Carbon Poker Bad Beat Jackpot won by Ruggio

Merge Network’s huge bad beat jackpot was finally won on Saturday at Carbon Poker.  A player called “Ruggio” who lost the hand with a straight flush won the largest portion of the jackpot of over $417k!  The winner of the hand, “Aelani”, got an extra $208k added to his poker bankroll and all the other players at the table each received around $50k.

Carbon Poker now and start playing at the Merge network bad beat jackpot tables.

This was the first time the Merge bad beat jackpot, which was introduced midway through 2026 was won.  The criteria for winning the jackpot is you must have a hand better than quad sevens, which uses both hole cards, lose to a stronger hand.  The payout of the jackpot is as follows: 35% to the big loser of the hand, 17.5% to the winner of the hand, 17.5% split between the other players at the table, 10% to the Merge gaming network and 20% left to reseed the new jackpot.

Once the jackpot grows back to as huge an amount as it was it becomes a good value to play at Aced Poker or Carbon Poker to try for the big score.

PKR Live II in London

PKR is hosting their second ever PKR Live event at Loose Cannon Club Casino in London from Feb 17th to 19th.  The tournament series will include 3 huge poker tournaments ranging from a freeroll to the main event $500 buy-in.  Here is the schedule of events:

Feb 17th – $100 Buy-in – 150 players max
Feb 18th – $500 main event – 150 players max
Feb 19th – $10K bounty freeroll for all players who played in the main event.

PKR is planning to make PKR Live II a fun event away from the tables as well.  It’s not known yet exactly what they are planning, but I’m confident it will be a party.

You can earn your package from many satellite tournaments on PKR.  If you are from London and don’t play at PKR you should sign up for PKR rakeback now and satellite in to make sure you don’t miss this fun time.

Use a PKR Bonus Code when making your first deposit to play for real money at PKR in order to make sure you receive a bonus.

Antonius Accepts Tom “Durrrr” Dwan’s $1.5 Million Heads Up Challenge

If you haven’t heard, Tom Dwan, aka Durrrr, put out a challenge to any player in the world to play him in high limit heads up no limit hold’em or pot limit omaha at 4 tables simultaneously for 50,000 hands.   What makes the challenge really interesting is that if Dwan wins his challenger must pay him $500K, but if Dwan loses he pays the challenger $1.5 Million!  The 3 to 1 ratio shows just how confident Dwan is that he will come out on top, but it is also a very good value challenge for many top poker professionals.

Patrick Antonius was the first player to accept Tom’s offer to play in this heads up Challenge with Phil Ivey and David Benyamine close behind.

Full Tilt Poker has already created “durrrr challenge” tables in the $200/$400 PL Omaha section of their software in preparation for the challenge.  Antonius had the choice and decided to play PL Omaha.  The challenge will start in a week or two and we will keep you posted on the outcomes.  Whatever happens you can be sure that this event will be followed with the utmost attention and will be very good for online poker as a whole.  It’s anyones game as these are two of the best poker players in the world.  One thing that we can be sure of is there will be many big pots with lots of money exchanging hands and some huge bragging rights on the line.  One player will end the challenge with a big increase in their poker bankroll, while the others may be completely crippled.

Get $10 FREE at Full Tilt Poker Now!

CD Poker Febonanza 2026

CD Poker is throwing a Febonanza this month and is giving away a ton of cash.  The Febonanza poker promotion includes a cash points race, a golden hand bonus and a few ways to win a seat in Feb’s 2.5M guaranteed tournament.

Cash Points Race

CD Poker is giving away over $400,000 in the Febonanza cash points race.  The top 300 race point getters will earn a cut of the dough.  You can earn points by playing in any ring games at CD Poker.  The amount of points you earn per hand depends on the amount of rake.  Obviously more rake translates into more points.  The top place finisher on the leaderboard wins a cool $20K and this amount drops incrementally down to the 300th place finisher still earning a decent chunk of change at $750!

Golden Hand Bonus

Every millionth hand dealt in February is going to be designated a Golden Hand by CD Poker.  Every golden hand winner receives a cash prize and the rest of the players at the table split an identical cash prize.  The prizes range from $65 for winners at microstake tables to $3000 for winners at $3/$6 and up tables.

