Game play at the World Series of Poker’s online poker room just got a lot more interesting as a host of new interactive features get added to the mix. However, the feature that takes the cake is their new private games (or lounges), which give players the opportunity to create their own cash games and tournaments and invite friends to join.

The private games add a new social dimension to the WSOP.com software, allowing players to mingle and chat in a more intimate environment. Players can go into the new “Lounges” tab to create their private games. Everything is customizable from the time, date, buy-ins, limits, rebuys, add-ons, etc. The game organizer will receive a special password that can be shared only with the invited players in order to keep the game exclusive.

Infamous for holding the most coveted land based tournaments in the world, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) has been in business since the 1970s and has awarded over a billion dollars in prize money. Their online poker room, WSOP.com, is one of the most outstanding gaming clients available in the UK with a huge choice of tournaments, easy access to casino games and a hugely appealing Welcome Bonus of 150% up to £500. On top of the bonus, new players get a free instant £20 when they make their first deposit, plus gain free entry to seven $500 First Depositors Freerolls. To download WSOP.com for free visit: poker.WSOP.com

The Poker Heaven Bad Beat Jackpot has once again built to an astonishing €780,000. Earlier this year Poker Heaven player OmgoMgomGo had Quad Kings beaten by Quad Aces whilst playing at a €0.50/€1 NLHE table. The world record jackpot was hit at €1,265,583.34, with OmgoMgomGo landing a jackpot prize of €442,954. In addition to the main prize, the winner of the hand – 7Adelaida7 scooped an additional €221,477, with a further 7 players all receiving €31,639.57 each for participating in the hand.Players are able to qualify for a huge payout at tables as low as €0.50/€1.

To qualify for the Bad Beat Jackpot players need to register and play at selected real money tables at PokerHeaven.com. If a player loses with Four of Kind Tens or better, and are using both their hole cards, then they will win the bad beat jackpot. The only other requirement is that 4 or more players are dealt into the hand.

You do not even have to have the losing hand to claim a share of the prizepool, you just need to be dealt into the qualifying hand. Full details of the distribution of the prizepool can be found at
www.pokerheaven.com/badbeat

The existing record of 115 hours was set by professional poker player Phil Laak at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas in 2010. Guinness World Records™ allow a 5 minute break every hour, and these can be banked for longer breaks.

“One of the biggest challenges will be finding enough players to play me” said Barry. “Guinness World Records™ will only allow other players to play for up to 4 hours at a time so we need as many players as possible to come along and take part, especially in the early hours or the mornings!”

The 5 day event will take place at G Casino, Bury New Road, Manchester from midnight on Sunday 1st July 2012. Poker players are invited to play for up to four hours, or just come along and watch. Donations can be given at www.justgiving.com/poker-marathon or by texting UKKT95 to 70070.

Help for Heroes (H4H) is a British charity launched on 1 October 2007 to help provide better facilities for British servicemen and women wounded since September 11, 2001. It was founded by Bryn Parry OBE and his wife Emma Parry OBE after they visited soldiers at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. The charity was launched after a meeting with General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army. H4H has attracted a number of high profile trustees and patrons and has the support of the Army Benevolent Fund and the Ministry of Defence.

PokerStars’ famous VIP scheme is based around what they call VIP Player Points or VPPs for short. VPPs are awarded to players who participate in real money cash games and tournaments on the site but the way they are awarded to cash game players has changed dramatically.

Under the old method, known as the “dealt method” anyone who was dealt cards would receive an equal share of the VPPs awarded during a hand but under the new “weighted contributed” method players are only awarded VPPs based on how much they have contributed to the pot. Using the example on the PokerStars site, imagine you are seated at a $1/$2 No Limit Hold’em table with four other opponents. Player one raises to $6, Player 2 folds, Player 3 folds, You call in the $1 small blind and Player 5 calls in the $2 big blind. After the flop you bet $9, the big blind moves all in for $21 and after Player 1 folds you make the call. The hand is completed, you win and the $60 pot is yours.

From this $60 pot PokerStars take $3 rake and as a result award the table 16.5 VPPs (5.5 VPPs per $1 in rake) and these were shared equally amongst players who received cards so everyone was rewarded with 3.3 VPPs each. However, under the new method only Player 1, yourself and Player 5 would receive VPPs. Player 1 contributed $6 (10% of the pot) so would receive 1.65 VPPs, you contributed $27 (45% of the pot) so would be given 7.43 VPPs, as would Player 5 who also contributed $27 to the pot. But Players 2 and 3 who both folded preflop would not receive anything.

