Poker News, Live Updates & Exclusive Deals
Borgata is the online version of the popular Borgata live poker room in Atlantic City, home to some of the biggest tournaments in the country. It runs steady tournament schedules and cash games suited to all bankrolls, with smooth multi-table play and fast payments. The site focuses on tournaments and freerolls that make it easy for players to move up through satellites, with simple navigation and fast-paced formats. The 888poker welcome bonus gives new players an easy way to start, with tournament tickets distributed over several days. It’s one of the best poker sites for players who want to build up a bankroll without making a massive deposit. 888poker is one of the most accessible poker sites in the world, built for new and casual players, but also a great platform for the pros.
Eight States Looking to Legalize Online Poker
The bill has already gained support from the Social and Promotional Games Association (SPGA), a group representing sweepstakes poker operators. While traditional casino operators aren’t thrilled about the competition, Calabrese argues that regulation is the best approach. Meanwhile, Senator Joseph Addabbo is pushing a separate bill for broader iGaming regulation, including measures targeting unregulated sweepstakes casinos.
Software Experience
The World www.pokernewsdaily.com Series of Poker free online poker game is available for players around the world. This was the first time poker players were able to win a WSOP bracelet online, with the final six playing down at the Rio to crown the winner. In our section, you’ll find useful services and programs for players who want to keep improving, track their progress, and get more insights into their game at both cash tables and tournaments. That is to be the best guide to online poker sites for new players and to guarantee every player the highest poker signup bonus. PokerListings has been a leading force in online poker since 2003, delivering poker news, stories, interviews with professional players, strategy tips, live streams and deals to millions of poker enthusiasts.
Play money poker means you’re playing on online poker sites with fake currency. Laws around online gambling can be confusing at the best of times, especially for real money online poker in the USA. Meanwhile, states with legalized online poker have combined player pools through the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA), creating much-needed liquidity for US players. On April 15, 2011, US poker players awoke to see a US Department of Justice emblem when they tried logging into their online poker accounts. Poker suffered its darkest day in history on April 15, 2011 — 15 years ago to the day — when the US government seized hundreds of millions of dollars in player funds and shut down the biggest online poker sites worldwide. Industry insiders, professional analysis, interviews with top players, and online poker survival guides.
Elsewhere,GGPoker’s Weekly $100k Freeroll is a specific highlight, and by far the best online freeroll for value. PartyPoker tops our list for the best poker site for freerolls and it was an obvious pick. That means you might be finding yourself playing for hours and only winning a few cents. Some sites don’t offer regular freerolls, and those that do won’t typically put up thousands of dollars. There really isn’t a catch – freerolls are free and you can (often) win real money or other prizes. And this is what draws so many to the tournament format.
As a result, there was no one to hold them accountable when misconduct, such as the infamous cheating scandal at UB, victimized players. Without proper legalization and regulation, online poker sites operate without much oversight. As one of the most conservative states in the country, Utah does not offer online or live poker and don’t hold your breath for that to change any time soon. There is no online poker in Texas and the state has some of the strictest gambling laws in the country. There is no online or live poker in Tennessee and it seems unlikely that either will be reaching the state any time soon.
The hand occurred during the 2026 Main Event final table on August 5 at the Horseshoe Casino. I’ve won over $1,000,000 in cash games. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced player, we have something for everyone.
THMC London is back for 2025, featuring bigger guarantees, trophy events, and a Cape Town package for the Main Event champion. Chad Eveslage backed up his reputation by taking down one of the biggest freerolls in poker, the $1,000,000 PGT Championship, for a $500,000 reward. Andrew Lichtenberger started the 2026 PokerGO Tour right where he left off, winning the opening event and setting the pace for the season. Shaun Deeb took home his ninth World Series of Poker bracelet after coming out with flying colors from the $1,500 8-Game Mix, moving close to an all-time WSOP record. Did you know about our poker forum?
Harvey Castro outlasted a 1,648-player field at The Lodge in Austin to win the WPT Prime Lodge Championship, earning $225,020 and a spot in December’s WPT finale. A controversial fold at the WSOP Europe PLO Championship bubble sparked plenty of tension while splitting opinions among players and fans. Phil Ivey has 11 bracelet wins, with Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Erik Seidel (10) the only players with double-digit WSOP bracelet wins. In 2024, the WSOP Main Event saw a record 10,112 players. However, from 2017 entries in the Main Event increased year-on-year, with the 8,569 players in the 2019 WSOP Main Event the second-highest ever, just short of the record of 8,773 set in 2006.
