‘Sicateen’ George. photo via Lonnie Carrol on Facebook.

Sicateen

It’s a term that’s going to live on for years in Portland poker (assuming that there is Portland poker) because of the work of one gregarious man named George, who dealt at Encore and elsewhere, cracking dry jokes, telling stories about his daughter at college and his grandkids, and playing a formidable game of poker himself. If you never got to hear the signature manner he uttered â€˜sixteen,’ you’ve missed your chance. RIP, George.

#SaveOregonPoker

According to a Facebook post by Portland Meadows’ Brian Sarchi, the anti-poker House Bill 2190 is dead in committee. It’s good nes for Portland clubs, but not the end of the line. Another bill can always come down the line, there are aspects of how the clubs operate that skirt—if not cross—the intent of the state’s social gaming laws, the labor issues with dealer compensation haven’t disappeared, and I don’t believe the Lottery issue with Portland Meadows has been resolved yet.

Forrest Auel, Event #4 Omaha Hi-Lo

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

The big winner of the week was Forrest Auel, who was the 2nd Oregon player to make a final table at the 2017 WSOP, in Event #4 $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo. Auel and Jordan Rich both made to the last three tables on the last day of play (Rich went out in 22nd place). Auel got to the unofficial ten-handed final table in 8th place, managing

Chris Gellagher, Event #1 Casino Employees NLHE

to outlast four players to take sixth after starting Level 28 with just enough to pay the blinds when they came around. Auel had a big rail of PNW players and fellow dealers (he worked the WSOP until this year) that dissipated when he went to get his payout. Also making a deep run in the event was Kate Hoang (20th)

The first Oregon player to final table this year was Chris Gallagher, in the year’s first bracelet contest, Event #1, $565 Casino Employees NLHE. Gallagher was the chip leader going into Day 2’s with ten other players. Unfortunately for Chris, he ran into a couple of bad beats (think A♣ K♥ v A♣ Q♠) before busting in seventh place.

Via a message from Jeremy Harkin, we learned Joe Mitchell—winner of Event #8 $333 WSOP.com NLHE—the smallest-ever buy-in for a WSOP bracelet event—was a former resident of Eugene. His WSOP biography still lists it as his hometown, though his Hendon Mob profile reflects his move to Las Vegas some time ago. (Props to my Daryl Vogel, one of the guys I started playing poker again with a few years back, who cashed the Online, and was in the top 25 when they hit the money at 333  players.)

Ronald Lemco of Auburn took 2nd place in a Daily Deepstack for his largest-eveer recorded tournament cash; last year’s tw-time bracelet-winner Ian Johns got 12th in Event #7 $2,500 Limit Mixed Triple Draw; Dylan Wilkerson joined up with Mohsin Charania and Marvin Rettenmaier for 12th place in Event #2 $10K NLHE Tag Team Championship.

Outside the Rio, Jeffrey Yakubinis of Bellevue made it to heads-up in a Venetian $400 NLHE SuperStack and Dave Van Weerdhnizen cashed in a Survivor(!) tournament at the Wynn Summer Poker Classic.

The big new name on the leaderboard is Patrick Gannon of Vancouver (WA), with a 4th place in a $235 Daily Deepstack and 2nd in the $135 the previous day. That’s some run-good to start the week.

I made a quick trip to Las Vegas opening weekend, playing the WSOP Online bracelet event on Saturday, the $150K GTD Omaha Hi-Lo at the venetian after I busted that, and an Omaha Hi-Lo/Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo Mix at the Golden Nugget Sunday morning. I was vacillating between the $30K GTD NLHE Bounty tournament at the Venetian and the $5K GTD HORSE (the prize pool hit $11.5K) at the Orleans until Toma Barber told me he was at Orleans, so I headed over there. Both of the Sunday tournaments went better than those on Saturday, but I could have just stayed home because the only poker money I made over the weekend was in online PLO.

Leaving Las Vegas. At 4 in the morning.

This Week In Portland Poker

Regular schedules.

Only a Day Away

I’m not going to enumerate all of the series in Las Vegas right now. What’s happening away from the WSOP?

