Jazette Enterprises, parent company of PlayersOnly.com and Sportsbook.com, will fully merge with Merge Gaming in mid April of this year. PlayersOnly.com and Sportsbook.com have tended to attract only seasonal members who primarily use the site for sports betting. Jazette\'s move to Merge is intended, in part, to attract more online poker players to the Sportsbook and PlayersOnly site.

That said, one thing for online poker sharks always seeking schools of fish to keep in mind is that sportsbettors who play online poker tend to be poor online poker players, too aggressive, always calling and raising, and therefore easy to beat.

One thing that both Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly.com\'s old network (CakePoker) and new network (Merge Gaming) have in common is that they both accept U.S. players, which is in tall order in the online poker world these days.

Also making the move from Cake to Merge is another Jazette site, Superbook.com. Other sites already on the Merge Network include its newest addition, Poker Fantasy, as well as Reefer Poker, Iron Duke Poker, and Poker Nordica.

Now the Merge Gaming Network may be a smaller network (in terms of player base, at least) but it has been around for a while, established in 1996, and lasting this long in the online poker and online gaming world is definitely the sign of a quality operation.

All you have to do is sign up in February for Double Ups and then get playing. The Double Up Dash operates as a leader board based system, with a total of $49,000 paid out each week for 4 consecutive weeks, starting Feb. 1. There will be 3 leader boards in all, called Dash Boards for the promotion, each Dash Board based on a certain stakes range.

Leader board points will be awarded for participation in any of VC Poker's Double Up SNG Tournaments. Just by entering you receive points based on the buy-in amount of the Double Up Sit 'n Go. But you can get those points doubled-up by finishing in the money.

Play at VC Poker

Now, to kick off the New Year in an interesting manner (if nothing else), on Wednesday the 7th of January, 2010 they let a second Team Bodog member go, dropping Justin Bonomo.

That leaves David Williams and Evelyn Ng remaining as the only two members of Team Bodog Poker. The site claims that they will be adding new poker pros to the team - both big name and up-and-coming, presumably - within the year. That\'ll make for an interesting news cycle for Bodog Poker at least. But what does cutting its pro sponsorship in half do for its reputation or morale? That\'s another question entirely.

Justin Bonomo joined Team Bodog in 2007, after rising to notice under the online name ZeeJustin. His poker career started, as many do, in online poker, with his segue into live tournament play (and live televised tournament play to boot) came when he made the final table at the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event (he got knocked out in seventh place).

There are some who have been wondering aloud online about whether or not Bonomo quit the team, but Bonomo himself put that rumor to rest when he wrote in his blog that it was Bodog who did the dumping in this relationship breakup. And that he is actively looking for another site to sponsor him and make a better use of his assets.

For the twelve days running from December 16 to 27, Bodog Poker will be holding two raffles daily. Getting raffle tickets is as easy as playing online poker at Bodog. You already earn Bodog Poker Points when you do that. Well now, and for the duration of the 12 Days of Poker, every time you collect 25 Bodog Poker Points, and again every time you collect 75 Bodog Poker Points, the site will automatically give you one raffle ticket. Play as often as you like and earn as many raffle tickets as you like.

Play at Bodog Poker

The raffle drawings are divided into low drawings (for the tickets costing 25 points) and high drawings (for the tickets costing 75 points), but the truth is that the value of the prizes switches back and forth daily, with $100K Guaranteed seats being the low prizes some days, and items like big screen TVs, GPS, video game consoles, digital cameras being the so-called low prizes other days.

So the point is, all you have to do is play and let Bodog Poker worry about paying. Play your cards right (or in this case, long and often enough during the 12 Days of Poker), maybe even earn yourself a free poker ticket for Bodog\'s $100K GTD, and this could become one of the merriest Christmases ever.

Remember, Bodog Poker also accepts players from the United States!

These tournaments are a huge staple of the online poker world\'s regular offerings for players with little bankrolls to cash in big, and most importantly for today\'s readership - it\'s not cancelled anymore.

Play at Bodog Poker

The Bodog Poker $100K Guaranteed runs, as we said, every week, on each Sunday at 4 pm EST. The buy-in is a respectable $162. Nothing too unwieldy for most. But even still, you don\'t have to pay nearly that much to shoot for a share of the $100K. Throughout the week are a series of qualifiers that you can jump into at whatever level you\'re comfortable with.

It starts with the $1 Cheap Seats qualifiers that run twice daily and award 1 seat in a special Semifinal for every $34 in the prize pool. That $100K Semifinal Sit & Go is a 6-handed Sit \'n Go that runs \"all day every day\" (as soon as six players fill the seats) where, if you don\'t want to work your way up through the Cheap Seats, you can buy-in for $34. 1st place gets into the weekly $100K Guaranteed and 2nd place gets 1/6th the buy-in in tournament dollars, or T$27.

Alternatively there are two other satellite routes to the Bodog Poker Weekly $100K Guaranteed, both with 2 steps.

All you need to do to win a piece of the action is to be playing at the cash game table when and where the 2 billionth hand is dealt. The winner of the hand, obviously, takes the largest share of the bonus (or $60,000), but all the players dealt cards in the hand (that\'s all who paid the big blind, whether they stayed in to see the flop or folded straightaway) wins an equal share of the bonus as well, set at $40,000 per person, regardless of how they played or finished in the hand.

Play at VC Poker

Starting at 1,900,000th hand dealt, VC Poker started awarding cash prizes to all the players involved in certain benchmark hands. Every 500,000th hand dealt is called a Golden Hand and every 2.5 millionth hand dealt is called a Platinum Hand. Each comes with its own rewards for the players involved.

As an additional bonus VC Poker is giving each player participating in a Golden Hand, a Platinum Hand, or the 2 Billionth Hand a free entry with $530 into the next Monthly Million GP, this one set for January, 2010.

Lastly, there\'s a Bubble Hands Freeroll for the 1,999,900th through the 2,000,100th players with 20 free entries into the January 2010 Monthly Million GP and a $20,000 bounty on the head of the player who won the 2 Billionth Hand.