Wednesday, PartyPoker and Matchroom Sport confirmed the dates for this year’s PartyPoker World Open VI.  The event will be held beginning Monday, September 6 in London through Friday, September 10.

The event will have some of the big name players as usual such as PartyPoker Team members Tony G, Mike Sexton, Ian Frazer, Dragon Galic, Tyron Krost and Felipe Ramos.  In addition, the third place winner of the PartyPoker Premier League IV who earned a professional contract, Giovanni Safina is also an early confirmation for the prestigious event.

Reigning title winner, Phil Laak will also be in attendance to defend his title that he won last year.  He will also be attending the World Poker Tour (WPT) London Poker Classic, which is an inaugural event and is being held from August 29 until September 5.  Ultimately, his hopes are that he can win both of these events.

This year’s prominent Party Poker World Open VI buy-in is $10,000 making a prize pool of $480,000.  All players in attendance will compete in preliminary heats of eight-hands, which will determine who moves on to the final table of seven-hands.

Eddie Hearn, managing director of the well-known Matchroom Sport, says that they will implement the same starting stack that they did last year in the event, which is a triple-buy in stack.

In addition to the two above events being held in London this year, London will also be the host for the World Series of Poker Europe, which begins in September, which will pave the way for the PokerStars European Poker Tour London in October.

Freerolls are offered  by almost every single online poker room on the web today.  Freerolls are simply tournament games that allow for online poker players to play and win money with no investment of their own at all.  Freerolls aren’t really news, but when the prize pool totals a remarkable $50,000, it’s pretty big!

Beginning in May, Absolute Poker and UB Poker will have freerolls exclusively for their new online players to their poker room.  If you sign up for a new online poker account at either online poker room then you will get a magnificent deposit bonus of up to $1,200 at 100%.  In addition, new players with new accounts will also qualify to play in the freeroll for their share of $50,000 free of charge.

New players that deposit for the first time in their Absolute Poker or UB account between now and May 30 will automatically receive seats in a daily series of New Depositor Freerolls.  Players will receive their chance to win their share of $50,000 as well as a VIP Package worth $14,000 for the 2010 World Cup.  This is definitely a good way to inspire online poker players to sign up with UB and/or Absolute Poker.

New players will also receive an online poker promotion qualification that is known as the $50K Soccer Freeroll Frenzy at UB and the South African Soccer Spectacular at Absolute Poker.  Players will have a chance to win their share of more than $50K in cash as well as prizes over more than 30 New Depositor Freerolls, which includes the remarkable Grand Prize poker freeroll of $20,000.

What do you have to do? 

Just make a qualifying deposit between now and May 3 (Monday) at 4:00 pm ET and you will be able to take part in all of the New Depositor Freerolls (33 in fact) and you will be able to win the maximum potential of the $50K combined prize pool.  Oh, and don’t worry if you aren’t able to make a qualifying deposit between now and May 3rd as there will be other chances throughout the entire month of May to qualify for chances in approaching New Depositor Freerolls.  However, getting a start early, you are able to take part in all the freeroll events and you don’t have to miss out on any of them.

Wait, there’s more….

Every new online poker player that makes a qualifying deposit at one of these online sites will also receive a seat automatically for the Grand Prize $20K Freeroll event.  The player that triumphs over the rest of the players in this event will win a prize package worth more than $11,000 for the World Cup.  In addition to the actual World Cup prize package, the winner will also receive $3,000 in travel expenses to travel to South Africa where this year’s World Cup is being hosted.  Never fret, if you aren’t the lucky winner, the next 99 runner-ups will receive a share of $9K in cash prizes.  Write down the date and time so you can make sure you participate, it isn’t something you want to forget about and end up passing up!  June 5,, 2010, at 2:00 pm ET for the Grand Prize $20K Freeroll.

Make your qualifying deposit today and get started under the Events tab where you will find all the New Depositor Freerolls.  Check back every day for new freerolls and new chances to participate for new prizes.

