The first female champion of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship was crowned on Sunday as UB.com pro and Poker News Daily Guest Columnist Annie Duke took down the title and its corresponding $500,000 top prize.Duke defeated eight-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Erik Seidel in the finals. She was nearly sent packing against Paul Wasicka in the round of 16, but trumped pocket aces with A-10 and pocket jacks with 8-5 of diamonds to move on. Duke beat Wasicka to face 2007 WSOP Main Event winner Jerry Yang in the Elite Eight. In the five previous installments of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Duke had only made it out of the opening round once

In an article authored by the German news outlet Spiegel, Police Chief Rainer Wendt labeled the four armed gunmen who plundered the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Berlin over the weekend “small-time crooks.”New details on the buzz worthy event have dribbled in since the incident took place on Saturday afternoon at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in the German metropolis. Text found on the PokerStars Blog shed light on the weaponry used in the high-stakes heist, which has captured worldwide headlines:

Much ado has been made in the online poker industry in recent months about rakeback. I’m not writing about that controversy in this article, but suffice it to say that many, if not most, poker rooms and networks are not fond if it. What I am going to do in this piece is educate those of you who are new to online poker rakeback, namely discuss what it is, how to go about getting it, and what to look for in your rakeback arrangement.Let’s start with a quick explanation of rakeback

The European Poker Tour has hosted a stop in Germany three times in previous seasons. Those first three stops took place in Dortmund and attracted fields of 493 players in 2007, 411 players in 2008, and 667 players in 2009. This year, the Germany stop has moved to the world-class city of Berlin, and it will feature a €5,000 no-limit hold’em main event that begins on Tuesday, Mar. 2 and runs through Sunday, Mar. 7. There will also be a €10,000 high-roller no-limit hold’em event hosted at EPT Berlin that will run on Mar. 6 and 7.

The third episode of Season 6 of GSN’s “High Stakes Poker” aired on Sunday night at 8:00pm ET. Team PokerStars Pro member Jason Mercier joined the set and Daniel Negreanu pushed all-in, but ultimately chopped the pot.Two players had gone broke in the first two episodes, as UB.com pro Phil Hellmuth and Andreas Hoivold each dropped $200,000. The latter’s seat remained empty as Sunday night’s “High Stakes Poker” kicked off,

The first day of the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Venetian High Roller Bounty Shootout event was, at points, a marathon affair, but after 14 hours of poker antics featuring 49 of the best and brightest poker players of the moment, the seven-handed final table is set.The tournament was an invitation-only $25,000 buy-in knockout event that pitted live pros, online pros, cash game grinders and tournament specialists against each other in a shootout format that required players win their table in order to advance to the next round

This are tips for low-stakes Limit Seven Card Stud.  If you are just picking up the game, these should be a good starting point as you develop your own style and strategy.Remember Face Up Cards is basic.  The ability to remember all or most of the cards that have been dealt face up is arguably a Seven Card Stud player's most important skill.  In Texas Hold'em, you don't have to remember any cards; your hole cards are always available for a quick peek and the community cards are always sitting there in front of you.  In Stud, your opponents' upturned cards disappear into the muck every time someone folds.

This article is laying out basic strategy for Double or Nothing (DoN) Sit-and-Go tournaments. I had taken a break from them for a little while, just to mix up my game, but this month, I have gotten back into them full force. While it does seem that the competition in these tourneys has gotten tougher, there are still people who routinely make the dumbest mistakes imaginable. Thankfully, this has not only allowed me to make a few bucks, but it also gave me a topic for this article: common mistakes in Double or Nothing Sit-and-Go's.