MISSING: BRONZIE. LAST SEEN: A couple of weeks ago (either that or it’s lost on the floor of my office somewhere).
Have You Seen Me?
UPDATE: Bronzie has been found. And not on my office floor.
I started using the hat off of a toy Simpsons figurine (Professor Frink) as my card cap a number of years ago, after dealer Matt Johnson squawked at me to get my damn Hawthorne Bridge rivet off of his cards (back during one of the renovations, the county sold rivet heads they’d cut off as souvenirs). The original was plastic and painted silver with a red top (it’s supposed to be a kitchen colander, with some sort of electric arc generators built onto it), but after being carried around to a lot of games, the plastic was bending and the paint was coming off.
So when I headed down to Las Vegas in the summer of 2012 for a couple of weeks, I took an afternoon to make a 3D model of the hat (with Blender, an open-source—free—modeling program) and sent the model off to Shapeways, a company that will print your 3D files in anything from plastic to platinum. I ordered four card caps, three in metal, and one in a metallic plastic. Two of the metal caps were delayed for finishing, but I got the plastic cap and ‘Bronzie’ (pictured above) in time for the Vegas trip. The plastic proved too brittle for carrying around in my pocket, but I used Bronzie and his mates ever since, in almost every game for the past four-and-a-half years (above, he’s pictured next to my stack in the biggest cash I’ve ever had at a tournament, back at Encore Club a couple years ago).
One of the caps is solid silver, but Bronzie and Goldie are both stainless steel at heart (Goldie is electroplated with—wait for it—gold).
I’ve walked away from tables a number of times leaving one of the caps behind, but someone’s always called me back or I’ve felt in my pocket at the last minute. But I’ve finally lost one of the set, and near as I can guess, it was at a home game two weeks back. If anyone runs across Bronzie, I’d appreciate getting it back, it’s not worth very much, and I can always get another one printed, but it’s served me well.
I had to go to the $10K at Final Table (yay! the snow is mostly gone!) with a backup (above) on Friday. Blasted through my first buy-in, built my way up from 5K of my second buyin (and the addon), then ran [qx qx] into [jx jx] all in on the flop and a jack on the river.
#PDXPokerTroubles
It’s been a harsh few weeks of winter, but except for a few dirty snow piles, it’s mostly gone from the metro area. Except for some roads closed by landslides and some gargantuan potholes, driving’s back to normal. Even I84 is open again.
In fact, pretty much everything is open with the exception of Rialto, which is going to be closed for some weeks yet, after a fire on the upper floors of the building.
Friday, 3 February, is the second of two entry days for Event #7, an $1,100 buyin $300,000 Guarantee tournament with Day 2 on Saturday. This will be a relatively small tournament, because of the buyin, and you might think that the field would be full of hardcore grinders, but of the 21 players who cashed in last winter’s opening weekend event, the only big name was Annette Obrestad. Not only that, but there was an overlay of nearly $20,000, with just a $200,000 guarantee, so they’re sticking their neck out upping this year’s guarantee. Or maybe it’s like throwing chum in the water to attract the sharks.
If you bust out on Friday or during the first three hours Saturday, you can get into the $100,000 Guarantee, $1,100 buyin bounty. Each bounty is $300, so if you can get 8 bounties you can make both buyins back without even cashing! Mmmm, bounties.
Only a Day Away
Commerce Casino‘s LA Poker Classic has a $300K Guarantee with a $350 buyin starting today. Two entry flights per day through Saturday. Saturday night is a mega satellite for the WPT event held a month from now.
The Tulalip Poker Pow Wowhas a $100K Guarantee this weekend with a $520 buyin. Entry days are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. 1PM on the first two days and 11am on Saturday.
Poker Night in America at Thunder Valley is winding down this weeked, Saturday and Sunday is filming for the $25/$50 cash game, and this weekend is also a $250K Guaranteed Main Event with a $1,100 buyin (entry days Friday and Saturday, with two more days of play Sunday and Monday).
The Winter SuperStack (mentioned above) has its first event tomorrow, a C$100K Guarantee for a C$550 buyin (that’s $76K and $420, approximately), but the tantalizing eventsthis weekend is Friday night’s C$330 4-Game Mix tournament (PLO, Omaha Hi-Lo, Stud, Stud Hi-Lo) and Saturday night’s C$330 PLO Bounty (with C$100 bounties).
Rain is actually falling again here in the River City, which seems to be signalling the end of the latest chapter of Poker On Ice.
