Starting from July, 7^th all the countries implement new loyalty program: Stars Rewards. No more VPP and VIP Steps. From now on, there are only chests… CHESTS! This is another step towards turning online poker to some sort of slot or social network games variation. All the details are below.

The biggest poker room announced this way of rewarding its regular users in April this year, but the details were unclear back then. In May, official blog has a post about what is Stars Rewards.

Power Up is a so-called poker hybrid of poker and card video game. Currently there is a closed alpha-test, so the final release is far away. The game reminds HoldemX, the development of the company of Alex Dreyfus, one of the most famous innovators in the world of poker.

There was a new trend in gaming-industry that has been formed during the latest years – it is card games. Not poker, but close (or not so close) analogues of Magic: The Gathering, a popular table and online game.

In its new update, the world’s largest room did what it was long asked for: started an active fight against bumhunters and scripts. PokerStars.es is already testing an automatic system of seating of players. Which means that soon it will be impossible to select specific tables or tag along weak players.

The room’s blog summarizes the major changes. The most important one is the Seat Me button. A player selects a game (e.g., No Limit Hold'em) and limit (say $1/2). Then clicks Seat Me to be placed at a random table at this limit.

New Year holidays came a little bit earlier for poker players as in the biggest high stakes database HighStakesDB opened a public access to closed-before accounts of the highrollers on some unknown reason in the middle of December. Now we all know how much really did Red baron, Alexander Kostritsyn, Ragen70, Ben Tolleren, Nanonoko and many other top pros earn.

HighStakesDB shattered pink glasses of many. The website suddenly decided to open the graphs of the players to the public eyes, though no permission was granted to them. Still, we have an opportunity to know how much did the most famous online players earn this year and throughout their careers.

During the previous year, Russian high roller Alexander “joiso” Kostritsyn earned about $1.5 million and was the only one to show a seven-digit result in the positive range. All this became known through HighStakesDB that opened for public access the previously closed accounts of most of online high rollers.

It stands to mention the significant decline in activity at the highest stakes. At the moment, online high rollers can only play on PokerStars at very castrated stakes (as compared with the old Full Tilt), and the field itself has tightened significantly while big fishes now deserve to be listed in a database of rare species.

Everyone loves to count other people's money. It is bad taste, but that is human nature. Poker is all about money, after all, so little wonder. Let us cut to the case. Do you want to know what bankrolls the world’s top live and online players command? Do you want to know how much they make a year? We will use the help of Douglas Polk, one of the world’s top online high rollers.

This is by far not the first time we have talked about the earnings of MTT and cash players. We have tried to figure out if it is hard being a tournament player, compared potential profits in the two disciplines, and once even tried to find out who won the more money in a given year, live or online high rollers.

As you might know, gambling is officially prohibited in China. It doesn’t stop poker enthusiast though. Just like in any other country where gambling is prohibited, the Chinese think of their own ways and tricks to bypass the law. Besides, donэt forget about many underground games around the country.

At the moment, official poker life in China is centered in Macao, and is quite poor in comparison with Vegas, for instance. This comparison isn’t correct even. Vegas is head and shoulders above Macao.

One of the major peculiarities of online poker is that players remain relatively anonymous. When you are playing cash games or tournaments in poker clubs – you will be identified in the future this way or another. But when you only see an avatar, some random nickname and country of the player – it is easy to create atmosphere of mystery around yourself.

We seldom write about online poker. It is not our profile. However, sometimes there are interesting stories there. And it doesn’t make sense to leave them without our attention: why limit ourselves with some unnecessary borders.

Besides, the topic of the article is somehow connected with live poker as well.

Should one eliminate respect from poker – there will be only market relations. Soulless chips trade, pure competition with no conscience involved. Limit Hold’em is pretty close to that. It is quite regular to use sitting scripts at top stakes for a long time. There are also various forms of angle shooting in practice. Russian top regular Feruell is accused of heavy buttoning and he admits it.

“King of Limit” Feruell, one of the most famous Russian regulars, was banned at PokerStars in July 2013 for buttoning (avoiding posting blinds).

Stars sent Feruell a warning – should he continue breaking the rules, he will imminently receive permanent ban. And so it happened. Elite regular with still secret name (what gives him some sort of being fantastic) can’t play in the biggest poker room on the planet:

“Well, I have my PokerStars account closed. Forever… I had a warning before that for some bullshit, I wrote about this on 2+2 with the text from PokerStars support. Now I have permanent ban.”

Despite all the irreversibility and strictness of punishment, Feruell got his right to play at PokerStars back. Looks like he found “the right words” in conversation with the security department.

And now we have this thread in the end of March 2016 where the mysterious player gets old accusations in the other room.