Existing players will have the opportunity to join the action at 14:15 ET on Sunday, December 26^th with buy ins for 2,000 Full Tilt Points; alternatively players can pick to gain entry through satellites of which entry begins as low as 50 points therefore giving them the chance to turn a very small number of points into a huge bankroll. New players have from now till the 26^th to join fulltiltpoker.com and starting gathering points by playing poker at fulltiltpoker.com after they have claimed the 100% bonus for all their deposits up to $600 which is applicable with the use of the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code which they can use during sign up as presented in the image in the top left corner of the page.

That basically means that players will have the opportunity to join fulltiltpoker.com and play poker for 15 days where they can both clear their bonus and gain the extra $600 and at the same time gain points to enter this one of a kind promotion announced by Full Tilt Poker. Please note that the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code does not unlock any other promotion at this point in time but does allow players to gain entry in the sing up bonus scheme which is explained in detail under the Full Tilt Referral Code section on luckyroom.com.

How to Register?

In order to register for the promotion you will first have to have an account at fulltiltpoker.com which can be issued here; please take the steps of using the Referral Code one by one as you will not have the ability to go back; you will have to use a working email which you can open and access the verification code in order to claim the offer. Now once you have signed up for free account you can choose to play poker for free an practice or you can select to deposit an claim the bonus. It is important o note that when you have used the Full tilt Poker Referral Code upon sign up you may play for free for as long as you like before you wish to deposit funds and claim the offer.

Depositing players New and Existing will have to follow the 3 easy steps below to gain entry to the $100K promotion.

After the midterm elections in November the legislature of the U.S. is in a transitional period, which means that there will not be many bills, which is why Harry Reid is pushing to pass the law on online poker before the Republicans take the reins; as the specific group are surely not famous for their sympathy towards online poker in a whole.

“We will know for sure by the end of next week whether the online poker will be part of a bill that will pass this time”, said the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) John Pappas. “Whether it becomes a law or not will be something that we will find out in the coming days”.

The greatest concern, however, for poker players is based on the fact that the senator is supported and influenced by the interests of land based casino owners (mostly in Nevada). The final version of the bill has not been published yet but it is expected to occur within the next few days. However, a version of the bill has already leaked towards the public and it does include provisions that do not look very good for online poker players.

Many existing car room websites that will receive the necessary permits including Full Tilt and PokerStars will probably be allowed to maintain the level of the rake and reward programs but there will be a cost of taxation of 20% on all deposits. This is acceptable but the issue with the bill is that in order to give the time to casinos and new businesses to create their own software and their own websites to strike towards the internet based poker market there will be a delay of full 15-month period in which no online poker room will be legal in the United States,

If the above mentioned bill does pass through professional poker players might find themselves stuck in to a 15-month blackout period which could be disastrous as they will not have the opportunity to earn money by playing poker via the internet and many of them have reported that they would move to different countries in order to continue to play poker online.

“It doesn’t makes sense for the player or the poker industry”, says Pappas. “I do not know why some companies will want to enter an industry decimated and the players have moved to other sites. There will never earn back these individual players. If anyone cares to run an online gaming site they would like to see a far smoother transition”.

Another point of concern is the so-called three-year trial period. The main concept is that the first three years the Americans and non-American players will be divided between them. The American websites will not be allowed to accept non-US citizens and PokerStars, for example, should open a new poker room exclusively for American citizens by the end of that period.

Pappas asks players and members of the PPA to support the bill because if the bill will not pass during this transitional period the majority of Republicans will force a total ban of online poker in the United States.

“There will be obviously parts of the bill that the players will not like and we should push for corrections. Perhaps, we have to push now to pass the bill and then to correct some points. I think the most important is to provide a clear framework and to establish a long-term institutionalized online poker market. There will definitely be Harrah’s on the scene and some new entries in the field perhaps may be Google, Yahoo and even Facebook in addition to the existing companies. There will be a dynamic market with strong consumer protection and competition which will ultimately prove beneficial for the players”, states Papas.

Mike Johnson of Pokercast.tv, started a thread in popular poker forum “2 +2″ in which there are chances that Phil Hellmuth will withdraw from Ultimate Bet. Johnson believes there is a conflict between the site and the popular player, which could result the end of their cooperation. As Johnson states – whose opinion is always respected because of its position and experience – Hellmuth does not wear the logo of the Ultimate Bet for several weeks now. This happened in the recent NAPT Bounty Shootout – which was filmed for television broadcast. Johnson believes that perhaps Ultimate Bet is not willing to meet the financial demands of Hellmuth who will remain – possibly – without a sponsor in the near future.

