After four eager months of waiting for visa approval, Angel Guillen finally made his way Down Under to Melbourne, Australia -- a country he has wanted to visit for a long time.  "Right now I'm in Melbourne, Australia, visiting my girlfriend in her hometown. I'm halfway through my three-week trip,...more

Circus Groupe and PokerStars, the world's largest online poker site, today announced that www.pokerstars.be has become one of the first online poker sites in Belgium to be officially granted a license under the Casino de Namur A+ license. The site was authorised in 2011 by the Belgian Gaming Commission in...more

"The players are calling it The Thing," Emma said. It was her job to be in touch with the people at the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. She had listened, and she knew that many folks were exceptionally curious about what my colleague Rick Dacey described as the "the elasticated crisscross...more

Better late than never. 2011 was a lot different than 2010 in terms of how I approached online poker. Fortunately, I mustered up a very similar result. In 2010, I was able to stick to a more robotic schedule and spread my play out between more days in each month...whereas...more

I have recently been asked to write a column on how life can change, when you become the world champion of poker. I know firsthand that it changes many things! Sometimes for the best and sometimes for the worst. In this blog, which I will split in three parts, I'll...more

In case you didn't know, poker players tend to like to gamble with their money, and I'm not talking strictly in cash games or poker tournaments. Prop betting offers another way for poker players to be in action and have their money on the line. Working in the industry, oftentimes...more

Though most people outside of North America refer to it as American football, the game's championship game is a worldwide event. Tens of millions of people around the world tuned in last night for the National Football League's Super Bowl. While it was a big deal, it was just background...more

I had a lot of travel problems getting to the PCA. I got stuck in Miami for one night, and had a lot of other flight problems. I showed up at the tournament very tired, which is not the way you want to be at a $100,000 tournament. I ran...more

Last month we launched a new global ad campaign which we believe captures the emotional essence of why poker has become such a global phenomenon. You can view the first ads from the campaign on our We Are Poker channel. Written by our in-house creative team, the ads introduce the...more

The first Sunday of February brings another Women's Sunday to the masses of female poker players on PokerStars. Another month of the weekly events is on the way, along with a Facebook freeroll and other surprises. We can't give away all of our secrets, but you can trust that there...more

The biggest and richest tournament in all of Europe is on its way back to Monaco. After a one-year hiatus, the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final is returning to Monaco. As Season 8 of the EPT draws to a close, the EPT will pack its bags April...more

People often ask me why it is that PokerStars is the world leader in online poker. There are many factors, of course: best customer service, superior product and innovation spring to mind. I'd also add one more... PokerStars has the best players. By that I mean they are the most...more

The are rules of etiquette when it comes to things like this. If a ball is about to hit you in the face, I'm supposed to immediately yell, "Heads up!" If your mother-in-law is on her way to your house, I'm supposed to call you ten minutes in advance so...more

The first month of a new year is always exciting, especially so for the Women's Poker League. It all kicked off on January 3, and a new division was added to the two existing ones to give players more choices and competition. That $5.50 league drew in some new players...more

As a guy who recently had a brief vision scare, I can attest that it's a bit off-putting when your eyesight goes all wonky out of the blue. You can find yourself stumbling around, running into walls, and wondering what disgusting thing you did to deserve such divine punishment. However,...more

I'm sad to say that I won't be staying on as a member of PokerStars Team Online in 2012. It was a great honor and a great experience to be a member of the team, but so much has changed since I joined the team last year. Now that I'm...more

Ace-ten against pocket sevens, blind versus blind, is a battle that is normally guaranteed to end badly for someone. And most of us would agree that head-to-head combat in a poker tournament is not the most auspicious way to start a relationship. But that is exactly what happened when Team...more

Vivian Im may have only been in the game of poker for just a few years, but don't confuse lack of time with lack of experience or skill. In her short career she has achieved something that many before her are still trying to do. Im kick-started her live tournament...more

