The new players will join Darus Suharto and Daniel Negreanu as members as the team and along with the two current players will represent Pokerstars.net not only in North America but throughout the world.

The Canadians added to the team include Patrick Pezzin, Marcello Del Grosso, Anh Van Nguyen and Greg DeBora. All four recently competed at the Mohegan Sun on one of the stops of the Pokerstars.net North American Poker Tour.

DeBora is from Toronto and began playing poker when he was 19. Six months later, when he discovered he was making money at the game, he decided to play full time. DeBora plays primarily in Los Angeles at the Commerce Casino. To date, DeBora has earned more than $120,000 in tournaments.

Pezzin previously was the general manager for restaurants, but began playing poker in 1994 and went pro in 1995. Pezzin, who is from Toronto, has won more than $700,000 in tournaments.

Del Grosso is from Ontario, and worked in construction and owned a call center for several years before turning to professional poker in 2006. He has won more than $400,000 so far playing poker.

Van Nguyen, born in Vietnam but now a Canadian resident, has been playing poker for 14 years, the last six of which have been professional poker. He's won more than $675,000 in tournaments thus far.

Two of the new players are from the United States, while the third is from the Ukraine. George “Jorj95” Lind and Dusty “Leatherass9” Schmidt are from the U.S. Denys ‘diatty’ Shcherbakov is the Ukrainian player.

While they might be new to PokerStars team play, the new players aren’t new to poker. They all have long poker resumes that include a number of tournaments, sit and goes and cash games, which have helped them to perfect their games and be invited to play as PokerStars pros.

Schmidt, in fact, is a former golf pro. After illness forced him from his golf game, Schmidt began playing poker by watching a friend playing online and studying the game itself. He says he’s played in more than seven million hands online and has won more than $3 million over the past five years.

Lind is a former computer science student who began playing poker not long ago, while Shcherbakov worked on video games before switching to playing at poker sites full time in 2005.

The players will represent PokerStars through their online play and at various tournaments and act as ambassadors for the site.

Jason Teixeira will head to the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut to compete in the NAPT and against some of the best players in the world. Play will begin April 7 and continue to April 11.

“I feel like I'm living every average, online poker player’s dream. It's just unreal,” Teixeira told a local reporter.

Teixeira was one of 10,000 people to enter and play at the PokerStars(www.pokerstars.com) online poker tournament. The tournament qualifies the top 36 players to play in the championship rounds. Teixeira qualified and competed against the other players to win a seat at the live tournament at the Mohegan Sun. That event will be covered by ESPN2

Teixeira said luck had a lot to do with his win.

“I got two royal flushes, one in each tournament,” he said. Noting how uncommon that can be, Teixeira said he had no other explanation that it was just pure luck.

But it wasn't just luck that was involved. Teixeira said he had a strategy, and it was to sit back and let his opponents duke it out until he became the last one standing. While his opponent had more than 1 million chips, Teixeira had just 266,000 which he pushed all in, and ended up with 1.1 million chips of his own.

The prize package to the NAPT includes entry into the tournament, as well as accommodations at the casino and airfare to Connecticut.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.