Caribbean Poker Classic

The 5th annual Caribbean Poker Classic which was held from the 16^th to the 23^rd of  November, 2008 was the most popular and certainly the most adventurous of 2008. Why, you ask? Well thats because it was held aboard one of the world’s largest cruise ships, the Freedom of the Seas which sailed across San Juan Puerto Rico, Charlotte Amalie St. Thomas and Philipsburg St. Maarten. This week long poker extravaganza kicked off once the ship set sail from Miami, Florida. The organizers of the Caribbean Poker Classic chalked out a detailed and informative schedule for players with details of game timings, cruise schedule, event schedule, excursion schedule, etc.

You must be asking yourself “How do I get into a Caribbean Poker Classic?” It’s simple there a two ways by which a person may get in and that is either by playing and winning a satellite (preliminaries starting in May), or by buying a seat in the main event But only people above the age of 18 yrs will be legible to play and will be required to a produce proof of their age.

Texas Hold’em isn’t the only option the Caribbean Poker Classic has to offer it also serves up action-packed side events, Satellites, a $2,500 main event and endless cash games. Besides poker the Caribbean Poker Cruise 2008 hosted a whole itinerary of events ranging right from dinners to rock climbing and ice skating, and yes it’s all available on board!! But ofcourse all this came at pricing options of $5K and $10K.

All-in-all the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008 was a mega success with 2 Super Satellites, 4 Categories of No Limit Hold’em ($300+$30, $400+$40, $500+$50, $1000+$100) and a Main Event spread over a span of 7 days, gave the poker stars plenty of action and doe, and the press people to talk about!! The Caribbean Poker Classic organizers spared no pennies when it came to spending as they looked after their guests like royalty.

Yes the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008 was one which will go down in the books as being one of the Special Tournaments of 2008 not only for its grandeur and pomp but also as one of the biggest poker tournaments of 2008.

European Poker Tour

The European Poker Tour (more commonly referred to as the EPT) began in 2004 as part of the worldwide explosion in Texas Hold 'em poker popularity. The EPT is a series of televised poker tournaments and is very similar to the World Poker Tour (WPT). It is branded and partially owned by Poker Stars.

In seasons 1-3 of the European Poker Tour, the most significant difference between itself and the World Poker Tour was the buy-in and its effect on the prize pool. The EPT featured buy-ins about half the size of the WPT and therefore the prize pool was somewhat smaller. This changed in season 4 when the buy-in for most of the EPT events was increased to €8,000. The increase was made due to its high popularity and lack of space in participating casinos. At the time (2007) after exchange rates, the buy-in was close to equal to US$10,000 which is the buy-in for most WPT events.

The final table of the European Poker Tour is made up of 8 players. This is again different to the 6 player final tables popularized by the World Poker Tour.The EPT is taped by Sunset + Vine for television broadcast across Europe.

The European Poker Tour was created by John Duthie, winner of the inaugural Poker Million tournament. John Duthie commentates for the show, alongside Colin Murray and James Hartigan. The show was first hosted by Caroline Flack, then joined by Natalie Pinkham. Season 4 of the show is hosted by Kara Scott.

There to date have been 6 seasons of the EPT. Although the location of the EPT changes frequently major locations such as London, Copenhagen and Monte Carlo remain the same each year; usually with Monte Carlo being the season finale location. The following locations are where the European Poker Tour have been held to date:

· Barcelona (Barcelona Open 2004)

· London (European Poker Classics)

· Dublin (The Irish Winter Tournament 2004)

· Copenhagen (Scandinavian Open 2005)

· Deauville (The French Open 2005)

· Vienna (11th Vienna Spring Poker Festival)

· Monte Carlo (European Poker Tour Grand Final)

· Baden (The Big Double 2006)

· Dortmund (EPT Dortmund)

· Warsaw (EPT Warsaw)

· Prague (EPT Prague)

· PokerStars Caribbean Adventure

· Sanremo (EPT Sanremo)

· Budapest (EPT Hungarian Open)

· Kyiv

· Vilamoura

· Salzburg

As the European Poker Tour has many events a Talley has been kept alike the Olympic Games showing each countries win score and Talley. This has no real meaning but may in years to come. Until now The United States is in the lead with a total score of 9 wins. Here is a chart showing countries who have taken down an EPT event:

1st United States 9

2nd England 7

3rd Germany 5; France 5

5th Netherlands 4; Sweden 4

7th Denmark 3; Canada 3

9th Finland 2; Norway 2; Portugal 2

12th Lebanon 1; Italy 1; Russia 1

The European Poker Tour Seasons 1 to 6 can be found on youtube and pokertube in bits and pieces with the final table of each event the easiest to find. This is brilliant viewing for all poker players across the globe.

Mansion Poker Card Room Review

Over the week end was able to write this Mansion Poker card room review. Mansion Poker is sure to please almost every online gamer.

The highlight of this Mansion Poker card room review is the fact that Mansion Poker has a good 100% first time deposit bonus of up to $500. If you make your first deposit using moneybookers, the deposit bonus increases to $150% up to $500 which makes moneybookers the place to deposit from for Mansion poker.

