PokerStars is offering two new promotions sure to bring in players.

The first promotion awards a dream job in Australia to the lucky winner. Called, appropriately, “Dream Job Australia”, this promotion will award one lucky winner the chance to play at their choice of stops on the Australian New Zealand Poker Tour, $40,000 for tournament entries and $5,000 a month salary for the year that the winner lives in Australia.

While you can get to the final round by playing in free daily tournaments at PokerStars (www.pokerstar.com), the final 10 players will have to prove to the poker playing community their worth as an international poker player in order to win the grand prize.

How can one of the 10 finalists become the Dream Job Australia winner? They will be asked to spend six weeks as a finalist during which time they will blog, tweet and Facebook their poker experiences. They will also complete a poker knowledge test and meet with Team PokerStars Australia at the Australian New Zealand Poker Tour Sydney. The poker community will choose the big winner.

The next big promotion that PokerStars is offering is for women only. Called “Luxury Ladies Poker Club”, this promotion will award one lucky winner a trip to Monte Carlo where she will play in a ladies tournament, earn a spot at Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso’s poker bootcamp, get a manicure and other pampering treatments and enjoy her stay at one of the best hotels in Monte Carlo.

Women can enter this promotion by playing poker at PokerStars and by entering daily freerolls.

Poker players who are looking to join a tournament but aren’t sure how can belly up to the virtual table from May 3-16 when Poker Stars holds its Spring Championship of Online Poker tournament.

The site is hosting the two-week event in an unusual way and one which will allow players of all sized bankrolls to fully participate in the tournament however they choose. While you can buy in for as little as $5.50, you get to share in the overall $36 million in prize money, no matter your buy-in amount. There is also a $5 million guarantee on the 2-day Main Event hand with the highest buy-in.

Unlike the World Championship of Online Poker, the Spring Championship of Online Poker tournament (SCOOP) offers buy-ins on a tiered system, allowing anyone to play in at least the lowest tier of buy-in hands. These buy-ins range from $5.50 to $10,300 on a low, medium and high buy-in range. You might choose to play a medium hand one day and a high buy-in hand another day.

The tournament kicks off on May 3 with a six-handed No Limit Hold’em hand (including re-buys) and will continue to the 16th. Other games include Razz, HORSE and Badugi events.

Prize amounts are also based on the low, medium and high premise. Winning hands might be worth $109, $1,050 or $10,300, with the tournament pools worth $1 million, $3 million and $5 million.

To up the ante at its Las Vegas stop, the North American Poker Tour will host a celebrity charity poker tournament this weekend.

PokerStar.com (www.pokerstars.net) is sponsoring the event, which is designed to raise money for Three Square, a Las Vegas charity that aims to provide food to more than 270 other non-profit organizations that help to feed the hungry in the Las Vegas area.

Some of the celebrities slated to play in the charity event include Team PokerStars pros Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso and Daniel Negreanu, along with other celebrities like Jason Alexander, Joanna Krupa, Tony Hawk, Christian Slater, Slash, Marlon Wayans and Montel Williams. Other celebrities who were expected to play in the $500 buy-in Texas Hold’em tournament include Brad Garrett, Orel Hershiser, and Donnie Wahlberg.

The winner of the tournament – whether pro poker player or celebrity player – will win a prize package that includes a trip to the PokerStars.net Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas in 2011. The Caribbean tournament kicks off the annual North American Poker Tour. The second place winner will win a prize package which includes a trip to the NAPT Mohegan Sun stop in April of this year.

Poker Stars.com (www.Pokerstars.com) likes to celebrate milestones and this February is no exception. The poker site will be celebrating 40 billion hands dealt by offering many cash prizes to players and great value tournaments.

The site is calling this promotion the F40; the focus is on thanking the many players who have made Poker Stars the standout poker playing website that it is. Including cash prizes, the site is offering guarantees, milestone rewards, and many freerolls, as well as a special VIP club instant cash credit.

In the cash games category, one of the most exciting games will be the F40 milestone hands. This is a bit complicated, but here’s how Poker Stars is awarding cash. Players who are dealt into every millionth poker hand will be awarded money based on their play in the previous 40 hands played at that table. Every player playing at that table during the millionth hand dealt will be eligible to win this extra cash.

Let’s use the Poker Stars example to explain how this will work. If you’re playing at a table and you get dealt into a milestone hand, Poker Stars will automatically calculate how many VPPs you have earned at the last 40 hands at that table. As an example, let’s say you earned 31 VPPs. Every player in that millionth hand will be awarded one extra VPP. Now you have a total of 32 VPPs. Every player is awarded at least $40 per VPP just for playing in that millionth hand.

