The Winning Poker Network has announced the largest guaranteed tournament for a U.S. room since the events of April 15th, 2011, a $250,000 guaranteed tournament to be held on April 15th, 2012. Dubbed the Liberty Weekend $250,000, the name of the event is an obvious play on one of the darkest days in history for U.S. poker players, Black Friday, which occurred one year to the date of this tournament. Poker rooms on the Winning Poker Network offering this large tournament include Americas Cardroom and True Poker. Players are able to buy-in directly to the Liberty $250,000 for $215 or via satellites for as little as $1. Players are able to rebuy during the late registrations period. On April 13th, a smaller $36+$3 buy-in tournament will be held which will guarantee 250 seats to the April 15th final. The network has been no stranger to larger tournament guarantees over the last few months, having gradually increased their largest tournaments each month. In December, their featured a $50,000 guaranteed prize pool, and then increased it to $75,000 in January and $100,000 in February, which was the largest on the network before the $250,000 Liberty Weekend Tournament was announced. Other U.S. facing sites have increased the prize pools over the last year, but not at the rate Winning Poker has over the last few months. The Merge Gaming Network increased their Sunday $50,000 to $100,000, while Merge Gaming’s Poker Maximus is featuring guaranteed prize pools up to $200,000. Bovada has continued $100,000 weekly tournaments and is hosting a $250,000 Guaranteed for the main event of the Black Diamond Poker Open running on April 1st. Winning Poker is currently the fourth largest U.S. facing site. Despite having their domain seized in the “Blue Money” seizures -- approximately one month after Black Friday – the network has maintained the fastest cashout times for U.S. players.
As some of you may know, each month I go through each of our partner rooms and post the most significant non-exclusive promotions of the month. Today, I thought I would share my subjective analysis of the most interesting promotions on the list -- my Top 7 -- running during February. 1) WPT/Party Poker Card Rush During February, Party Poker and WPT Poker bring back the popular Card Rush. For each 15 Party Points a player earns they will receive a game piece that will reveal a guaranteed prize of a minimum of 10 Party Points up to a grand prize of $5,000. Card Rush Race points will also be earned towards a leaderboard that will pay additional cash prizes of $50 to $9,000 to the top 200 players. Party Poker will also scatter $50 spots to players finishing 220 through 2,000. Party Poker will be awarding up to 1.8 million cards during the length of this promotion. Undoubtedly, many of these cards will be Party Points and freeroll entries but it's still a great extra perks that grinders should appreciate. 2) Carbon Poker/Aced/Black Chip Poker $25,000 Bankroll Booster Freerolls Carbon Poker, Aced and Black Chip Poker will be running numerous daily qualifiers to the $25,000 Bankroll Booster Freeroll to be held on February 26th at 2 PM ET. There is no direct way to get into the tournament so players must enter either three-times-daily Freeroll Qualifiers (at 13:30, 17:30 or 21:30) or via VIP Points Earned Qualifiers. The VIP Points Qualifiers are run nine times daily. To qualify for these tournaments, players must earn a designated number of VIP Points the previous day and/or the current day up to the time of the tournament. I'm estimating an overlay of about $10 per player in the final. 3) Minted Poker $1 Max Rake Minted Poker and other sites on the Everleaf Network have extended $1 Max rake caps on all tables through February. These tables should be attracting more players than they are due to the fact they are not subject to the large 5 euro max rake and the winning limits that players must undergo at the euro tables. This would be the top promotion in online poker if there was more traffic on these tables. 4) Betsafe $100,000 Points Races Betsafe offers their lucrative Points Race every month so this promotion isn't any more special than previous months. I like this promotion not only for the total size of the prize pool -- which is divided into two promo periods each month -- but the overall value to players. Betsafe also sweetens the pot by providing a $6,000 freeroll to all players that finish in the top 100 of Race 1 or 2. 5) True Poker/Americas Cardroom You really wouldn't think that a small network such as Winning Poker would be able to offer such large promotions, but during February they have actually increased their monthly race promotions to $100,000. $60,000 of the prize pool is awarded to the top FPP Point earners during the month and another $40,000 will be given away during weekend "Sprints," $10k each weekend. Note that the Sprints are only available to ring game players while the $60k "Marathon" is offered to both ring game and tournament players and actually awards bonus points for participation in top tournaments. 