Monthly Archives: August 2018

#PNWPokerCal for 28 August 2018: MOST EXCELLENT EDITION

Posted on by

My Time Is Coming

The Ignition Super Millions Poker Open ended Sunday and last week I popped into another small $10K GTD NLHE 6-Max, busted halfway through, then banged straight out of the nightly $3K GTD NLHE 6-Max. A couple nights later I nabbed 3rd place in a 153-entry $500 GTD NLHE Turbo Bounty, picking up 8 bounties along the way.

The Final Table $10K GTD NLHE  went bad from start to finish, and I busted my live rebuy just before the break, then dropped 100bb in 45 minutes on the shootout tables.

Saturday, I got into an Ignition $300 GTD O8 and just started sucking up chips, then blew a stack that should have gotten me to first or second and took 4th out of 36 for a small cash. Got halfway through the Sunday 6-Max ($4K), and busted a $1K NLHE Super Knockout early.

Monday…well, last week I’d promised I’d have to get over to Claudia’s (at SE 30th & Hawthorne, always the closest game to my house) for the Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo game they spread once a week, and I headed over this week to see if I could catch David Long, my semi-regular partner for trips  to Lincoln City and Pendleton, to talk about October’s Fall Coast Classic Poker Tournament at Chinook Winds. He wasn’t there, so I played the tournament myself (I might have been thinking about that anyway), got seated next to Joe Brandenburg on his first visit there, and I ended up taking first place (all those years of low-level PLO8 and Big O at the late Portland Players Club still paying off!) And with 45% going to first place even after we paid a bubble, even Steve Chanthabouasy would be happy with the percentage (though maybe not the size of the pot).

And Tuesday, the second episode of the PokerTime session I played in dropped, and I actually play a couple of hands.

This Week In Portland Poker

I haven’t seen any announcements for the big Labor Day holiday weekend, so I’ll just leave you with the Oregonian article that Josh Stellmon posted Monday to the NW Poker Facebook group, which includes some news about redevelopment plans for the Portland Meadows site.

Mackenzie via City of Portland and Oregonlive.com

Added to #PNWPokerCal This Week

  • Muckleshoot Fall Classic Satellites, Auburn 2—26 September
  • Lucky Chances $20K/1st, Colma 30 September

Muckleshoot 2018 Fall Classic

The full schedule for the Fall Classic is out, and for the first time that I can recall since starting up the #PNWPokercal, Muckleshoot is putting guarantees (instead of cash added to the prize pool) on their tournaments. A minimum of $500K in prize money is up for grabs over 7 tournaments.

Muckleshoot has spearheaded the concept of satellites for multiple events with games running the three weeks before the series on Sunday morning (10:15am) and Wednesday night (7:15pm) for $150 where a cash gets you $1,250 in tournament entries. There are three nights of $190 tournaments with $1,750 in tournament buyins in a gap between the two weekend of the series.

 

A 2-day Main Event (29—30 September, $750 buyin) with $150K GTD and two $100KGTD (22 & 28 September, $400 buyin) events are the tentpoles of the series, with an $80K GTD tournament leading off on 21 September ($300 buyn). Thrown into the mix are a $25K GTD LHE tournament (23 September, $200 buyin) and $15K GTD O8 (27 September, $200 buyin) for the fixed limit fans, and a finale I know a couple people will love: the $40K GTD NLHE Shootout (30 September, $300 buyin).

Ticket presales are already open.

