International
Casinos may not allow you to play several tables (and several games) at once, type your witty chat into a little box (unless you count texting into your phone, which some shockingly won't let you do) or play in your underwear.But they do have one advantage over the online game, and that's playing live.
There's something exciting and even a little romantic about throwing live chips in a pot, squeezing real cards between your fingers and reading real expressions on your opponents stunned faces after you bluff with the hammer (7-2 os).
PokerStars and many other online sites seem to know this, as many of them are offering satellites to live events in addition to the usual online fare. Full Tilt is combating this by offering a brand new, huge Sunday tournament on the cheap.
PokerStars attracts the most players every night online, but it's pushing live poker, too, and as proof, this week the site announced Season 2 dates for the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour, or ANZPT if you like the alphabet.
This tour was the hottest poker to hit the mainland states of Australia, and this year PokerStars is bringing six events to all mainlands and expects to add more as the year goes on.
The first event starts Feb. 9, and it should be big, if last season is any indication, when 1,309 players battled for almost $3 million in prize money. That's a lot of Fosters!
That's pretty sweet in its own right, but PokerStars wouldn't start these things just to rub our noses in the fact that we can't go, right? Sure enough, there are plenty of ways to qualify through satellite tournaments.
You don't even have to pay anything, as the site will run nightly freerolls from Monday to Saturday each week in the lead up to the ANZPT Season 2 in February. Those top players will get a seat in the weekly Sunday Stage 2 final, and the top 10 from each Sunday final will then go on to play for an all-expenses paid package to ANZPT (with spending money to boot).
Absolute Poker is hosting a happy hour, only it's a Power Hour. That's what the site is calling a chance to earn double AbsolutePoints than you normally would.
If you want to play at work, you'll earn extra points in the afternoon, and if you want to be sleepy at work, you can play late at night.
You can use the points to shop for merchandise including clothing, books or even iPods, or you can convert the points to cash. You can also use them to enter tournaments.
As the Winter Olympics approach, Titan Poker is giving us a chance to represent our countries without having to learn a triple toe loop (though the bobsledding looks kinda fun).
Titan's putting on the International Team Poker League. That's a chance to play both online and in casinos during a 10-month period.
There's lots of cash as well as some honor on the line here, as prizes are offered in all regular events during the season, and qualifying tournaments run practically all the time until the final in May 2010 in, where else? Las Vegas.
The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino will host that eight-day ultimate showdown, and all of it should be shown on TV.
A Super Satellite promotion is running now to the first land-based event for online qualifiers in Vegas from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, but hurry, as the last one runs on Jan. 6.
Winner Poker is offering its own qualifying tournaments to one of the biggest international events in poker, the 2010 Irish Open.
All Irish eyes will be on Dublin this April, as millions will be up for grabs, and Winner Poker has a seat ready for you.
Winner will be awarding $7,200 prize packages from satellites that you can enter for as low as $2.20. Half of that money will go to the buy-in, so you know the final prize is pretty sweet (and it was, last year's champion won close to $1 million).
It's easy to get addicted to these low buy-in tournaments that offer high rewards, and Full Tilt just might be offering one that could be as addictive as Christmas cookies (even if they are a little stale at this point).
It's the brand new Big Little Tournament, and for $5.50, or about what you used to spend on SnGs when you were starting out (or maybe that was just me), you can enter a tournament with $250,000 guaranteed.
Four of these will run on the first four Sundays of January, and $1 million is up for grabs in guaranteed money. Two of the tournaments, on Jan. 10 and Jan. 24, will be Turbos, but all of them are No-Limit Holdem.
If $5 is too much - and no, I'm not making fun, I was there once - you can satellite your way in for .50, or less than the price of a candy bar, or you can use your Full Tilt points.
Registration for each tournament is limited to 50,000 players, so you might want to register now to lock up your seat.
As always, you can download Full Tilt or the software for any other online poker room above on Pokerworks, where you can earn juicy bonuses for doing so.
Hope your holidays are as good as many of these promotions.
Calling all Ladies
PokerStars has a Luxury Ladies Poker Club trip to Monte Carlo waiting for you. 
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