Snow started coming down late last week, leading to Final Table and Portland Meadows running games without guarantees on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and Aces Full running with a $500 guarantee on its noon game (rather than $1,000). Friend of the blog Brad Press reported that the prize pools at Meadows on Saturday and Sunday noon games easily exceeded what would have been guaranteed.
Final Table ran Monday without guarantees (Meadows had guarantees, as well as a new noon structure), then Meadows closed on Tuesday in expectation of and early afternoon freezing rain deluge that never materialized, while Final Table operated without guarantees.
There’s still two more months of winter.
The Jackpot That Wasn’t
If you weren’t aware of it, there is a “Portland, OR” thread on the 2+2 poker forum. Not very busy, but something to keep an eye on. Last Friday, nebluefc had an interesting post:
The story, based on a press release from Vancouver, BC-based Jackpot Digital said that the company “has signed a licensing agreement with Portland Meadows Horse Track and Poker Club (“Portland Meadows”) after Portland Meadows received approval from the City of Portland to install Jackpot’s PokerPro electronic table games (ETGs).” It went on to relate an “initial rollout in February.”
While ETG’s might at first seem to be a possible solution to the issue of paying dealers that has aroused the interest of the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries, a big hurdle would be how the licensing fees for these types of machines could possibly be afforded, given the relatively low door fees paid by players. You’d need to have enough of them on hand to handle a large tournament, but like tables, most of the time they’d be sitting unused. Unlike tables, poker rooms still have to pay for the machines if they’re just sitting there.
It might be noted that for an e-gaming vendor the Jackpot Digital website is remarkably short on images of their products in action (and no videos). The product shots that are shown appear to be composites rather than live photos. This can be for of a number of reasons: the LCD screens may not show well in the photo from all angles, attempts to clarify the screens may make them look less realistic, etc., it’s the same reason you see a disclaimer about simulated pictures in ads for TVs and computer monitors, but it’s odd that there aren’t more live shots.
What’s 25 years old and not Donald Trump’s fourth wife-to-be? Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise & His Spectacular Fall, a memoir by one of the guys who ran Trump’s casino operations in Atlantic City for several years in the 1980s. Poker tells expert Zach Elwood review the book in a blog post he put up just before Christmas. It sounds like an interesting read, and Zach’s review is enlightening in and of itself.
One of the main points Zach bring out about the book is Trump’s seeming inability to understand the variance of the gambling world (i.e. that even in an upward trend there are temporary setbacks). On the same note, Robert Wooley (aka ‘PokerGrump’) has three pieces at PokerNews on regression to the mean, and what it means to poker players. There’s a part 1, part 2, and a follow-up.
Vegas Summer Poker Schedule
2016 WSOP Main Event 6th-place finisher Kenny Hallaert has already posted the first installment in his annual summer poker tournament series schedule, which got a little more flesh on its bones this week with the release of dates for the big weekend events at the WSOP. The Colossus III, Millionaire Maker, Seniors & Super Seniors, Monster Stack, Crazy Eights, and Little One for One Drop starting dates have been announced, along with the Main Event, Casino Employees, and Ladies Championship. Those dates are all on the#PNWPokerCal.
A month from today is the last of four entry days for a two-day tournament at the LAPC with a guarantee of $1M. Entry is $1,100 for 15K in chips (150bb) and 40-minute levels through Level 12. One re-entry through the first six levels, and you have the option to try to qualify more than once for Day 2, getting the lowest payout from Day 2 for any stack removed from play due to multiple qualifications. There are $175 satellites starting 13 February (Monday).
This is a new event for the LAPC. Last year, they had a $500K Guarantee with a $1,650 buyin that ended up with a prize pool of over a million, though similar guarantees in the spring and fall last year were smaller. Presumably, that’s what led to the reduction in the buyin.
This Week In Portland Poker
No announcements as of yet, but I expect a lot of pent-up poker frustration to explode this weekend once people dig themselves out of the ice.
Only a Day Away
The Heartland Poker Tour East Chicago Main Event starts tomorrow in Indiana. Entry days through Saturday with a $1,650 buyin and final table on Monday (live-streamed rather than televised, HPT has announced they’re going to more on live streaming than television). You can still get a RT ticket for Friday and four nights at the host casino for less than $1,000.
Commerce Casino‘s LA Poker Classic starts its second weekend with a $250K Guarantee. Two flights each day through Saturday with a $250 buyin. There are PLO, PLO8, and Survivor tournaments early next week, and a $300K Guarantee with a $350 buyin starting Wednesday.
