Good morning everybody, some fine folks recently took notice of my interest in Poker, and asked me to go check out this fancy news site, WSOP Journal. For anyone interested in up-to-the-minute updates about all World Series of Poker news, this site is the official source.

They’ve got updates on official WSOP events and schedules and even resources on educating yourself about poker and how to become a pro.

They even have their own online poker room, which actually has a really slick interface. You can specify “favorites” by selecting a series of options like game type, limit type, and there’s also this awesome little double-slider to specify a range of acceptable stakes. That’s something I’d like to see more of.

We know you’ve seen the World Series of Poker on TV, and you probably want to know more. So go check this place out, WSOPJournal.COM

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Free iPods, Free Laptops, Free PS3s, we’ve all seen the ads. We’ve all seen the little asterisk marked “participation required” and we all know it’s bullshit.

This isn’t one of those things.

I was recently turned on to a neat little site called http://www.pokersource.com/ that has a lot of neat promotional offers for various online poker sites.

One such promotion is something called their “Free Poker Money No Deposit Offers” I took a look at it, with intense scrutiny, waiting to find the line that told me what the definition of “Poker Money” was or that “free” meant I had to sell my soul to Apple corporation but no, actually, I didn’t find any of that.

Basically, it works like this. You sign up for the first time at one of their partner’s poker rooms with a special referral code when you create the account (I picked Absolute Poker, and I have been enjoying it a lot, but that’s another story) and you also sign up at Pokersource. Make sure all the account info matches at both sites.

Then, this part struck me as odd, they call you. To verify your identity and make sure you’re not trying to scam them. I would have given up at this part if they’d asked me to call some shady number because who knows what the charges would be, but no they actually call you instead to say hello and ask you to tell them your account name and verify your name.

And that’s it. $50 cash goes into your account to play with after a couple days, and after you’ve played enough hands you get an additional $50 (in $5 increments).

I wouldn’t bother to mention it if I hadn’t been enjoying the hell out of Absolute Poker’s 10-Step sit and go tournaments, which are a lot of fun to play. Their blackjack tournaments are a blast too. I got my cash no problem and I have been slowing building my bankroll and I haven’t had to pay a penny (I don’t seem to have been scammed, either)

You can check out this entire promotion and all the details at http://www.pokersource.com/free-poker/money/

You can find me at Absolute Poker, I am Endymian of course. If I should happen to bust out on AP (heaven forbid) I’ll roll on over to their other promo, Ultimate Bet and try my luck there if I can.

See you at the tables!

Being a gamer, I went there and naturally wanted to play a bit. Staying on the Strip affords you a lot of options, and most of them are pretty pricey. A few places have $3 Blackjack, but expect to see one table, with a novice dealer, and a crowd around it. If that’s your bag. Go for it.

But really, by the second day, I was tired of the abuse. Not just from the expensive table games–that was expected. But the casino personnel in general have become rude and altogether disinterested in customer satisfaction. (See also: I will not stay at Circus Circus ever again, and I would not recommend it to anyone.) I could go on for hours about how much trouble I got just trying to redeem a coupon I got in the funbook I received upon checkin. Maybe that’ll be a story for another time.

What I am getting at, is that the gambling was downright miserable on the strip. On the last day, we decided to see what was around the outlying area. We wanted to go “where the locals go to play” because that’s what they keep saying to do if you want to play. Right? Well, they’re right. We should have left that dump in the first place.

We came across a fancy little joint down in Henderson (it’s like fifteen minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip) called Jokers Wild

Anyone miss being able to eat a good dinner in Vegas for cheap? How does a 1 lb. Prime rib dinner with soup and salad bar for $12 grab you? Or a 1 lb. Porterhouse steak for a couple bucks more? Them’s old vegas prices. And the food is good too.

Oh, but what about the gambling? Check this out, on the weekdays: $1.00 Craps. 25cent/$1 min. Roulette, and $3 Blackjack and 3 card poker…and that’s every table.

How about slots? Oh, is that what you’re into? How about some three-reel, single-line, three-credit nickel slots with progressive jackpots? Or 50-play videopoker for pennies?

But what about the weekends? They hike their prices right? Yep…you caught me. Craps and roulette go up a dollar. (gasp)

And the people? Friendly. Dragonkitty and I started playing Craps, not really interested in signing up for the slot club right away because we weren’t sure how long we’d be there. The pit boss approached us, recognized that we weren’t regulars, and offered to sign us up while we were playing. He took our IDs to the slot club booth for us and brought back our cards for us. That’s service.

On a completely unrelated note, a drunk guy and his even drunker girlfriend got into a scuffle with security and had to be escorted out. (Awesome!) I’m told that doesn’t happen often, but it sure was entertaining! We had a blast, I would recommend this place to anyone; especially anyone who laments for the good old vegas days with good old vegas prices. I was very pleased with this place and I will definitely return.

Today we’re going to take a look at a pretty interesting online poker site; part of the 888.com online casino, Pacific Poker offers good online poker games with some great bonuses happening right now.

