Summary:  On Tuesday May 3rd, 2011 at 8pm we will host a bonus ONLINE tourney for all of you on a new poker site...This should be a smaller field and the Top 3 finishers will get a spot in our Grand Finale on May 15th.

As many of you know, the US Government has taken some action against 3 of the largest online poker sites including Fulltilt where we have been running our free monthly tournaments.  It is important to note that players having played on these poker sites don't appear to have necessarily done anything wrong.  It appears that these poker sites were processing their deposits/etc in a way that the government wasn't happy about.  It is unknown at this time what the outcome will be from this action, but for the time being these sites will no longer support the monthly online tournaments that we have been hosting.  So....I have had to try to come up with a solution for our promotion.

In our current 6 month long promotion we have played 5 out of the 6 monthly events.  We don't have much time before the month 6 event that is scheduled for May 3rd.  Most of the sites that I have looked at will not allow private freeroll tournaments (where YOU get to play for free in my events).  I have located another online poker site that looks like it will accommodate our events and still cost you nothing to play.  The site can be found at www.LuvinPoker.com.  I have downloaded the software myself and tried out a few games.  I think it will be okay for us, but until we try a tournament there we won't know for sure (I hope that we don't stress their bandwidth as they are a much smaller site than Fulltilt).

My proposal is this:  Since we have already completed almost all of the monthly events for Promotion#8 (5 of 6), I'm going to skip the regular month 6 event.  The ~30 spots into our live Grand Finale for the WSOP prize package ($1500 entry plus $400 cash) will be dispersed as follows:

   - [10 spots] 1st and 2nd place finishers in the Month1-5 online 'Main Events'
   - [ 5 spots]  1st place finisher in the Month1-5 online 'Second Chance Events'
   - [ 5 spots]  Top 5 point winners that haven't already qualified for the Grand Finale.  See Standings here
   - [ 1 spot]    Winner of the 10-person online 'Bounty Tournament' to be held on May 4th at 8pm on the new RaiseAndFold.com poker website
   - [ 2 spots]  1st and 2nd place finishers in the 'Thanks for Spreading the Word Tournament' to be held on May 4th at 8pm on the new poker site
   - [ 3 spots]  Top 3 finishers in our May 14th 'Top 30 Invitational' live event...a live event for the top 30 finishers in the Standings that haven't already qualified for the Grand Finale.
   - [ 1 spot]    For the person that got the most new people to join in our promotion this time.
   - [ 3 spots]  Top 3 finishers in a BONUS online tournament on the new poker site www.LuvinPoker.com held on Tuesday May 3rd at 8pm.  I expect this will
                     be a smaller number of players because it requires that people have to download the new poker software and create a new account. 
                     Your odds could be much better in this event!  (I'm hoping we'll get enough players to test out the new site's software/bandwidth/etc before Promo#9)

IMPORTANT:  You will have to go to this site (www.LuvinPoker.com) and download the software and create a User Name and Nickname. 
PLEASE use the same PlayerID name that you had on Fulltilt as your Nickname so that I will know who everybody is!  On this new poker website, the Nickname you choose is the one that is visible when you play.  You will also create a User Name that must be different than your NickName.

Please download the software and create your account a few days before our May 3rd event. 
If you wait until the last minute there are bound to be issues.