The Tulalip Poker Pow Wowhas a $50K Guarantee this weekend and $100K Guarantee next weekend.
Poker Night in America at Thunder Valley outside Sacramento just started up, this weekend is the $425 buyin $250K Monolith (with the final on Sunday) and there’s another $250K next weekend that’s a 3-day, $1,100 buyin. Lots of smaller events packed in-between.
The Venetian January Weekend Extravaganza starts today and runs through Sunday. The biggest event is a $150 buyin $60K Guarantee, but there’s a $9K Guarantee $250 PLO Bounty tournament on Saturday evening, which looks like fun. The month-long Deepstack Extravaganza Igets going just a week after its done, on 30 January.
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…wait, those are the wrong old man notes….
#PDXPokerTroubles
The billionth ice storm of a winter less than a month old caused yet more havoc for poker players in the Portland region. The Game opened up Friday, only to be greeted with sheets of ice across the city that evening. Out in North Portland, Portland Meadows was closed both Saturday and Sunday because of the storm, and even though things were beginning to thaw in the city on Monday, their capacious but exposed parking lot was a sheet of ice and the building’s operators kept it closed Monday. Final Tablewas able to open up on Monday after weekend closures; fortunately, they got their First Friday $20K in under the snow front. Rialto, as mentioned last week, is closed for several weeks after a fire in the building.
It snowed here Tuesday evening (as if you didn’t know that already), so it’s likely there are more weather closures this week.
My own poker week was short. I played a tournament with the group of guys who got me back into poker. Not exactly high stakes, you can see from the numbers below (as well as my new nickname above the notation for the quad kings high hand I made that took a bunch of the host;s chips. But that was the only money I made during the night, I lost three big hands after being chip leader and went out in fifth place. Afterward, I went to the only other home game I’ve ever been to, where I met a very nice young woman who told me she read the blog every week—before she took all of my chips in a Big O cash game. And then I switched tables to play some 7-Card Stud before a) realizing it was Stud 8 and b) was Pot Limit. Not a good night overall for me.
There are only a limited number of $100K Guarantee (or events with prize pools that large) events within a few hours drive of the Portland. We had three of them in town last spring, but there’s nothing that big on the immediate horizon here for the moment. That leaves Wildhorse (where the Spring and Fall Main Events are $170K to $200K and more without guarantees) and Chinook Winds (where the Main Event next month has had a $100K guarantee). Muckleshoot’s Main Events. And Tulalip, north of Seattle.
The 2017 Poker Pow Wow starts Saturday, but the big events are next weekend (a $50K Guarantee) and the last full week of the month. The Main Event is a $500 buyin with $20 dealer appreciation tournament. There are entry days on Thursday (26 January), Friday, and Saturday, with the final day of play on Sunday (29 January). All days of the Main Event start at 11am. The drive is roughly the same as to Pendleton for distance, but usually a little slower due to Seattle-area traffic.
No online structure sheets, but what do you need to know? It’s a 2-day $100K for $520 bucks! Go get ’em!
This Week In Portland Poker
No announcements for anything special this weekend that I’ve seen so far, but a lot is going to depend on the weather. If the snow hangs around for a while, we could all be cannibalizing out rolls in no time, if you know what I mean. Have you ever considered a Caribbean poker cruise?
Only a Day Away
The poker world is ramping back up after the holidays!
Friday is the last of four entry days into the Hustler Casino Poker Players Tournament $250K Guarantee that closes out the series this weekend. If you can get to LA, it’s $250 for the buyin, and there are two flights (12:30 and 5pm) each day, with 12% of the field going to Day 2 (Saturday) and 15% in the money.
The Heartland Poker Tour East Chicago series starts tomorrow with a $300 buyin $100K Guaranteed tournament. There are three entry days, with Day 2 on 15 January. The first of three Main Event flights in on 19 January. It’s still possible to get flight/room packages at the hosting casino for either tournament for less than $600 total. Last year’s opening $100K had a prize pool of $298K, and the $1,650 Main Event prize pool was over $900K, with a top prize of $211K.
Commerce Casino‘s LA Poker Classic begins a seven-week run on Friday. There are a total of 60 events, with eleven of them having guarantees of $100K or more, plus the $10K buyin WPT Championship that caps the series. Structures have been posted for about half of the events so far. Of particular note for Portland players is the $570 entry Big O tournament on Groundhog Day (2 February).