Many believe that Hellmuth is no longer the player who he was once, and that the fact that he states that he is is the “best player in the world” is a fact that can true only in his own complicated head which is what drives him to do what he has done during recent years in land based poker appearances! Even so, however, Hellmuth is one of the most famous players in poker worldwide which, itself, raises his value in the marketing of the game.

The scenarios discussed in this thread, after the eventual departure of the “Poker Brat” from Ultimate Bet (ub.com), were many. The main were a possible integration of the dynamic Hellmuth to one of the two giants of online poker, PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker as their increasing popularity lacks Hellmuths contribution which does have a big audience behind him.

Of course, given the personality and character of Hellmuth, it is not sure whether he would like to share the focus of “spotlights” with other professionals who are already part of the teams of the aforementioned poker rooms. For this reason, a good choice for Hellmuth seems that would be PartyPoker – if and when, of course, the poker room returns to the U.S. market. As Party Poker doesn’t have a “No. 1 Professional” on its team, Hellmuth would be the” No. 1 Poker Pro of the poker room.

However, there is another scenario that Hellmuth can follow – if he eventually stops cooperating with Ultimete Bet as he can always follow in the footsteps of Doyle Brunson and set up his own poker room – although, as someone pointed out very successful, “Few European poker fans will want to play at a poker site, whose owner called some customers ‘idiots from Northern Europe’! All this of course will remain only in the realm of fantasy, until the rumors / suspects of Hellmuth’s departure from the Ultimate Bet will be confirmed.

It is worth mentioning that several problems with security during the recent past with the overall network hosting UB.com and Absolute Poker have of course driven players away and have downgraded credibility of the network in a whole. During this period pokerstars.com and fulltiltpoker.com have increased their player volume and their overall online exposure with pokerstars.com increasing is sign up bonus from 100% up to $50 to 100% up to $600 with the new PokerStars Bonus Code while fulltiltpoker.com has introduced a patent pending product coming under the name Rush Poker which has changed the overall concept of poker online. Just recently the latter has announced that its patent pending game has been released for mobile play which is also expected to increase the overall popularity of both its name as an online poker room and its new product.

As far as a possible migration of the Poker Brat to any of the above mentioned online poker rooms we personally would like to comment on the threads posted on 2+2 as we don’t believe that Hellmuth would take the hit on moving to pokerstars.com or fulltiltpoker.com as his way of thinking is just not fit to be confronted with Ivey or Negreanu; as far as opening his own online poker room we again think that its just not going to be a profitable business with the way things are evolving with processing in the USA. We would put our money on a possible retirement or a possible reinforcement of Hellmuth to Party Gaming as the brand is said to be preparing for a possible entry to the US later in the New Year.

Further investigation revealed a movement of Shanky Technologies to apologize to bot users as the company maintains and operates a website that sells “bots” for a variety of different games.
Shanky Technologies officially apologized to its customers and railed against Full Tilt Poker saying that Full Tilt “quite suddenly and without warning ‘froze all the accounts and seized us all amounts, although it tolerated the presence of bots all this time”!

While it is still unclear of many accounts have been closed, the online poker room makes it clear that it will not tolerate any kind of violation of regulations and encouraged the players to communicate with security@fulltiltpoker.com if they’detect’ illegal activities that violate the terms of fair play.

The black card program from fulltiltpoker.com provides players a unique collection and selection of rewards and added benefits including unique access to members to a black card store with limited circulation black card member apparel, accessories and outerwear. As far as bonuses are concerned black card members get a little bit more than what a normal player using the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code gets as accumulated fulltiltpoker.com points have the luxury of being transformed to cash bonuses. The elite status of fulltiltpoker.com which is the equivalent of the Supernova Elite at PokerStars and the Palladium Elite at Party Poker allows players to gain full tilt points and a twice accelerated pace, even more members have the privilege of entering exclusive private tournaments to which entry is closed for other members of the popular US poker room.

In order for a poker player at fulltiltpoker.com to have the privilege of gaining his position on the black card program he will have to gain a minimum of 500 full tilt poker points for at least 100 days; qualified members will receive additional communication from the poker rooms management and will be mailed their black card which they will be able to use in further tournaments and land based events. More information can be found directly at the popular poker room after signing up an account if you are a new player. Please note that new players at Full Tilt are entitled to a $600 sign up bonus by using the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code as shown in the image to the left.

Read more about Full Tilt Poker on Wikipedia.

