Player Receives $55,000 as Titan Poker Deals Its Billionth Hand

Titan Poker, the largest online poker room on the iPoker Network, dealt its Billionth Hand on May 27 and player “wootrigged” from Finland went home with a prize of $55,000. The other five players playing at the same table received $5,000 each, just for participating in hand number 1,000,000,000.

Titan Poker’s Billionth Hand promotion, which launched a number of weeks ago, awarded more than $420,000 in prizes. A countdown started when the 950,000,000th hand was dealt. Hundreds of dollars in cash were awarded to players every day as Titan Poker neared its monumental billionth hand.

Players were able to track the progress of the countdown to the Billionth Hand by logging into the Titan Poker software, or onto the Titan Poker website. Titan Poker players also received regular updates of the countdown progress and were immediately informed when they started to play on a winning hand.

Titan Poker regularly rewards its players with huge cash prizes. The popular online poker room is currently giving away $3,600,000 in its second European Championship of Online Poker (ECOOP II). It also frequently awards its players with seats at the world’s most well-known poker tournaments, including the 2008 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the Irish Open, the European Poker Tour and the Asian Poker Tour. In May, Titan Poker sponsored the Eurocity Poker Tour Madrid Open, a highly successful tournament event staged at the Casino Gran outside the Spanish capital.

For World Series of Poker players, brain trumps hand

The real action at the World Series of Poker won’t be visible to the eye or even the hole-card cameras under the tables. It will take place inside the heads of the players.

They will mess with each other’s minds, watch for clues that might tip off another’s hand or a nervous bluff and calculate the risks and rewards of each hand. And before they move all-in with their chips, they will decide whether they have not only the cards but the nerve.

“A lot of time, it’s just a game of chicken. You don’t have very much. You think they don’t have very much. Each of you is just trying to make the other one fold,” says pro Barry Greenstein, who rates psychological toughness the No. 1 trait of a poker player.

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Poker: Picking the right time to gamble is important

Ideally, you want to get your money in the pot in a no-limit Texas hold ‘em tournament when you have an opponent dominated, but that isn’t always possible.

Sometimes your stack will be below average, you will draw a nice hand, even if it isn’t the best, and you will see a big pot brewing. You have to gamble.

It happens to the top players all the time. They don’t always like it, but one part of their strategy is to pick a smaller stack to gamble with so they can’t bust out, as Josh Arieh showed at the $15,000-buy-in Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Las Vegas’ Bellagio in 2007.

With blinds at $500-$1,000 plus a $100 ante, the player under the gun limped, as did pro Marcel Luske and two other players.

Arieh, who finished third in the 2004 World Series of Poker main event, found ace-queen offsuit on the button. He also found a chance to make a move to improve his below-average stack of about $24,000.

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Ultimate Poker Challenge

Ultimate Poker Challenge is a syndicated show that televises a series of weekly poker tournaments where players accumulate points instead of money in order to play in the semi-finals. Eight players then go on to play in the finals. The playing field for ultimate poker challenge is comprised of both professional poker players and top amateurs.

Chad Brown, an actor most recognized for his work on the soap opera “Another World” hosted the show with Brandi Williams as field correspondent who often interviewed the players. Matt Savage was the tournament director. In the first season of Ultimate Poker Challenge, James Van Alstyne won the top prize of $100,000. In season 2, Andy Bloch, who is best known for being a member of the MIT blackjack team that was featured in the book, “Bringin Down The House,” which is also the subject of the 2008 movie, “21″ won the top prize of $167,500. The winner of the show’s season 3 was Amir Vahedi, who took home $181,390.

Seasons 1 and 2 of the exciting series are available on DVD for fans of the show to purchase. In season 4, the show was actually renamed to The Ultimate Poker Challenge Presents Cash Poker: The Ultimate Challenge. In 2007 ultimate poker challenge teamed up with Woman Poker Player magazine to create the Ultimate Women’s Poker Challenge. This event was held at Binions in Las Vegas and was televised for the show. Shows like these have really helped to popularize poker, especially when people at home see the “average Joe” take home the money. It gives the ordinary amateur hope that he or she has a chance at winning the big one someday. Also, by utilizing Henry Orenstein’s invention of the pocket camera, now that the home audience can see the player’s hole cards, it makes watching poker more exciting than ever!

Checkout the UltimateBet Weekly Online Poker Tournament Schedule:

Monday - Saturday: 8:00PM - Buy In $120+9 - $20K Nightly Bounty No Limit Tournaments
Sundays: 5:00PM - Buy In $120+9 or Qualify for your seat for as little as $5.50 - $200K Guaranteed No Limit Tournament.

Designed with the assistance of the best poker players in the world - Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke – UltimateBet provides the best poker betting games available on the net. Players can download the free poker software, play in free ring games and tournaments and get tips from these pros to learn the sport or to enhance their playing strategy. UltimateBet currently has over 2 million registered players.

World Series of Poker kicks off with $10K event

It seems it was yesterday that Jerry Yang was celebrating his 2007 World Series of Poker main event title. It feels like it was last night that I was busting out of the 2006 WSOP main event. Sorry, some of those hands just haunt me in my sleep.

But it is time for poker’s main attraction — the WSOP — again. And while the number of main event entrants is anybody’s guess, this year’s World Series already is guaranteed to be the longest in history.

It starts today with the $10,000 buy-in pot-limit hold’em world championship and ends in November with the final stages of the main event final table.

Usually, it’s the casino employees event that kicks off the WSOP, so it’s refreshing see the World Series starting in style this year with one of the 12 world championship events. In all, Caesar’s Entertainment will be handing out 55 WSOP bracelets again this year at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

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Comments (0) May 30 2008