The 2-week Tulalip Poker Pow Wowstarts 14 January with a $10K Guarantee, then a week including O8, HORSE, and PLO, before the $50K Guarantee and $100K Guarantee events on succeeding weeks.
The $40K Guarantee Stones Gambling Hall Chip Amplifier is 15 January outside of Sacramento. Buyin in level 1 is $120 for 10K in chips, but the price and the number of chips go up for each level, with the last one being level 6 where $550 gets you 60K in chips.
It’s back to Thunder Valley on the 17th, with Poker Night in America.As they’ve done before, they’re running satellites to the $5,000 buyin televised cash game (filmed 28/29 January), as well as a slate of 12 tournaments that features two $250K Guarantees (the first for a $450 buyin and the second for $1,100). In-between, there’s 6-Max, HORSE, and lots of satellites to the second of the $250Ks.
If you’re in Vegas next week, the Venetian January Weekend Extravaganza starts Wednesday (18 January) and runs through Sunday. The biggest event is a $150 buyin $60K Guarantee, but there’s a $9K Guarantee $250 PLO Bounty tournament on Saturday evening, which looks like fun. The month-long Deepstack Extravaganza Igets going just a week later, on 30 January.
Happy Poker New Year from Las Vegas! I’m down here in a city with its own bagpiper blowing to announce the coming of…whatever.
I missed all of the New Year’s Eve shenanigans here (though I was at a party in Beaverton with an upside-down Christmas tree), catching an emptyish 8am flight on the 1st so I could take a shot at a $100K guarantee event at the Venetian. The first couple of levels were fantastic, and I almost tripled my stack. It was slower going after that, though I was still in good shape, knocking out three players from a table that included WSOP bracelet-holdersAllyn Shulman and her husband Barry Shulman, who own CardPlayer Magazine, A little brush with poker media dynasty, that. Allyn started at the table, Barry showed up several levels in as tables were consolidating, then Allyn busted and I ran [qx qx] into Barry’s [kx kx] and was severely crippled before I went out two hands later after I limped [ax jx] got called by [2x 2x] in the big blind, and jammed into him on a [kx jx 2x] flop. That was it for me in the $100K.
If you look closely, you’ll see Kao Saechao in the standings with a decent stack. Day 2 starts with 74 and pays 54. It’ll all be over by the time you read this.
Played a little PLO, went back to the room and got into a WSOP.com$20K where I did well for a while but was hobbled by the fact I hadn’t realized it was a rebuy and addon (it pays to look at the structure before you buy in at the last minute!) then was playing catchup and was crippled (again) when I called a 15bb late-position all-in from the big blind with [ah qs] and [qd tc] hit a ten right on the flop. That left me in the small blind with 1bb behind. I managed to quadruple up with a flush on the next hand but ran into quad queens just five hands later.
I've been at 2 4-8 O8 tables today at Orleans and somehow 2nd youngest guy at each
Monday morning I took a shuttle to the Orleans (free from the spot under the Linq) and waited around for a table to open up. For the unacquainted, the casino is full of very old people. I mean, even older than me. And it’s the place to go for Limit Omaha games. They had several tables of O8 at 4-8 and 8-16 (both with kills) running on a Monday morning. Admittedly, it was the Monday after a holiday, but there were 16 cash game tables running, more than anywhere except Bellagio at that time of day. Even as I write this at 2am on Tuesday, Aria has 19 tables, Bellagio has 16, and the Orleans has 12. The Venetian has 9. The wait, though, was long enough that I considered getting off the list to just play the noon O8 tournament, but I late-regged that instead and made it partway through.
There was one amusing hand in the first hour or so, where I was dealt [ac ad ah as], which is about as bad a hand as you can get in any version of Omaha, but I limped in just to see what would happen. I had another hand where I bluffed that I had a flush with the nut low draw on the turn (with 2s counterfeited by the flop) and not only made my low against an all-in player but bet another player off and took the high with a paired 4. Lost a big pot when my own low was counterfeited on the river and it was down from there.
Played a smaller WSOP.com tournament and made the money, though it was only about enough to cover lunches for the days I’m here.
