Cake Poker is giving out 100% more gold cards until July 15th.  This means that gold cards will be released from the gold card vault twice as fast as they were being released previously.  This is great news for all cash game players at Cake Poker because gold cards are highly sought after and they can be used in a variety of ways that add value to the player.  Gold cards can be used to receive cash or tournament tickets in the daily gold card lottery, they can also be used to earn miles in the weekly gold card races for cash and can also be used to buy-into many gold card specific tournaments run by Cake Poker.

If you don’t have an account at Cake Poker yet, this would be a great time to sign up if you are a cash game player in order to take advantage of the double gold cards promotion.  Use Cake Poker sign up code THE500 when signing up in order to receive a 110% up to $600 bonus on your first deposit.

Great service and cool new features make Entraction’s new skin TrickyPlay.com interesting more than ever

The Entraction Network is proud of having the fastest growth in 2008 in the European market. Hence, a new skin is on air called TrickyPlay.com. What makes TrickyPlay.com unique is their invention of an affiliate school, that teaches you not just the 101 of online marketing and player conversion but keeps you constantly up-to-date with fresh strategies and ideas to make a living as an affiliate. Even users who don’t know anything about affiliate marketing find everything they need to know to get their own business started. How fast and competent the affiliate managers are answering your requests is outstanding and very promising.

But it’s not just poker that is being offered at TrickyPlay.com. If you have players that like to gamble in a casino, or you like doing it yourself - the Netent online casino provides you will a seemingly gazillion of different games, like Roulette, Black Jack and also plenty of slot games like Arabian Nights, Dead or Alive or Pacific Attack and many many more. If you are more into video poker you will find all sort of different types of Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild and All American.

What makes the poker room tempting is the decent amount of traffic that Entraction offers and a very stable software. You can of course play Texas Hold’em and Omaha, but there are games like Telesina, Americana, 5-Card-Draw or even 2-7 Triple Draw that you find nowhere else. This huge variety offers a lot of exciting experience to every player.

Even the new Double-or-Nothing Sit and Gos are available at TrickyPlay.com. There you can simply double your Buy-In if you finish in the top 50% of the tourney.

And now for the biggest benefit if you are on the road a lot and working from different computers: If you want to play online but don’t want to install the poker software on the PC or MAC you are using, there is a perfect solution: Play online using your browser! TrickyPlay.com is offering this neat and rare browser poker option so their players can play from anywhere they want to. This liberty to use every computer you come along is an awesome feature for everybody who wants to play anyplace anywhere.

Online poker is taking over Europe is booming. Those are the words you can these days find from a lot of different places. And online poker truly is taking over Europe. Just as with many other things the online poker first gained popularity in America and when it became a major thing “across the pond” the Europeans started realizing how much fun playing poker online really is. The first countries that got swiped over with the poker pandemic were a bit surprisingly the Scandinavian countries Norway and Sweden. It can be speculated that this was mainly because practically every home in those countries had a fast and reliable internet connection already over ten years ago. It didn’t take a long for the online poker sharks in those countries to become main stream media figures. Poker players such as Erik “Erik123” Sagström and Bengt Sonner aka “pkrbt” were soon featured in major news magazines and TV programs. After Scandinavia the poker boom began taking over the central Europe and soon major European countries such as France and Germany witnessed their own poker boom. Currently the poker boom doesn’t show any signs of slowing down and every year a new European country finds itself in middle of the online poker storm.
Every year the player numbers keeps going up on the European Poker Tour and other on other European poker tournament series such as European Masters of Poker.
This is mainly caused by countless online poker sites focusing more of their marketing efforts on Europe and running satellites to those tournaments. PokerStars has taken it the furthest and is the official partner of the European Poker Tour. You can find satellites to all the European Poker Tour events at PokerStars. Another site where you can find major satellites is LuckyAcePoker.
Besides the online poker sites focusing on the European poker market, several poker news sites have decided to focus on Poker in Europe as well.  Most famous of them is the Euro Poker Pro which offers daily poker news and poker articles that focus mostly on European poker.

It has become very common for online poker rooms to have a casino section where players can take a break from the stresses of online poker and relax with some simple casino games.  The casino games that poker rooms offer include all of the popular casino table game so you can play blackjack, video poker, or even play roulette online.  It can be very nice after a bad beat to just hit up the casino section of the poker room and play until your anger has faded and you are ready to return to the felt.

Carbon Poker is one of the online poker rooms that has a casino section available for players.  Carbon offers blackjack, roulette, caribbean stud poker and video poker to players looking to take a break from the tables.  It is important to note however that the losses from these casino games aren’t recouped even if you are on the 30% Carbon Poker Rakeback plan.  A lot of players believe that the rakeback extends to the casino games and this is just not the case.

Party Poker is another top quality online poker room that offers casino games to players.  Party Poker’s casino is simply called Party Casino and is one of the many areas that Party Poker branched out into, the others being Party Bets and Party Bingo.  If you have never played at the Party Casino before then you should definitely use a PartyCasino.net Bonus Code in order to make sure you receive the sign up bonus from Party.