Their current promotion is a 100% deposit bonus (meaning they match your first deposit) up to $400, and from what I read, you only need to clear 75% of it, meaning that technically–if you wanted to, you could deposit $400, and you would have $500 available to you to play with (and possibly withdraw if you so chose) to get the rest of the bonus deposited, all you need to do is play.

Ultimatepokerbankroll will help me explain this a bit better: “Pacific has a 100% to 400 dollar bonus, but you only need to clear 75% of it. The first 25% is in your bankroll after deposit. So if you deposited for the full 400, you would have to earn 3000 points to clear the remaining 300. Bonus points are earned thusly, for every dollar in rake you contribute to the pot or pay in tournaments, you earn two bonus points and two of their normal points. Pacific calculates this based on the amount you wager in a hand. So if the pot is 10 dollars and you wagered 5, you’d earn half the rake in the hand.”

To me, any poker room that gives me a portion of my deposit bonus right away with no strings attached sounds like a good deal. Most of them make you jump through a bunch of hoops just to get the first dollar of your promised deposit match so that is pretty cool.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try the cash games myself because they do not allow players with United States IP addresses to play. But the play environment is widely and clearly regarded as an above-average experience; and in the sea of mediocrity that is online poker rooms, that is saying a lot.

Another benefit to this is that you can play without actually having to download anything.  Just look for the small “Quick Play – No Download” button underneath the big green download button and it will launch a handy Flash interface for you. This is especially important since (probably due to the cash depositing features in the software) the downloadable may report a “Potentially Harmful Dialer” by some Anti-Virus applications, which may or may not actually do anything. But I have notified them of this and they are looking into it. 888.com is very proud of their reputation for having software that is free of adware and spyware releasing something that actually had a virus in it would be corporate suicide for them. It is probably harmless, but I just want you to be aware of it.

Edit [4/28/2009] : The wonderful folks at PacificPoker have been working on the ‘virus threat’ issue because of my recommendation and have now fixed the problem! It was, in fact, a false positive and it’s been fixed so now no anti-virus software should incorrectly report pacificpoker’s software as a potential threat anymore. Great customer service!

So if you’re a fan of Texas Hold’em, 7-card stud, Omaha, or Poker Tournaments give Pacfiic Poker a shot right HERE and try playing for free or give their deposit bonus a bash. You’ll have a blast.

Enter the Poker League; chances are, there’s one at a restuarant or bar&grill you already go to pretty regularly. The league I belong to, All-In Entertainment holds games at various establishments all over my home city of Phoenix, and they also have venues in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

It’s “Free” poker, which means that there is no fee specifically to play, but you are implicitly expected to eat a little bit or at least have a beverage of some kind to support the venue who is paying the organizers to be there. The Winners each night get gift cards to the venue in which you played, or on some special nights cash, or other exciting prizes.

It’s a great way to learn how to play better, the environment is friendly, and it’s a really unique feeling to have a place where “everybody knows your name” every week to play cards in an inexpensive learning environment.

All-in Entertainment, like many other leagues, award points to the top finishers in each game as well, and at the end of every season the top finishers will play for a league-paid seat at the World Series of Poker, which is one heck of a way to break into pro-level play. All of this for a couple sodas and a burger every tuesday night isn’t such a bad idea if you’re looking for something to do, is it?

I’ve been giving All-In a lot of plug time because I currently play with them every week and I think they are a particularly great organization, but not to worry because there are others too! Check to see which ones are playing in your area and go learn how to play like a shark.

All-In Entertainment

Nationwide Poker Tour

Red White and Blue Poker

United Poker League

The World Poker Tour has an Amateur League as well, you can search for venues in your area HERE

Today’s post is about Poker, specifically Online poker. Online poker is becoming more and more popular and rightfully so, more and more websites appear to try and cash in on it. But it is sometimes difficult to seperate the good ones from the bad, which ones hassle US players, and which ones are the “best” to play at.

One way to help your decision on which one to start at is to look at what sites give you the best signup bonus. Many good poker sites will match your first deposit (usually 100%), up to a certain amount (usually around $500). Because it is so easy to find sites that match 100% and up to $500 on the first deposit, I would seriously hesitate signing up for anything less, a lot of sites even offer more money than that.

Another thing that you need to consider that a lot of people don’t is rakeback. The way online and physical casinos make their money from poker is by taking a small percentage of each pot for the house. This is called the rake. By signing up through certain affiliates you can maximize the money you make by getting a certain percentage of your contribution to that casino rake paid back to you.

How do you do this, you ask? Well, I’m going to send you to another website I know of, run by a fellow Something Awful goon, www.ultimatepokerbankroll.com I have no personal affiliation to this site, but it helped me a lot when I started playing cash games myself for the first time. This site has guides for starting out with $100, or even starting with $0 as an initial deposit or investment. It reviews almost every poker site in detail and gives you very specific and clear rundowns of what their deposit bonus(es) are, and what your rakeback percentage will be if you sign up with them.

My personal favorite sites right now are Cake Poker, and Full Tilt Poker. Both offer you the chance to play for free both for play money, and in free cash tournaments daily. Also the interface is easy to use. But don’t just take my word for it, go check out UPB and decide for yourself.

Cards in the air, good luck.