Poker Stars is holding both FPP qualifiers and freeroll qualifiers for entry into the Just For Laughs tournament. The freerolls run between June 23 and July 6 and the FPP qualifiers (costing 10 FPPs to enter) run from June 27 to July 4. All qualifiers start at 8 pm ET. Additional tickets into the tournament are being given out to all PokerStars players in Canada who either make their first real money deposit or a reload deposit of at leat $10 between June 23 and July 7.

The top 9 finishers in each Summer of Laughs Freeroll and the top 45 finishers in each Summer of Laughs FPP Qualifier advance to the Summer of Laughs Final Tournament, which takes place on Wednesday, July 7 at 7 pm ET. One Just For Laughs prize package will then be awarded to the winner, plus a $500 prize pool split amongst the top finishers.

The Card Rush has long been a popular promotion at Party Poker, coming and going like the seasons, and each time offering players instant scratch game cards for earning a certain amount of Party Points (in this case 15). The different between this Card Rush and Card Rush promotions of PartyPoker’s days past is that with this one, every last card has a prize. That’s right, there are no losing cards.

That means every time you collect 15 PartyPoints in the course of your normal play at PartyPoker, you win a bonus. The more you do between June 28 and July 31 (and the sooner in the promotional period you do it) the more you win.

In the Million Dollar Hand promotion, players earn PartyPoints as normal for playing in real money games and qualifying tournaments. These points then earn players random playing cards to apply towards making complete poker hands and earn themselves the corresponding cash bonus.

For example, if the first 5 cards you earn give you a pair, you win $3. But if the first 5 cards you earn give you a straight, you get $50. And if they give you a Royal Flush, you get $1 million. After you earn your first 5 cards and your hand is valued, you simply go on earning more cards towards your next bonus hand, with 2 allowed per day of the promotion. But you can score a million dollar royal flush as often as you’re able.

Then, for Palladium members, PartyPoker has added a points race into the mix, in which the same PartyPoints that earn you playing cards also earn you points (2 for a pair up to 15 for a Royal Flush). The top 2 finishers on the PartyPoker Million Dollar Hand VIP Points Race Leader Board for Palladium members will win $12,000 prize packages that include free entry into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.

Each series is made up of the same 30 poker tournament events, ranging in format, buy-in, and playing style. The schedule includes Pot Limit, Fixed Limit and No Limit poker, Texas Holdem, Omaha, Stud, Razz, and HORSE, 6-max, turbo, speed, rebuy/add-on poker and more. The only differences between the FTOPS XVI and MiniFTOPS XVI are in the buy-ins and prize pools, but the buy-ins for the MiniFTOPS XVI are a lot less than those for the FTOPS XVI while the prize pools are only a little bit less.

Satellite tournaments are going on now over at Full Tilt Poker with top prizes of free entries into the various FTOPS XVI and MiniFTOPS XVI events.

The High Roller Monday poker tournament is a 10-handed No Limit Holdem event.

Before the big ‘shuffle up and deal’ on any given High Roller Monday is a High Roller Monday Satellite, held on Monday as well, in just enough time for the winner to grab their seat alongside all the other high-rollers. The buy-in for the Holler Roller Monday Satellite is $50 + $1.

On a day when there’s not much going on in the online poker world, especially after the big majors have their usual big money Sundays, a high-stakes, high-rolling event like this on a Monday is a rare gift to that rare breed of online poker player who wants to put some real money on the line.

The Contender Tournament series, sponsored and hosted by the UK’s biggest online gambling site, including an online casino and online sportsbetting and horse race betting, in addition—of course—to online poker, guarantees its winners cash rewards for earning a particular amount of Market Points per month, in any given month.

That’s right. The Bwin Poker Contender Tournaments are not just a one-shot promotion, but an ongoing part of the monthly Bwin Poker schedule. There are 5 different tiers of accomplishment in these events, 5 separate classes of freeroll tournament.

