You might recall how last week BetStars took bets on the winner of the EPT Dublin Main Event. It was the first instance of them laying odds on a final table with pre-match favourite Dzmitry Urbanovich proving that the odds setters knew a thing or two about compiling prices (or reading chip counts the night before).

Now though, BetStars doors are open for a different poker contest.

Betting has just opened its doors for the Team Pro Online Heads-Up Challenge, part of Team Pro Online week running until this Sunday.

It's a 32 player slog, comprising of Team Pro Online and qualifiers who won their chance to take on the pros and (potentially) win big - now easy feat when you consider who they're up against.

As you can see in the chart below, Randy "nanonoko" Lew leads the betting at 12/1, followed by a bunch of team mates whose odds range from 14/1 through to 25/1 (surely there's some value to be had on some "outsiders").

Randy Lew: A favourite online, a favourite on Twitch, now the favourite on BetStars

Then the qualifiers who won the right to take on the Pros at their own game, and win cash prizes and packages along the way. You can back these guys too, and at some enticingly long odds. Take a look at what's on offer:

Click to enlarge

The Team Pro Online Heads-Up challenge starts this Saturday, March 5, at 14:00 ET, leaving you plenty of time to place your bet. That's when they play down from 32 to four remaining players. The semi-finals start on Sunday March 6 at 14:00 ET and feature a best of three contest, with the final at 16:00 ET, also best of three. If a qualifier steers past the pros and wins, they'll get a package worth €10,000 to the EPT Grand Final.

It's obvious who's going to win, right? Well now you can make your choice.

There are plenty of prizes still to be won this Team Pro Online week. Check out the homepage for details.

Eliminations and cold hard cash were the main features today.

The poker room is dying down here now as Day 2 of the MPC24 Red Dragon has wrapped but not long ago PokerStars LIVE Macau was electric with excitement.

We had 259 returning from our record 1,075-player field and again the herd was thinned dramatically. After six levels of play it was only 55 who survived proceedings - they'll be back tomorrow for the official Day 3 where we'll play down to a final table.

Of those 55 it was Kamel Mokhammad who climbed to the top of the chip counts. Mokhammad is already a familiar face after finishing atop the leader board on Day 1b. He continued to run it up today and bagged up 905,000 when all was said and done.

Today also saw the money bubble burst as 135 players locked up a $HK22,300 payday. The unlucky 136th spot went to Wing Cheong Chong who got his money in good holding [ac][jc] but couldn't hold against his opponent's [ad][4h] when the latter found a runner-runner flush.

Also finding the rail today were our two remaining Team PokerStars Pros. Kosei Ichinose and Chen-an Lin returned today but couldn't outlast the night. Ichinose moved all in over a button-raise with [ks][ts] but he couldn't improve against his tablemate's [ac][jh].

While these players all left us today, the remaining 55 will return tomorrow for the penultimate day. Some who made the cut include Wayne Zhang (246,000), Leon Tsu (201,000), Tom Alner (171,000) and Takashi Ogura (160,000).

Here's how the top 10 finishers stack up.

MPC23 Red Dragon Day 1c Top Ten Chip Counts
Kamel Mokhammad (Ukraine) - 905,000
Yiu Wah Kwok (Hong Kong) - 715,000
Tianhong Su (China) - 712,000
Chien-jung Huang (Taiwan) - 641,000
Inaki Joseba Santos Armendariz (Spain) - 628,000
Huitong Cao (China) - 579,000
Chia-chi Liu (Taiwan) - 542,000
Chong Yu (China) - 539,000
Weihang Chen (China) - 532,000
Yuexin Wang (China) - 503,000

Click here for Day 3 seating draw

So that's all from us here tonight. We hope you can join us tomorrow when 55 continue to chase the $HK2,360,000 top prize and the illustrious Red Dragon trophy. The action begins at 3:00pm local time and the goal is to play down until a final table is set.

Stay tuned!

Some years ago I did a challenge where I tried to turn $100 into $100K over the course of a year playing only tournaments. I didn't reach the $100K goal (I finished with $70K), but I learned a lot about tournaments and what kind of content my followers liked. Mostly they enjoyed the parts where I was playing the same games they were playing, which for most people were micro-stakes and low-stakes.

This year I've decided to give Twitch a try and do a challenge where you can see me playing live, and where I focus 100 per cent on what my followers like, micros and low stakes. But, instead of starting with $100, I started with $10, which pretty much everyone who plays online poker can afford. The goal was to reach $1K (100x the investment).

