@coolwhipflea and I have been discussing for some time now what we can do to expand and promote the Twitter Poker Tour. We have a pretty loyal, albeit small, following of die-hards that play in our weekly online poker events. Many of which have been with us since day 1. Over the years and months we have grown from 20 to 110 players and back to our regular 50 weekly players.

Some of the questions we asked ourselves:

1. Is the $5 + $1 buyin too small?
2. Is the one month leaderboard season too short?
3. Are we providing any added value to the league?
4. Are we creating compelling enough content on the Twitter Poker Tour website to attract and maintain traffic?

And over the last few weeks we have been putting together something that we hope will be exciting to our existing players and intriguing to our prospective players. We aim to answer all of the questions above, and in fact have already begun doing so.

For instance, we have started to post some poker strategy and how-to articles on-site and in the forums. Speaking of the forum, we have made steps to reinvigorate it. We have re-modded 4Get24BetMe. Some people love him, some hate him but there are a few things that are true about him: He has been a loyal supporter of the TPT since almost (if not the) beginning. He really knows how to play poker and (when he’s not being a wise-ass) does a pretty good job at explaining strategy in the forums. And he helps us out a lot behind the scenes.

As for what we have planned….that’ll have to wait for another post! Paul is working on a press release and we are finalizing some details with Full Tilt and our sponsors. When we are ready, you’ll be the first to know!

Recently, Full Tilt Poker was forced to pull their Rush Poker Mobile application from the Android marketplace. This application allowed players to play holdem poker online for real cash. According to Full Tilt, they voluntarily took the app off of the market for “maintenance.” In an email response to those questioning why the app was pulled, Full Tilt stated that the application was no longer available due to maintenance. They also mentioned that they were happy at how successful the app was but because it was only in the beta testing stage there were some maintenance issues that had to be addressed.

Though the aforementioned, is Full Tilt Poker’s take on the matter, the Android Market website seems to suggest otherwise. The website mentions that all gambling websites have to be rated correctly. The correct rating is Teen or above. Also, only simulated gambling is allowed, no real money games via apps are allowed. The latter may be a big reason the Rush Poker Mobile app was pulled, even though the company doesn’t state so.

For those still interested in using the app on their phone, they can download it from the Full Tilt website. In order for it to work, their telephone must have Flash Version 10.1 or higher. There is no word on whether or not the app will once again be added to the Android marketplace.

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding what may really be a non-issue. The company may have taken the app down for maintenance. It was after all in beta. Changes are often made to programs in this stage. However, the mystery develops when one reads Androids TOS regarding apps. It looks like Rush violated them and were thus forced to take their app down. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just admit that and move on. It would have caused less furor. For those individuals still interested in the app, again, it can be found on the Full Tilt website.

What do you associate with Sunday? Church? Football? Well, thanks to Full Tilt Poker you can now associate Sunday with online poker. Full Tilt has went above and beyond and now has over $1,000,000 in guaranteed money being paid out every single Sunday. They call this series of events Big Money Sundays which consists of the Sunday Brawl, the $750k Guarantee and the Sunday Mulligan.

The Sunday Brawl

This is a nice little starter tournament that kicks off at 2:00 PM EST every Sunday. The entry is $240 + $16 with $200 going to the prize pool and $40 going to the knockout bounty pool. The guaranteed money for this event is $350,000. The fun twist to this tournament is that for every person you knockout of the tournament, you get $40! Makes for a pretty aggressive poker game.

$750K Sunday Guarantee

This is Full Tilt Pokers largest weekly guaranteed tournament. There is $750K guaranteed every single Sunday. The tournament starts at 5:00 PM EST and is $200 + $16 to enter. There is late registration options as well as options to buy entry with you Full Tilt Points.

Sunday Mulligan

If you haven’t had enough online poker yet or you missed these first two tournaments, the Sunday Mulligan is still available. This tournament kicks off every Sunday at 7:05 PM EST and has a $200,000 guarantee to it.

