This weekend was, as it is known in certain circles, the Sunday before the Sunday before.

In less than two weeks, the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker will begin, rendering this weekly report of the big weekend activity moot. Why, ye ask? Because for a solid twenty-something days, WCOOP will cover this blog like batter on a corn dog.

Next Sunday, we'll be right back here as players work out some last minute kinks before the big month. For now, we have a few successes to note from this weekend.

Among the most notable in this week's run is the first place finish of Friend of PokerStars Bill Chen. Chen, a noted and spooky-good player at all games, took down this weekend's $215 Weekly Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo event.

We also can't let the day go by without recognizing Team Online's Steve Paul. He made the final table of the Sunday $530 No-Limit Hold'em contest for a cool $10,000.

Oh, that's not enough Team PokerStars action for you. Then how about none other than Johnny Lodden? YugiohPro cut deal at the final table of the Sunday Warm-Up, eventually taking the title and $104,060 for his victory.

For a complete rundown of the big weekend action, check out the 8-22-10 PokerStars Sunday tournament results.

One more Sunday to go, folks. Let's make it a good week!

As you probably know we like to follow Salvatore Bonavena here on the PokerStars Blog. The Italian Team PokerStars Pro became a firm favorite after taking down EPT Prague two years ago, and we've loved his pink jumpers ever since. We're therefore a little sad that he did not make the final table of the Italian Poker Tour event in San Remo. What cheers us up a little, however, is that another man called Salvatore is chip leader.

Salvatore Chillemi may need to work on getting a snazzy hat and adding some pink jumpers to his wardrobe, but he seems to know how to accumulate chips like his Team Pro namesake.

As the final eight players sit down later today to fight over the €200,000 first prize, Chillemi, a 53-year-old Italian, has 1,782,000, more than 600,000 ahead of closest rival Christian Cipriano.

Details of the final players are below. You can follow the action as it happens over on our sister Italian blog, where Matteo Viola is very excited (and that must be something to see - Italians are excitable anyway) because all the finalists come from Italy. Remember to use Google translate if you need help following his writing.

Stefano Demontis, 1,005,000
Stefano is a PokerStars qualifier who plays with the UserID 'delf1no74'. He's been playing poker for two and a half years with excellent results, including a third place at the last IPT San Marino.

Christian Cipriano, 1,150,000
Christian is 25 and has been playing poker for two years on Pokerstars with the UserID 'Tisciali'. His best results include a 11th place at a €1,100 side event in San Marino.

Salvatore Chillemi, 1,782,000
Businessman Salvatore, 53, has been playing poker for four years. He's planning to use his winnings for his family and to play as many IPTs as possible.

Alberto Di Vilio, 938,000
Alberto is 41 and will be celebrating his first tournament cash in San Remo. He's thinking of spending his winnings on a house. When asked to define his playing style, he said: "Maniac!".

Sergio Castelluccio, 1,088,000
Sergio is 34 and has been playing poker for three years. He's plans to play all the IPTs this season. He considers himself a professional poker player and started to play poker for fun with friends.

Giuseppe De Blasio, 746,000
Giuseppe, 30, has played for three years and enjoys the action in PokerStars and after making the final table wants to play in all of the remaining Season 2 IPT events.

Alberto Palchetti, 834,000
Alberto is a 25-year-old student who will be using his winnings in San Remo to build his bankroll. He describes himself at the table as "loose and aggressive".

Matteo Taddia, 370,000
Matteo is a 37-year-old professional player. He's been playing for six years and will be putting his winnings here into his bankroll.

While the remaining 31 players at IPT San Remo are already guaranteed €3,100, it's the €200,000 for the winner that they're all after..

As they prepare for today's Day 3, the man leading the chase for first is Alberto Di Vilio on 721,500. Not far behind is Sergio Castelluccio with 639,000 and Demontis Stefano with 500,000. Other highly-placed players are Nicola D'Alessio with 474,000 and Alberto Palchetti with 441,500. The average stack is 255,774.

You can follow today's action on our sister Italian blog - for help understanding it all, use Google translate.

They say a week is a long time in politics - just ask the Australians who are going to the polls today for one of the tightest elections in years. But the poker world packs a lot into seven days, too: PokerStars has crowned the first champion of EPT Season 7 in Tallinn, UKIPT Edinburgh is in full swing, and the Italian Poker Tour is continuing its love affair with San Remo. Oh, and next week we begin EPT Vilamoura.