Andre Coimbra

This time though there is no deadline, because I think that the process is more important than the goal. I just want to have a good time with my followers playing a fun game. We can learn together and if possible make some money!

Level 1

I started by playing the $0.25 45-player sit-n-gos. The structure is pretty good and there is enough time to find good spots quite often. After a few days, I realized that the 90-players $0.25 had an even better structure (15 minutes blinds!) and that the players there were making more mistakes, so that became my main target.

In these sit-n-gos players didn't usually go all-in pre-flop without having a hand they believed was strong. So even though I wasn't getting too many crazy all-ins when I had my strong hands at the beginning at the tournament, I was able to steal many pots pre-flop cheaply in the late stages.

Later on I started opening some $0.10 360-player turbos and these were quite different! The players usually wanted to gamble early and get it in with weak hands. However, the bubble was serious business and players with some short stacks would just try to make it into the money as if their life's depended on it!

Don't believe me? Watch this bubble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQdBcsAP08

I'm guessing that a lot of people make a few cents in the freerolls and then try to build it up from there in these tournaments...

So, if you have a stack where you can put pressure on the bubble, go for it and try to accumulate chips in these big sit-n-gos. In the later stages a big stack is worth a lot. You can increase your bankroll by quite a bit with a big finish, and final tables are a lot of fun!

Here's a video of me playing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_fTVvz4BU8

After reaching $50 I moved up stakes and started playing $0.50 turbos, but that is a story for another day...

If you want me to keep writing about the next levels, please leave me a tweet @andrebcoimbra and join me live on twitch at http://www.twitch.tv/acoimbrapoker

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/acoimbrapoker/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrebcoimbra/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/andrecoimbra
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acoimbraen/

In the United States tonight a big round of primaries and caucuses in multiple states gave today the nickname "Super Tuesday." But on PokerStars every Tuesday is Super Tuesday, the name given to the popular weekly $1,050 no-limit hold'em tournament that routinely attracts poker's best and brightest.

No need to take any polls or hold a vote to declare tonight's big winner -- TDO6H20G of Canada, who topped a big field of 532 to earn a handsome $101,080 payday.

That turnout meant a prize pool of $532,000, well over the event's $425K guarantee. It would take close to six hours to play down to 63 players and for the bubble to burst, at which point Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead, manyadecano, and Ryan "HITTHEPANDA" Franklin were battling for first position on the leaderboard.

About 90 minutes after that Ryan "HITTHEPANDA" Franklin had been ousted in 25th ($3,192), manyadecano had slipped back to an average stack, and Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead was still hovering near the top. Meanwhile with 18 players left Nick "chilenocl" Yunis had moved up into the top spot in the counts.

Adrijan_S (18th), cctt2 (17th), and Tommy "TMoney0209" Miller (16th) were the next out, earning $4,256 each. manyadecano (15th), EspenasApart (14th), and Incognita93 (13th) then followed, picking up $5,320 apiece. Then Charlie "Epiphany77" Carrel (12th), Gratitdude (11th), and Mark "AceSpades11" Radoja (10th) were successively eliminated, earning $6,384 each for not quite making the final table.

With Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead back in front -- and eventual winner TDO6H20G just a few chips ahead of the shortest stack -- the final table was underway.

Seat 1: NormyDozer (Australia) -- 116,718
Seat 2: brights88 (Lebanon) -- 367,933
Seat 3: Paul "pvas2" Vas Nunes (United Kingdom) -- 234,408
Seat 4: Nick "chilenocl" Yunis (Chile) -- 273,904
Seat 5: maggess88 (Netherlands) -- 399,277
Seat 6: TDO6H20G (Canada) -- 116,733
Seat 7: Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead (Mexico) -- 492,486
Seat 8: moneyinbag (Mexico) -- 477,221
Seat 9: Eccentric_BG (Bulgaria) -- 181,320

On just the third hand of the final table, the blinds were 3,600/7,200 when moneyinbag opened for 15,696 from middle position, brights88 three-bet to 41,192 from the button, moneyinbag made it 93,147 to go, brights88 shoved for 347,233 total, and moneyinbag called.

brights88 had picked up [Qs][Qc] but had run into moneyinbag's [As][Ac], and five cards later -- [7d][Ks][6h][Td][Js] -- brights88 was out in ninth.

