PokerStars Celebrates 10th Anniversary with 10 Promotions

This year wasn’t the greatest, to say the least, for PokerStars. Despite coming out relatively clean so far (repeat: so far) from Black Friday, at least compared to Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker, the U.S. Department of Justice indictment and subsequent loss of revenue from the United States could not have made those working at the world’s largest online poker room feel very happy. Nevertheless, PokerStars does have something to celebrate: its ten-year anniversary. The site began offering games in December 2001 and rather than expecting gifts for its anniversary, it wants to reward its players with a series of online events. There will be ten events in total (makes sense), but they will be unveiled in stages. Here is what we know about so far:

10th Anniversary Giveaway

PokerStars is giving away 100 prize packages to the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) over the next month. Qualifiers come in three varieties: freerolls, ten cent tournaments, and 10 FPP tournaments. Top finishers in each qualifier will advance to one of two weekly finals where they will compete for the PCA prize packages.

The freerolls will run every day, every ten minutes, and will see the top ten finishers make the weekly finals. The 10 cent tournaments will be held once an hour at five minutes past the hour, while the 10 FPP qualifiers will go at 35 minutes past each hour. The top twenty finishers from each will be sent to the weekly finals. Those weekly finals will be run in pairs every Sunday from November 13th through December 11th. The top 1,000 finishers in each will win a part of $10,000 cash, while the top ten will be awarded a PCA package.

The PCA prize package is valued at over $15,000 and includes the $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event, hotel accommodations, and expenses.

10th Anniversary $10 Million Sunday Million

On December 18th, the Sunday Million will be quite a bit bigger. At least $9 million bigger. Starting at 2:30pm ET, the buy-in will be $215, and the prize pool is guaranteed to be at least $10 million, with at least $2 million guaranteed for first place. Qualifiers for the Sunday Million abound at all sorts of buy-ins, including the $11 Sunday Million Mega Satellite, which will start one hour before the Sunday Million and will send at least 1,000 players to the big tournament.

10th Anniversary World Record Tournament

On December 4th, PokerStars will attempt break its own world record with a $1 buy-in tournament with a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool and a $50,000 first prize. In 2009, Stars set the record, as 149,196 players entered the gargantuan event, but this year, the poker site wants to get at least 150,000 at the tables simultaneously. If you do enter and anticipate playing normal tournament poker, plan on sticking around for hours and hours and hours if you think you can make the final table.

Over the next few days and weeks, PokerStars will reveal the remaining seven promotions. Stay tuned.

Related Online Poker News:

Huge 100% Match Bonus up to $500 Free! Plus $75 Free Refer-A-Friend!

Full screen 3D animated & 2D ("bird's eye") view options, Extra games

Poker lexicon:

BUTTON CHARGE - A periodic fee paid by whoever is the button, perhaps every 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Constitutes part or all of the HOUSE CUT.
RACE - In tournaments it is sometimes convenient to remove all lower-denomination chips from play, as the remaining players' stacks tend to grow. Small chips are converted to larger chips and any odd chips are "raced off" in the following way: each player with odd chips places them in front of his stack and is dealt one card for each chip. Highest card (rank and suit) takes all the small chips and converts them to higher-denomination chips.
DRAWING DEAD - A draw in which it is impossible to obtain a winning hand for any of a variety of reasons: an opponent's hand is better than whatever you are drawing to, the card(s) that make your hand are out of play, or (in Hold'em) give an opponent a stronger hand even if it makes yours. Frequently used in the past tense, since one rarely knows it at the time.
GUT SHOT - A draw to an inside straight, as in 2-3-4-6.
BIG BOBTAIL - An open-ended 4-card straight flush.
CASE - The fourth card of a particular rank, as in "he folded the case 9" when describing where all the 9s were in a hand. Comes from the game of Faro where an employee of the house, called the "case keeper". kept track of the number of each rank of card remaining.

♥ Bookmark Us! ♠

Poker Information