The all-new Sit ‘n’ Go rooms:

Cape Hunting Dog Room (maximum 45 players) – $2.20
Emperor Penguin Room (90) – $2.20
Starling Room (180) – $2.20
Salmon Room (45) – $5.50
Snow Goose Room (45) – $11

With room names like this it won’t be long before CarbonPoker has a complete zoo!  Get into the action with these new Sit ‘n’ Go rooms today.

Yep, you read that right: $15,000 daily.  And that’s not all – a number of existing prize pools have been increased across the CarbonPoker schedule, for a total increase in monthly guaranteed prize pools of over $500,000.  This news comes only weeks after the site boosted its total guaranteed monthly prize pools from $3 million to $4 million.  The new cash brings that total to over $4.5 million, 50% than it was less than a month ago.  Not too shabby!

The bulk of the new tourneys are classic NL Texas Holdem Freezeouts, with entry fees ranging from $11 (1,100 VIP points) to $82 (8,200 VIP points), but cash has been added to a number of other guaranteed tournaments already on the schedule.

The new games are listed below and will continue to be actively added to as more players join Carbon so get into the action today!

New Daily Guaranteeds

14:00 – $1500 Guaranteed Freezeout – $60 buy-in
16:00 – $2000 Guaranteed Freezeout SH – $82
18:00 – $2000 Guaranteed Freezeout – $11
19:00 – $1500 Guaranteed Freezeout – $11
19:30 – $300 Guaranteed Freezeout – $5.50 (7 Card Stud)
20:00 – $2000 Guaranteed Freezeout – $60
20:15 – 2000 Guaranteed Freezeout Turbo – $11
20:30 – $2000 Guaranteed Freezeout SH – $27.50
22:00 – $3000 Guaranteed Freezeout – $44

Not yet content with Tilly and her GG’s, Laak is seeking more attention with his attempt to break the poker endurance record for most hours spent at the table.  Of course, to do this Laak will have quite the task ahead of him since Englishman Paul Zimber holds the current record having played for 74 hours, 20 minutes, and 21 seconds.  Zimber set his record last year in London’s Casino at the Empire while the WSOPE was going on.

Laak’s quest for 74 hours, 20 minutes, and 22 seconds will begin on June 2^nd at Las Vegas’ Bellagio poker room.  Phil talked about his attempt at the record by saying, “I have played many endurance sessions of poker, but never anything of this magnitude.  I know this will test my limits, but I love a good challenge and am excited to be trying to beat this record in Vegas’ top poker room.”

Laak is best known for his nickname “The Unabomer” and the crazy things he does at the poker table.  He opened last year’s WSOP by wearing a leather mask, wig, and makeup thus forcing WSOP to ban masks from future events.  Phil Laak has also won several big poker tournaments in addition to

One of these situations is when you’re in heads-up play during a tourney.  Whether you’re in an actual heads-up tournament, or have had the good fortune to make it down to the final two players standing, aces are very valuable at this point.  In fact, many experienced player will push all-in whenever they get an ace in their hand since the odds are in their favor.  The thinking here is that aces don’t come around all of the time and when they do, you’ve got to play them.  Plus most winning hands in heads-up play are pairs so if you can pair your ace, you’re most likely going to win.

Aside from heads-up situations, playing a single ace in short-handed tournaments is also a good decision in many cases.  Because of the fact that short-handed tourneys only have 6 players at the table (to start), you can get away with using single-ace hands in many situations.  As long as the pot isn’t too big, you can play hands like A-5 since top pair will win more often.  Just make sure that the price to see cards isn’t too high!

The key thing to remember with a single ace is that the fewer players there are in the hand pre-flop, the better chance you have of taking down the pot.

After Mohammed B sold out his partners in crime, Mustafa Ucarkus, Ahmad el-Awayti, and Jihad Khaled Chetwie were all subsequently arrested.  The team of robbers made off with an estimated €240,000, and could have had a lot more had the idiots not dropped a bag of €500,000 while making their escape.

A spokesperson for the Berlin police department talked about the escape and the mastermind behind the crime when he said, “According to the current state of our investigation, the suspect is thought to have been the organizer.  He also drove the getaway car.”  The getaway car was said to have been a luxury Mercedes, which the criminals drove away in after sprinting through a nearby shopping mall.

Aside from dropping the bag full of cash while escaping, another mistake the robbers made was when one of them took their mask off.  A security camera caught the back of their head and even a side profile at one point, which was key in apprehending the suspects.

The one player who benefited from all of the commotion was Kevin MacPhee who held his composure long enough to end up winning the EPT Berlin event.  This win was not only good for around €1 million in prize money, but also for an appearance on the CBS Early Show where he discussed the whole ordeal.

Luckily people haven’t been scarred too much by the EPT event since plenty of top pros were among the 546 people who signed up for the EPT Snowfest tournament in Austria.  Security is a little tighter now as well which always helps.

For instance, if you’re at a new table and somebody makes a huge raise while you are holding a second rate hand, you have no choice but to respect their raise at this point.  You have no information on how they play and calling their raise with no info is only going to put you in a bad situation.  But if you stay at the same table and notice that the same player is making raise after raise, you will have a good idea that they’re a loose/aggressive player.

With this being the case, the raises from the loose/aggressive player won’t hold as much weight as they would with others at the table.  The obvious “others” we’re talking about are the tight players who don’t like to bet out a whole lot unless they have the nuts (or close to it).  If a tight player makes a raise, you can be rest assured that they’re holding something worthy of taking down a big pot at the showdown.