The tournament's nine-hour mark passed and a few minutes later Nick "chilenocl" Yunis min-raised to 16,000 from early position, then moneyinbag reraised to 42,337 from the button. It folded back to Yunis who four-bet to 92,404, moneyinbag responded with an all-in shove, and Yunis called with the 218,296 he had left.

Yunis had [Qc][Qs] this time while moneyinbag had picked up [Ah][Kh]. A runout of [9s][8h][5h][Qh][7c] followed, adding up to a set of queens for Yunis but a heart flush for moneyinbag, pushing the latter way out in front with the chip lead while stopping Yunis in eighth.

The final seven played on another half-hour with moneyinbag continuing to accumulate and add to the lead, then came two knockouts on successive hands.

In the first Paul "pvas2" Vas Nunes open-raised all in for 137,090 (just under 14 big blinds) from the hijack with [Ad][Tc], then TDO6H20G reraised from the button with [Ah][Jh] and the blinds got out. The board came [8s][9d][5c][Qh][Ks], and Vas Nunes hit the rail in seventh.

On the next hand NormyDozer open-pushed from UTG for 87,710 (just under nine BBs) with [Qd][Jd], got called by moneyinbag in the small blind with [6c][6d], and watched the board come [8c][2h][Kh][2s][2d]. That made a full house for moneyinbag and knocked out NormyDozer in sixth.

The remaining five played on, approaching the tournament's 10-hour mark. Then came a hand in which TDO6H20G made a just over 2x raise to 26,400 from UTG, moneyinbag called from the button, then maggess88 reraise-shoved for 92,999 from the big blind. TDO6H20G responded by shoving all in, and moneyinbag stepped aside.

maggess88 had [Ad][Ks] and was hoping to improve versus TDO6H20G's [Tc][Th]. But the jack-high board, coming [7c][6d][8h][4c][Jd], failed to help maggess88 who was eliminated in fifth.

moneyinbag remained in front for the next short stretch, but then fell back to be caught by the others, then after losing a couple of medium-sized pots was suddenly down to 132,825 (about 8.5 BBs) and open-pushing all in from UTG.

TDO6H20G called from the big blind in a flash, turning over [As][Ac] which had moneyinbag's [Ah][Qh] dominated. The board came [4d][2d][Kd][Ks][Qd], TDO6H20G had the better two pair, and moneyinbag was out in fourth.

Not too long after TDO6H20G proposed the idea of a chop and Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead said he was willing to look at numbers. Both of those two had a little over 1 million, but Eccentric_BG -- sitting with about 550,000 -- wanted to play on and so they did.

They pushed past the 11-hour mark, then about 10 minutes after that the blinds were 12,500/25,000 when TDO6H20G raised to 55,000 from the button/UTG, Eccentric_BG called from the big blind, and the flop came [Kc][5s][Td]. Eccentric_BG checked, TDO6H20G bet 44,837, Eccentric_BG check-raised to 128,396, TDO6H20G pushed all in, and Eccentric_BG called with the 161,209 behind.

Both had flopped top pair, but TDO6H20G's [Kd][Qd] meant a better kicker versus Eccentric_BG's [Ks][8d]. The case king -- the [Kh] -- fell on the turn, then after the [3s] completed the board Eccentric_BG was out in third.

That hand gave TDO6H20G a big advantage to start heads-up play with 2,115,296 versus Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead's 544,704, nearly a 4-to-1 edge. After 10 hands Woodhead had chipped up close to 610,000, but the 11th hand would spell the end for Woodhead.

It began with a just-over-2x raise to 52,500 by Woodhead from the button, with TDO6H20G then three-betting to 132,888 and Woodhead calling. The flop fell [Ah][Th][5c], TDO6H20G bet 92,488, and Woodhead called. The turn then brought the [Qs] and an all-in shove from TDO6H20G, and after spending a while in the tank Woodhead decided to call and commit his last 381,278.

Woodhead had [As][6s] for a pair of aces, but TDO6H20G had the same hand with a better kicker with [Ac][9s]. The river was the [2s] and it was all over -- TDO6H20G had won.

Congratulations to TDO6H20G for being the big winner of the version of Super Tuesday on PokerStars tonight to notch a six-figure score.

