One addition worth noting is the new ‘Knockout tournaments’ where every player has a ‘bounty’ on their head. So even if you don’t place in the money in the tournament you can still come out a winner if you take out enough of the other players.

This is not a new concept of course, as it has been available on Carbon Poker for quite a while, but it is new to Poker Stars.

Other improvements are focused on fixing some of the problems that they were experiencing at the heads-up tables, and as these are specific to that game, you won’t care unless you are a heads-up player, in which case you will probably appreciate the changes.

Another great addition to their tournament line up is the ‘Special Multi Event Satellites’. Simply put, if you make the pay in one of these special satellites, you can choose from the main events on offer. So, instead of playing a satellite to one specific main event, and then finding for whatever reason that you cannot play in that main event, now you can have a choice of main events from just one satellite.

Three have also been a number of cosmetic changes, such as an increased lobby size, and improvements to the various poker table skins too.

All in all, these are some good changes, and are definitely worth checking out.

PokerStars Bonus Information

Last year Poker Stars updated their initial deposit bonus, which was long overdue, and increased the maximum amount available to a reasonable amount of $600 at 100% deposit match.

A great feature of this bonus that should be noted is that you can make up to three deposits in order to avail of the full bonus amount. For example, say you sign up for Poker Stars and deposit $50 just to see how you like the room. Then you find you do like, it so you reload another $500. In this scenario on a different poker site, you would get a deposit bonus of $50 and that would be all.

But with the new Stars bonus in the same scenario you would be entitled to a bonus amount of $550. Worth noting.

No related posts.

These poker rooms include SportsBook Poker and PlayersOnly Poker. The resultant increase in traffic on the Merge Network is expected to be huge – possibly up to six times the current level – and is predicted to propel the Merge Network into the top 10 of online poker sites by next year.

Currently Merge is ranked 20th in the list of poker rooms by player numbers, with Cake being 10th on the same list. The loss to the Cake network of these rooms will probably be as significant as the gain Merge expects.

Both Cake and Merge take American players, so all else being equal the transition should go smoothly for most existing players.

In order to ensure the success of the transition, there are a number of excellent promotions being offered by Merge skins right now, and these should be taken advantage of by all smart players.

Poker Host is one room on the Merge network that hopes to benefit by the increased players at the network, and they have a number of promotions right now that are geared to make them stand out from competing skins.

Aside from their larger than usual deposit bonus of up to $2,000 at 200% deposit match, Poker Host players can also cash in on the current freeroll extravaganza being run as part of the change over preparations.

Related posts:

1. Everleaf and UPN merge

The new larger network is still called Everleaf so I guess you could say that the UPN was taken over by Everleaf.  The details don’t matter too much.  No players, or their bankrolls, were hurt in the making of that merger, so all is good.

The new larger network is still very small compared to the top ten poker sites, with still only a couple of hundred players at peak times.  Hopefully the increased player base and assumed cost savings will be enough to keep Everleaf Gamings doors open for another while.

In the current economic climate smaller poker rooms and networks are coming under a lot of financial pressure and the economies of scale that a larger player base can bring must be most welcome.

Everleaf Gaming sites accept American players which should be a big boost, but the software is still being reported as quite buggy by a number of dissatisfied players and, until that gets sorted out, the network will most likely not flourish.

Related posts:

1. Merge Network Traffic Explosion