NEWLY ADDED POKERSTARS FESTIVALS IN SPAIN, SOUTH KOREA

The newly formed PokerStars Festival will have five new events running on three different continents from May through September. If you are seeking out a poker-themed summer vacation, or looking for an exotic alternative destination other than the WSOP in Vegas, then you have several options. The newly added PokerStars Festival stops include familiar locales like Vina del Mar in Chile and Punta del Este, Uruguay. In addition, there will be stops in South Korea, Spain, and the Philippines.

In line with this, the site introduced home games during the first lockdown of 2020. Seeing the demand for online entertainment, Unibet came up with its own way of online poker you can play with friends. Unlike its peers, Unibet does things on a request-only basis. This is possible because it has a close-knit community and an active poker manager.

Agents are nothing new. The agent model is how illegal sports gambling worked in the USA for years (i.e., think “bookies”), and still does in many states. Moreover, the agent model is very common in Asia, Africa and Latin America for online gambling and other payments and money transfer purposes.

The latest update on the UKGC regulations - as of April 2020, all poker operators that are licensed in the UK are obliged to promote responsible gambling. Namely, all UKGC license holders must be registered at GamStop, meaning that players that have excluded themselves with the self-exclusion scheme will not be able to access poker sites licensed in the UK.

For years poker existed primarily in the back of smoky bars or casinos but that all changed in the early 2000s when the internet and an accountant from Tennessee elevated poker to primetime. Prior to 2000 most poker played on the internet was done in chat rooms and, understandably, was just recreational. That changed when technology advanced and secure online poker sites launched that were able to safely hold players’ cash and let them wager against other.

Some club owners run clubs with as few as five or 10 people - all people they know in real life, and often organised around a brick and mortar poker club. For these owners, it’s feasible to manage money transfers between players. Other owners, however, run clubs with hundreds or even thousands of members. Sometimes, multiple hosts come together to form unions, encompassing tens of thousands of players. Things can get very big very quickly, and this is where agents come in.

ESPN, the Travel Channel, Game Show Network, Bravo, NBC. These and many other television stations are jumping on the poker bandwagon. Each of these stations offers some form of the game played by everyone from nobodies to prominent celebrities. No one can deny the power of television in today's society. People mimic just about everything they see, such as how to dress, what to drink, where to eat, so it is natural that the games they play are also heavily influenced by what is on television. "ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker--which includes more than 40 poker tournaments leading up to the main event--draws ratings comparable to Major League Baseball and the NBA" (Condotta). Once upon a time kids would go outside to play catch with each other. Now they are in their garages playing poker. Another way television has made the game more appealing is the way it shows the audience what cards each player has. This has taken away the guesswork and confusion of watching a game and spiced things up more for the viewing public. Condensing the action has also helped ratings. "The hour you see is probably 10 hours of poker" (Condotta). With the game made shorter and easier than it really is, a whole generation accustomed to instant gratification can get a quick fix.