6) Boss Magic Hands For one day only on February 14th, the Boss Network (Poker Heaven, Fortune Poker, Interpoker) are awarding cash prizes to players that hit various Valentine's Day themed hands. I've always loved these types of promotions, especially ones that are relatively easy to hit like this one. Players receive €25 for a Heart Flush, €25 when losing 3 hands with K and Q of hearts and €250 when winning a hand with Straight Flush of Hearts. Players must submit a Magic Hand to claim via the Player Zone within 72 hours of hitting the hand. Note that both hole cards must be used and other rules apply. 7) Mansion Poker On Target! I'm also a big fan of promotions that guarantee a prize when a certain amount of play is achieved and that is exactly what Mansion is offering during February with their "On Target" promotion. Each week during the month, players can enter On Target via a no-play tournament from the lobby. Players that hit a raked hand target during the week will receive a cash reward and a $50 pending bonus. Prizes start at $5 and a $50 bonus for reaching 200 raked hands. Not bad, especially for grinders and when combining the promotion on top of the other many Mansion promotions. There you have it- my personal favorite standard online poker promotions for the month of February. If you a PAS publisher, be sure to also check out over $300,000 in exclusive promotions during the month of February. Good luck and happy marketing!
At the beginning of each month, we post the top standard promotions for the month in the Poker Marketing Forum. Often times as the month moves along new promotions are announced by poker rooms. The promotions below are some of the best that you should be informing your players about for the rest of January. Party Poker Rake Free Tournaments: For the remainder of January, Party Poker is slashing buy-in fees on all multi-table tournaments. To celebrate this offer, Party Poker is offering a 100% up to $100 reload bonus and a $50,000 Depositor Freeroll entry to all players that use bonus code RAKEFREE. Minted Poker $1 Rake Caps Minted Poker has continued $1 Rake Caps on all USD tables through the month of January. Euro tables are not eligible for this promotion. Minted Poker will also be holding a large €10,000 guaranteed tournament on January 29th. Red Kings $85,000 Points Race Ongame's Red Kings is offers a huge $85,000 Points Race each month, and players only need to play for three days in a row to qualify for a prize. A player simply needs to finish in the top 120 chart for three consecutive days to receive a prize based on their performance during those days. The next three-day cycle starts with the accumulation of more Player Points. Betsafe Second $60,000 Race It's not too late for players to start accumulating Race Points towards Betsafe's second $60,000 January Race, which started January 17th. The leaderboard will pay cash prizes of up to $7,500 to the top 100 Race Point earners. In addition to the cash prizes, the Top 15 finishers from Race 1 and 2 will receive an entry into a $6,000 January Race freeroll in early February. Red Star $27,000 Rake Race The $27,000 Rake Race (really more like a Rake Chase) is one of the best offered by a Cake Poker Network site. Players that generate rake at 1 of 14 levels are paid predetermined cash prizes of $3 to $2,000. Many of the smaller cash prizes have been claimed, but there are plenty of opportunities remaining for players that generate at least $350 in rake for the rest of the month. These cash rewards effectively pay more than 10% extra rakeback to players. Intertops FPP Race Intertops, a popular Cake Network poker room, offers $6,250 FPP Races each week exclusively to their players. The weekly leaderboards pay the top 100 FPP earners during each promo period. Race 4 gets underway on January 22nd at 04:00 GMT and runs through January 29th at 04:00 GMT. Poker Heaven €20,000 Cash Race This race started on January 16th, but players have until January 29th to accumulate points towards this large race. The leaderboard will pay cash prizes to the tpo 50 point earners during the promotion period. This promotion is offered network wide but Poker Heaven seems to be offering the largest prizes. Players must opt-in via the Player Zone. True Poker $65,000 Points Race, $75k Gtd. Tournament The $65,000 Points Race has become a monthly staple and players joining the race today still have a chance to get on the leaderboard. A $50 prize is for the taking for currently just over 1100 points. On January 29th, True Poker will be offering a $75,000 guaranteed tournament. Players can enter by buying in directly for $109 for satellites for a low as $2.20. NoiQ €60,000 VIP Races There are two remaining promotion periods remaining in NoiQ Poker's main VIP Races. The Entraction Network room will be giving away €15,000 each from January 16th to January 24th and January 24th to January 31st. Cash prizes are awarded to the top 100 VIP Points earners during each period.