3/1/16 Super Tuesday ($1,050 No-Limit Hold'em) results
Entrants: 532
Prize pool: $532,000.00
Places paid: 63

1. TDO6H20G (Canada) $101,080.00
2. Stephen "woody1234321" Woodhead (Mexico) $74,480.00
3. Eccentric_BG (Bulgaria) $54,530.00
4. moneyinbag (Mexico) $41,496.00
5. maggess88 (Netherlands) $29,260.00
6. NormyDozer (Australia) $22,610.00
7. Paul "pvas2" Vas Nunes (United Kingdom) $17,290.00
8. Nick "chilenocl" Yunis (Chile) $11,970.00
9. brights88 (Lebanon) $8,831.20

A funny thing happened on the way to this year's Spring Championship of Online Poker schedule. There, in the spot of Event 15, there was a little hole. Just what kind of tournament was that going to be? Turbo? Zoom? Ante-Up?

That's when the brilliant minds behind SCOOP said, "What if we put it to a vote?"

No, not a vote among PokerStars employees. A vote from you, the SCOOP player.

Just like that, SCOOP had its first Players' Choice event.

Here's how it will work:

If you'd like to vote on what kinds of tournaments will be part of Event 15, write to PokerStars at scoop@pokerstars.com. Make the subject of your email "EVENT 15 - FORMAT". In the body of the email, provide the format you'd like to play in the event, ordered by stakes (Low, Medium, and High). Keep in mind that each selection must be a form of NL Hold'em.

The nomination period will close on March 4th at 10:00 ET. Once the people behind the scenes sort the nominations, you will see the SCOOP lobby change. Each of the top nominations will have a Voting Tournament representing the top nomination from each stake level.

From there, you can register for one Voting Tournament per stake. That will be your ballot for the Event 15 formats.

On Monday March 7 at 12:00 ET, PokerStars will close the voting, the the Voting Tournaments with the most registrations will become the official formats of the SCOOP Players' Choice event. While there will be a fee to register for the Voting Tournaments, that money will be refunded to your account after the close of voting.

Got it? Good. Happy voting!

Unlike many other players who turn pro after a big tournament score, my poker career started with $10 on micro-stakes. It has been a long grind to where I am today, so I am very familiar with how poker players with modest bankrolls trying to move up stakes feel. Naturally when I decided to LiveStream, I thought that showing others how I did this would be the way to go. So I decided to walk this path once again.

Of course, I am not the player I was eight years ago, and it showed. Despite the games being a little tougher than they were in my early days, there is still a lot of people making a lot of big mistakes, and I breezed through the stakes to my $1,000 goal. I don't say this to brag but to demonstrate my initial objective: to show people that it isn't very difficult. I used a seven-buy-in bankroll management method (to move up or down). I didn't make any fancy plays (except for when I was trying to specifically teach a concept to the stream). I played a bit less than 10,000 hands of solid and basic poker, and that was all it took.

So, to anyone who is stuck in micro-stakes or simply wants to do this, I strongly recommend you watch all the 32 episodes in my YouTube channel. Watch one before your session for motivation or binge watch them, whatever your style is.

If you cant be bothered to watch hours of videos, then here is some pragmatic advice that I can give you after experiencing this grind again:

I completed this challenge this quickly because I know more poker than the opponents I faced. So your only goal is to learn more poker. It isn't growing your bankroll, moving up stakes, or anything else. It is simply to get better at this game.

Your bankroll is a tool to learn the game. Don't see it as money or goal or as any kind of metric. Lose any emotional attachment to it.

Despite what you read elsewhere do not use a conservative bankroll management (using 50 buy-in rule for micro-stakes is a huge mistake). The lower you play, the less you will learn. Moving up is essential for the learning process, but don't overdo it. If you lose your bankroll, you can't learn any more. So, I'd suggest something like 15 buy-ins to move up or down, and obey it religiously.

There isn't a big gap between skill level of stakes. Each stake higher is slightly more difficult than the previous one, don't be afraid, get frustrated, or be superstitious about a stake you have "bounced" back from a few times.

When you are forced to move down in stakes don't feel bad about it. Again, your goal is to learn and only learn. It might help with these kind of distractions to use software to see the tables in big blinds and not money. That way, all the stakes will be the same.

I know, easier said than done.

So, get to work and see you at the tables!

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/baalshin
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Baalshin
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/Baalshin
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BaalimTeamOnlinePS

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, Play Money Poker has changed. One of the big changes in the last two years is the dramatic increase in popularity of tournament poker, with the number of daily tournament entries more than doubling in the last two years.

