February 24, 2006
Now is your chance to join the pokerstars com freeroll tournament to win a guaranteed prize pool of over $100,000. The purpose of the action, according to the proposed bill, is "to improve the business climate of pokerstars rooms and allow individuals to interact with others who enjoy card games." One person who doesn't think a prizes-only game would work is Shawn Reilly, general manager of Eli's on Whitney, a casino and lounge in Vegas where people played Texas Hold 'Em Poker games until the business got a cease-and-desist order from Blumenthal's office last year.
Although he was often around the game, it wasn't until pokerstars started having its breakthrough on U.S. television that he really caught the poker bug. "I really got hooked on it when the WPT started airing its freeroll tournaments. Some people talk to the TV during football. I talked to the TV while watching poker, often telling players what to do with their hands before they would act. I couldn't believe how much money they were winning." After catching the pokerstars com action on the tube, it wasn't long before Spee was knee-deep into the world of poker, cutting his teeth at the Commerce Casino in L.A. "I was still learning the game when I began entering freeroll satellites at Commerce. I probably lost the first 15 I played, but I was kind of expecting it since I was still learning the game. After I won my first top 5 pokerstars .com satellite, two and three came even easier. I ended up winning 22 in a four week period."
Top 5 Pokerstars .com
It took about three months for Tony to find his way to the WPT Pokerstars com main events. He immediately found an environment that suited him. "I like the WPT more than any other tournament series because you get all of these nitwits from all over the world coming for the World Series of Poker. In essence, the WSOP is harder because there are more players. Although it makes for huge money, you have such reckless play online at pokerstars com. WPT events have much more of a limited field and a higher concentration of better players. I play better against skilled players than I do amateurs." Just having good cards isn't enough to ensure victory, Spee noted. "I think what makes me a good player is my skills in math and psychology. Psychology is probably the most important part of the game. If you can't read people or look at a person and tell they are lying despite their efforts to tell you otherwise, then I don't think you can be a good pokerstars player. The ability to look at a person and see that something is wrong comes naturally to me."
A long-distance relationship and bad beats have made things tough for Spee, but he warns newcomers to the professional online pokerstars game that these are only two of the hurdles players face. According to Spee, it takes more than faith to make it. "Unless you have good math and psychology skills or are the luckiest person you have ever known, it takes a lot of money to play professional poker. The overhead from playing is enormous. You can easily spend $200,000 a year on tour. If you don't win, you're going to go broke." Chuck Bunnell, chief of staff for the Mohegan tribe, said that even if the games are played for prizes rather than money, top 5 pokerstars .com would still withhold the state's share of slot machine revenues.