• The Bicycle Casino Summer Poker Series runs through the end of the month. This weekend is a $150K GTD event with $150 buyin; next week is the $500K GTD tournament with starting flights with $85 and $240 buyins.
• Tomorrow is the start of the Cash Casino Calgary Classic. The Main Event is next week, with a C$560 buy-in (which includes a dinner buffet) on starting days Thursday through Saturday. Next Tuesday is a $235 PLO tournament.
• Bay 101 Summer Madness runs from 12 June to 19 June with seven events, including an $1,100 Main Event with two starting days.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#SaveOregonPoker

I’m going to mostly ignore this subject for a week. For one thing, I don’t know anything new. The Oregon Senate’s General Government and Accountability Committee had a work session scheduled for last week, but it was postponed. It’s back on the docket for today, with proposed amendments, the text of which I haven’t had the opportunity to process.

For another thing, I’m not getting this week’s piece started until late Tuesday. Holiday weekend, a last-minute decision to go to a concert with an old friend, and preparations to head to las Vegas this weekend for the opening weekend of the World Series of Poker. So let’s get to it.

Poker Christmas

Christmas has 12 days, but Poker Christmas last a month and a half. Just like the real Christmas, the good children get presents beyojnd belief and the bad children get lumps of coal in their stockings. That’s if they can still afford coal after the summer in Vegas.

Today is the very first bracelet event of the World Series of Poker. Other series have  been running for a couple of weeks, and Daily Deepstacks got going yesterday at the Rio, but 11am is the start time for Event #1: Casino Employees NLHE. If you’re not a casino employee, you can enter Event #2: $10,000 Tag Team NLHE. And no, that’s not the guarantee.

This weekend’s big event is Event #5: The COLOSSUS III – $565 NLHE. There are entry flights at 10am and 4pm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Saturday is also Event #8: $333 WSOP.com ONLINE NLHE, the lowest-ever (so far) bracelet event, weighing in at a price lower than the WSOP Circuit Ring side events. It’s where I’m going to be.

For the full schedule of WSOP events, check out their schedule, or…

2017 Summer Vegas Poker

I’ve mentioned November Niner (one of the last) Kenny Hallaert’s regular summer spreadsheet before (it’s linked from the Calendar page), but I would be remiss not to trow out Kim Unger‘s Tableau dataset, which covers the same ground but in a somewhat different manner.

You can directly edit the valules in fields by clicking, rather than using the slider handles.

You can filter the schedule by type of tournament (daily, satellite, series), by date, buyin (althogh this could use some refinement), how many chups, level length, and rake percentage, as well as venue.

I don’t think there’s any relation to Stu Unger.

Ming Zhu, via the Venetian Poker Room blog.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

I thought there’s be more action this week, but I miscalculated. The only big winner reported by Saturday was Portland’s Ming Zhu, nearly taking the trophy in the first event of the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III, a $125K GTD, $250 buyin. Ming had 6.6M chips to winner Brandon West’s 8M when they went to heads up, and the players chopped, with West getting the trophy and 5% more money than Ming. (By the way, the Venetian Poker Room’s blog has moved from the antiquated Blogspot to WordPress.)

This Week In Portland Poker

It’s the beginning of the month, which means First Friday at Final Table, with the $20K guarantee, one of the best tournament values in the Northwest. $80 entry, $80 live rebuy, and a $40 addon.

Only a Day Away

• We’re already more than a week into the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III. There’s a sweet-looking $150K GTD Omaha Hi-Lo tournament with $600 flights on Friday and Saturday (it’s my plan if I bust out of the WSOP.com bracelet event before 8).
• At Planet Hollywood’s Goliath 2017, Sunday is the first of four flights for the $1M GTD Goliath Milly NLHE ($600 entry).
• The Grand at the Golden Nugget is running now, and this weekend is a $100K GTD with just a $150 buyin. Six flights (3 on Friday, 3 on Saturday) at 11am, 3pm, and 7pm. The Grand had a few large overlays on their big events in recent years, so it might be worth checking out, since this one is going to need more than 800 entries to break even.
• In Los Angeles, there’s another $150 $100K GTD at the Bicycle Casino Summer Poker Series. Eight flights total from Saturday through Tuesday, and you get $1,200 for every extra stack that qualifies for Day 2.
• The Aria isn’t doing anything big for a couple of weeks (now that the SUper High Roller Bowl is over), but they will have an 11am $465 HORSE tournament nect Tuesday, and PLO for the same price and time on Thursday.
• There are two charity events at Binions on Friday and Saturday, then some HORSE (Monday, 11am, $$20K GTD, $230 buyin) and Omaha Hi-Lo (same, but Tuesday).
• Opening weekend at the Wynn, there’s a $5K Survivor tournament on Friday ($400 buyin, cashing players receive $5K each) and a $100K GTD ($550 entry) on Saturday, MSunday, and Monday.
• The Orleans  is running a Triple Stud tournament for just $150.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