There is a new Full Tilt Poker television series that will air in the United Kingdom.  This show, which will be a series, is known as The Poker Lounge, and will feature an amateur poker player against five of the pros from Full Tilt Poker. 

The show will be filmed in London, nonetheless, and will be seen on Channel 4 on a weekly basis starting June 21st and ending August 23rd.  This series will consist of ten different matches.  The amateur poker player will be an online qualifier from Full Tilt Poker and will go up against five of the Full Tilt Poker Pros.  Although it is unofficial, a couple of the pros that could be attending this show are Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey.

The games will have a $20,000 buy-in and will play out as a six-person sit and go game.  The games will have a winner takes all prize pool.  This same format was used for the popular television show on NBC known as Poker After Dark and it deemed appropriate and very popular.

Satellites will be running on Full Tilt for two months from April 4th until July 4th for players to qualify online for the amateur poker player in the TV series.  There are eight prize packages of $22,000 and these tournaments have a buy-in of $640.  There are cheaper satellite tournaments found online at Full Tilt if you couldn’t afford the more expensive one with $10 buy-ins.

There are currently two periods of filming planned from May 14th through the 16th as well as July 24th through July 25th. You can catch this show in Britain on Channel 4.

David Chicotsky was 2008 Bluff Magazine Online Player of the Year. He decided to capitalise on that fame by announcing the opening of a poker training school called TheMavenVT. The Maven, as David is known online, took advantage of Lightspeeds VT online streaming software to put into development an advanced poker training business that took advantage of people’s interest in him and also that of his business partner “Bodog Ari” Engel who is also a very successful online poker player. They put together a sophisticated poker training facility that allowed them to tutor players in their self styled poker strategies. They charge $1500 a day for eight hour poker training sessions, usually comprising of players watching them play the system and then answering questions on their strategy. Soon the Maven VT training will be available online costing around $1000 for the first phase of training (the second phase is the personal $1500 per day training), but whilst recommended is not essential.

Whatever you think of whether this is price is justified or not the mere fact that The Maven has managed to give lessons in how to learn poker the way he plays it to many poker players around Las Vegas is testament to obvious marketing ability on his part. The mere fact I am writing about it suggests that online poker players are intrigued rather than put off by this high price for the maven poker training. Even before he has opened his poker training school, he will have made big money from his training methods thanks to the group sessions that take place most days of the week.

I remember reading that a product can fail simply because it is too cheap. After all, would you have brain surgery done by a surgeon offering a $100 weekend special or a surgeon with a flat fee of $25,000? Even before trust is established there is a subliminal consumer link between high price and high quality, until proven otherwise. By then the money is often spent. The Maven understands this perfectly.

My reservation with poker training costing this much is that to a decent player there will be no magic pill that suddenly elevates their poker game. My knowledge of what The Maven offers in his poker coaching for Texas Holdem poker tournaments is an aggressive approach. He advocates a deeper version of the two ways to win approach and makes crazy plays with low cards to force opponents to fold in certain spots. Tilt control, knowledge of push-fold and building a stack are likely to be key parts of his poker training. Unfortunately I have a problem being told that there is a way to win but you will have to pay a large amount of money to find out what it is, I may already know it!

Here is another thing The Maven does very well. By saying that he does things differently and the high learning price suggests a new line of thinking that is seductive to online poker players. They wonder if indeed they have missed something. The Maven writes many blogs and forum postings but he gives nothing away, yet has many online poker players testifying that he is the real deal. He seems trusted and all of this lends itself to increased intrigue in just what does this young player have to offer?

My feelings towards this type of poker training are that you should avoid anything that is not open about what you will learn. Learning new ideas and strategies through poker blogs like the bwin poker blog or internet forums will teach you the dos and don’ts of poker tournament strategy. If your bankroll management allows you this type of investment then perhaps it will be worth it but I would suggest that unless you play over one hundred online poker tournaments per month where your wins would be worth over $5000 this type of investment will be a leak to your bankroll. Time and user reviews will tell whether this is the real deal, or savvy marketing hype.

By Malcolm Clarke