Only a Day Away

  • Ameristar East Chicago is the host to HPT Chicagoland Main Event ($1,650 buyin) has three entry days starting Thursday.
  • Mid-States Poker Tour stops at Canterbury Park in Shakopee (just outside of Minneapolis) from Thursday through 16 September. There’s a $300K GTD $1,100 buyin Main Event with three entry days (13—15 September) with satellites running daily from 5 September.
  • The Commerce Poker Series starts Friday and runs through 16 September. The first full week features a tasty-looking $350 HORSE tournament, some Omaha Hi-Lo/Stud Hi-Lo, and a $240 buyin $200K GTD.
  • See above for info about the Muckleshoot Fall Classic Satellites.
  • Labor Day is the start of Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III. Running through 26 September, the first week features a $100K GTD ($340 buyin) followed by the $1,100 buyin $250K GTD tournament co-sponsored by MSPT.
  • WSOPC Thunder Valley opens 6 September with a $300K GTD tournament for $400 entry. It’s a 2-day event with five flights (two on Thursday and Friday, one on Saturday). HORSE on Monday, 10 September and O8 on Tuesday! The $1,700 Main Event has $500 GTD.
  • The Aria Poker Masters starts 7 September with its smallest buyin: $10K. You can only rebuy once.
  • HPT Golden Gates kicks off in Colorado 12 September with a four-flight $400 buyin tournament. Their $1,650 Main Event begins 19 September.
  • The Gardens Poker Classic (starting 14 Septepmber) is—among other things—the third stop on the West Coast for the PokerStart Platinum Championship, where you can compete for a ticket to a $25K buyin in the Bahamas in January and $5K in expenses (also known as the cost of a banana at the Atlantis Resort). There are a few other things going on during the Classic, including a $300K TD, a $200K GTD, a $550 buyin 8-Game Mix, some HORSE, and a Progressive Bounty tournament.

Poker Time: 3 SETS for WSOP Finalist Jacki Burkhart! (Part 1—UPDATED)

Posted on by

Poker Mutant makes an appearance on PokerTime over the next few weeks, playing with all the fan faves: Terminator, Wonka, Destroyer of Worlds, Digital Dan, plus my former Vegas housemate Jeff Mitseff, double WSOPC Ringbearer Jeff Dobrin, and non-Jeff WSOP Ladies tournament final tableist Jackie Burkhart.

This wasn’t as exciting a session for me as it was for Jackie or Mitseff, but I promise my VPIP goes up in the next one. It can’t go down!

UPDATE

Technically, it could go down, but I had a VPIP of just over 4% for that session (maybe 8% if I played the hand that was edited out, I can’t remember what it was), putting extra money into the pot just one hand out of 24.

I was on the button the first hand (where Jackie gets felted by Dobie) with [9s 5s]. My hands, in succession are:

  1. button [9s 5s]
  2. cutoff [qd 2c]
  3. hijack [8h 5s]
  4. UTG2 [6h 5s]
  5. UTG1 [kh 5d] the hand where Jacki has a set of aces and loses on the river
  6. UTG [9c 2d]
  7. BB [qh jh] I call Terminator’s raise ([5s 5c]) to 30 along with Digital Dan ([ah js]), and fold to a bet from Dan on the ace-high flop
  8. SB [kd 5c]
  9. button [td 5s]
  10. cutoff [td 5c]
  11. hijack [8h 5c]
  12. UTG2 [9c 4d]
  13. UTG1 [ts 3h]
  14. UTG [7d 5d]
  15. BB [th 4d]
  16. SB [5s 2s]
  17. button [7s 4s]
  18. cutoff [9d 5d]
  19. hijack [tc 7d]
  20. UTG2 [8c 3c]
  21. UTG1 hand edited out
  22. UTG [5s 3c]
  23. BB [qs 9c]
  24. SB [5c 4s]
  25. button [7s 6h]

#PNWPokerCal for 20 August 2018

Posted on by

My Time Is Coming

Because of life, my poker week usually consists of the Friday night $10K GTD at Final Table and one other night of degeneracy, with one or two evenings of online poker at Ignition Casino. I changed things up this week because of a couple of changes at Portland Meadows.

The main one was the introduction of the big blind ante (BBA) to all of their tournaments starting Monday. I’m pretty sure the twelve people reading this already know about the BBA, but it was definitely not on the radar of some of the players this week. I didn’t see any signs up announcing it (it was mentioned by Brian Sarchi on the NW Poker Facebook group and the schedule, but some people just show up).

I got out to Meadows late on Tuesday for the 7pm game, got lucky, got lucky, made the final table, then managed to make a bad call in a multi-way pot where I had the other two players covered and lost almost my entire stack before going out in ninth place, well short of the money in that size of a field.

The mechanics of the BBA are this: the player in the big blind puts out an amount equal to the size of the big blind first, then posts the big blind. If the player doesn’t have enough to cover both, they post the big blind (or whatever portion of it that they can) first, then any remaining chips for the ante.