Heavyweight tier contender tournaments are $2,000 guaranteed events that you must earn a minimum of 75,000 Market Points in a single month in order to enter.

Cruiserweight tier contender tournaments are $1,000 guaranteed events that you must earn 30,000 Market Points in a single month in order to enter.

Middleweight tier contender tournaments are $500 guaranteed events that you must earn 15,000 Market Points in a single month in order to enter.

Welterweight tier contender tournaments are $350 guaranteed events that you must earn 1,600 Market Points in a single month in order to enter.

Flyweight tier contender tournaments are $100 guaranteed events open to any and all new players at Bwin Poker the month that they join the site.

To earn Market Points toward these Contender Tournaments, you must register not only with Bwin Poker but with the site’s b’inside player rewards program.

All contender freeroll tournaments take place the 3rd Thursday of every month at 20:00 GMT.

The new U.S. online poker bill is called the Tax Fairness and Simplification Act and it was put together in a bipartisan efforts by two Senators, Judd Gregg and Ron Wyden. Obviously, if the name didn’t give it away, the bill isn’t solely about legal U.S. online poker, but it does include legislation for that. It also includes legislation for replacing the Alternative Minimum Tax and making it so that most Americans can file their taxes using a simple one-page form.

Superceding all previous bills aiming to legalize U.S. online poker is fine. Let’s just hope S3108 can succeed in the one area the others failed—getting passed into law.

Because that’s how you earn PartyPoints, and every time you earn 20 PartyPoints, you get to play a special bonus game called Hit Or Run, a single heads-up hand of all-in NL Hold’em. You against the dealer. Double or nothing. Your bet: the $1 ticket you get each time you earn 20 PartyPoints in 1 day at PartyPoker.

If you win the Hit Or Run game you can then choose whether to Hit, wagering your $2 on another Hit Or Run hand, double or nothing, or take your winnings and Run. If successful, you can do this 10 times in a single Hit Or Run game, making your maximum winnings from one game over $1,000. And PartyPoker lets you play 10 of these games in a single day. Just earn 200 PartyPoints in 1 day and you could win $10,000.

Party Poker is well known for its high-stakes Limit Holdem offerings, but hasn’t had much in the way of high-stakes No Limit and Pot Limit cash games. But with the increasing popularity of Omaha among major leaguers (like Phil Ivey), and Pot Limit Omaha (aka PLO) in particular, it seems the PartyPoker team finally feels the time is right to branch out to the high-rolling PLO players.

And not a moment too soon. Just as point (or two) of comparison, Full Tilt Poker has high-stakes PLO cash tables ranging from $50/$100 to $500/$1,000 (a popular fave with Ivey); and Poker Stars has them at $100/$200 and $200/$400 levels.

Of course one of the biggest differences between FullTilt, PokerStars, and PartyPoker is that the first two serve U.S. customers (and have a huge U.S. showing at their nosebleed PLO tables), but Party Poker does not. So that might mean players from the rest of the world can enjoy some heavy hitting Pot Limit Omaha action without all the U.S. sharks bloodying up their waters.

One of them is a new option in the selection of console views from which to play in multi-table tournaments. Now, along with Tiling and Cascading will be a Stacked console. With the Table Stack view, players will indicate their position at each table and the console will stack the tables accordingly, with an alarm sounding to notify you that it’s time to act at a certain table. You don’t even have to go to the table itself to take your action, you can do it right from the Stacked console view, as you can also view hand histories, players’ chip stacks, and other pertinent information to each table without having to switch to each respective table to view that information.

Also coming as part of the new PartyPoker software will be synchronized breaks, a feature becoming more and more common at poker sites, giving tournament players a 5 minute rest break every hour at 5 minutes to the hour (with certain exceptions, such as tournaments still in level 1 or that still have late registration open). They’ve also extended late registration at some tournaments to level 6, and they now included a deadline posted in the Party Poker lobby of when a player can no longer un-register from a tournament and get their buy-in back.