Overall I think it’s great that poker rooms are offering casino games to players.  There is no downside to incorporating them into the poker room.  If you don’t want to play them you don’t have to, but if you do get the urge they are there for your enjoyment.  Casino games are obviously not a great use of your money because of the house edge, but if they keep you from tilting your money away at the poker tables then maybe they do have their uses.

Full Tilt Poker has recently announced that they will begin to hold a $250K guaranteed tournament on the first Sunday after the 15th of each month.  The buy-in to these big events will be 5000 Full Tilt Points.  These tournaments are now the only ones on Full Tilt Poker where you can turn your Full Tilt points into cash.  The tournaments will have a 12000 player cap and the top 900 places will be paid.  First place is just over $26K and the 450-900 place finishers all receive just over $60.  You will also be able to satellite your way into these 5000 FTP tourneys for as little as just 50 points.  If the tournaments do cap out, which I expect them to, each seat will be worth approximately $21.

This tournament is very similar to the current PokerStars monthly $1M Turbo Takedown where all players must buy-in with just FPP’s.  Just because it’s a stolen idea though, doesn’t mean it’s not a good one.  I really like the sounds of this tournament because it gives all players a chance to turn those FTP’s that they don’t know what to do with into potentially a lot of cash.

The first tournament of this nature will be held on June 21st at 2:15pm EST.  There are already many Full Tilt pro’s entered including Gavin Smith and Lee Watkinson.  If you aren’t signed up at Full Tilt Poker yet you should download Full Tilt Poker now and start earning Full Tilt Points.  If you don’t get enough by the 21st there is always next months $250K guarnateed tourney.

PayPal is one of the most popular e-wallets available for use online and is the preferred choice because of its reputation, security and ease of transactions.  The one problem with PayPal has been their anti-gambling stance which has made it very difficult for online poker, casino or bingo rooms to accept PayPal payments even though the majority of online gamblers do have a PayPal account.  Well this problem has recently changed with many online poker rooms, casino rooms and bingo rooms allowing PayPal deposits for specific countries.

Some of the emerging PayPal poker rooms include Pacific Poker, Betfair Poker, Paddy Power Poker, Ladbrokes Poker, William Hill Poker and Party Poker.   Even though these poker rooms are allowing PayPal deposits they are only from a select few countries in Europe.

Some of the PayPal casino rooms include William Hill Casino, 888 Casino, Paddy Power Casino and Betfair Casino.  A lot of these casino’s also own PayPal bingo rooms that include Ladbrokes Bingo, William Hill Bingo, Paddy Power Bingo and Tombola Bingo.

At most of the sites mentioned above the minimum PayPal deposit is around €10 and the fact that these sites are now accepting PayPal will surely set them apart from the competition.  PayPal is such an easy to use online payment method and it is nice to see the gambling industry starting to incorporate PayPal into their plans.  Hopefully in the future more online gambling sites will start to accept PayPal and a larger list of countries will be on the accepted list.

Fortune Poker has announced a big 20,000 Euro rake race for the month of June.  Fortune will split the race into two stints of 2 weeks each which will award 10K Euros a piece.  First place in each half will win 1,750 Euros and this amount will decrease until the 50th through 125th place players earn 20 Euro each.  Fortune Poker does many rake races and they are one of the main attractions to the poker room.

If you are a big time cash game player these rake races provide a lot of value when used with the 30% Fortune Poker rakeback and the 200% up to $1000 bonuses.  If you are able to clear the entire $1000 bonus, while cashing in the rake race and earning 30% rakeback you will be up more money than you have paid to the poker room.  The great thing about Fortune Poker rakeback is that bonuses are not deducted from rake so you can take full advantage of all Fortune Poker bonuses and promotions.

Full Tilt Poker is bringing back the successful $25K world heads up poker championships.  The event will begin on May 23^rd at 3pm EST and the tournament will play down to the final four competitors.  These four players will then have to try to get some sleep before playing some of the biggest heads up poker matches of the year the next day.  The final four resume play at 4pm EST on Sunday and play down to a champion.

Last year the final four included Andy Bloch, Brian Hastings, David Singer and “whitelime”.  “Whitelime” was the only player remaining that was not a Full Tilt Poker red pro.  “Whitelime” did make the finals but eventually lost to champion David Singer.

This event is going to bring out all kinds of rail birds because all of the best heads up players in the world will be in the line-up.  Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Durrrr, Chris Ferguson and more are all sure to be in attendance.  The winner will walk away with a huge payday and the title of champion.

There will likely be sweat tournaments again on Sunday where if you win the tournament of the player that wins the heads up title you win a bonus prize.  The sweat tournaments will be great value for all players.

If you don’t have a Full Tilt Poker account you should sign up for one now using Full Tilt referral code “THEFULLTILT“.  If you use this bonus code Full Tilt will award you a 100% up to $600 bonus on your first deposit.