Friday, I went back for the second big change: the Freezeout Big O. Big O tends to be a very volatile game and it’s rarely played without reentries. I got there an hour after the game started and lasted a whole half-hour. No antes in Big O!

Fortunately, I had plenty of time to get into the 7pm NLHE tournament ($2K GTD). Early on, I played [6s 5s] and rivered a gut-shot 8-high straight against a guy who flopped a set of 8s, and I guess I played it tricky enough that he was audibly kicking himself for twenty minutes after he doubled me up because he missed it. It didn’t seem to phase his play, though, because by the time I’d climbed to 80K and been beaten back down to 25K, he was back up to 100K.

The player on my right remembered my card cap from back in the Encore Club days and we had a pleasant chat, then I asked her if she had any thoughts about the BBA format (always thinking ahead for  material!). She said hadn’t heard about it yet, though we were going to be moving into the antes in just a few minutes, and it took all of about ten seconds to tell her about it, the dealer chimed in, and we chatted about the potential tactical modifications you might need to make to your game.

Shortly after that, the BBA went into effect and hit the player on her right, who had been listening to his iPhone and drinking what apparently wasn’t his first drink. He was also a novice to the big blind ante format, and unlike the player between us, was completely unprepared for change, apart from having caught a snippet of the conversation going on around him. That snippet had been twisted in his mind into some sort of angle or something of the sort, because he then spent a long time telling us he’d never heard of such a thing. When I mentioned that I’d heard the ARIA had been where it started, he said (several times) that he played at ARIA several times a year and had never heard of such a thing. Anyway, it went like that for a while, until he shoved a shortish stack with [jx 3x] and I called with [kh jh] to send him to the shootout tables. A couple of players looked longingly at his table once he was seated there.

I never got anywhere near the lead, but I made the final table as one of three smaller stacks. Only seven places paid, and there was talk of a chop right away but no decision before a couple of players were knocked out. An agreement was made to pay the bubble, and one of the other players busted on that. By then I was the smallest stack, with only about 50K, but three all-ins in a row (ending with a pair of tens that I showed) got me 25K each time, and put me near the chip average. The big stacks at the table (including the player who’d doubled me up early on) were taking damage and, you know, it’s a long way between $335 and $1,465 when the average stack is just 16bb, so the next time a chop was proposed, everyone was ready.

Depending on the structure of the tournament, the big blind ante is going to change how much you pay per orbit. Where antes are about 1/10th or 1/12th the big blind (say 500/1,000/100 or 600/1,200/100) you’ll pay more on a nine-handed table with the big blind ante (9×100=900 in both of those examples, whereas you’d pay 1,000 or 1,200 for a big blind ante). In tournaments where the antes are 1/8th or 1/6th the big blind (600/1,200/200 to use one of the examples above) you’re actually paying less on a full table (9×200=1,800 vs 1,200 for the big blind ante). For shorter stacks, this can be great, because—as in most pot-limit games—you don’t pay anything when you’re not in the blinds. On the downside, if you’re on the big blind, it’s a bit harder to squeak past the blinds, and you might be more inclined to go with what you get dealt when your stack loses nearly twice as many chips on a particular hand.

From a speed standpoint, there’s no hectoring of multiple players to get their antes out. It remains to be seen how it affects play near the final table when you have two or three short-handed tables.

This Week In Portland Poker

The Game has a $300 single-table sit-and-go this Tuesday at 7pm. Call to reserve a seat or get on the waiting list.

One of these days soon, I need to get over to Claudia’s Sports Pub & Grill for their 7pm Monday PLO8 with a $25 buyin.

Worst Graphics Ever!

It’s the final episode of the most recent PokerTime, picked apart by Joe Ingram or Doug Polk (they’re pretty much interchangeable so far as I can tell, one wears a tank-top or something) for titling and design esthetics in a recent podcast on starting a YouTube channel. Anyway, I at least, am looking forward to more from Jonathan Levy and Grant Denison (I can tell them apart).

Added to #PNWPokerCal This Week

A couple of series within driving range already in progress that I missed adding while I was sidelined (thanks Steve Roselius for reminding me to check the Alberta venues!) Check the /?pnwpokercal for more info!