And while the whole watching for tight and aggressive players at your table notion is overstated, doing so will help you to identify which raises hold weight and which ones don’t.  Furthermore, you might want to switch to a tight style of play from time to time in order to give your own raises more power.  For instance, if you notice that nobody respects your raises, it could be because you are playing far too aggressively.

This recently happened when Lithuania’s Department of Physical Education and Sports declared that the Lithuanian Sports Federation is a real operation – basically, this means that they’re saying poker is now a sport in the country.

The president of the Lithuanian Sports Poker Federation, Andrius Tapinas, expressed his gratitude about poker now being an official sport in the country by saying, “This is an extremely important step in our work.  We are receiving congratulations from many of our colleagues abroad and I know that we are breaking thick ice with our progress for similar international initiatives.”

The good news about this is that there will be virtually no restrictions in Lithuania when it comes to playing poker.  People will be able to organize tournaments in lots of different settings now and not just in casinos.  Plus other countries may see what Lithuania has done and take note of this when deciding what to do about the restrictions they’ve imposed on the game.  It would be especially nice if places like the United States took notice of Lithuanian’s actions.  Maybe a possible bid for poker to be an Olympic sport is in the works?

But for right now, it’s just good to see that a country would think highly enough of poker to declare it a sport.  I’m sure that Lithuanian poker pro Tony G is smiling somewhere over this decision.

And it doesn’t matter if your forte is live tournaments or online cash games because if you’re good, you’ll be on the list.  With this being the case, The Nuts isn’t some list of crusty, old players who’ve built a name for themselves over two decades of play.  Instead, it is a legitimate look at who the hottest poker players in the world currently are.

As you might’ve guessed, the top overall player in the world is currently Phil Ivey and he’s been in this spot since The Nuts started back in December.  But some of the people may surprise you such as Jason Mercier who has moved up to the number two overall spot in the world.  Tom Dwan made a leap from 8^th place to 3^rd place after recently crushing fellow rival Patrik Antonius in online cash games.  Likewise, Antonius fell from 2^nd place to 5^th place after having a number done on him by Dwan.

What’s cool about this list is that it’s not made by somebody who just started a poker website, knows nothing about the game, and is looking for something original to put on their site.  Rather, it’s a top 10 list compiled by the professionals at ESPN who actually follow the game and all of the news within the industry.  So you can get an honest look at who is playing well right now rather than just who’s got the best body of work over their career.

The Full List:

1. Phil Ivey
2. Jason Mercier
3. Tom Dwan
4. Daniel Negreanu
5. Patrick Antonius
6. Yevgeniy Timoshenko
7. Daniel Alaei
8. Eric Baldwin
9. Cole South
10. Scott Seiver

Aashish Nanak was already different from other boys his age since he showed an interest in computers at the age of 3.  Now he is definitely different from boys his age because the Delhi, India resident recently won over a half million dollars in an online poker tourname nt.

Unfortunately for Aashish and the Nanak family, the money isn’t theirs yet because an unidentified poker site won’t deliver the $500k.  The poker room, which has remained anonymous, has refused to pay up because of the simple fact that Aashish is obviously underage for the game of poker.  Their refusal to pay has set the stage for a big court battle that is currently taking place in Delhi.

The case for the poker room seems solid at this point, but the Nanak family has also put forth some strong arguments as well.  According to them, it was well known by the mysterious poker website that Aashish had been playing at their room.  They claim that a staff member from the site had even given him a nickname – the Little Poker Wizard.

Whether Aashish Nanak and his family wins the court battle remains to be seen.  But he has an incredible story nonetheless.  Aashish began working on his first Internet website by the age of 4.  This in turn evolved into an affiliate marketing business that Aashish was running to help the Nanak family pay their bills.  Eventually, his uncle noticed his remarkable abilities and got him involved in Internet poker by the age of 6.  Since then, Aashish has been playing poker on his uncle’s account and has earned lots of small winnings during his three-year poker career.

But Aashish will have to continue fighting for the largest win of his career this week in court.  Since the Nanaks aren’t exactly the wealthiest people in India, they are certainly hoping the court decides in their favor.

The premise of this poker show was that 4 online pros were living in a fancy Las Vegas house while trying to accomplish the tough feat of making $2 million in just two months of online poker.  In addition to the whole money making aspect, the trials and tribulations of the players was also an element to the show.  The players involved were Brian Roberts, Dani Stern, Emil Patel, and Jay Rosenkrantz.

Rosenkrantz was of particular interest since every major heads-up challenge saw him taking on some a poker pro.  In one episode, Rosenkrantz was pitted against David Benyamine in a heads-up battle that saw him lose over $60,000.  But Rosenkrantz redeemed himself in an online heads-up match against David “Viffer” Peat where he took Peat for over $351,000 after discovering a cyber tell.  Unfortunately for Rosenkrantz, he couldn’t redeem the whole four person team as they fell short of the $2 million in 2 month goal.

By the end of the 2 months the team earned a solid $676,000 total, which would definitely satisfy plenty of four-person online teams out there.  However, in the spirit of this challenge the money wasn’t quite enough to make ends meet.  And the ratings weren’t high enough to give the group a second chance at their goal since G4 made it clear that the show is done.  2 Months, $2 Million ended up lasting for 10, half hour episodes.