$2,500,000 Guaranteed Tokens

CD Poker is giving you two ways to win a $2.5M seat this February.

1. Finishing in the top 100 of two Sunday $250K guaranteed tournaments this month.
2. Play in every $250K Sunday guaranteed tournament in February.  The players who do this will earn an entry into the $2.5M seat freeroll, where you can win one of 10 seats!

This is a great month to play at CD Poker.  All of these extra bonuses are a great way to build your poker bankroll.  You can check out CD Poker’s full Febonanza Details and sign up to CD Poker using your CD Poker coupon code THECDBONUS.

What is Rakeback?

In order for you to understand what rakeback is, first you must understand rake.  Rake is the amount of money that the poker room takes from the pot in cash games and the fees that pay for playing in tournaments.  In cash games the rake is usually a small percentage of the pot, and is only taken when the hand requires a flop to be dealt.  Rake is essentially how the poker rooms make their money and to be honest, they make a lot.  Many players pay thousands of dollars a month in rake.  For example, a typical cash game player who plays four $0.25/$0.50 no limit hold’em tables at a time, for a couple hours a day would pay over $1080 a month in rake!

Poker rooms can calculate your rake contribution using either the dealt or the contribution method.  In the dealt method the total rake is split evenly between all the players dealt in the hand no matter how much each player contributed to the pot.  Whereas, with the contribution method, the rake is split up proportionate to the amount of money you contributed to the pot.  For example, if you contributed $40 to a $100 pot and the rake was $3, then the amount of rake that is counted as yours would be $1.20.

Rakeback is rake that is refunded to the player.  Most online poker rooms offer to give back a percentage of the rake they take from the player if they sign up through a rakeback provider.  The typical rakeback offer is around 30%, but can be higher or lower depending on what room you are playing at.  A few examples would be Cake Poker rakeback offering 36% and PKR rakeback who offer 30%.  Continuing with our example, if the typical player who raked $1080 a month played at Cake Poker and received 33% rakeback, he would receive about $356 of the rake he paid during the month back as a refund.  That is a huge chunk of cash!  Especially for a low limit player who only plays a couple hours a day.

There is absolutely no downside to rakeback.  The only reason some players don’t receive it is simply because they don’t know about it or they already have an account at the poker site they want to play at.  In order to receive rakeback you have to sign up as a new player to the site through a rakeback provider.  If you already have an account at the site, then you are not eligible to receive rakeback at that site.  One way to combat this is to open up a rakeback account at a new site or sometimes if you email the poker room about your dilemma they will be able to help.

I would strongly advise signing up for rakeback.  When you receive your first refund at the end of the month you will be extremely glad you did!

PokerStars 25 Billion Bash Promotion

Pokerstars is close to dealing it's 25 Billionth hand and to celebrate PokerStars is having a huge promotion called the 25 Billion Bash!  The poker promotion includes a variety of rewards and bonuses for PokerStars players including milestone hands, a reload bonus, the mega milestone hand and more!

Milestone Hands
Every millionth hand, starting from 24.5 billion, PokerStars is giving away cash prizes to the winners and the players dealt into the hands.  The higher the limit you are playing the bigger the prize will be.  At the micro limits the winner of a milestone hand wins $300, whereas if you play the high limits and win a milestone hand you receive $2500.

25% Reload Bonus
PokerStars is also offering at 25% reload bonus to all players.  It is very rare for PokerStars to offer reload bonuses and this would be a great opportunity to help build your poker bankroll if you are playing at Stars anyways.  The bonus is a 25% matching bonus up to $250.

Mega Milestone Hand
The 25 Billionth hand at PokerStars is going to be huge.  Over $250K will be won just on one hand of poker.  The winner receives a prize package of over $150K which includes $100,000 in cash as well as packages to the EPT Final, the WSOP, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and the World Championships of Online Poker main event.  All other players that are dealt into the hand will split $100K.

Those are the main parts of the 25 Billion Bash put on by PokerStars, but we shouldn't forget that Stars is also having $60,000 in new depositor freerolls for the days leading up to the 25 billionth hand.  The guarantees of the Sunday Million and Sunday Warm-Ups are also being increased for the occasion.

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