Yep, that time of the week again, a time to sharpen your hunting skills and target the bounty player in the Bounty Hunter tournament at 8pm! You can snag a tasty $100 by knocking out the bounty, and hopefully with his lucky chips in your stack and the soaring confidence that comes with taking out a targeted player, you’ll be able to make a push for the final table. Remember, if you knock out the bounty player, YOU will have the bulls-eye on your back the following week (as well as an additional $100 in your account, my, paddypowerpoker.com are generous souls!)

Not only that, but win two Bounty Hunter tournaments as the bounty player and we’ll reward your cunning and self-preservation skills by providing you with an additional $1,000 bonus! Fighting your corner and clinging onto your chips for dear life have never been so important! See you on the tables.

In honour of the two massive Champions League matches this week and the footballing superstars we all know and love that will take centre stage, we’re adding $500 to four tournaments (two tonight, two tomorrow) in our Dive into the Champions League promo! Ronaldo and Drogba only look like big strong fellas, actually a strong breeze could knock either one over so there shouldn’t be any surprise to see them fall over in the penalty area TEN TIMES A MATCH!

The tournaments are at 7pm and 9pm each of the two evenings and the $1 + 10c speed rebuy tournaments should feature action as wild and combatative as we all hope this weeks matches will be See you on the pitch….in the pool….err, across the felt!

Just a quick one (I know you love it!) listing some of what’s going on paddypowerpoker.com this weekend:

1. Tonight (Friday) at 8pm is the final April Golden Shower tournament, your last chance to win a Playstation 3 or Ipod Nano from your uncle Paddy for only $5.50
2. Win your seat at one of Ireland’s must-attend poker tournaments, the Irish Winter Festival, on Sunday evening at 10pm
3. You can start your quest to play in the World Series of Poker $10,000 Main Event by playing some of the many feeder satellites live on paddypowerpoker.com - the 1st weekly Super Satellite tournament iwill be on Sunday April 6 at 8pm
4. Continue trying to snag the big prizes in the Billionth Hand promotion by playing our cash tables - any type of poker, any stakes!
Enjoy and see you on Monday

With the 950,000,000th hand on our poker network being dealt on Tuesday and the prize giving period well and truly underway, Paddy Power player targuste is one of the early winners, sharing in a Countdown Hand Bonus (awarded every 200,000 hands on the way to the Billionth Hand). Congratulations!

The numbers of players on the cash tables have exploded since the 1st prizes were won and I’m sure more and more will pile onto the tables as we come closer to the magic number…I fancy a bit of multi-table action myself, now that I think about it! See you on the tables, I’ll be the player with the shortest stack and the hang-dog expression…

Yes, it is that time of the week again, a time to stick Rocky IV into the VHS player, hum the Eye of the Tiger to yourself, run up and down stairs and scream ‘Adrianne!!!!’ at the top of your lungs. Out of the corner of my eye I can see our champion slugger, Paddywhacker0, lacing up his gloves and preparing himself mentally in front of the mirror for the battle that’s coming later this evening. It’s Paddy Whacker time!

As always, simply log onto paddypowerpoker.com, register for the $10 + $1 Paddywhacker Bounty freezeout at 9pm and knock our man out for a cool €100 bonus…watch out, though, he’s been promised a month in the sun (or at least two days off in ’sunny’ Siberia!) should he win the tournament outright and save our $100, so he won’t be no Apollo Creed-style pushover…think of Ivan Drago instead (’I must break you’) and you’ll be closer to the challenge you face playing the tournament!

In other news, Daragh Thomas has a new strategy article up in our poker academy: Relative and Absolute Position

Check it out!

Have you been keeping an eye on the hand counter on the Billionth Hand page or the bottom of the poker software? It currently reads hand 949,575,273 for me…make that 949,575,299….or 949,575,315…you get the picture! I’m betting Jackpot hand 950,000,000 will be dealt within the next 24 hours, so some player could be hours away from winning up to $14,000 in cash and a ticket for an ECOOP II tournament. Nice work if you can get it….