The Cereus, whose basic structure of the rake is comparable to Full Tilt Rakeback and PokerStars Rakeback, receives extra money of each pot in order to ‘finance’ the bad beat jackpot. The PTR has included these costs in comparison as it is unlikely someone to win the bad beat jack- pot. All but a tiny percentage of players will experience a bad beat jackpot. Of particular interest is the column with the PokerStars.fr. Anyone might wonder about the increased rake to the French site. The answer is simple and it is to the recent legislation in the country that imposed higher taxes on the websites which in turn pass the cost to the players. At 100NL hands someone needs to earn a 3bb/100 more to maintain the same profit margin just because of the increased rake!

* You can see therefore that the amount you pay every 100 hands on top websites differ dramatically. Full Tilt Poker, Bodog, PokerStars and Cake poker are the sites where the player pays less money for rake per 100 hands. In some cases the cost of playing in these sites is only half of their competitors. This translates into significantly less bb(big blinds)/100 you need to win in order to break even.

France passed the bill on the online poker last April despite their initial intentions to protect the state monopoly as EU forces all countries to liberate the gambling market on all forms including betting, online betting, horse races, lottery, poker, online casino and more. According to the Daily Telegraph that hosts recent statements of Mr. François Baroin, – the Finance Minister, “This legal framework enables us to eliminate the ‘black market’ by creating a legal environment that complies with the rules and subject to the relevant control”. Of course, what all the European online poker sites hope for is without any doubt the legitimacy of the U.S. market although it seems that U.S will adopt a similar plan like the French one – were each state will issue its own gambling licenses and will be responsible to regulate the online games.

Sign up at Full Tilt Poker Here Claim a $600 Bonus

Overall, there will be six events where the guaranteed prize pool will be a seven digit figure! In total, more than $19 million in guaranteed prizes! The FTOPS are considered as the beginning of a series of online events including among others the UBOC 5 in UB Poker and of course the World Championship of online Poker (WCOOP) on PokerStars. The FTOPS XVII is open to both new and existing players; new players can use the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code to sign up at Full Tilt Poker and maximize their sign up bonus by claiming the opportunity to claim a super sign up bonus of 100% for all deposits up to $600. Read more about how to use the Full Tilt Poker Bonus Code.

Here is the entire program of the FTOPS XVII:

Wednesday, August 4
Event # 1: 9:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em
$ 750,000 Guaranteed

Thursday, August 5
Event # 2: 2:00 pm ET
$ 256 Pot Limit Omaha High / Low Knockout Rush
$ 200,000 Guaranteed
Event # 3: 6:00 pm ET
$ 322 No Limit Hold’em 4x Shootout Six-Max Turbo
$ 300,000 Guaranteed
Event # 4: 9:00 pm ET
$ 535 HORSE
$ 200,000 Guaranteed

Friday, August 6
Event # 5: 2:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Cubed
$ 600,000 Guaranteed
Event # 6: 6:00 pm ET
$ 322 No Limit Hold’em Super Turbo
$ 400,000 Guaranteed
Event # 7: 9:00 pm ET
$ 216 Stud Eight or Better
$ 100,000 Guaranteed

Saturday, August 7
Event # 8: 2:00 pm ET
$ 535 Pot Limit Omaha Six-Max
$ 350,000 Guaranteed
Event # 9: 4:00 pm ET
$ 109 No Limit Hold’em with Rebuys
$ 600,000 Guaranteed
Event # 10: 6:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Turbo Rush
$ 350,000 Guaranteed

Sunday, August 8
Event # 11: 2:00 pm ET
$ 129 No Limit Hold’em Knockout
$ 800,000 Guaranteed
Event # 12: 4:00 pm ET
$ 535 No Limit Hold’em Heads-Up
$ 500,000 Guaranteed
Event # 13: 6:00 pm ET
$ 322 No Limit Hold’em
$ 1,250,000 Guaranteed

Monday, August 9
Event # 14: 2:00 pm ET
$ 216 Omaha High / Low
$ 150,000 Guaranteed
Event # 15: 6:00 pm ET
$ 322 Pot Limit Omaha Turbo Rush
$ 200,000 Guaranteed
Event # 16: 9:00 pm ET
$ 1,060 No Limit Hold’em
$ 1,250,000 Guaranteed

Tuesday, August 10
Event # 17: 2:00 pm ET
$ 216 Half Pot Limit Hold’em, Half Pot Limit Omaha Six-Max
$ 150,000 Guaranteed
Event # 18: 6:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Turbo
$ 400,000 Guaranteed
Event # 19: 9:00 pm ET
$ 535 No Limit Hold’em 3x Shootout
$ 350,000 Guaranteed

