A player on the site posted a video of the security flaw on YouTube. For those of you who missed this video follow this link to view it. The vulnerability apparently relates to either unsecured wireless networks, cracked wireless networks or hard wired connections to the Internet where your password is known. The data packets sent to through the networked are intercepted by the hacker and decoded. After decoding a special program identifies the cards and they are visible to the player on the poker table unbeknownst to the rest of the table. The speed of the program allows an almost instant revealing of the hole cards. Knowledge of your hole cards would see opponents make perfect decisions on your hands and you would be unable to avoid losing to the cheaters.

The Cereus network is said to have been informed of this encryption issue and are seeking to resolve this as soon as possible. The vulnerability is not isolated to the online poker hole cards however. A cyber attacker could use this method to obtain your personal information via obtaining your password and they could hack into your account and lose all of your bankroll deliberately. This has happened before when an AOL mail vulnerability caused many players, including online superstar Pearljammer to suffer a loss of bankroll in this way. Due to the difficulty of catching the perpetrators due to the anonymity of the Internet this type of crime puts players particularly at risk and any vulnerability which accentuates these risks mark a serious online poker security risk.

Whilst it is recommended that players do not play on unsecured wireless networks because data packets sent from any website can be intercepted and maliciously decoded, there must also now be a serious consideration made whether playing at this network is sensible. The XOR-based encoding used by Cereus is notoriously vulnerable to hackers yet this network preferred this method to the more secure SSL encryptions. It is clear from watching the video that while most people would not have the knowledge to get as far as decoding hands the mere fact it can be done is a fatal flaw for the cereus network software. There is no suggestion at the moment that this security flaw was known by Cereus.

Players concerned about their online poker security should forward any queries to their poker room but rest assured that with the exception of these two poker rooms and their network there have been few instances where vulnerability has been exposed. It is clear that people like the makers of the video are constantly testing the security of different poker sites looking for exploitable flaws and the fact no such vulnerability has been reported on a site like bwin.com where I play a lot of my poker speaks volumes for their ability to securely encrypt their poker software.

Security for players is paramount; therefore my recommendation for downloading the poker client offered by bwin.com might be the solution you are looking for if you are currently uncertain about where to play poker.

By Malcolm Clarke

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Jose Damiani, the IMSA President, spoke of his pleasure in welcoming poker to the inner cabal of such already accepted mind games, praising poker as being accepted as a game of mental skill and set it apart from standard gambling endeavors. The final decision to include poker into the inner sanctum of mind sports was reached at the annual worldwide congress for International Mind Sports that took place in Dubai earlier in the week. When the news was announced Anthony Holden, a poker writer and president of the IFP, referred to the decision as a major step-up in the campaign to allow poker to be officially recognized around the globe as a contest of skill. He added that, over a period of time, its inclusion should enable poker to become untangled from the general governmental interference and restrictions that currently face it across the world.

The next step for the IPF will be to gain membership of the well-know gaming group known as SportAccord, which is a worldwide organization that has the aim of unifying the sporting world. To this aim Mr. Holden along with his colleagues are looking to be present at the SportAccord Congress this coming Friday in Dubai in order to present the IFP’s application to the organization. Their application will subsequently be discussed further at the SportAccord’s 2011 annual meeting as long as the IPF has managed to organize at least 40 countries in three continents by that time.

According to Mr. Holden’s figures SportAccord is currently over half way towards the target. The IMSA current members include draughts, chess, bridge and Go, and they are all also part of the SportAccord group.

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Full Tilt Poker held a Sunday online guaranteed tournament of $750,000.  The buy-in was set at $216, which caught the attention of more than 4000 poker players creating an ultimate prize pool of $801,200.  Overall, 585 poker players were able to cash in with the main prize being taken by BOOP BOOP NEB in the amount of $113,270.  Second place went to Sebago2811 who won $104,217.

The Sunday Million held by PokerStars lured in more than 9,000 poker players who paid the $215 buy-in to get into the tournament.  This generated a total of $1,874,200 for the ultimate prize pool.  Approximately 1,350 players went home with cash prizes with the winner, tony6733, receiving the $267,640 main prize.  Second place winner, Alex Moore (He1en ke11er) received almost $200,000 and third place winner, kvnok88, received almost $140,000.

Congrats to you guys!

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These three pros each have their own unique style and worthy accolades that have brought them to this pinnacle of success. They have made a name for themselves in cash tournaments, sit and go’s and various major online tournaments. Each of these three champions has parleyed their prior life experience into a multi-million dollar poker career.

Dustin Schmidt was a golf pro for many years before he turned to poker due to an illness that kept him off the course. Schmidt’s poker calling began in a fashion wished for by amateur poker players the world over: He was watching a friend play and was sucked into the game through analyzing his friend’s adventures in online tournaments. He discovered PokerStars in the year 2007 and has remained as a fixture their ever since, calling it his home site. He has now been playing for five years, in which time he’s been dealt into approximately seven million hands through ten thousand hours of play. For his time, he’s made upwards of $3 million to this point and never had a trailing month. He’s now an philanthropist, author and entrepreneur and still plays golf on occasion. His memoir, “Raise: The Impossibly True Tale of Dusty Schmidt,” will be released sometime later this year.

George Lind was in school studying computer science before he found himself in a poker game at a local land-based casino. To this point, he has visited the WCOOP final table twice and aims to achieve the accomplishment of reaching the final table of a major televised poker event sometime this year or next. Lind started out as a stud poker player but has turned himself into a Supernova Elite privileged player, where he’s been each year from the time when the group was created. He managed to string together three million VPPs in the year 2008 alone and hopes for similar results in his play with the PokerStars stable.