On the second effort, they succeeded, and the state has appeared to have gone backward in terms of precedent that might favor online poker. The only caveat – PokerStars as a platform in the US migrated across, meaning players now can only access it via the FanDuel platform. This incorporated Pennsylvania into the shared-liquidity compact, allowing PokerStars players to compete with others in PA, MI and NJ. Ever since they dealt their first hand of online poker back on January 29, 2021, Michigan has been one of the hottest online poker markets in the United States.
- We’ve got five states (NJ, Nevada, Delaware, Michigan, PA) running regulated poker, each with their own hoops, and everywhere else either no option or offshore rooms with zero safety nets.
- The stakes are another great plus, with micro, low, medium and high-roller games all available.
- We recommend looking for bonuses with low playthrough requirements and valuable extras like freerolls or rakeback.
- More work will need to be done in addition to the passing of this legislation before Maine players can join forces with other states.
Yeah, Bucky (Shawn Buchanan) got me on the cold showers before I headed down to play. But before, at my table, not only was I the shortest stack, I had the monster stack to my left. Our table had the top five stacks, and the other table had the six shortest stacks. I imagine you were keeping a close eye on what was happening at the other table.
Honestly, going into the final day, I had a strong feeling that destiny was on my side. If I could have chosen one opponent to play heads-up against, it was Lucas. When we were at the same table, we talked about our backgrounds, our history, family, and stuff like that. You had a lot of support from all corners of the poker world.
My mission for the final table is to feel good, look good, and play good, kind of thing, right? I was fifth overall out of eleven players left. What people don’t understand is you can’t be a tight player or a loose player or a gambling player. Against better players, yes, it can.
Ohio was a hotbed for illicit gambling in the early 1900s until 1990 when casino legalization was first introduced to the state. Online poker was late to the game and was legalized in New Jersey in 2013 after poker’s Black Friday two years prior. It’s also the only Nevada-based site to allow you to compete in online bracelet events for a chance at a coveted gold bracelet. As one of the most gambling-averse states, there are very few states further away from legalizing online gambling than Nebraska. But while Montana is pretty relaxed when it comes to many forms of gambling, the same can’t be said about online gambling.
Poker Promotions
Elsewhere at the SHRPO series, statistical anomalies were on tap as three different players won four events in the series. However, since I play mainly high-stakes tournaments in the US, most of the players I’m familiar with are also high-stakes regulars. The tables are livelier; they’re more willing to chase draws and take gambles, and their fundamentals are still a bit weaker compared to US players.
Nevada and Delaware both passed legislation legalizing online poker in 2013 and other states followed suit over the next decade including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan. But it would take several years for millions of dollars to be paid back to Full Tilt players. However, Full Tilt only had $60 million on deposit in its bank accounts, meaning over $300 million was still owed to players worldwide. The complaint alleged that, as of March 2011, Full Tilt Poker owed approximately $390 million in player funds around the world, including $150 million to US players. The US Attorney’s Office amended its complaint to allege that Full Tilt Poker was a Ponzi scheme that Raymond Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst used to defraud players. On April 20th, both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars reached an agreement with the Department of Justice that allowed them to regain the use of their dot-com sites to help distribute player funds.
However, it was only in June 2025 that residents of West Virginia had a legal and regulated platform on which they are able to play, following the launch of BetRivers Poker. Among Washington state casinos are Muckleshoot Casino, Tulalip Resort Casino and Emerald Queen Casino, to name just a few. There are nearly three dozen casinos in Washington operated by more than two dozen different tribes. Charities are permitted to hold bingo, raffles, and casino nights.
Also on Wednesday, BetMGM Poker PA announced that it would join the BetMGM Poker shared player pool with New Jersey and Michigan on Monday, April 28 at 9 a.m. Shapiro even accepted an invitation to a poker game for government officials inside the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. “I hope so. And not because I’m trying to encourage people to go out and gamble or play poker or do something else. It’s up to you. But if you want to do that, I think it’s important to make it easy.”