No News Is Good News

Unfortunately, there is news. After a working meeting last Wednesday in the state Senate’s General Government and Accountability committee on House Bill 2190—aimed at shutting down poker rooms in Oregon (specifically those in Portland)—there was a little bit of hope when Brian Pempus at CardPlayer wrote the headline “Oregon Senate Committee Is No Fan Of Anti-Poker Room Bill.” The article wasn’t entirely positive, but it did indicate some interest from committee members in perhaps finding some accommodation.

The enemies of Portland poker are legion, however, and in an article published Sunday in Willamette Week, Nigel Jacquiss covered a new front opened by the Oregon Lottery, which is threatening the lottery franchise held by Portland Meadows, on the basis of alleged violations of state social gaming laws and city ordinances. A letter from the  lottery director dated last Tuesday would seem to force the operators of the facility to choose between the sure bet of their take from lottery games and machines, and holding onto a poker room that’s already in peril.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Lottery—it not only sucks money away from working-class Oregonians to make up for a lack of political will to raise income taxes, but it’s horribly inefficient by needing to raise about two dollars for every dollar of revenue, and needing to spend a good chunk of that revenue to administrators and companies that sell lottery products, not to mention advertising to try to convince people to play the lottery in the first place.You could get rid of the lottery entirely, raise taxes by the amount the lottery brings in, and actually save some money. Of course, then you’d have to pay unemployment to the guy who wrote that letter.

Big Injun

Many moons ago, there was a Portland satirical newspaper called The Free Agent, run by some bright young people known to the Poker Mutant. Most of them have gone on to far greater things then I have (I’d say “all of them,” but there may be one who fell hard like me), and one of them is writing a Q&A column in Willamette Week as Dr. Know. One thing I do know is how to get letters in newspapers, for whatever that’s worth, and Dr. Know took on one of my questions the other day.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

This week’s mover onto the leaderboard is Tommy Kendrick of Olympia, who got to what looks like a four-way chop in a $20K GTD during the Venetian May Weekend Extravaganza for a 2nd-place finish of over $6,500.

Big money this week was for Kevin Jenkins of Kent, with a 3rd-place finish in a preliminary tournament at WSOPC New Orleans with nearly 1,000 entries, nearly doubling his lifetime earnings. A distant runner-up was Valparaiso, Idaho’s Paul Loduca, with the runner-up in a 6-Max at HPT Chicago.

Nobody new on the leaderboard this week, but expect a lot of new names and movement in the next edition, after the first week of the WSOP.

This Week In Portland Poker

Who the fuck knows?