  • Summer Super Stack, Calgary 15—27 August
  • Ante Up Poker Tour, Reno 16—26 August
  • Mid-States Poker Tour, Shakopee 30 August—16 September
  • Gardens Poker Classic, Hawaiian Gardens 14—30 September
  • Canterbury Park Fall Poker Classic, Shakopee 5—21 October
  • Bay 101 Fall Poker Classic, San Jose 15—22 October

PNW Pokerleaderboard

Alll the action this week is in the Southeast, at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood, Florida and at the World Series of Poker Circuit  in Cherokee, North Carolina.

New to the leaderboard, Portland’s Andrew Dymburt picked up his first recorded cash in the SHRPO #23 $50K GTD NLHE, a $150 buyin tournament with 610 entries that netted him five figures.

Almedin Imsirovic  was also at the Hard Rock, playing slightly larger buyins in somewhat smaller fields. SHRPO #14 $1M GTD NLHE High Roller was a $50K entry with 25 players. 5 positions paid (20% of the field!) and Imsirovic took 4th. He followed that up with 9th place (out of 12 paying and 91 entries) in SHRPO #25 $500K GTD NLHE.

Perennials Matt Affleck and Lee Markholt took 16th of 442 in SHRPO #20 $1M GTD NLHE and 10th/209 in SHRPO #17 $200K NLHE 8-Max. respectively.

Moving up to Cherokee, Kindah Sakkal had a great run in a filed of nearly 1,200 entries in the $400 buyin WSOPC Cherokee #8 $200K NLHE Monster Stack. The tournament almost doubled the guarantee and she took 4th place.

Another $400 event (the price points for all WSOPC events have been raised this year) saw Max Young start the 2018—19 season strongly, by placing 3rd in a field of 471 for the WSOPC Cherokee #13 $50K NLHE Double Stack (the prize pool reached $155K).

Last, but far from least, Kao Saechao was poised to follow his deep WSOP MAIN Event run on Day 3 of the WSOPC Cherokee #11 $1M GTD NLHE Main Event, but he lost a race early in the day and went out in 21st. Still, with a field of more than a thousand, a respectable showing.

Only a Day Away

  • The Bicycle Casino WPT500/Legends of Poker continues on with the $570 entry WPT500 with $1M GTD and flights running through Saturday. Eash entry day features a regular flight at 1130am and a turbo at 5pm. Day 2 on Sunday with final table on Monday. Immediately following that is another $1M GTD tournament with 6 entry days ($350 buyin). Friday is the ast pair of flights, with Day 2 (including direct entry for $2,200) on Saturday.
  • One of the tournaments I didn’t get on my calendar in time is the Summer Super Stack at Deerfoot Inn in Calgary. The Main Event (C$1,600 buyin) has entry days on Friday and Saturday and there are some side-events through Sunday. The flyer mentions C$300K in guarantees through the series, but I don’t see any guarantees on individual events or links to structures.
  • Another ongoing series I missed is the Ante Up Poker Tour Reno at the Atlantis. The $200K GTD Main Event starts Friday ($1,100 entry) with another entry flight on Saturday. Winner of the Main gets on the cover of Ante Up.
  • The second stop in the PokerStars Players Championship is at Lucky Chances Casino south of San Francisco. It’s $86 for an entry—the amount Chris Moneymaker paid for his satellite to the WSOP fifteen years ago—and the prize is a Platinum Pass seat in the $25K buyin PSPC tournament in The Bahamas next January, along with $5K in expenses. The PSPC itself will be loaded with online and live qualifiers (and people who won seats in drawings), There’ll be tour stop in September in LA and Phoenix, and another at Run It Up Reno in November.
  • The Colorado State Poker Championship 22 at Golden Gates Casinois just about over, but Wednesday is the $75K GTD High Roller ($2,500 entry).

  • Image via Steve Roselius.

    This month’s Muckleshoot Casino Deepstack tournament ($300 buyin) takes place Sunday at 10:15am. Next Sunday at the same time id the monthly Deepstack ($300 buyin). They still haven’t posted anything on their web site about next month’s Muckleshoot Fall Poker Classic (21—30 September, that link goes to Facebook).