Tuesday was the $300 bounty tournament at the Venetian. It got 139 entries but I only made it through the first three levels, losing small amounts on a couple hands (including laying down [kc kh] on an ace-high board with two diamonds to a bet of half my remaining chips to a guy who showed the [6d 2d] he’d called my pre-flop raise with). I raised [kh jh] in a hand and was called by Hani Awad, whose WSOP bracelet win I covered this summer. Awad ended up calling my bluff on a queen-high board with [7x 9x] and middle pair (the seven), but he’d already knocked out several players and had probably close to five times my stack. He took me out a couple hands later when I shoved [ax qx] pre-flop, he called with [9x tx] from the big blind, and he made two pair by the turn. Not my finest hour. The final numbers for the tournament were $20,850 in the main prize pool, with an extra $13,900 in bounties, and $5,842 scheduled to go to first place. I talked briefly to Awad after he busted me, and he showed me he was wearing his bracelet, so some people at least don’t just toss them in a box or hock them on eBay.
I’d been planning to play the 7pm tournament (a $200 bounty) but decided to force myself to play some cash game. I herded back to the Orleans, sitting in the back seat of the shuttle with some tweaker gal who had “something something HELL” as her tramp stamp complaining about how long her free ride to was taking, had some surf and turf for brunchinner (a single meal for the day), then got on some lists.
A $1/$3 NLHE game opened up relatively fast, and I sat down in seat 5. I was under the gun and raised the first hand I was dealt—[th 8h]—then was reraised by seat 7 to $30. Two players called, and I put in the extra $20. The flop was [7c 6h 5c], I’ve got an open-ended straight draw for the ten, a backdoor flush draw, so I check it, then seat 7 shoves for more than my remaining stack of $170. The other callers fold, and it’s up to me. I called, the dealer put out a [6s] on the turn and [8s] on the river. I can only assume the guy shoved with [ax kx] because my two pair ended up taking the pot. From there on it was a mostly upward trajectory for ninety minutes, then I checkout out to go call my wife for the evening before deciding whether to play the $75 PLO tournament at 7.
I got into the game late, just as the last level before the break was starting. There were only two tables and I had to wait as an alternate for a couple of minutes while a player who busted just as I was registering kept up a steady stream of complaints about having to go on the alternate list. A spot opened up for him by the time I got to my seat.
I lasted all of ten minutes. I picked up a hand with a pair of aces, raised, was reraised from the other end of the table, made a 4-bet (we weren’t particularly deep at this point, less than 40bb) and he went all in with pocket kings which made a set on the turn. Back to the cash games, after having evened up the day before the tournament.
It took about 40 minutes in the $4/$8 O8 game for me to make up the tournament buyin and a little more. Got on the shuttle bus, had an interesting conversation with a cigar distributor from LA who mentioned he comes up to Portland several times a year, and decided to see what the cash games at the poker room in the Flamingo were like.
The only time I’d played at the Flamingo before was in a late-night turbo tournament. The first thing I noticed after I sat down was that the place was a hotbox. I just about pulled up stakes and left after the first orbit, and had just determined I couldn’t stand it any longer when they finally turned the A/C on. Other than that, things went well and I booked a third winning cash session for the day, picking up another $50 in an hour before I told myself that I had to get to my room to get some sleep before a very early morning shuttle to the airport. No sleep before I wrote this for you folks, of course.
Survivor
Portland Meadows ran the first Survivor-style tournament in Portland (that I’m aware of) on New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t able to make it myself because of other pre-Vegas commitments, but it seems to have been well-received. It’s a bit difficult to make comparisons between this and similar tournament that don’t have add-ons, but thirteen players made as much as 1200% ROI on their buy-in (less if they did the addon or re-entry) in just over six hours, with a friend who made it through texting me the chop came at 6:09pm. Everyone got plenty of time to go out to celebrate the end of the year with their newfound cash.
If it had been a straight 10% payout for 10% of the players (with no add-on) that would have been $1,000 for a $100 buyin (assuming 130 players and a $13,000 prize pool). If the prize had been set at $1,000, there would have been 17 players paid $1,000 (13% of the field) with an 18th player getting $380. With standard payout structures, 10% of the prize pool is usually between 3rd and 4th place money in a field of 130.
#PDXPokerTroubles
Nothing new to report. No unexpected closures (a couple of early closings for New Year’s Eve). The Game should be re-opening tomorrow.Rialto’s been open, Aces Full ran a game on Monday for the holiday, and hopefully (I haven’t seen an announcement yet) Final Table will be running a $20K this weekend.
Monday. tournament director Matt Savage asked the question that many in the poker Twitterverse had been wondering about for over a week: “Where is @limonpoker”? The best-known personality on Live at the Bike has been a constant presence on Twitter for years, but mentioned during a pre-Christmas #PokerSesh that some Trump supporters had ganged up to get the account suspended because of his rather outspoken anti-Trump posts (of which there were many).