Do yourself a favor and just look at this list. Take some time. Enjoy yourself. Roll around in the excitement that comes with PokerStars giving away a bunch of money in a short period of time. As you're probably aware, the PokerStars 75 billionth hand is coming soon. How soon?...more

The last Super Tuesday of January drew a large group of 378 to play the weekly $1,050 no-limit hold'em tournament. That meant a prize pool of $378,000 -- again, as usual, crushing the $150K guarantee -- with the top 45 finishers dividing the cash and $73,143 due the winner barring...more

Over the course of the past few years, we have come to wonder when Danny McDonagh slept. When we arrived at any tournament venue, he was there and looked like he'd just come in from a week's rest at a luxury spa. When we left 14 hours later, McDonagh was...more

Richard "Tzen1" Veenman isn't like your typical member of Team PokerStars Online. Veenman, who signed on to represent PokerStars last January, splits a part-time IT job in the Netherlands with his chase toward Supernova Elite on PokerStars every year. And, unlike most online poker pros who specialize in no-limit hold'em...more

Just before the PCA, we unveiled the all-new PokerStars television campaign, We Are Poker. Featuring highly-charged, atmospheric scenes, these ads went down well and will be coming to a television screen near you some time soon. Now PokerStars has released a third advert in the series. Watch out for appearances...more

Slow. Motion. That's. What. This. Monday. Is. It's not only that I had a really long weekend or that I'm out of coffee. It's that after a week and half of the Turbo Championship of Online Poker, I'm really used to everything moving very, very fast. TCOOP ended last night,...more

So, you're walking down the street. You've got your earbuds in, maybe grooving to a little Sly and the Family Stone and thinking about how you wished you had chosen a different pair of underwear to wear that day. Without warning, you trip over a plain brown envelope and fall...more

In the mid-December I had to put away my grinding sessions for a few days as a filming crew came to my home town - Warsaw. I was very anxious about meeting them and extremely excited about shooting the video. You all have already probably seen Nanonoko's short film by...more

Every Sunday on PokerStars is a big day. There's a reason the big tournaments that play out on Sundays are called "the majors." Big guarantees and even bigger prize pools award millions of dollars to players who compete and make it into that money. January 29 was no different -...more

January was a big month. It started with the celebration of 2012 and a winding down from the holidays, and the last Sunday of the month ended with a big Women's Sunday tournament that provided poker excitement through to the very last hand. The month is not over, though. The...more

On the last day of TCOOP, Event 46 was one of six events that focused mainly on NLHE but threw an 8-game mix as well. Yes, the series is already coming to an end. If it seemed like a fast 11 days of events, it was. They were all turbo...more

The high-dollar event on the TCOOP schedule was Event #47, a $2,100 buy-in no-limit hold'em "high roller" tourney that attracted many of online poker's top players. About 460 were seated when first hands were dealt at noon ET, although the total field would continue to grow over the 90 minutes...more

You know you're a poker player when ... you choose to play the TCOOP on PokerStars on a Saturday night rather than make any other plans. It takes some dedication to turn down a night out with friends, or even a relaxing evening with a movie, for turbo poker. The...more

Talk about action. Pot-limit Omaha. Heads-up format. Five-minute levels. Saturday's TCOOP Event #41, a $109 buy-in PLO heads-up tourney, certainly had everything an action junkie could want. A total of 1,127 players saw the event as inviting enough to enter, thereby creating a $112,700 prize pool, more than twice the...more

What better way to prepare for the last weekend of TCOOP events (11 of them, to be exact) than to dabble in a FLHE event on Friday? There were NLHE and PLO options as well, but limit players were finally given their platform on which to shine in Event 39....more

Event #37 on the Turbo Championship of Online Poker schedule was guaranteed to feature a few hours of action-fueled power poker. The game was six-handed pot-limit Omaha, with a $55 buy-in plus a couple of re-buys and an add-on available to inspire further risk-taking early on. And five-minute levels --...more