  • The Parq Vancouver Super Sunday is a C$450+50 buyin (US$385 total) starting at 10:15am. You can register up to 2 days early if you’re up that direction.
  • Tulalip Casino’s Last Sunday of the Month Back to School tournament is at 11am on the 26th. $5K added to the prize pool and a $220 buyin with $10 dealer addon. Now with big blind antes!
  • Ameristar East Chicago is the host to HPT Chicagoland from 23 August to 3 September. The Main Event ($1,650 buyin) has three entry days starting 30 August. Three flight days for the $1,650 entry Main Event, starting 30 August.
  • Mid-States Poker Tour stops at Canterbury Park in Shakopee (just outside of Minneapolis) from 30 August through 16 September. There’s a $300K GTD $1,100 buyin Main Event with three entry days (13—15 September) with satellites running daily from 5 September.

  • The Commerce Poker Series starts in just over two weeks (31 August) and runs through 16 September. The first full week features a tasty-looking $350 HORSE tournament, some Omaha Hi-Lo/Stud Hi-Lo, and a $240 buyin $200K GTD. Plus, if you get there before 2 September, you can take some time off to see ”Holy Hollywood History!”, an exhibit of goodies from the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman TV show at The Hollywood Museum.
  • Labor Day is the start of Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III. Running through 26 September, the first week features a $100K GTD ($340 buyin) followed by the $1,100 buyin $250K GTD tournament co-sponsored by MSPT.
  • Coming up the end of Labor Day week is the WSOPC Thunder Valley and the Aria Poker Masters for anyone named Imsirovic.

#PNWPokerCal Planner for 12 August 2018

Posted on by

When I decided to take a break from the Planner back in March, I did not realize it would last quite this long. “Maybe a couple of months,” I told myself, “spend some more time playing, maybe head down to Vegas a couple of times, I’ll be back soon.” Best laid plans and all that.

Enough banter. Let’s get into stuff.

Watch 10/25 Ladies Night! | Seminole Hard Rock, Hollywood, FL from PokerNightTV on www.twitch.tv

Jacki Burkhart on Poker Night In America

After making the final table of the WSOP Ladies tournament, Jacki was invited to Florida for a taping/streaming of Poker Night In America Ladies Night. There were two $25/$25 sessions on consecutive nights, streamed simultaneously on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, jacki was on the first, Friday night, as one of the newest players to the national scene, along with Jo Kim, Lily Kiletto, Danielle Andersen, Jamie Kerstetter, and Kelly Minkin. There were some issues with the graphics, as the session ended the announcers said she was up over $6000, then the last tally showed only $300 profit, but she reported a number closer to the original on Facebook. So yay! You can see her pick up a $3100 pot somewhere in the stream.

Wildhorse Summer Poker Round Up

Results are in for the smallest of the Wildhorse Round Ups, The bigger events ran about 300 entries each, with the Main Event ($330 buyin) garnering 294 players and a prize pool just under $90K. Results are up on Hendon Mob.

PNW Poker Leaderboard

Walla Walla’s Felipe Nievez-Lopez gets onto the leaderboard with a win in the Wildhorse Summer Poker Round Up Main Event. It’s also his first Hendon Mob recorded cash. I wouldn’t normally report on Chad Norheim (Gig Harbor) taking 5th in the event for his second recorded cash, but the fact that he turned around and went to The Bike in LA to make the unofficial final table at Legends of Poker #3 $200K GTD NLHE tickles my fancy. Coming in 2nd was Denny Edwards of Hermiston for his biggest-ever cash (all 13 of them from events at Wildhorse, by the way), and Ronnie Anderson from Yakima, whose first recorded cash was a win in a 400-entry event at Wildhorse in the spring. Both players move up about 300 places in the rankings (Edwards moves to #595, Anderson to #864).

The event leading into the main was Wildhorse Summer Poker Round Up #5  with 267 entries and a prize pool of over $52K. Corren Spargur from Richland won that (moving up to #786) and Ryan Stoker repeats on the leaderboard this week because of his 2nd place finish. Stoker only picks up 9 places (moving to #174) because it just gets harded and harder the more money you’re made.

