politician Antanas “Tony G” Guoga.

The Big Game is unique due to the presence of an online qualifier joining the game by winning the partypoker Big Game Challenge.  The competition for this seat that comes with a package valued at over $27,000 will run online at partypoker between now and Sunday, 4^th February 2018 with the winner being awarded the following –

• $20,000 Big Game buy-in
• $5,300 MILLIONS Online entry
• €1,100 MILLIONS Open entry
• 5 nights’ accommodation
• $900 for travel and expenses

Partypoker is also bringing back the “vote-off”, a feature of the original game.  Another feature that is new for the upcoming edition is the “party button booster”.

Sam Trickett, commented on the forthcoming event by saying that he is really looking forward to the return of The Big Game as it is always huge fun to play – even if you do not win – and he is looking forward to testing his PLO skills against the likes of Isildur and Tony G.

Trickett went on to say that The Big Game is one of the most popular poker shows on TV and will be a very exciting part of the MILLIONS Germany schedule in Rozvadov.

PokerStars Shared Liquidity Network in Europe to Use “Seat Me”

PokerStars will be using a shared European liquidity network soon that will not allow players to table select.

Online poker traditionally allows players to browse through a selection of available tables and then choose the seats they liked best.  However, with the “Seat Me” system, players get to choose a game and a stake while the system selects a seat for them, which is similar to the way seating works in most live poker rooms.

Severin Rasset, the Director of Innovation and Poker Operations at PokerStars, commented that they have achieved most of their initial goals with “Seat Me”.   Rasset went on to say that this will greatly reduce players’ ability to hunt specific opponents, completely preventing the use of seating scripts and creating an environment where recreational players play more hands.

There are a number of challenges that come with a shared liquidity network that include regulatory hoops to jump through in two different jurisdictions, which make it quite difficult if the two areas are not on the same page in terms of regulations.  The rollout of the actual product presents choices due to the fact that the operator cannot always simply copy and paste an old product into a new market.

Spain has, in this case, been the test market for “Seat Me”.

According to PokerStars, the system was meant to “improve the overall experience” of players.  They explicitly announced that they were endeavouring to reduce the ability to “bumhunt” or allow strong players to look out for weaker ones.  The new system aimed at seating scripts allowing players to instantly sit whenever a profitable seat opened and data mining, where players could collect data on opponents’ play styles without actually playing with them.

Unfortunately, the system effectively blocked players from “railbirding” on the high stakes tables which have been a vast part of online poker since its inception at most sites.  The industry has, however, been changing.

A year after the implementation of Seat Me, PokerStars had a decision to make with the coming shared liquidity network between Spain and France and eventually Italy and Portugal.  They could go with traditional online poker seating or Seat Me out of the Spain test market.

PokerStars has seen enough of a positive result from the system and intends implementing it to a wider customer base.

888 Ambassadors Head to London in February

888poker Live will be returning to action for the first time this year when it makes its’ way to Aspers Casino in London from Thursday 8^th to Sunday 11^th February 2018.

888poker Live Kick Off 2018 is a £440 buy-in tournament that will feature four starting flights that come with a guaranteed prize pool of a massive sum of £120,000.  Day 1 will see players sitting down with 25,000 tournament chips in order to play blinds of 30 minutes and 40 minutes on Day 2.  Those players who dust off their stack during the 210-minute late registration period will have a chance to re-enter twice.

It would appear as though a number of members of the 888poker ambassador lineup will be present in the British capital.  Dominik Nitsche will definitely be playing while a trio of 888’s ladies will also be heading to London.  Kara Scott, Natalie Hof and 888poker’s newest ambassador Vivian Saliba will be demonstrating their skills at Aspers Casino.

Chris Moorman, online poker’s most recognized player, is also due to descend on the largest casino in the United Kingdom and will be pulling out all the stops in order to get 2018 off to a winning start.  Moorman is bound to be confident of winning a tournament on home soil.

Although the £440 buy-in makes 888poker Live Kick Off 2018 quite affordable, 888poker is still running satellites into the £120.000 guaranteed Main Event.  A $12 buy-in satellite guarantees at least one £440 ($600) seat while those wanting to get their hands on a package are required to play in the $30 buy-in satellites.

Those players who manage to play their way to a $1,200 package will receive –

• The £440 ($600) 888poker Live Kick Off Main Event buy-in
• $300 for accommodation
• $300 for travel expenses

There are also feeder satellites at a cost of a mere $0.01 running around the clock for those wanting to try and win a $1,200 package for a single cent.