The first series of the new calendar year finish in Las Vegas at the Aria Casino with the 2025 PGT Last Chance, which also had potential implications for the upcoming $1,000,000 Championship Freeroll. Shannon Shorr and Brandon Wilson each won two events, while Nick Schulman and Martin Zamani both shipped one event. Along the way, Zamani also won the largest $10K event in PGT history. Shorr finished ahead of Wilson in the leaderboard standings to clinch a Dream Seat in the $1 million Championship.

Some of the most fun I've ever had playing poker occurred in a home game setting. If you participate in a regular poker night with friends and family, consider yourself lucky because it's not easy to host and maintain a regular game. If you're looking to start a home game or struggling to keep one running smoothly, we compiled 10 tips and ideas on how to host a poker night that's well organized, consistent, and most of all... tons of fun!

Tournament action continues at the Alantis Resort in the Bahamas and two well-known high rollers added bracelets to their collection! Alex Foxen shipped 2024 WSOP Paradise Event #7 $100,000 Triton Main Event for $3,850,000. Meawhile, Stephen Chidwick took down Event #8 $50,000 PLO Championship for a score worth $1,357,080. Other bracelet winners in the Bahamas include Mike Gorodinsky, Lei Yu, Eric Wasserson, Lautaro Guerra, Jeffrey Hakim, and Alejandro Lococo.

Rapper Alejandro 'Papo MC' Lococo from Argentina shipped the largest single prize pool in 2024 with a staggering $12.07 million score in the Bahamas when he took down 2024 WSOP Paradise Event #2 $500,000 Triton Million Invitational. Lococo outlasted 96 runners and a difficult final table that included Ben Heath, Dan Dvoress, Alex Foxen, Sinan Unlu, Elias Talvitie, Aleksejs Ponakovs, and Sosia Jiang. Heath finished in second place yet still banked $8.16 million.

The fifth installment of High Stakes Duel is in the books, and Jared Bleznick won three straight matches against Patrik Antonius in Las Vegas to win $700,000 in heads-up battles featuring both NLH and PLO. Bleznick won Round 1 for $100,000, and won again in Round 2 for $200,000 stakes, and completed a sweep in Round 3 worth $400,000. Antonious declined a rematch, so Bleznick was declared the ultimate winner of High Stakes Duel 5.

In the latest bit of sponsorship news, PokerStars announced that they entered a relationship with the Philadelphia Flyers. PokerStars is the first online poker site to work out a deal with the Flyers, so this is a historic move. PokerStars now has three sponsorships with NHL teams as an official sponsor of the Flyers, the Detroit Red Wings, and Toronto Maple Leafs.

Everyone would love to see a sequel to Rounders, but for now a second poker movie is not close to happening. That didn't stop us from brainstorming ideas for Rounders 2 that includes crypto scams, dogfighting, Russian cam girls, Ukrainian arm dealers, Hollywood home games, a ‘movie within a movie', online poker cheating scandals, multi-million-dollar prop bets, and Joey Knish's estranged daughter known as Lola Challah.

The 2024 North American Poker Tour finished off their latest stop and series at Resorts World in Las Vegas. British pro Nick Marchington outlasted 895 runners and won the NAPT Las Vegas Main Event for $765,200. American pros Stephen Song and Sam Soverel took down high rollers. Song outlasted 60 players to win the $25K High Roller for $439,400. Soverel best a field of 170 runners and won the $10K High Roller for a score worth $385,750.

The Sahara Casino in Las Vegas will shut down its poker room on November 16. The valuable floor space will be renovated for a special new area for slot machines. The cost-cutting measure is another bottom line decision by executives who intend to maximize profits with slot degens instead of providing a safe space for poker-loving denizens and tourists.

American pro Matthew Wantman topped the leaderboard at the PGT PLO Series II hosted at the Aria Casino in Las Vegas. He shipped Event #3 $5,100 PLO and cashed six times with four final table appearances. He banked $434,380 in winnings and finished with 453 leaderboard point. He edged out Jeremy Ausmus for the PGT PLO Series II Gold Cup, and held off Alex Foxen and Daniel Negreanu.