Speaking of which, James Romero‘s stuck at #10, despite the cashes for James Christopher Romero getting wrapped in to his records and winning the Seminole hard Rock Poker Open #3 NLHE 8-Max Turbo. Really hard when you get up to that level; the gaps are so many dollars apart.

This Week In Portland Poker

The Game is running single-table sit-and-gos on Tuesday nights at 7pm. There’s a rotating buyin ranging from $200 to $1K. I played the $500 buyin last week and managed to chop three ways at a table that included Dustin Tragethon, Randy “Terminator” Palazzo, Nick “Wonka” Getzen, and Jonathan “Jonathan” Levy among others. Call The Game to find out the stakes for future games and reserve your place.

There’s another episode of PokerTime out but the series I played in hasn’t started yet. Console yourselves.

Last week’s $10K at Final Table (out with the second nuts). Portland poker is not dead.

There’s a $10K almost every week at Final Table on Friday night and another at Portland Meadows Saturday at noon. And two tournaments every day at both clubs (plus shootouts). I’ll try to make the rounds of places like Claudia’s and Rialto soon!

UPDATE

Just after I posted this, Brian Sarchi at Portland Meadows posted on Facebook’s NW Poker group that all tournaments at Meadows will be using the big blind ante starting Monday (when antes come into play, the big blind puts in 2x the big blind, half for antes for all players, and the remainder for the big blind). The Friday Big O and Saturday 7pm tournament also have changes.

Only a Day Away

  • The Bicycle Casino WPT500/Legends of Poker continues on after the end of Mega Millions XIX. This weekend has some great stuff that I’m just dying about missing: a $350 buyin HORSE tournament tomorrow, a $565 Survivor tournament where 10% of the entries get a $5K payout (Friday), then the $570 entry WPT500 with $1M GTD starting Saturday, with flights running through next weekend (25 August). Eash entry day features a regular flight at 1130am and a turbo at 5pm.Day 2 on 26 August and final table on Monday, 27 August. Immediately following that is another $1M GTD tournament with 6 entry days ($350 buyin).
  • The Colorado State Poker Championship 22 starts its $1100 Main Event on Friday, with  another entry day on Saturday, at Golden Gates Casino.
  • Tomorrow through Saturday are the last 3 entry days for the Venetian August Extravaganza #10 $100 GTD NLHE. $250 buyin and run as big blind ante (as are the Colorado State poker Championship games). The August Estravaganza is followed by the 7-day Senior Extravaganza. For some reason, neither event is currently linked from the Venetian’s poker blog.
  • Friday and Saturday are the entry days for the HPT St. Charles Main Event outside of St. Louis. At Ameristar St. Louis, it’s a $1,650 buyin event; the most recent (in April) had a $435K prize pool.
  • The second stop in the PokerStars Players Championship is at Lucky Chances Casino south of San Francisco starting Sunday. It’s $86 for an entry—the amount Chris Moneymaker paid for his satellite to the WSOP fifteen years ago—and the prize is a Platinum Pass seat in the $25K buyin PSPC tournament in The Bahamas next January, along with $5K in expenses. The PSPC itself will be loaded with online and live qualifiers (and people who won seats in drawings), One was awarded last week at Stones Gambling Hall in Sacramento, There’ll be tour stop in September in LA and Phoenix, and another at Run It Up Reno in November.

  • Image via Steve Roselius.

    This month’s Muckleshoot Casino Big Bounty tournament ($200 buyin) takes place Sunday at 10:15am. Next Sunday at the same time id the monthly Deepstack ($300 buyin). They still haven’t posted anything on their web site about next month’s Muckleshoot Fall Poker Classic (21—30 September) but that link goes to Facebook. Friend of the blog Steve Roselius posted a snapshot of the flyer from the poker room to Facebook. They’ve typically run satellites to the all or part of the series in preceding weeks.