And what do these players want? They want bigger and better events. Up to now we have generally built our tournament events as 'light' versions of their real-money counterparts. However this will change in April this year with The Elite Series, the first poker tournament series designed with the play money player in mind.

There are a number of really exciting innovations:

Hourly Hyper Saturday
On Saturday 16th April we will see the first "Hourly Hyper" day. This is a day set aside for our most hardy tournament players, with fifteen identical hyper turbo hold'em events starting one hour apart. To make getting up early and / or staying up late worthwhile, we are adding ten million chips to each individual event, and over five hundred million chips to the players who crush hardest that day and top the Hourly Hyper Saturday leaderboard.

Themed Event Days
Do you like Omaha? Then you'll want to put 'Omaha Wednesday' and 'Round-of-Each Monday' in your diary, and start building your bankroll for the Omaha Super High-Roller.

Want to get your feet wet with a different variant of poker? You'll enjoy the Badugi, Triple-Draw, and Stud Hi/Lo events on 'Try-A-New-Game-Friday'.

And for our PokerStars women, we have a day of events just for you with some challenging hold'em events just for you on 'Women's Tuesday'.

Billionaire Club Invitational
On Sunday 17th April we have something really special arranged. Twelve members of the Billionaire Club will qualify to play in the two-table Billionaire Club Invitational. They will be playing for a top prize of one billion chips, but they won't just have their fellow club members to contend with; they will be joined by four of our most acclaimed Team PokerStars players, Barry "barryg1" Greenstein, Chris "money800" Moneymaker, Felix "xflixx" Schneiders, and Andre "acoimbra" Coimbra.

This will undoubtedly be the most prestigious and toughest two tables of play money poker in history.

You can visit our website for more information on The Elite Series, and keep an eye out in the lobby in late March for details of the events. If you want to join our Billionaire Club, please see the Billionaire Club page for more information.

MPC24 Red Dragon Day 1c ready to go

It's almost time for the Red Dragon's third and final opening flight!

Today is expected to be easily the biggest yet and with 563 combined entrants from Days 1a and 1b we'll be hoping the field can reach the 1000-player milestone.

Those taking their seats today will be chasing yesterday's chip leader Kamel Mokhammad. The Ukrainian set the pace last night bagging up 210,600.

Play kicks off at 7:00pm tonight and with the later start we'll be playing until the early hours of the morning. Stay tuned to the PokerStars Blog for everything you need to know from here in Macau!

Social media, and especially Twitch lately, is the best way to get in touch with Team Pro Online members. There is no better way for asking someone a question as you get your answer right away. And it's not in some sort of a text form. You can actually see and hear the player answering. Of course, some of you guys like to put us on the spot with some...interesting stuff...but that just makes everything even more super-duper exciting, right? Kappa Kappa.

I got asked a myriad of questions during my livestream ramblings in the last year or so, but the most asked one by far is "How do you get in Team Pro Online?" One would think that in situations like this, the way it goes is, "Don't call us, we'll call you." But that is actually not the case here. Every year during the Team Pro Online week, Supernovas have a chance of filling out an application to become a member of our team. And you know what? It's that time of the year again!

This is exactly how I've got that Red Spade displayed by my name on the tables. I filled out an application and was chosen among 500 other online grinders. I play Limit Hold'em, and PokerStars didn't have an ambassador for this niche variant at that point.It also helped that my country Slovenia wasn't represented yet, so there was definitely some luck involved. Even though I could have filled out an application in the years before, I didn't do it. But I did send one that particular year. What has changed from one year to another, you might ask? Nothing really. I just decided, well...I guess this is going to sounds as cliché as possible...there was nothing to lose, but everything to gain. Here I am today.

I know I'm no Tolkien and this might not be the most interesting story you're going to hear during the week, but it's still mine, and I don't mind talking about it, even though I've told it many times during the Twitch livestreams. I've been member of Team Pro Online for two years now, and this is without a doubt the most exciting period of my poker career. All fellow members are also great people to work with, and it's definitely a privilege to be part of the team. So if you are Supernova, do not miss this amazing opportunity during the Team Pro Online week. Send in that application. Remember - there's nothing to lose, everything to gain!

Luka "LukaSteel" Kovač is a member of Team PokerStars Pro Online

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/coreysteel111
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoreySteel_
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/MrCoreySteel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LukaSteelKovac/