Every poker room runs some kind of freeroll action. Action changes by the day, and if you’d like a complete list of freeroll action go to http://www.freerolls.net/

PokerStars is currently running a promotion called the Million Dollar WSOP Giveaway. There are daily free qualifiers that will get you to the next step, towards winning one of the many all-inclusive WSOP main event packages.

Party Poker runs many sizable freerolls every day. They have multiple $1250, $2500, $250, $200,000 qualifiers, and $500 freerolls for their players.

Carbon Poker runs a $50 freeroll every two hours, plus a daily $2000, $1000 and $500 tournament.

Poker Time has a bunch of daily freerolls too, with multiple prize pools of $1000, $200 and $250.

Check the individual poker rooms for times, or check the freeroll monitor I mentioned earlier. You’ll have to be a member of each site to play in their freeroll events.

Very cool news for poker players looking to keep a sharper eye on those wickedly fun guaranteed poker tournaments: GuaranteedMonitor.com.

According to its press release, the idea behind GuaranteedMonitor.com is to give online poker players a single destination where they can find online guaranteed tournaments from all poker networks in a single, convenient web site. The extensive database allows users to search by a multitude of categories that include start time, poker room and/or network, prize and buy-in fees.

What are online guaranteed poker tournaments?

A guaranteed online poker tournament is a tournament where the prize pool is guaranteed by the poker room. For example, a guaranteed $10,000 tournament will always have a minimum of $10,000 in its prize pool. If however, there are not enough players to cover the prize pool then the poker room covers the difference.

Every poker star seems to have a cause they want to support. And this month it’s Jennifer Harman’s turn to raise some funds for her charity by hosting a poker tournament. On April 18th she will host the second annual Jennifer Harman Charity Poker Tournament to support the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

Jennifer has been instrumental in improving the conditions for animals in Nevada. The $130,000 raised last year opened two new wings in the center, and this year’s profits will go towards environments without cages.

The recommended donation to participate in the tournament is $300 + $30. There will be $200 re-donations for additional tournament chips for the first three 20-minute rounds, and a $200 add-on. The first-place prize is a $10,000 seat into the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event. Visit  www.nevadaspca.org to reserve your seat in the tournament.

Much of poker’s appeal is due to the fact that it is primarily a game of skill. Although most of the skills of the game are inherent, many more of the skills are acquired only though experience. As a result, successful poker players will always seek to improve by being critical of their own play.

With both on and off line poker the game has many transferable skills that can benefit to over all emotional and mental and social health.

Poker develops critical evaluative skills that allow you to appraise information and situations realistically, and to anticipate problems and difficulties. The game also develops your numerical skills giving you the ability to handle and interpret numerical and statistical information. This skill can also attribute when micromanaging. Pragmatism skills are also attributed to poker that allows you to make the best of a no ideal situation and to work with your present constraints. Success in almost any job will require a good use of pragmatism.

These are just a few of the many heath contributors of poker. This game also contributes to the development of interpersonal, problem-solving, goal orientated, learning, flexibility and face management/deception skills, which are all important in everyday life. Poker on a personal level develops great self control and self awareness which is again is important to leading a healthy life.

The next time someone tells you that you play too much poker you can now let them know that too much poker is never a bad thing.

By beating five of the best players in the world to win the latest edition of Poker After Dark last week, David Williams showed why he is one of the best players in the world. The game included Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, Antonio Esfandiari, Eli Elezra, Barry Greenstein, as well as BodogLife’s own Williams.

Williams was able to pick up $20,000 more than the usual $120,000 that goes to the winner of the event, after Eli Elezra busted out early and bought back in. Williams did have to get lucky with his pocket Jacks against Howard Lederer’s pocket Aces, but was able to hit a third Jack on the river to knock the Professor out.

The heads-up battle was against Antonio Esfandiari and didn’t last very long, with Williams’ pocket sevens holding up against Esfandiari’s A-5. That was all David Williams needed to take down the $140,000 winner-take-all prize.