  • A little further afield, Ameristar East Chicago is the host to HPT Chicagoland from 23 August to 3 September. Main Event ($1,650 buyin) has three entry days starting 30 August. Nonstop RT tickets  for Thursday through Tuesday of that weekend are still less than $350, Accommodations could, uh, run a bit more.
  • The Commerce Poker Series starts in just over two weeks (30 August) and runs through 16 September

This Place Is a Dump! #PNWPokerLeaderboard for 5 August 2018

Posted on by
I eked out the most recent #PNWPokerleaderboard on the Fourth of July—over a month ago—but even that only covered tournaments reported through the end of June. Then, Hendon Mob changed the format of their reports (from which this info is drawn), and all of the tools I’d written to automate the process were busted. Updating them took me some time, what with a broken wrist, but it’s finally done, so let’s catch up on how Pacific Northwest players did in the last weeks of the World Series of Poker and other events! At the top of the board, of course, is Kao Saechao. His 16th-place finish at the World Series of Poker Main Event puts him just outside the million-dollar club of the top two dozen players in the Pacific Northwest (and as I’ve mentioned before, some of those people don’t actually live here any more). The Main Event made some money for a number of other PNW players, as well. Notable was Mason Barrell of Eugene who has exactly one Hendon Mob cash on his record: 70th place in the field of 7,874. That’s in the top 1% of the Main Event for his only recorded cash. Washington’s Eric Kepper and Bothell’s Aaron Moreau-Cook got their first recorded cashes (at 131st and 354th, respectively). Making it to 73rd, Ahmed Amin of Seattle just about doubled his recorded tournament winnings; Takashi Matsushita (also Seattle) took 261st for nearly ten times his previous records. Paul Varrano (Pullman), Christopher Leslie (Portland), and Adam Walton (Seattle) made the same payout tier at 387th, 352nd, and 407th, but I gotta give the not to Adam for making a little extra by cashing in the Wynn Summer Classic $5K Survivor about a week earlier. I prefer the poker players who survive. If you missed the great 5th-place run of Jacki Burkhart in the WSOP #57 $1,000/$10,000 NLHE Ladies Championship and were having trouble finding the replay, have no fear, because it’s still on Twitch, but since they switched over from the very end of the $10K Razz Championship just a quarter hour after the stream started, it’s labeled for that game. You can hear a little rightful bitching about the marginalization of the tournament by the WSOP and broadcast media in Jamie Kerstetter and Chad Holloway‘s LFG Podcast, where they interview Molly Mossey, the 7th-place finisher. Jacki and Jamie are both scheduled to play the Poker Night in America Ladies Night on Friday this week, (along with Lily Kiletto, Natasha Mercier, and Danielle “@dmoongirl” Andersen). James Romero didn’t post any big cashes at the WSOP (I mean, he got a double-up for 608th in the Main Event but that’s piker’s money for Romero), he did make six figures for 3rd place at the Venetian/Mid-States Poker Tour $3.5K NLHE Big Blind Ante, as well as decent ROI for the Venetian/Card Player Poker Tour #126 taking 17th. Darren Rabinowitz placed 13th in that one, and took 5th in the Wynn $200K NLHE. There was a James Christopher Romero from Wilsonville who grabbed 7th at the Larry Flynt Grand Slam of Poker $777,777 NLHE at the end of the month, which seems like a weird coincidence, particularly since JCR’s only other recorded cash is from a tournament last summer in Macau, but I could just be mistaken about that coincidence. Friend of the blog Ryan Stoker placed 4th in a Wynn Summer Classic $1M NLHE at the end of June (won by Athanosios Polychronopoulos, the favorite name of every poker reporter). It looks like a three-way deal was made after Ryan busted, but he did quite well. Kirkland’s Matthew Simmons got a huge boost to his lifetime earnings with the best part of a four-way deal at the Planet Hollywood GOLIATH $500K NLHE. Bill Patten, one of the owners of the late Aces Full club on SE Powell, won a huge WSOP Daily Deepstack in June, with 1,199 entries, which brings him to the brink of $100K in recorded cashes. Lee Markholt, one of the biggest names in poker in the PNW (and #6 on the all-time earnings list for the region) cranked it up a little bit by finishing 5th in the WSOP #76 $3,000 HORSE. Jesse Hampton of Mercer Island came in 9th, effectively doubling his lifetime earnings. The WSOP #63 NLHE High Roller got 480 entries; Bellevue’s Noah Bronstein added a nice chunk to his record by placing 4th. Back over at a Wynn Summer Classic $100K NLHE on 1 July, Garry Bleisner from Spokane Valley took 2nd in a 3-way deal (with more than $100K left in the $240K prize pool) that dwarfed his previous earnings and got him on the PNW Leaderboard. Other newcomers are John Durney (Aberdeen) whose only recorded cash so far is 2nd place in a deal at the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza #92 $75K NLHE, and Portland’s Amy Schwarz, who beat out 8,906 other players for a 14th-place finish in WSOP #6 NLHE The Giant, the $365 tournament with the $2.676M prize pool that ran qualifiers throughout the series and wrapped up at the end of June.