The network home of True Poker and Americas Cardroom has announced that they have officially changed their name from Yatahay to the Winner Poker Network, a move they say reflects their "industry-leading product offering and proven dedication to the online poker community in the United States." While other top U.S. facing rooms such as Carbon Poker and Bovada garner much of the buzz these days, the network now dubbed Winning Poker has been a quiet success story since the events of Black Friday, or Blue Monday for that matter. According to PokerScout the network has a shade over 200 real money players at the tables during peak times. But this traffic figure comes short of telling the entire story. The low to mid stakes games, for instance, often see just as many players as networks twice the reported size of the Winning Poker Network. The multi-table tournament prize pools tell a similar story. The Sunday guaranteed now fetches a $15,000 prize pool and at the end of January, the Winning Poker Network will be offering a $75,000 guaranteed event. These are prize pools that are competing or exceeding the MTTs offered by Cake Poker and Everleaf, much larger networks according to PokerScout. In addition, the promotional offerings on the Winning Poker Network are also very generous. Not only are players receiving 27% rakeback and a 100% up to $1,000 sign-up bonus at rooms such as True Poker and Americas Cardroom, but players can also participate in a monthly $65,000 Points Race, which provides impressive returns to players that are among the top 275 on the leaderboard. A Secret Santa cash-rewards program was also extended through January. The Winning Poker Network touts themselves as "being the best destination for U.S. players looking for a safe and secure site," but do they live up to the hype? The roots of Winning Poker Network trace back to the flagship room, True Poker. Even though the poker room has maintained a similar size for roughly a decade, they have always seemed to quietly go about their business providing the same respectable, quality service to players. In regards to payouts -- arguably the most important aspect of a poker room for U.S. players today -- they are among the top performers over the last few months. In December's Payment Processing report we gave them a B rating -- 2nd overall -- with non-bounced checks arriving to players' mailboxes within 1-2 weeks. Despite the many positives, the Winning Poker Network clearly falls short in some key areas, at least right now. Sit N Go grinders and non-Hold'em cash game players, for example, are two types of players who likely wont find much appeal in the poker network unless they are playing another poker room simultaneously. Most of the U.S. facing rooms, including the Winning Poker Network, are significantly above where they were at this time last year. While we can't expect a name change to affect a network's success by any significant measure (although I would argue it's an improvement over the confusing and ambiguous Yatahay), monitoring the Winning Poker Network's momentum over 2012 will be something we will be sure to keep an eye on.
We're happy to announce that True Poker has returned to PAS with a 27% rakeback offer, providing publishers another option for their U.S. players. True Poker is no stranger to the online poker world having launched in 2001. With some recent acquisitions the network has been one of the fastest growing in online poker over the last year. So why should I promote True Poker? --Established in 2001, backed by financially sound company --Accepting U.S. players --Better than average payment processing --Good cash-game action up to $2/$4, especially up to $0.50/$1.00 --Tournament guarantees increasing. Weekly tournament up to $15k and daily up to $4k What do players receive when signing up at True Poker through a PAS site? --27% Rakeback, Weighted contributed method --100% up to $1000 sign-up bonus --$65,000 November Points Race. PAS players that make a $50 or greater deposit will receive 500 extra points towards the promotion --PAS players receive (2) $250 Freeroll entries --$150,000 in guaranteed tournaments each month How do I promote True Poker rakeback through PAS? ? Existing PAS publishers, can simply enable the offer in the Rakeback tab on the publisher admin. If you previously had True Poker on your rakeback site, it will automatically be added. For those interested in becoming a PAS publisher: Starting promoting the True Poker rakeback offer today, as well as dozens of revenue-share or CPA deals from top rooms. Sign-up today and get started in minutes. Where can I receive additional information? We have a provided publishers a helpful FAQ for answers to some of the basic questions you may have. If you're looking for in-depth information about True Poker or the True Poker affiliate program, check out our True Poker PAS review. For additional questions about PAS or the True Poker rakeback offer, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help. Of course, we are always here to assist you with growing your online poker affiliate business. Please let us know anytime what we can do to help.
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