Woody Harrelson has his poker face on, all right. Those are some nice sideburns, too.

What is “The Grand” all about? And what the heck is a ‘mockumentary’? Well, think ‘This is Spinal Tap’, but substitute the glamor of rock ‘n roll for the glamor of high-stakes poker. Now add in actors Woody Harrelson, Michael McKean, Dennis Farina, Ray Romano, Chris Parnell (and a bunch of other directors), and you’ve got the making of a goofy, experimental poker comedy.

Produced during the recent writers’ strike, director Zach Penn assures moviegoers that the film’s script did not suffer one bit. Having so many directors on hand to move the story along through improv rather than rewrites, Penn says, has given the movie plenty of life: “An improvisational movie strives to avoid the life-sucking qualities of the rewrite process.”

With a tag line like this, “a comedy about the fine art of losing”, you have to know that you’re not likely to pick up any winning poker tips just by watching this movie. But a good laugh? Now that’s a good bet.

Read more reviews on “The Grand” here.

The 2008 version of the World Poker Challenge will be the last we will see. The event has not made it on the WPT schedule for next season, despite being an annual event for the last six years. Many industry insiders were surprised with the move because of the popularity the event has enjoyed.

This year’s edition has a $7,500 buy-in, which represents a 50% increase from previous years. But even this won’t be enough to get the event back on the schedule next year. This event has had some of the best poker players in the business at the final tables in the past. Players such as J.C. Tran, David Pham, Mark Seif, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Blair Rodman, Young Phan, Greg “FBT” Mueller, Paul “Eskimo” Clark, T.J. Cloutier, and 2007 WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider have all come close to winning the big World Poker Tour prize in Reno.

There are seven online poker rooms that offer multilingual software. There are seven trustworthy sites that are multilingual, plus there are a few more but I wouldn’t play on them. Most have been around quite awhile, but new ones are starting to pop up. RedKings.com has only been a round a short time, since 2006, and they offer software in 17 different languages.

EverestPoker.com has been around since 2005 and they offer poker in 12 different languages. Languages that the software supports are French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, German, Japanese, Czech, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Icelandic and Finnish.

Most multilingual sites won’t offer action to Americans. PokerStars.com does, but that’s about it. Not that multilingual rooms are desired in the States anyway, it’s mainly a European feature that hadn’t really been important to players until the game became so popular over there. Multilingual software will become the norm for most sites in the future.

Once you’ve played enough Texas Holdem, most players look to expand their poker horizons. Omaha variations of the game are the usual route of expansion for players, with pot-limit Omaha being the most popular. These variations have had limited information available on strategy and theory, until now.

www.chipsinthemiddle.com has launched a website that is dedicated to providing information and discussion for Omaha variations. The main focus is on pot-limit Omaha for now, but expansion is sure to follow. We can expect to eventually see more information on Hi/Lo versions as well.

There is already a wealth of Omaha information available there. There’s an open forum that’s not too busy yet, and a good blog that’s up to date. The information ranges from simple starting-hand selection theory to advanced draw articles. The site could be a little more organized, but they claim they’re committed to doing that as they develop.

To compare which is the better poker player between Josh Arieh  and David Williams we would first have to look at their playing records. These records show the differences in their results over the last eight years, which is how long both have been around the poker scene:
Josh Arieh                  David Williams
Cashes                                              36                                  41
Winnings                                       $3,977,014                $5,773,676
WSOP Bracelets                                2                                    1
First-place finishes                            2                                    4

The two are close in their careers but David Williams has a sizable lead in the prize-money department, and that’s because of his second-place finish in the WSOP main event in 2004 ($3.5M). Arieh has more WSOP bracelets, but those are the only tournaments he has won outright.

I would give the edge to Williams, but both players are highly effective. Josh Arieh is underrated in my opinion, but I’m sure his reputation will grow if he can add more wins to his stats.