Amy Schwarz, WSOP The Giant © Melissa Haereiti

Seattle’s Laurence Hughes kept the hammer down as the summer series came to a close, with a final table in a seniors tournament at the Wynn on 8 July (7th of nearly 500 entries), a final table (3rd) in a seniors tournament at Bellagio three days later (only 64 entries, but chopped by Eli Elezra and Michael Holm), and 5th place in a Wynn Summer Classic $200K NLHE three days after that. Wrapping things up in this catch-up edition are a couple of 3rd place finishes in the WSOP Daily Deepstacks. Kent’s Kevin Jenkins did it on 29 June, Phillippe Olbrechts pulled it off on 5 July. That’s far from all the winners and cashers. Don’t argue with anyone who says they cashed the main just because they’re not on here; if they didn’t at least triple their buyin, I didn’t cover it. Let them live out their fantasies. I think I might know someone. The heat this week may delay me, but I’m going to try to get the weekly #PNWPokerCal back in operation. Thanks to everyone who’s offered thanks and support over the summer!

There’s Plenty of October to Share, Guys!

Posted on by

The cast just came off my wrist last week, so I’m not back in shape to take up my duties here at Mutant Poker Tower quite yet, but I have been trying to keep up the calendar (thanks to Nick Getzen for his kind words last week about its utility!) and somehow, three series of interest to PNW poker players coming up in the next quarter have managed to pick overlapping dates (once again).

Closest to home, the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Classic has been on the calendar (20—28 October) for months. They released their tournament schedule a while back, and I’ve had it marked ever since.

The World Series of Poker Circuit Lake Tahoe dates (25 October—5 November) were announced along with the rest of the season just before the WSOP started in late May. The individual events haven’t been announced yet.

And this week, Run It Up Reno‘s dates were released (19—29 October) along with the event schedule.

So three of the only tournament series that run in my loosely-defined greater Pacific Northwest (including Northern California and Nevada) will be operating simultaneously for four days, and for another six days, at least two of them will overlap. There’s a fair amount of travel time between Lincoln City and Tahoe/Reno, and even just going from Harvey’s Lake Tahoe to the Peppermill Reno isn’t like shuttling between the Venetian and the Rio.

These guys are killing me.

Shout out tonight to Liz Brandenburg, recovering from surgery for a broken elbow (at least I hope she’s recovering, the last post I saw from her she’d been waiting for a few hours because they’d pushed back her surgery time). Also on this summer’s Poker Disabled List:

  • Dan “Goofy” Beecher, who broke some ribs falling off a deck a couple weeks after I fell off a deck;
  • Angela “Badass” Jordison, who unexpectedly tried cliff-diving on the wrong kind of cliff (way too far to the water).

Be  careful out there, and remember that poker rooms are much safer than the outdoors.

First Friday

I think this week marks the return of the Final Table First Friday $20K GTD after a WSOP hiatus. $100 buyin with 1 live rebuy and $50 addon.

Newly-minted WSOP Dealer’s Choice bracelet owner Jeremy Harkin is working to get a dealers choice game together Friday nights at Portland Meadows. See the NW Poker group on Facebook to find out details and availability.

I got the chance to play poker in Portland on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago (I’m usually doing stuff with family if I’m in town) and chopped the Portland Meadows $10K, then put my bump to work in the 5/10 game recorded for The Poker Guys‘ PokerTime YouTube show, playing with Jacki Burkhart (who’ll be on Poker Night in America  in a couple of weeks), former Portlander Jeff Dobrin (who appeared  on some of the previous game’s installments), as well as Jeff Mitseff and some of the other regulars from the show. While we’re waiting for that to drop, enjoy one of the recent eps.