Whilst a large percentage of players welcomed the changes mainly because the new system rewards those who play poker and get involved in games rather than the old system that literally rewarded players for playing extremely tightly creating a type of player known as a rakeback grinder, that is a player who makes hardly any profit from playing (in fact are usually slight losing players) but makes up for it through the reward schemes on sites.

Within minutes of the changes being announced players reacted angrily on the Two Plus Two forum with many saying PokerStars were using their position as the biggest online poker site to bully its loyal customers. One poster suggested that as a protest players should sit at 24 table, the most allowed on PokerStars, and simply sit out much like the French players did when the huge rake was revealed on the PokerStars.fr site. The sit-out protest was planned to go ahead on New Year’s day but as is usually the case PokerStars were one step ahead of the would-be protesters and started to employ measures to stop the protest from happening.

As players sat down then sat out they were suddenly faced with a pop-up informing them their playing privileges had been altered and that they were only allowed to sit at a single table, not 24 of them as they had initially planned so the protest was over before it had even begun.

PokerStars have offered to meet some player representatives in the coming months to show them the facts and figures behind the move and to prove the changes were not made as some sort of cash grab as some players had accused them of doing. Poker Channel Europe will being you more developments as they become known to us.

“The ownership and management of the new Tropicana, as well as Jamie, have an incredible vision for this relationship,” commented Gold’s agent, Randy Kasper of Poker Players International. “This deal is by far the biggest of its kind and the poker world will be shocked by many of the components as they are unveiled.”

“For the past three years, I have been focusing on raising money around the globe for worthy causes,” said Gold, who has worked with such high profile organizations as the United Nations and Global Creative Forum. “It has been so rewarding; I couldn’t begin to put it into words. I will continue to live up to my nickname as ‘The Poker Philanthropist’ while at the same time getting back to the game I love which has given me countless opportunities.”

Gold is the latest addition to Tropicana Las Vegas’ recently completed $180 million comprehensive transformation of the resort, with further expansion announcements to come in the near future. The relationship with Tropicana marks the re-emergence of the poker champion, known for winning the most coveted honor in poker and the $12 million largest prize in sports history, to the live poker scene. In addition, the relationship is one of a string of deals this year for Gold who, in early 2011, signed with Poker Players International (PPI) and a plan was created to move forward with a number of business ventures including www.jamiegold.com and www.freegoldpoker.com.

“This deal with Tropicana covers everything I could have ever wanted in a relationship with a major Las Vegas Strip resort and it will serve as my anchor and the conduit to all of my future poker and philanthropic endeavors,” continued Gold. “I really couldn’t be more excited!”

“We’re thrilled to welcome Jamie to the Tropicana family,” stated Melissa Steinberg, vice president of entertainment and casino operations at Tropicana Las Vegas. “This new poker room is sure to not only create unique and memorable gaming experiences for our guests, but will also give them the opportunity of a lifetime to play with one of the most iconic poker players of our time.”

London, December 1, 2011 – More than 100 poker players will enjoy the explosive atmosphere at the BAMMA 8 mixed martial arts event in Nottingham on 10 December through a free prize draw at PKR.com. In the fourth event of its kind this year, PKR is again offering players the opportunity to meet staff and other players, against the backdrop of one of sport’s fastest growing events. The prize draw is open to all PKR members and concludes on Friday 02 December.

PKR became the headline sponsor of BAMMA, Europe’s premier mixed martial arts organisation, in January 2011. The online poker site has since welcomed hundreds of its members to BAMMA events in Manchester, London and Birmingham, having offered tickets in free prize draws through the site’s busy forum and website.

PKR players who attend the upcoming BAMMA 8 event, which takes place in Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena on Saturday 10 December, will enjoy 13 bouts featuring some of the world’s top martial artists including light heavyweight champion Jimi ‘Poster Boy’ Manuwa, who makes his eagerly anticipated BAMMA debut. UFC legend Randy Couture is also rumoured to be making a promotional appearance.