Wednesday, August 11
Event # 20: 2:00 pm ET
$ 216 Seven Game
$ 150,000 Guaranteed
Event # 21: 6:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Super Turbo Rush
$ 250,000 Guaranteed
Event # 22: 9:00 pm ET
$ 322 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max with Rebuys
$ 1,000,000 Guaranteed

Thursday, August 12
Event # 23: 2:00 pm ET
$ 322 Pot Limit Omaha Heads-Up
$ 200,000 Guaranteed
Event # 24: 6:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Cashout
$ 150,000 Guaranteed
Event # 25: 9:00 pm ET
$ 216 Stud
$ 100,000 Guaranteed

Friday, August 13
Event # 26: 2:00 pm ET
$ 216 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max
$ 400,000 Guaranteed
Event # 27: 6:00 pm ET
$ 216 Limit Hold’em Rush
$ 150,000 Guaranteed
Event # 28: 9:00 pm ET
$ 322 Razz
$ 150,000 Guaranteed

Saturday, August 14
Event # 29: 2:00 pm ET
$ 2,100 No Limit Hold’em Ante from the Start Two-Day Event Six-Max
$ 2,000,000 Guaranteed
Event # 30: 4:00 pm ET
$ 109 Pot Limit Omaha with Rebuys
$ 400,000 Guaranteed
Event # 31: 9:00 pm ET
$ 535 No Limit Hold’em Super Turbo Knockout
$ 400,000 Guaranteed

Sunday, August 15
Event # 32: 2:00 pm ET
$ 256 No Limit Hold’em Knockout Six-Max
$ 1,000,000 Guaranteed
Event # 33: 4:00 pm ET
$ 163 No Limit Hold’em Rush with Rebuys
$ 750,000 Guaranteed
FTOPS XVII Main Event: 6:00 pm ET
$ 640 No Limit Hold’em
$ 3,000,000 Guaranteed

Additionally finding a seat is now much more easier as the popular card room has introduced the ring game table finder which prevents you from being put on a waiting list for a specific table but now offers you the opportunity to enter a waiting list for a type of table therefore making it a much more hassle free procedure to find a seat on table; additionally when a seat does open you are automatically enabled with the opportunity to claim the seat and information is directly available in regards to the table itself.

Even more coming with the latest software update fulltiltpoker.com has introduced achievement badges which is a type of accomplishment sign which shows around a players name on the table therefore distinguishing a player seated at a specific fulltiltpoker.com table with either a Rush Poker Poker Badge, a Full Tilt Poker Academy Badge, a True Poker Badge or an Iron Man Badge depending on what the player has accomplished during his poker playing experience at the popular card room. Finally tables with only 1 player seated do not any more show in the lobby in a random order and not in an alphabetical order as before.

Call of Action

Existing players will only have to accept the software upgrade the next time they log in and the system will automatically install the necessary upgrade to the PC they are using to play poker at fulltiltpoker.com. New players that have not downloaded fulltiltpoker.com for free can issue an account today by using Full Tilt Poker Referral Code: LUCKYROOM as shown in the image to the left and claim a super sign up Full Tilt Poker Bonus of 100% for all deposits up to $600; if you may have downloaded the software in the past but have not yet issued an account all you have to do is access the icon on your desktop allow fulltiltpoker.com to install the upgrade and issue an account by using the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code and a working email account in order to be able to verify your account and claim the sign up bonus offered by using the Full Tilt Referral Code. More information in regards to fulltiltpoker.com, the Full Tilt Poker Bonus or the full tilt rakeback section can be found by following the relevant hyperlinks highlighted.

The popular series this year will include a knock out shoot out turbo and super turbo event, a two day event featuring a $2 million prize pool and the FTOPS main event which will have a total of $3 million as guaranteed prize pool.

Players can claim their entry to the 2010 FTOPS through satellite tournaments running at fulltiltpoker.com and claim the opportunity for a little more than a boosted bankroll as the 2010 FTOPS will be giving its participants that reach any of the FTOPS final tables limited edition apparel items including jackets, T shirts and even a gold jersey avatar to be used on the tables at fulltiltpoker.com.

The 2010 FTOPS promotion is open to both new and existing players with the difference that absolutely new players can pick to issue an account at fulltiltpoker.com by using the Full Tilt Poker Referral Code which will gain them a 100% sign up bonus for deposits up to $600. New players will have to enter the Full Tilt Referral Code as shown in the image to the left during registration of a new account to gain the opportunity to claim the super sign up bonus and join the action and the promotions currently running at fulltiltpoker.com.