While all that is going on, allow us to give Davide Pennelli his moment in the spotlight. The Italian was chip leader at IPT San Remo after Day 1B last night with 172,000. He was one of 220 starters yesterday who, along with the Day 1A players, completed a field of 396 generating a tasty €768,240 prize pool. 56 will get paid and €200,000 will go to the winner. Nice.

Among those through to today's Day 2 are Team PokerStars Online Antonio Tarantino and the Hungarian Tamas Lendvai, winner of the last IPT event in Venice.

A total of 146 runners will sit back down for Day 2 today. If you can read Italian you'll have no problem following all the action over on our sister Italian blog. But if you can't read lots of words with double letter 'ls', 'ns', 'ts' and loads of 'is', you can always pay a visit to Google translate and it will do the job for you.

First San Marino, then Venice and now San Remo - idyllic locations, great venues and fine food. No wonder the PokerStars Italian Poker Tour is so popular.

San Remo is like a second home for the IPT, and the latest stop this week for IPT Season 2 saw Nicola D'Alessio hold the Day 1A chip lead last night with 199,100.

A bumper 194 players from around the world started out on Day 1A, including 28 who qualified online at PokerStars for much less than the €2,000 + €200 entry fee..

A total of 67 survived, including 12 qualifiers, and they'll return for Day 2 on Saturday. They include Italians Angelo Patane (126,400) and Roberto Buratti (122,000). Other notable players who survived a fast-and-furious nine levels of play include Sergio Castelluccio, Leonardo Claudio Pagano and Luca Colangelo.

Day 1B will kick off later today with another large field, including Team PokerStars Pros Dario Minieri, Luca Pagano and Salvatore Bonavena.

You can follow all the action on our sister Italian blog. Can't read the Italian on offer from blogger Matteo Viola? No matter - make sense of it all using Google translate.

A few things you might not know about the phrase "Triple Stud:" First, it's syllabic structure allows for it to be sung to the tune of "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Crofts. Second, it has never been the title of a movie, adult or otherwise. Third, and perhaps most importantly in this context, it is how PokerStars describes its newest mixed game offering.

Triple Stud is just as simple and not nearly as naughty as it sounds.

You know all those seven-card games you like to play? Now you can play them while sitting at the same table and without having to contend with those nasty little Hold'em and Omaha games like you do in HORSE.

Triple Stud, like most mixed games, works in a rotation. It stars with Stud High, moves on to Razz, and then finally gives you a shot at Stud Hi/Lo Eight or Better. You'll get eight hands at each game and then move back to the beginning.

And if you're ready to play, apparently the phrase of the day is, "Seat open!"

PokerStars has made sure you don't have any reason to get confused about what game you're playing. Just look at the top border of the table window and it will always display that game that is in play.

If you're itching for some seven-card, Triple Stud action, just go to your PokerStars lobby, click on Other Games > Mixed Games > Triple Stud.

To learn more, visit the PokerStars Triple Stud page.

Good luck!

The Estonian Tax and Customs Board has issued PokerStars an activity license in Estonia, making the world's largest online poker site among the first license-holders in the country. The company will now turn its focus to obtaining its operational license in Estonia.

PokerStars has 36 million players worldwide and has already enjoyed a great relationship with the Estonians. The country is one of the smallest EU member states, but poker is flourishing.

Last week, the Estonian capital Tallinn hosted the first stop of the new season of the EPT, the world's richest poker tour. The €4,250 buy-in tournament attracted 420 players from 40 countries. The winner, Norway's Kevin Stani, earned €400,000 for first place.

"In addition to Estonia having excellent players and tournament organisers, Tallinn is also a new and truly attractive destination for many top players," said Tomas Larsson, PokerStars' Baltics Country Manager.

PokerStars has made also significant investments in Estonia during the last few years, contributing to the development of the local sports and cultural life. The company is the main sponsor of the Estonian national volleyball team which last year battled its way to the final tournament of the European Championship.

PokerStars' operational license applications have previously been approved in Italy and France. PokerStars.it launched in October 2008, offering Italian citizens the chance to participate in games organised by the world's leading poker operator, in compliance with Italian law. PokerStars.fr, which was granted a license in June 2010, permits similar access for French players.

Poker is booming in both countries, with San Remo, in Italy, and Deauville, in France, among the most popular established stops on the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour (EPT).

by Greg DeBora
The 2010 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is just around the corner and I can't wait until it gets underway. As one of the most prestigious online tournament series and with a large range of buy-ins and game formats, there really is something for everyone.