Community Manager Dan Grant commented, “BAMMA events are a fantastic opportunity for our players to meet PKR and each other in a fun and social real-world setting. They’ll get to put faces to names they’ve met at our online tables and meet new poker mates while enjoying the great atmosphere of a thrilling sporting event.”

The GUKPT has a Main Event that commands a £1,070 entry fee whilst the UKIPT Main Events have just had their buy-ins increased to £770 leaving a gap in the market for a cheap-to-medium buy-in tournament and this is where Genting Poker have stepped in.

Starting on Wednesday 1 February 2012 at the Genting Club at Star City, Birmingham, the Genting Poker Series offers players one of the best structures in the world for just £430. Each player starts with a massive stack of 25,000 chips and the blinds begin at just 25/50 and increase every 60-minutes. This means that when play does get under way everyone will be playing 500 big blinds deep, something that is unheard of in the vast majority of live poker tournaments.

Along with the great structure, six of the seven stops have had a £100,000 guarantee slapped on them with the Grand Final, being held in December at The Palm Beach Casino, London having a £200,000 guarantee placed on it, though that particular Main Event costs £1,600 to enter. The seven stops see the tour go to Birmingham, Southend, Edinburgh, Stoke, Sheffield, London and there is even an online leg so no matter where you live in the UK you can take part in this tour.

Genting have really started to make their presence felt in the UK poker scene and it can only be good for the game as the casino giant can afford to challenge the biggest companies in the world. In recent months Genting have signed up the quartet known as The Hendon Mob, the man who reached the final tables of both the WSOP and WSOPE Main Events, James Akenhead and yesterday they purchased the Fox Poker Club for an undisclosed fee. It seems wherever you look lately Genting are there but competition is healthy in this industry and it can only be good news for poker players.

The Premier League saw 12 of poker’s most recognisable poker players get split into two groups of six and play three separates heats. Each heat was a six-handed sit ‘n’ go played first to No Limit Hold’em, then Pot Limit Omaha and finally Pot Limit Hold’em, with players receiving points depending on their finishing position in each heat.

Frankenberger hit the headlines during the three heats due to his unorthodox style of play, a style that saw him literally bulldoze his way through his opponents. Whilst his style may not have been seen as “standard” by the internet masses, nobody can argue that is was effective and he ran out a deserving winner.

Everyone who reached the final table was guaranteed their $25,000 entry fee back, the first player receiving this amount of prize money being the November Nine member, Matt Giannetti. He lost a flip with AdKd against the pocket jacks of Andrew Feldman around two hours in be the first player to be eliminated but he gave a great account of himself and he will certainly be around for years to come.

Next to go was one of two Brits to make the six-handed final, James Dempsey. The Brighton-based pro found himself short-stacked and committed his stack with AcJc and ran straight into Frankenberger’s dominating ace-queen. Dempsey did hit a jack on the river but Frankenberger had already spike a queen on the turn.

Italian Max Pescatori was the fourth place finisher. He flopped a set of sixes on a 2h-6s-5h flop and all the money went in against Frankenberger, with the latter holding Ah7h for a heart flush draw. This was completed when the Th landed on the turn and when the river failed to pair the board, Pescatori was sent to the rail.

Three became two when Sorel Mizzi open-shoved for around 20 big blinds with QhTh and was snapped off by Feldman holding AdTs. Neither player improved but Feldman’s ace kicker came into play and it was time for the heads up battle between Feldman and Frankenberger, a battle that lasted two hours. Feldman started as the shorter of the two stacks, never really recovered and in the end he had no answer for Frankenberger’s relentless aggression, though the final hand saw Frankenberger get extremely lucky,

With the chips going in preflop, Feldman looked on course to double up as his KhQc was dominating the KdTs of Frankenberger but the final board ran out Jd-8d-9c-Ac-Qs to give the American an unlikely straight and the win, busting out a distraught Feldman.

This latest victory, worth $100,000, means Frankenberger now has more than $2,000,000 in live tournament winnings in the past two years and he shows no signs of slowing down just yet.

Final Table Payouts

1st: Andy Frankenberger: $100,000
2nd: Andrew Feldman: $65,000
3rd: Sorel Mizzi: $45,000
4th: Max Pescatori: $35,000
5th: James Dempsey: $30,000
6th: Matt Giannetti: $25,000