If your win is $40 with 32 VPPs, you would win $1,280. The player who wins the hand at that millionth table will see his or her winnings doubled, so using the same 32 VPPs scenario, that player will now be awarded with $2,560.

Once the 40 billion mega milestone is reached, every player dealt into that 40 billionth hand will be awarded $400 for every VPP earned in the previous 40 hands played at that table. If you went into the game with 31 VPPS, and got your extra VPP (32), times $400 for every VPP, you would win $12,800 just for being dealt into that 40 billionth hand. If you were to win that hand, you would win $25,600.

The site will also offer bonuses at multi-table tournaments, sit and go’s and to members of the site’s VIP club.

The New Year is a time of fresh beginnings and extra chances and PokerStar.com is aiming to help players have more of both during its New Year Reload Bonus program.

Matching poker deposit bonuses are often reserved for new players at gaming websites, but PokerStars (www.pokerstars.com) is making sure that even veteran players can benefit from a bonus program this January.

Through Jan. 10, players who deposit play money at Poker Stars will receive a 25 percent bonus on that money. If you deposit $300, for example, you’ll receive $75 in bonus money. If you deposit money before Jan. 10 and use the “2010” bonus code, you can also make up to two deposits within 60 days that will also be eligible for the 25 percent bonus.

As with most gaming site bonuses, you can’t withdraw the amount of your bonus, but simply play with the additional funds. You also can’t withdraw money unless you have more than the bonus amount in your account.

PokerStars has other promotions currently running, including 100 percent bonuses on players first poker deposit and the PokerStars Frequent Player Program, which allows you to collect frequent player points and exchange them for tournament entries, electronics and apparel.

If there were any doubts that online poker isn’t popular among a number of people, the new world record made Sunday will prove the naysayers wrong.

PokerStars (pokerstar.com) broke the Guiness Book of World records previous world record when nearly 150,000 people showed up to play in an online tournament Sunday.

While it was projected initially that there would be a huge crowd playing in the tournament, few could have imagined that the world record would be broken with 149,196 people signing on to play in the online tournament.

The day before, rival Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.net) hosted a huge poker tournament itself, but that play record was broken the next day when PokerStars hosted its tournament.

Generally, the last Sunday of the year is a busy day for online poker rooms, according to PokerStars. Prior to the December tournaments, the world record was held by PokerStars and it was won when 65,000 people played in a July 2009 tournament.

The winner of the Sunday poker tournament at Poker Stars won $50,000. That winner’s user name is oskar69.

To put the number of players in perspective, PokerStars offers some comparisons. The number of people playing Sunday at the poker site:

* Was enough to fill the Rose Bowl with 60,000 people still outside the stadium

* Would fill up all the rooms at the Las Vegas MGM Grand 30 times

PokerStars regularly holds tournaments and offers people the chance to sit at virtual tables with poker stars like Daniel Negreanu and Greg Raymer.

Pokerstars (www.pokerstar.com) has added to its roster of online poker talent.

The site, the largest online poker site in the world, has announced that it has added 22 poker players to Team PokerStars Online, an offshoot of the site’s Team PokerStars Pro, which features some of the biggest names in pro poker.
Team PokerStars Online is a group of 22 poker players who will play online often at PokerStars. The diversity of players (18 countries are represented among the team) ensures that when you log on to PokerStars, there’s a greater likelihood you’ll find one of them at the table.

The site received more than 2,000 applications for the positions and officials spent two months sorting through the applications before choosing this inaugural group of 22.

The names of the 22 Team Poker Stars.com Online players (and their user names) are:
Andres Alisievics (lobojiji)
Jorge Arias (JorgeArias)
Boumaaza Bachir (Chiren80)
Thomas Boekhoff (Boku87)
Alvaro Blanco (VARICO)
Diego Brunelli (vgreen22)
Anders Berg (Donald)
Mathew Didlick (chipstar1)
Andrew Goetsch (Kid Nebraska)
Andre Coimbra (acoimbra)
Ta-Chi Geeng (socutiesf)
Keiran Harris (K_Man2307)
Steve Jacobs (stevesbets)
Karlo Lopez (elmagopr)
Martha Gonzalez (marene)
Randy Lew (nanoko)
Grzegorz Mikielewicz (DaWarsaw)
Grayson Physioc (spacegravy)
Kristian Martin (CharismA3)
Alexey Makarov (LuckyGump)
Sebastien Sabic (Seb86)
Amanda Thomas (ROXY24)
Nichoel Pepee (NicP)

The pros who play at PokerStars, or as part of the Team PokerStars Pro are Tom McEvoy, Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem, Peter Eastgate and Joe Cada.