For every 1000 Mansion Poker Points earned, $10 of your bonus will be released as cash into your Mansion Poker account. It is easy to earn points with 20 points for every single dollar spent on a tournament and points are earned in ring games regardless of whether you play the hand or not, so long as you are dealt cards and rake is taken from the hand.

Another good thing found during this Mansion Poker card room review  is that the refer a friend bonus is also good. A $75 bonus for you and a $25 welcome gift for your friend is up for grabs. You will receive your bonus amount as soon as your invited friend makes a successful deposit. Your friends deposit must be $50 or more and they must earn 200 Mansion Poker Points before you receive your bonuses.

Mansion Poker offers happy hours where point earning doubles making all promotions easier to accomplish then a lot of sites. They seem to continually change, but are always offering fabulous promotions and bonuses with extraordinary pays. There really are too many promotional tournaments and challenges to list as part of this Mansion Poker card room review and i will leave it to you to explore further on the mansion poker site.

Deposit Methods 10/10
Mansion Poker offers a massive amount of deposit methods for its customers. With such a huge range everyone is sure to be happy no matter what location they are from in the world.

Tournaments and Sit N Go's 7/10
Mansion Poker offers a massive 1 million dollar guaranteed tournament every month, what's more, you can make your way into this massive prize pool for free. Satellites to the tournament run continually. Download Mansion Poker and search for them in the lobby for your chance to win your way to 1 million dollars cash. They also have on other other guaranteed tournaments including their massive (but not quite as big as 1mil) 20k GTD.
Mansion splits tournaments and Sit N Go's into 2 sections. What i saw during the Mansion Poker card room review is that there Sit N Gos cater for the biggest of online gamers down to the smallest with up to $5000 entries. Private Sit N Gos are available if organized.

Mansion Poker offers tournament satellites, major online qualifiers for live events and a regular tournament schedule also. Tournament buy ins range form the smallest of all being freerolls through to $500 entries.

Tournaments and Sit N Go's run around the clock on Mansion Poker. Depending on your stakes, you shouldn't have much of a wait time to get a game.

Withdrawal Methods 10/ 10
There is no hassle getting your winnings off Mansion Poker. Mansion has just about every part of globe happy with the withdrawal methods they have available at the time of this Mansion Poker card room review .

Traffic 7/10
There is never a shortage of traffic at mansion poker with as many as 20 thousand plus players online at any one time during peak hours. Players are primarily tournament players but you can find thousands in the ring games also.

Customer Service 8/10
Mansion Poker offers a great support system with email, chat and telephone support available 24/7. One bad thing about this Mansion Poker card room review is that it cost money to call Mansion Poker as phone calls are not toll free.

Game Selection 8/10
Mansion poker offers a good selection of the basic poker variants such as:

• NL Texas Holdem
• Pot Limit Texas Holdem
• Limit texas holdem
• Omaha hi
• Omahahi/lo
• 5 Card Stud
• 7 card stud

Unfortunately Mansion Poker doesn't offer games such as H.O.R.S.E in either ring or tournament play due to the unavailability of RAZZ. If RAZZ and H.O.R.S.E unavailable doesn't effect you, mansion may just be the right home for you.

Ring Games 6/ 10
Mansion offers ring games in all of its game selections:

• NL Holdem; 1c/2c through to $200/$400 blinds
• Limit Holdem Games available in 2c/4c through to $300/$600 limit blin
• Pot Limit Holdem 2c/4c through to $50/$100 blinds
• Limit Omaha is available in 2c/4c Blinds through to $50/$100 blinds
• Pot Limit Omaha has blinds to play from 1c/2c through to $100/$200
• Limit Omaha Hi/Lo has stakes from 2c/4c through to $200/$400
• Pot limit Omaha hi/lo available from 1c/2c to $50/$100
• 7 Card Stud you have the option of 5c/10c stakes through to $50/$100
• 5 Card Stud has blinds from 5c/10c through to $100/$200

However during the Mansion Poker card room review i noticed that Mansion Poker is missing some ring games other sites have but if you are not a big fan of them there is no great loss. As with most sites, most of Mansion Pokers traffic is on the lower limit ring games. There are few players in the stud ring games at most times.

Software 7/10
Mansion Poker although in Lime Green is a very attractive site and it looked quite good while doing my Mansion Poker card room review. The graphics are clean and smooth and the lobby is easy to maneuver around. The avatars are all pretty plain, but are human like. The software seems very stable and smooth running. Mansions software is nothing to be excited about other then you can be pretty sure it isn't going to crash on you.

Mansion offers a filter system that can be very handy, it can be reset unlike a lot of others leaving you stranded with an annoying lobby mess. Mansion sends newsletters to its customers on a regular basis so you are sure to know what's hot at any given time. They have a comprehensive section for club M where everything is finely detailed. There are really not too many extra features but the site itself is practical and simple to use which is what counts.

Overall while doing this Mansion Poker card room review i would say Mansion poker is known for weaker players, a moderate amount of traffic, but with unique software, large deposit bonuses and the cash-added tournaments. Unfortunately U.S. Players are Not Allowed.