It's been a busy week for the World Series of Poker brand. The WSOP Online Domestic is underway and the WSOP Europe wrapped in RozVegas. Italy's Simone Andrian banked €1,300,000 for winning the 2024 WSOP Europe Main Event after he outlasted a field of 768 entrants. Over in the WSOP Online Domestic (for US players), Daniel Negreanu came close to narrowly winning bracelet #8 but Matthew 'The_founder' Davis took down Event #9 PLO 6-MAx. Other bracelet winners include pros Dylan Linde and Joshua Remitio.

The 2024 WSOP Europe continued at the King's Casino in RozVegas. Several rookie bracelet winners stepped into the spotlight for the first time, but local pro Martin Kabrhel took down WSOPE Event #12 €50,000 NLH Diamond High Roller for his third bracelet. Other bracelet winners over the last week included Patrick Bueno, Darus Beagoe, Amir Mozaffarian, Dennis Weiss, Alessandro Pichierri, and Ermanno Di Nicola.

Big tournament action returned in September. German pro Moritz Dietrich took down the $5,000 buy-in 2024 WSOP Online International Main Event at GG Poker for $4,021,012. Dietrich outlasted 6,146 entries in the record-setting field, and he also navigated a tough virtual final table that included Rui Ferreira, Isaac Baron, Diogo Coelho, and Benjamin Rolle. The WSOP Europe began and early bracelet winners included Poland's Przemyslaw Szymanski (WSOPE Event #1 €315 The Opener), Ukraine's Volodymyr Kokoulin (WSOPE #2 €550 PLO [8-Max]), and Brazil's Vivian Saliba (WSOPE Event #3 €2,000 PLO).

The 2024 Poker Masters, the latest stop on the PokerGo Tour, concluded on Thursday at the Aria Casino in Las Vegas. American pro Jim Collopy won the coveted Purple Jacket that is awarded to first place on the leaderboard. Collopy did not win any specific events but reached the got hot at the right time and advance to the final table in four-straight events, or in half of the events in this year's Poker Masters. He was propelled to the top of the leaderboard with two second place finishes and one third-place finish.

American pro Stephen Song outlasted 1,975 entrants to win the €5,300 buy-in 2024 EPT Barcelona Main Event for a score worth over €1.29 million. Song survived a final table that included Marius-Catalin Pertea, David Coleman, Rania Nasreddine, Andrew Hulme, and Boris Kuzmanovic. Song and British pro Andrew Hulme cut a heads-up deal, but Song went on to win their heads-up joust and Hume banked €1.16 million.

Get ready for the triumphant return of the biggest and most prestigious online tournament series in the world. The 2024 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) starting this Sunday, September 8 exclusively on PokerStars. This annual festival of poker will run the remainder of the month and end on October 2. This year's WCOOP has a total of 379 tournaments spread across three tiers of buy-ins with guaranteed prize pools over $80 million. The Main Event World Championship in both NLHE and PLO is slated for September 29.

The Venetian Casino in Las Vegas recently opened their renovated poker room. With 50 tables, the Venetian is now home to the largest poker room in Las Vegas. The new space opened in early August and is now located in between the Venetian and Palazzo on the second floor of the Grand Canal Shops.

The latest poker movie is slated for release next month. "Dead Money" is directed by Luc Walpoth and stars Emile Hirsch and India Eisley. Hirsch portrays a professional poker in the middle of a downswing who gets caught up with a criminal element after a poker game gets robbed. "Dead Money" is slated for release on September 13 in theaters and via video on demand (VOD).

Caesars Entertainment will sell the intellectual property rights for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) brand to NSUS Group Inc. (owner of GGPoker) for $500 million. The WSOP will still remain in Las Vegas for the next 20 years and Caesars will still be able to use the WSOP branding for their brick-and-mortar rooms and WSOP Online.

Save the date! The 2024 WSOP Paradise will take place over two weeks on Paradise Island in the Bahamas starting December 6 and running through December 19. This second installment of the WSOP Paradise will be hosted at the newly renovated Atlantis Resort, and the $25,000 Super Main Event will have a $50 million guarantee.