Only a Day Away

• The Gardens Poker Festival $1M GTD Main Event is underway with six more days of entry flights ($565) before Day 2 on Tuesday.
• We’re already more than a week into the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III. Coming up Friday and Saturday are $600 entry flights for a $200K GTD. MOnday is the first of two flights for a $250K GTD with $1,100 buyin.
• The WSOP Warm-Up Series at Horseshoe Hammond starts its Main Event tomorrow, with entry on Friday and Saturday. $680 gets you into a 2-day event with three $10K WSOP Main Event seats added to the prize pool.
• River Rock Casino’s May Showdown at the Rock starts today in Vancouver, with three events: C$230, C$345 (including C$50 bounty), and a two-day C$575 tournament with two entry days. You can pre-register by calling their poker room, registrations are transferable/non-refundable, and each flight will have 100 players max.
• Thursday at Planet Hollywood is the start of Goliath 2017. The first event is a $250K GTD with a $600 buyin and starting days through Saturday.
• Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, California has a WSOP $1,500 Seven-Card Stud qualilfier on Saturday at 11am.
• Tulalip Casino’s Last Sunday of the Month Tourney for May is a $35K GTD with $400 buyin (including dealer addon). It starts at 11am.
• Sunday at noon is the Muckleshoot  monthly Deepstack, for $300.
• Lucky Chances south of San Francisco has a tournament Sunday with $20K GTD for the first place finisher and a $375 buyin. It starts at 9:30am. The next morning is a $4K for first tournament ($130 buyin), FYI: their regular weekly schedule has an $8K for first GTD every Sunday.
• Tuesday the 30th, it’s time for The Grand at the Golden Nugget. Nearly 60 events through 3 July, with what is usually the most diverse ange of tournaments at easily-affordable buyins. There’s a Mixed PLO8/Omaha Hi-Lo/Big O tournament on 5 June, all Big O on 26 June, and the $570 PLO8/Omaha Hi-Lo/Big O Championship the next day.
• And , of course, there’s the World Series of Poker starting the same day and running through 17 July. It kicks off with Daily Deepstacks and cash games on the first day, then there’s the Casino Employee event, a $10K  buyin Tag Team tournament, the $3K shootout, $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo, and on the weekend, the Colossus III, with an $8M guarantee, $1M to first, and just a $565 buyin.
• Not to be left out, Bicycle Casino Summer Poker Series in Los Angeles is where you can find the people who aren’t making the few hour trip to Las Vegas. It runs all through June.
• The other ball drops in Vegas a week from Friday with series spinning up at Aria, Binions, and the Wynn.
• The Orleans  dropped their summer series a couple of years back, but that doens’t mean the place is dead. If anything, they don’t have to do anything special to get people in to play, so they just piggyback off the rest of the series. That doesn’t mean they won’t do something out of the ordinary from time-to-time, and Saturday, 3 June, they’re running a Triple Stud tournament for just $150. Not big money, but how can you say no?

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#SaveOregonPoker

No news or schedule updates today in solidarity with the clubs who’ve decided to shut down for 10 May. There’s a Senate General Government & Accountability Committee working meeting scheduled today at 1pm Wednesday (900 Court St NE, Salem). Both Portland Meadows and Final Table will be closed for the day, with players carpooling from both locations.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

New on the radar is Lake O’s Max Brown, who had a pretty good run at Run It Up Reno  in early April (results just posted on Hendon Mod this week). He cashed in 4 of the 16 events in the series, taking 4th in the 3 Card NLHE, coming in 2nd in the NLHE Partner event, and almost making the final table of the Main Event.

The other big winner of the week (apart from the people who made big money here in Portland at the Final Table $20K and Kentucky Derby Day tournament at Portland Meadows) was Spokane’s Frank Ward, who placed 2nd in a tournament at Dover Downs, in Delaware.

This Week In Portland Poker

All tou really need to know this week is that Portland Meadows and Final Table will be closed. The Planner will be back next week (maybe even later this week) with updates and schedules.

#SaveOregonPoker

So many hashtags, so little time. This edition of the Planner may be a little short; I’m not even getting started until almost 11pm Tuesday night, when I usually have some of the work already done.

The main reason for that is HB2190, which restricts the types of organizations to which cities can issue social gaming licenses. Fraternal, charitable, and religious organizations, essentially. There’s lots of info on the bill and about the bill, I’ve put together sort of a clearinghouse of the information I know about, and it’s on the menu above next to the calendar link.

The big news this week, of course, is that the Oregon House of Representatives passed the bill, after an incredibly smarmy introduction by Representative Paul Evans, in which he alluded to Russian mobsters, Portland as the capital of sex trafficking and drugs (kind of rich coming from a guy whose district includes east Salem), and wild estimates of the income at Portland Meadows. I urge you to take a look.