Simply put, it didn’t outlaw online poker, but it took away the ability to get the money required to play online poker on and off the sites. The first online poker site to offer real money games was Planet Poker in 1998; in fact, the very first hand was dealt on January 1! For poker players, Black Friday was the day the US government forever altered the course of online poker. In April 2025, Pennsylvania joined the multi-state compact, allowing players from the state to play online poker with other players in Michigan and New Jersey. WSOP.com is pretty much the only current legal online poker site for players in Las Vegas and the state of Nevada.
Those are the kind of hands that are the reason I love the game and make poker what it is. Poker’s boom years played a vital role in making the game safer and more inviting to all. I’ve been sitting at public poker tables since the mid-1980s. The poker environment, the atmosphere in which we all played 25 or 35 years ago, was toxic. But you’re not sitting those games, and if you are, you already know all this.
Instead of the bounties being a fixed payout each time, bounties accumulate and are added to your own bounty every time you win one. No other operator can match its offering, with Razz, Stud, PLO, PLO8 and many more variants available to play in a Sit and Go format. Once a Sit and Go reaches its capacity field size, the tournament will begin. Its daily schedule is packed with fan-favorite events, including bounties, hypers and satellites. For instance, a knockout (bounty) tournament will almost always be an MTT, but a hyper tournament could also fall under the MTT umbrella.
Cash game and MTT data used in any articles, reports, charts or elsewhere is provided by SharkScope Analytics unless specified otherwise. The tournament took place at LES A Casino in Jeju and attracted 71 entries. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, please visit begambleaware.com (Great Britain) to find help.
I mean, you’re essentially passing the money back and forth, but it’s always entertaining. That being said, the mixed poker community is special. Then we go to the nineteenth hole and relive the glory of our shots. You’ve said in a few interviews you had lost the passion for poker over the past few years. I truly feel like it’s a team game. But that’s one thing that I did every day before my start time during the main.
So, I liked in my interviews to try and bring players opportunities to express themselves without worrying if it was going to give away crucial information about how they thought about the game. Poker players during that era had television identities, online personas, forum reputations, and private selves that could be very different from one another. There were a few players like Kathy Liebert, JJ Liu, and Jennifer Harman that weren’t sexualized all the time, but the default for players and media personalities alike was to frame them in a sexy way. The first two weeks of December may not have enough players for two giant festivals at the same time, but there’s still plenty of interest to go around if they all learn to share.
MSIGA is the interstate compact that allows players in states like New Jersey, Michigan, and Nevada, where various legal poker sites exist, to compete against one another in a shared player pool. Collectively known as the Wabanaki Nations, these tribes have been granted exclusive rights to operate online poker and casino gaming in the state. There are plently of places to play online gambling games, but only a handful of them provide you with a quality experience. It is usually governed by official gaming authorities and state bodies who ensure that players are safe when gaming online. As long as the online poker USA site you decide to play on is reputable then it is totally safe to engage.
When we look at it, Europe shows the danger of fragmented frameworks and the stable growth that comes with shared liquidity. Official markets are locked down tight, but underground play is thriving. This journey the U.S. poker market finds itself on is not unfolding in a vacuum. Truly sustainable poker needs both robust compliance frameworks and cutting-edge tech. EvenBet Gaming platforms have 99.9% uptime, real-time fraud detection, and modular integration options, ensuring operators can scale without sacrificing stability.
That’s a big miss, considering how much it would boost the state’s poker scene. From Pennsylvania finally joining the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) to New York and Massachusetts making fresh moves toward legalization, there’s a lot to unpack. The PokerGO Tour heads to Houston next month for the Texas PLO Roundup, a 10-day series featuring big guarantees, high-stakes action, and plenty of Omaha excitement. Edward Jackson-Spivack capped off a strong week in Las Vegas with another CMSOP win, beating a stacked field before jumping straight into the next event.
Its global reach, diverse player base, and nonstop action make it the go-to platform for anyone seeking high-volume games at every stake level. If you want to find a game quickly and easily, or play large-field tournaments with bumper prizepools, BetMGM Poker is a great choice. BetRivers Poker might be one of the newest online poker sites around, but it’s already making a big impression on the market. It is focused on returning a high share of rake to players via its iRush Rewards programme, which can deliver 40 %–75 % rake-back at top VIP levels.