In Monday’s #PokerSesh (for the uninitiated, his weekly freeform call-in show), Limon mentioned that he’s not going to bother returning to Twitter (sad!) or any other social media, and offered up his back catalog to anyone who want to select segments and post them on YouTube and promote them to try to make money. Crowdsourcing his promotional efforts, in other words. Not insignificantly, for someone to get access to the videos in order to watch them and pull out segments, they’d have to at least temporarily subscribe to Live at the Bike at $20/month…not really PNW news, but Limon’s an Oregon kid….
Deal of the Week: Bay 101 Shooting Star Satellites
The WPT is coming back to Bay 101 for the popular Shooting Star bounty championship in early March, and it’s preceded by a week of daily mega satellites. $275 Satellites have been running since December, but the big ones start 18 February, with daily $550 satellites running 25 February through 1 March and $1,050 sattys for three days starting 2 March.
Bay 101 publishes the payout structures for their satellites, and you can see from the payouts on the $275 events that unless they get 48 players, no seat is awarded (with the money getting paid out on a standard curve), and with 48—79 entries, only one $7,500 seat is awarded, so the odds aren’t exactly good enough to travel to the Bay Area if what you want is a seat. But the $550 and $1,050 buyins are a good buy if you want to get into the Main Event (which begins on 6 March).
This Week In Portland Poker
The big game this weekend should be the First Friday $20K at Final Table.
Only a Day Away
The poker world is ramping back up after the holidays!
I missed it somehow, but the WPT California Swing Kickoffhas a 2-day $100K Guarantee with a $250 buyin that starts today. Two flights tomorrow, with Day 2 on Friday. Saturday is a one-day $400 entry $100K guarantee, and Sunday there’s a WPT Rolling Thunder satellite with $400 entry that has 20 $3,500 Rolling Thunder Main Event seats guaranteed. I’d probably have gone there this weekend instead of Vegas if I hadn’t missed it on the schedule.
Another one that snuck past me is the Hustler Casino Poker Players Tournament (could they get any more generic?), which starts a $400 buyin $500,000 Guarantee today, with two flights each day through Sunday and Day 2 on Monday. I don’t know how that got by me. Progressively fewer people make it to Day 2 on each starting day (10% today, 9% Thursday, and 8% after that). Next week is a $250K Guarantee for a $250 entry, with 15% in the money.
Eugene’s Full House Poker has a Heads Up-Championship coming up, on 7 & 8 January. It’s a bracket-style elimination competition where you can buy 1 or more spots on the bottom bracket, at reduced rates. Seating is limited, so contact them for details and availability.
The Heartland Poker Tour East Chicago series starts 12 January with a $300 buyin $100K Guaranteed tournament. There are three entry days, with Day 2 on 15 January. The first of three Main Event flights in on 19 January. It’s still possible to get flight/room packages at the hosting casino for either tournament for less than $600 total. Last year’s opening $100K had a prize pool of $298K, and the $1,650 Main Event prize pool was over $900K, with a top prize of $211K.
Commerce Casino‘s LA Poker Classic begins a seven-week run on 13 January. There are a total of 60 events, with eleven of them having guarantees of $100K or more, plus the $10K buyin WPT Championship that caps the series. Structures have been posted for about half of the events so far. Of particular note for Portland players is the $570 entry Big O tournament on Groundhog Day (2 February).
The 2-week Tulalip Poker Pow Wowstarts 14 January with a $10K Guarantee, then a week including O8, HORSE, and PLO, before the $50K Guarantee and $100K Guarantee events on succeeding weeks.
The $40K Guarantee Stones Gambling Hall Chip Amplifier is 15 January outside of Sacramento. Buyin in level 1 is $120 for 10K in chips, but the price and the number of chips go up for each level, with the last one being level 6 where $550 gets you 60K in chips.
It’s back to Thunder Valley on the 17th, with Poker Night in America.As they’ve done before, they’re running satellites to the $5,000 buyin televised cash game (filmed 28/29 January), as well as a slate of 12 tournaments that features two $250K Guarantees (the first for a $450 buyin and the second for $1,100). In-between, there’s 6-Max, HORSE, and lots of satellites to the second of the $250Ks.
I’ve walked away from tables a number of times leaving one of the caps behind, but someone’s always called me back or I’ve felt in my pocket at the last minute. But I’ve finally lost one of the set, and near as I can guess, it was at a home game two weeks back. If anyone runs across Bronzie, I’d appreciate getting it back, it’s not worth very much, and I can always get another one printed, but it’s served me well.