Denys Shcherbakov was more interested in the video aspects of poker and other video games until he opened his PokerStars account in 2005. He has worked his way up from $5 sit and go’s to Supernova status, earning a ranking as one of the top players in Ukraine. He enjoys playing high-stakes cash games, where he has made a name for himself in just a short time.

These three new signings bring the PokerStars team total to 26. Lind, Schmidt and Shcherbakov will take their place in a handpicked team of elite players, destined to compete for some of the biggest stakes in the world of online poker.

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Daniel Negreanu

Daniel notes that Phil Ivey finished second in the high rollers event at the Aussie Millions and that win of 600,000 AUD puts Ivey in first place in the all-time money list. This does not sit well with Daniel who is very competitive and it looks like he is using that issue to motivate himself to win more tournaments this year to regain his place at the top of the money list. He also notes after a three day session playing against Antonius, Durrrr and Ivey that they are the three best cash game players in the world and according to Daniel, better than everyone else by some distance. He says that the better standard of poker is a good thing and is motivated by the better players he faces and trying to overtake Ivey as the all-time leading poker tournament winner to ensure he has a great 2010.

Lou Krieger

Lou’s blog is one of the best for discussing the political and legal things related to poker. Lou’s latest articles are about the new rush tables at Full Tilt which has caused quite a stir in the online poker world over the last two weeks and that Florida is considering regulating and therefore legalising online poker for their local residents. Lou hopes that this will cause a domino effect that leads to the UIGEA act being repealed and online poker become legal in the whole of the USA. New Jersey and California are expected to re-visit the issue following Florida’s lead suggesting the domino effect may begin straight away.

Michael Craig

Michael is Full Tilts official blogger. Quite why he numbers all of his posts is puzzling to me, but he has good access to professionals and is part of the Full Tilt mob so his posts are always interesting recounting stories of his experiences with players like Roland De Wolfe and Andy Bloch. Michael gives some compelling reasons why a faster version of online poker is good for the game in a long post. The only thing I dislike about this blog is that it serves the purpose of its paymaster and therefore objectivity is less than other blogs. With this in mind, it is still an interesting read and is regularly updated.

Doyle Brunson

Doyle has a great blog style and his writing is extremely readable. He writes honestly about what he is doing and on his mind recently is the Haiti peoples suffering. Doyle defends criticism levied at Negreanu recently regarding comments he made on the fund raising by poker sites. He is fiercely defensive about poker but you certainly should be reading the “Doylisms” while the great man is posting.

There are many other poker blogs that we do not have space in this article to report on. On my own blog I keep a set of blog links that I have easy access to. I recommend you do likewise as poker blogs offer many articles, opinions, discussions and advice for free and there are many talented writers out there who take real pleasure in having readers so get searching and for those hidden diamonds!

By Malcolm Clarke

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Phil Ivey

What else needs to be said behind the name of Phil Ivey? It’s an incredible story to see a man they used to call “no home Jerome” morph into the incredible Phil Ivey. Ivey is arguably the best all-around poker player in the world. He has won over $9.6 million dollars and continues to dominate the cash game world both online and live. Phil is also a founding member of Full Tilt poker. Last year he won the WPT LA Poker Classic and this year he already has won 2 WSOP bracelets and will sit at the Main Event Final Table in November. Yes, Ivey is on top of his game as usual. It would be an incredible feet if Ivey were able to pull off yet another 3 bracelet win and further cement his name in history as one of the greatest poker players ever.

Annette Obrestad

What else can you say about Annette_15 AKA Annette Obrestad? She started out on the internet killing poker tournaments and winning millions. Over the past 3 years Annette has translated her online wins into live tournament cashes and a victory in the 2007 WSOPE Main Event Championship. She has lifetime winnings of over $2.4 million dollars. What makes Annette so special is her aggressiveness at the table. She plays a style that is extremely successful in a live poker tournament format. Some even say that Annette is the new face of women’s poker. She is young, intelligent, beautiful and has the charm and charisma that sponsors like. Most importantly Annette is a winner and that takes you a long way. Next year will be her first year playing the WSOP in Las Vegas and it will certainly be a media members dream to have her on the scene. It also gives us another player to keep a close eye on as the series progresses.

Phil Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth is the reining WSOP bracelet champion with 11 of them. That is certainly no small feat as he continues to win bracelets despite the fields becoming larger and larger each year. I know it can be difficult to like Phil at times. However, none of us can deny his lifetime winnings of over $8.8 million dollars in tournament cashes. Phil is probably one of the most entertaining players in poker and his “poker brat” persona have helped to build, sell, and market his brand of poker to many an advertiser. Currently Phil is endorsed by Ultimate Bet and pitches several other poker related products for various companies. Phil, always the resourceful one, also has written several books on tournament and online poker that have done well. Sure, the routines at the table can get a little stale from time to time but one thing rings true, we all know they are just a shtick. Phil is about as harmless as a fly – unless your playing poker.

Vanessa Rousso

I have one word for this Duke University bomb shell – LETHAL. Don’t let her good looks fool you into thinking that she can’t play poker. Vanessa Rousso is another up and coming professional poker player that has already made her presence known to the poker world. She is the fiancé of Chad Brown and travels the poker tour regularly from city to city. She also has very nice endorsement deals with PokerStars and GoDaddy to name a few. Yes, you will be seeing a lot of Vanessa Rousso at both Final Tables and in TV ads. Vanessa has lifetime tournament winnings of $2.3 million dollars and has also done extremely well online coming in 2nd in the 2007 WCOOP and winning the European Poker Tour Grand Final High Roller event for a cool $1 million.

Each one of these players are people that should be on your poker radar going into 2010 as they continue to win bracelets and championships and garner media attention.

Curtis Mayfield III

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