Retired New York City policeman Mike Kosowski didn’t expect too much excitement after retirement. A cop’s excitement is supposed to be spent on the force, not after retiring from it, right? Such was not the case for former officer Kosowski who recently won $1 million playing poker.

Mike Kosowski was one of the first officers to respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City. He was injured on that fateful day and due to this, and could never perform his duties the same since. In 2004, he decided to retire from the police force, taking up the poker card game to help pass the time.

Kosowski had no idea that his boredom-relieving decision would result in such a prolific, life-changing event just 5 years down the road.

Mike Kosowski told the New York Post, “With my injury I was getting lethargic, out of shape. My wife noticed this.” One day he and his wife were watching a poker game on television. The session included famed professional poker player Daniel Negreanu. Kosowski’s wife challenged her husband to beat him.

“She said, ’What do you have to do to become [a player] like that?’ I said ‘I’d need a miracle’”. But that wasn’t the end of the fantasy-supporting conversation. “One day I’m going to play him face-to-face and I’m going to win,” Mike told his wife.

Mike was a member of the online poker site PokerStars, the same poker site where Daniel Negreanu carries the status of Team PokerStars Pro. Kosowski played an online qualifier tournament at PokerStars that awarded him the Million Dollar Challenge – a chance to play pro poker player Daniel Negreanu heads-up on the FOX television network.

The episode of PokerStar.com Million Dollar Challenge will air December 27th, 2009 on the FOX television network.

Kosowski claims he owes his million-dollar victory to his years working as a New York City detective. “I said this guy’s a pro. If he gets a chance to read me he’s going to pick me off. So being a detective sergeant, I couldn’t let that happen.”

PokerStars (www.pokerstars.com) wants to give online poker players the unique experience of playing with some of the biggest names in poker, thanks to its current “Team Pro Tuesdays” promotion.

Every Tuesday until Dec. 29, players can log onto PokerStars.net and play against some of the most famous names in poker. Players might simply watch the stars play, chat with them from the rail or buy-in to play against them. Some of the big names that might be around the virtual table include Joe Cada, Chris Moneymaker, Peter Eastgate, Daniel Negreanu, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier.
These players regularly play at PokerStars, but with Team Pro Tuesdays, there’s a greater likelihood players will run into them online.

While players can have fun chatting with and watching the pros play, they can also play against them, or play “Outlast the Pros”, where players can win cash by lasting longer in a game than the pros. “Outlast the Pros” tournaments will run twice on Tuesdays, one beginning at 1 p.m. ET, and the other at 10 p.m. ET. Each tournaments buy-in is $11, with another $1,000 added to the prize pot.
If online players can stay in the “Outlast the Pros” tournament longer than all the pros, the winner will get to split the cash with all the other players still in the tournament.

PokerStar.com has an exciting new promotion where you can win a free Porsche. Not only can you seem like a high roller by playing high stakes poker games but you can look like one on the roads behind the wheel of this sporty car. PokerStars is sponsoring a tournament where the top one hundred players in North America get to share in the cash prizes and the winner walks away with a Porsche Caymen S. The Porsche Caymen S retails for over $70,000 so to win one for free will be a real benefit.

Entering the tournament is easy. If you are already a member of Poker Stars.com, you simply need to reload your real money account between September 28th and October 17th, 2009 while entering the promotional code of “WINCAR”. If you are new to the site, register an account and make your first real money within the same time period using “NEWCAR” as the promo code. You will automatically receive a ticket to enter the tournament.

You can pit your skills against some of the best in the industry and earn bragging rights that you did so well in the standings. The top 100 finishing players will share in the final pot and cash will be credited to your account. But the real benefit is the chance to win the Porsche Caymen S, a six cylinder sports car that will get you from zero to sixty in seconds. This car is a beauty and one often chosen by celebrities and car enthusiasts.

Once you receive your ticket to the poker tournament, simply go to the lobby at PokerStars, click on “Tourney” and “regional” on October 18th at 1:00 PM ET. You can enjoy a rousing tournament of poker with fellow players as well as learn a chance to win the car of your dreams.