At MacPoker.net, we’re dedicated to keeping you as up to date as possible on the latest news and events from around the world of poker. Just like you’d expect from any leading industry news site, we’ve got the scoop on what’s making news this week in both live and online poker. Here are the top three stories making headlines: The World Poker Tour’s Club WPT will feature tournaments on Fox Sports Net, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series kicked off once again on one of the most popular online poker sites on the planet, and Bodog is holding its $250K Guaranteed this weekend.
Let’s start on the World Poker Tour, where Club WPT has announced that special promotional tournaments featuring its players will air on Fox Sports Net. If you’re a regular reader here on MacPoker.net, you’ll know that the WPT recently signed an agreement with Fox Sports Net to air 26 one-hour episodes comprising Season VII of the popular poker tournament circuit. Aside from those tournaments, Club WPT tournaments will also air nationwide, marking premium exposure for the California-based company.
So what is Club WPT? It’s the World Poker Tour’s “subscription” site that is open for U.S. members. For a nominal fee every month, you’ll be eligible to enter a series of freerolls with cash on the line. Think of it like PokerStars, but you have to pay to become a member rather than pay per tournament. It skirts around U.S. gaming law in the process and has been promoted relentlessly by the WPT. Now, Club WPT tournaments will be beamed into millions of homes around the country.
The ninth Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS as it’s called in the poker world, kicked off on Wednesday night with the first of 25 events. Nearly 5,800 people showed up, each paying $216 to enter the no limit tournament. GARFIELD25 walked away $200,000 richer in one of the largest tournaments ever held on Full Tilt Poker. Among those in the field were Mac players, who can actually download a full version of Full Tilt, complete with all of the features available to users playing on their Dell laptops.
The FTOPS guarantees $15 million in prizes. The Main Event, which is a $535 buy-in tournament, takes place next Sunday, August 17th. Satellites for various FTOPS events have been running constantly. The poker series even features a two-day event with a $2,500+$120 buy-in. That’s about as high-stakes as you can find online. It’s all on Full Tilt Poker.
Finally, we turn to Bodog. The poker room, which is unfortunately only available to Mac users through programs like Boot Camp or Parallels that allow you to operate Windows programs on your Mac, recently launched resizable tables. It had been available in beta mode for quite some time, but became official this week.
Bodog is also getting ready to host its largest poker tournament to date: A $250,000 Guaranteed tournament on Sunday. Remember that Bodog’s largest weekly poker tournament offers just a $100,000 guarantee (which also has an overlay all of the time), so these are really uncharted waters.
Bodog has recently come under fire after a Forbes article indicated that over $20 million had been seized by U.S. authorities from four major domestic banks, including Bank of America and Sun Trust. Bodog fired back, saying that the accounts in question were not associated with the company and that its customers can rest assured their money was not in danger. Regardless, it marked a tumultuous time for the online sports book, which has come under fire by the federal government as well as by a bill introduced by Pete Sessions (R-TX) which hones law enforcement in on sports books.