Throughout the week Full Tilt Poker has a very nice schedule of guarantee tournaments. But to get the most bang for your buck, give the Big Money Sundays a try one of these weeks and you just might walk a way a winner thanks to Full Tilt Poker.

It’s been a long time since I traveled out to Las Vegas for the 2010 WSOP Main Event, arriving on Day 5 and seeing it through to 15 remaining (damn travel plans). Here is my 2010 WSOP trip report incase you missed it! After the final table hiatus the time has come for the remaining nine players to reconvene at the Rio and play until they crown a new Main Event Champion who will take home almost $9m in cash.

There are a few players that I am actively rooting for. After spending so many hours watching it in-person, it’s hard not to start pulling for certain players.  The biggest name still in the hunt is Michael Mizrachi (7th in chips at $14.4m) and if he were to be able to pull it out it would be historic. He would have won the two most prestigious events in the 2010 WSOP, the $50K Players Championship and the Main Event.  That would tie him with Frank Kassela for POY honors. It also helps that Grinder joined the TPT Live broadcast and spent some time on-air with Paul and I (Listen: Grinder on the TPT.)

Another player I am pulling for is John Racener (4th in chips at $19m). He’s an accomplished live and online player and has over $2m in live tournament winnings. He’s a young guy at just 24 and started his poker bankroll from a $50 online deposit. Must be nice!

Lastly I am pulling for Joseph Cheong to win the 2010 Main Event. Cheong, the on-again, off-again chip leader over the time I spent at the event sits 3rd in chips with over $23m. I was most impressed by his table persona and his seemingly impossible-to-tilt character. After suffering a devastating blow at the hands of Filippo Candio (see youtube clip below), he was able to shake it off and hind himself 3rd in chips at the November Nine.

Paul (@coolwhipflea) and I have been busy at work for the past few months getting things in line for the upcoming year. As we celebrate our 2 Year Anniversary this month, we have started to roll out some changes that online poker players on the Twitter Poker Tour will certainly enjoy.

First off, we have inked a deal with DeepStacks University and DeepStacks Live as a sponsor. They will be providing the TPT with prizes for the monthly leaderboard as well as provide access to their stable of poker pros’/instructors to join us on the TPT Live program. Be on the lookout for this in November.

Additionally we have partnered with CardzShoppe.com to provide a leaderboard prize, also starting in November. Gary will be providing us with a poker chip set retailing at $125 to award as a prize on the leaderboard. Welcome aboard!

We still have a few tricks up our sleeves we’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks that will really juice up the prize pool. We are very excited about these changes and can’t wait for November!

If you haven’t had a chance to play in our events, please feel free to drop on by the Twitter Poker Tour website to find out more information about the league.

All week I have been recapping my trip out to Las Vegas for the 2010 World Series of Poker. I wrote it partly for my family and friends that read this but I also wrote it down for myself. Though the days were long and tedious at times, the experience flew by. I wanted to be get it all out on “paper” so I can share and remember.

2010 WSOP Trip

• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part I
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part II
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part III
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part IV
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part V

Continue reading The 2010 WSOP Experience →

This is part IV in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I, part II, part III and part IV.

Even though I had been up for about 23 hours the day before, sleep was hard to come by on my last night in Vegas. I was partly excited for the play down from 27 to 9 and partly afraid to be woken up by housekeeping sometime after checkout. I had set the alarm on my iPhone so I wouldn’t sleep past 9:30 but as it turns out I would be walking down the halls of the Rio at that time. For those of you wondering, my iPhone alarm sounds something like this.

I was the first one into the media room since it was so damn early, well second as Seth Palansky (WSOP Communications Director) beat me in….and he was in for a looooong day. When I got settled in I was able to parse through the table draws and chip counts and get some notes written down about the day to come. This is what the Day 8 table draws were: Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part V →