Phil Galfond, a long-time successful professional poker player and three-time WSOP bracelet winner has received green light by the Maltese regulators allowing him to play on his poker room, Run It Once Poker.

Galfond announced this exciting news in his latest blog post titled “Let’s Play Some Card.”

“Recently, I’ve gotten approval to play on Run It Once Poker with you all (and I’m excited about it)! We had to make a couple of changes in order to make this happen,” Galfond explained in his blog.

“I’ve become the first non-anonymous player on Run It Once Poker. If I’m at your table, I won’t know who you are, but you’ll see my name and avatar,” Galfond wrote.

If you don’t already have an account on Run It Once Poker, sign up through us to get up to €600 FREE with qualifying deposits.

Galfond will be streaming daily on Run It Once’s official Twitch channel from August 30 to September 4 between 19:00 and 00:00 CEST hours.

To make it more thrilling, Galfond has put a bounty on himself meaning anyone that stacks him for 100 big blinds or more will be rewarded an additional €20 cash prize.

Wait, how is he being allowed to play on his own site?

Well, Run It Once had to make some changes. He must reveal his identity when playing at the tables and secondly his access to player data and non-publicly game info have been restricted.

The historic PokerStars Players No Limit Hold’em Championship is returning for its second edition and this time it will be held in Barcelona, Spain in August 2020.

The announcement for PSPC 2020 was made earlier this week at the PokerStars European Tour (EPT) Barcelona, currently underway at Casino Barcelona.

Soon after making an announcement, PokerStars awarded the first five Platinum Passes to all finalists of the Chase Your Dreams promotion.

Two days later, three more Platinum Passes have been given away by PokerStars through the ongoing PSPC Mystery Chest promotion requiring players to win the hand with A-5.

In total, five platinum passes are being given away in this promotion.

Similar to last year’s PSPC event at the Bahamas, the Platinum Passes are valued at around €26,500, approximately $30,000, which include travel, accommodation and expenses.

Last year, PokerStars gave out 320 Platinum Passes through a myriad of paths both live and online. In the end, Ramon Collilas, a Platinum Pass winner (and now PokerStars Ambassador) took down the inaugural PSPC event at the Bahamas for $5.1 million.

While the operator has yet to reveal the details on how many Passes will be given this year, expect to see a similar number of passes handed out to players this year via a similar route of competitions and promotions.

Sami “LarsLuzak” Keopuro is running incredibly hot.

Earlier this month, Sami had a monster session, winning a whopping $1.3 million on partypoker at high stakes Pot-Limit Omaha Heads-up cash games.

The Finnish high stakes pro has been regularly posting updates on the Finnish poker site Pokeriteto.

“I was waiting for party 100/200 PLO HU and an unknown nickname came on the table”, wrote Kelopuro on his blog.

“It doesn’t take long to notice that the guy doesn’t know how to play/what to do, but gambles”.

He began his journey by shipping a Powerfest event profiting $235,000 earlier this month followed by multiple wins on GG Poker’s high roller MTTs for a total of nearly $400,000.

In total, Sami is up $2.5 million in winnings this year already and with big fall online tournament series, expect this figure to grow up further.

PokerNews caught up with PokerStars Ambassador Maria Konnikova at PokerStars EPT Barcelona to find out about her upcoming book plans as she continues to take the poker world by storm.

For the past two years, Konnikova has been working with Eirk Seidel to immerse herself in the world of poker—seeing how far she can take her success, then turning what she has learned into a book that is billed as a chronicle on her “year long immersion in the high stakes world of professional poker”. She talks to Sarah Herring about how the project is progressing.

Since entering the poker scene Konnikova has $296,267 to her name in winnings—in 2018 she took down the 2018 PCA National Championship for $84,000, plus a $30,000 PSPC Platinum Pass.

Catch up with what Konnikova has to say below.