I’ll keep you up-to-date on how the promotion is progressing and how close we are getting to the magical 1,000,000,000th hand and the $50,000 prize…if any readers grab some cash in this please come back and let me know. I’ll know who to borrow a few bob off next time I tilt away my bankroll!

I was wondering what readers think is the best poker to play on a lazy Sunday night, sitting on the couch in front of a rubbish film or terrible TV? I had a hectic weekend, out late partying on the Friday night and a full evening of live tournament poker on Saturday (fruitless in terms of ROI, it has to be said, the cash tables were a little better). When Sunday evening rolled around I was still tired and just wanted to veg out in front of the idiot box, with a bowl of popcorn on one side of me and my trusty laptop on my, well, lap!

So what to play? I often think about trying to satellite into a major live tournies, such as the WSOP or the Irish Winter Festival, as most of the big sat tournaments are held on Sunday evenings. There usually are a few tasty Multi Table Tournaments (MTTs) online on Sundays as well, though to go deep I imagine you’d want to be well-rested and ready for the challenge! Cash is a no-no for me when relaxing in the living room, too many other distractions on the box or online to really dedicate myself to this most taxing of poker choices. Finally, how about Single Table Tournaments (STTs)? Easy to fire up a couple of these, play A-B-C poker and keep an eye on the telly at the same time, right? Yep, STTs are my choice here!
So what do you think, what kind of poker do you fancy when you just want to relax, take it easy, chill and unwind?

There were 146 runners in last night’s Paddy Whacker tournament, all gunning for the mythical Paddywhacker0. It is a hard life here at Paddy Tower, making sure the card-o-matic connects to dealerbot-ALPHA and that both are hooked up to whatchamacallitron and integrated with the interwebmatrix, just so that our treasured players get all the poker they need whenever and wherever they are!

Now think of the added pressure of playing in the Paddy Whacker game, knowing that despite your efforts to provide the superior poker experience, those you care the most about are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of knocking you out. Imagine the mental trauma!

Yes, a hard life indeed - despite all the pressure, Paddywacker0 battled most of the way through the field last night, only falling in 37th place after being knocked out by crockett227, who earns himself a tasty $100 bonus for eliminating the pride of Paddy Tower. See if you can do the same next week - be warned, I’ve instructed dealerbot-ALPHA to keep one metallic finger on the bright red DOOMSWITCH ‘re-randomizer button’ on the poker control panel during next week’s tournament and to press repeatedly if anyone tries to take our man down…

Most readers of the blog and players on Paddy Power Poker are probably aware of the Billionth Hand promotion we’re currently running - with a massive $50,000 cash prize for the winner of the Billionth Hand dealt on our cash tables and other tasty cash prizes for winners and participants in the many other prize hands in the run-up to the big one!

Well, to aid all players in their quest to snag some of the loot on offer, we’ve added a hand counter to both the Billionth Hand webpage and the poker software client. Now you’ll be able to see just when the big Jackpot and Countdown hands are approaching, in addition to be better prepared for the Billionth Hand and the inevitable 24-hour cash table madness that will accompany the last day before it is hit!

Dr. Jack has also been spotted joy-riding around outside Paddy Tower in his gilded horse-drawn carriage recently and has added to the growing body of wisdom on his very on page on paddypowerpoker.com…check him out and learn a little…if not about poker, definitely about life and love!

If you haven’t been playing our Bounty Hunter tournaments on Wednesday evenings, you’ve been missing out. These wonderful events give players the chance to wallow in their primative hunter-gather side and forget about the complexities of modern living - all you need to worry about is how to find that elusive bounty player, hog tie his ass* and knock him out of the tournament. And, oh yes, doing so will capture you an additional $100! It pays to be primative on paddypowerpoker.com!

This week your target is Elyobo, who knocked out the previous week’s bounty player. How quickly the hunter has become the hunted! The Bounty Hunter tournament is a lot like 1980’s flick The Running Man, except without the ridiculous Austrian accent and dubious special effects! And remember, if you are the top hunter this week, not only will you snag the $100, but you will be the bounty player next week and the bullseye will be on your back. Fun, isn’t it?

*not literally, PPP discourages such actions, there is a time and a place for that sort of thing!