Coming from a limit hold'em background, I find that my biggest edge is when I am playing the limit hold'em events. While many pros advocate the 'tight is right' approach to limit tournaments, I feel that it should really depend on the dynamics of the table you are on. If
everyone at your table is playing tight, you should be looking to steal as many pots as you can get away with.

The importance of having a big stack in tournaments cannot be understated. The goal shouldn't be to cruise into the money, but rather to try and build up chips so that you have enough ammunition to survive the inevitable beats that will come your way. You should be playing to win, and the players that come out on top more often than not are the ones who aren't afraid to take chances and also have the chip stack to warrant it. Don't worry so much about your loose image because your table can break at any time.

Lately, however, I have been spending time working on my mixed games and I plan to apply that fresh knowledge towards winning my first WCOOP title. I'm becoming a big fan of the draw games and will be playing the triple draw and budugi events, as well as the mixed events.

Being able to play different variants of poker is important in today's poker world as you
never know what game will become the next craze. If you are primarily a no-limit hold'em player, I would highly suggest you take some time to learn the other games and jump in to
some of the different events the WCOOP has to offer. Playing new games can be a little scary sometimes, but the learning curve will not be nearly as big as when you first learned to play poker.

You will probably find the new games interesting and exciting as you will have many decisions that you have never faced before. Tournaments can be a great way to 'get your feet wet' because with a little luck, anyone can win.

To keep updated with my results during the WCOOP events, I will be posting frequently on my Facebook fan page and on my Twitter.

I hope to see you playing some new games during this WCOOP series, and if you see me at the tables, please say Hi!

To see more about WCOOP and how you can play, please visit the PokerStars WCOOP site.

As the world turns, Arnaud Mattern is trying to become the first person to win two European Poker Tour events, Nauv Kashyap is celebrating an ANZPT win, and WCOOP is still a few weeks away.

Still, we have some of the biggest online action in the world to report. Once again, PokerStars put up a massive slate of online events for the weekend warriors.

As always, the Sunday Warm-Up was in play, one of the bigger European time zone-friendly events of the weekend. The result was Ansgar2000 pulling in $136,079. For the whole story, check out the 8-15-10 Sunday Warm-Up final table report.

It wouldn't feel like an August Sunday without the Sunday Million in play. Oh, sure, there is a lot more than a million up for grabs, but the branding people haven't gotten around to figuring out how to re-name the thing yet. This week, a four way chop ended with blumenkind53 securing the title. To see how it all happened, have a look at the 8-15-10 Sunday Million final table report.

It all happens again next Sunday, and the Sunday after that, and ad infinitum...until WCOOP starts. Then we have a month of fun ahead of us.

For a complete rundown of all this weekend's big final tables, check out our 8-15-10 PokerStars Sunday tournament results page.

Good luck to everyone in the coming week.

by Tom McEvoy
Hello everybody, the time is almost here. Yup, the biggest and best online tournament series of the year, PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker.

There is no online tournament series that comes close in both prize money and prestige. The winner of every event gets their own personalized gold bracelet and lots of cash. There are buy-in's for every size bankroll no matter how modest or how big. I love this event and have played in every one of them.

I have not been fortunate enough to win one, but I will keep trying. I have made a few final tables, and I think this might be the year I finally break through. How about you? Maybe it is your turn to break through. I do know this, you can't win it if your not in it, so start playing satellites and gathering up enough of a bankroll to take some shots at it.

Most of the Team PokerStars Pros will also be competing, so if you knock one of us out of an event you have further bragging rights.

There is not only buy-in's to fit every size bankroll, but all of your favorite games are played. We feature not only hold'em games, but Omaha, both High only and Hi-Low split varieties. Also you can find Razz, 7 Card Stud, & 7 Card Stud Eight or Better, as well as HORSE games. We also will be playing an 8 game mix, Triple Draw Lowball and even Badugi. No wonder WCOOP is the biggest and the best of all online tournament series.

Oh, did I forget to mention our guarantees? Every event has a guaranteed prize pool
and almost every year PokerStars breaks a new record for attendance and prize money awarded. If an event happens to fall short of the guarantee, no worry, PokerStars makes up the difference so if it happens (which is seldom, if ever) the players get an overlay on their money.

There will be several tournaments for various size buy-in's starting September 5th. I hope you join me and the other Team Pros on the tables and don't forget to say hi. We are friendly and will be happy to chat with you -- of course we will be trying to take your chips at the same time lol!

Take are everybody and good luck.