For the better part of 2011, the PokerStars Women's Poker League became more exciting by the month. Women played the league tournaments on a regular basis, and those who earned the most points found extra cash in their online poker bank accounts in addition to the money they won in...more

If you're not a former winner of PokerStars' Tournament Leader Board, you may not even know this event exists, much less what's happening with it. However, it's become so interesting that we have to pay it some attention. It's history-making, after all. Every week for as long as I can...more

The inaugural TCOOP series is more than halfway to its completion, so you can be sure the final days will be packed with as much turbo online poker action as possible. Today, players were able to choose from NLHE two ways, Razz, and this particular Omaha option. With the continuously...more

Razz has a well-earned reputation as one of poker's most painful variants, the sad brick-brick-brick of uncooperative late-street cards having caused immeasurable suffering to many who have played the game. Accelerate the pace of the game by spreading it as a turbo-style tourney, however, and the duration of such suffering...more

The Road to 100 Billion is not a short one, but there are fortunately a lot more stops along the way there these days. They are rest stops where we can take a break, consider the trip ahead, and, indeed, win a lot of money. PokerStars announced this morning that,...more

Everyone knows ElkY is a man of personality. These days, no one questions Pius Heinz's tournament game. Now, the European Poker Awards have taken notice as well. Tonight in Paris, the European Poker Awards held its 11th annual awards ceremony and honored two Team PokerStars Pros for their contributions to...more

A thousand poker players gathered around 100 tables on Wednesday morning for Event #29 of the Turbo Championship of Online Poker, a $109 buy-in no-limit hold'em Shootout. With five-minute levels and starting stacks of 5,000 (reset each round), the one among them who would win three ten-handed sit-n-gos -- each...more

Editor's note: This Q&A with Liv Boeree took place at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on January 13. Walking into the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure poker room, an intimidating figure of Liv Boeree, wearing six-inch heels and wielding a whip, greeted thousands of poker players. Between waterslides and poker at the PCA,...more

This week's Super Tuesday saw no decline in numbers resulting from the ongoing TCOOP, with another big field of 445 showing up for the weekly $1,050 no-limit hold'em tournament. That's a small increase from last week, and in fact represents the largest Super Tuesday field since almost a year ago...more

Double turbo means levels of five minutes each. The rebuy portion of the tournament allows for more action, though, as the first mistake can be rectified with another buy-in. Add-ons at the end of the one-hour registration level also give players the option to pad their stacks going into the...more

Marking the midway point of the 50-event Turbo Championship of Online Poker was Event #25, a $215 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. Think Sunday Million, only with 5-minute levels, meaning a winner would necessarily be determined in considerably less time than the 12 hours or so it normally takes to decide...more

When PokerStars gives away free money, people show up in droves. It's science, or something. In any case, it makes a lot of sense. When PokerStars offers freerolls to people in return for their real money deposits, things started getting a little crowded around the cash register. Nine days ago,...more

Not everyone loves turbos, and I've heard some of my peers bemoan the lack of deepstacked, early level play with 100+ BBs. But from my perspective, deepstacked play is simply not the most important skill for a tournament player, and regardless of the speed of the structure, your success in...more

I have to confess that my tournament game is a bit rusty because I haven't played many big tournaments lately. My main issue about playing big tournaments is that if I do well, they take too long and that makes it really hard to have a working schedule like non-poker...more

Every Sunday on PokerStars is a busy one. With the line-up of Sunday majors, players need a strict schedule and several computer monitors to get in on all of the action. Today is one of those days that requires even more attention because of all of the TCOOP action, but...more

Sundays are typically leisure days, ones that offer a slower pace than the rest of the week with time to relax. Even with the regular Sunday tournaments on PokerStars, players can ease in to the action with the Sunday Warm-Up and other events. It may be a grind at times,...more