The bill has already had a first, perfunctory, reading in the Senate. If it passes there, the last stop before it’s made into law will be the desk of Governor Kate Brown.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

After all the movement of the Spring Poker Round Up, it was relatively quiet this past week. The big winner (and only five-figure cash) was Bend’s Seth Davies, who snagged 3rd place in a $25K buyin High Roller at the Aria for $93,600. Ming Zhu took 4th in the a WSOPC event in Cherokee, North Carolina. Dylan Wilkerson skipped across the pond to the £ 5,000 partypoker Millions Nottingham and a min-cash. Seattle’s Brenda DeWitt had her best cash ever with a final table of the 317-entry $300 buyin Getaway Classic at Talking Stick in Arizona.

Moar Casino

Just a week after the opening if the Ilani casino on the Washington side of the Columbia River, the Siletz tribe went public Tuesday with news that they’re hoping to open a casino north of Salem by 2021. According to KGW-TV:

The Siletz have been hatching this plan for about two years and are working to get buy-in from all nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon. They hope the plan would keep a “proliferation of casinos” from the metro region, according to Craig Dorsay, tribal attorney for the Siletz Indians.

None of the tribes would need to contribute financially to get a share of the revenues, as long as they agree not to build another casino in the Portland area.

The Siletz (who operate Chinook WInds) already have land in trust for them in the area, and wouldn’t face the same battle for recognition and trust land that the Cowlitz tribe had to navigate through. Any proposal would need approval from the state and federal authorities, and could still face stiff opposition from local businesses and outside interests.

The proposed site is at the intersection of Interstate 5 and Highway 99.

This Week In Portland Poker

I’M A MORON! THERE’S A FIRST FRIDAY $20K GTD AT FINAL TABLE TOMORROW NIGHT (FRIDAY) AT 7PM!

Wheeee! Horsies!

Only a Day Away

• The Beach Poker Club in Eugene has a First Sunday of the Month Super Stack tournament at noon on 7 May. $135 includes your buyin, lunch, and dealer bonus. 30 minute levels and 400bb deep to start.
• Tomorrow is the first of six flights for a $300K GTD at the Cal State Poker Championship. Day 2 is Sunday. You can check in on the action at lapcnews.com (the Social Experiment tournament got 500+ entries, half-again what was needed to meet the guarantee).
• Today is the start of the Venetian May Weekend Extravaganza, featuring a $340 buyin $100K GTD tournament.
• The Deep Stack Derby at Cactus Pete’s in Jackpot, Nevada starts today.
• Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, California has a $340 buyin WSOP Monster Stack qualifier on Sunday, with a tournament on Saturday that earns you points for the WSOP qualifier freeroll later in the month. Over the next three Saturdays, they have qualifiers for $1500 WSOP events in Limit Hold’em, Omaha HI-Lo, and Seven-Card Stud.
• Sunday is opening day for the WPTDeepstacks Turlock in central California. The $100K GTD Main Event ($1,100 entry) starts next Friday, with a livestreamed final table on Sunday, 14 May.
• Sunday, there’s a $10K GTD Big O tournament at Ocean’s Eleven in San Diego.
• Little Creek Casino still has a few WSOP Monster Stack package satellites Tuesday nights in May. Next Saturday is a Bounty tournament.
• Stones Gambling Hall is running a Six Shooter $100K GTD Tournament over two weekends, with Day 1 flights (two per day) from 12—14 May ($200 buyin) and Day 2 on 21 May. The field pays 15%, everyone making Day 2 is in the money, and you can multi-qualify, with your stacks being combined for Day 2.
• 14 May is the Muckleshoot Monthly Special, a $250 buyin for 15K in chips.
• 15 May is the first day for The Gardens Casino Poker/WPT500 Festival, featuring a $1M GTD $565 buyin event from 21 May to 31 May.
• The 15th is also opening day for the first of the Vegas summer series, the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III. The opener is a $125K GTD$250 buyin tournament.
• The WSOP Warm-Up Series at Horseshoe Hammond has a $210 tournament with two Millionaire Maker and one WSOP Main Event seat added to the prize pool starting on 17 May. The Main Event of the Hammond series (just east of Chicago, 4 hours from Portland on a direct flight) has three WSOP Main Event seats added to the prize pool.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

Gearing Up

There are just 40 shopping days before the beginning of the World Series of Poker, but some of the other Las Vegas series start even earlier than Memorial Day.

PokerNews has a day-by-day calendar of events at several venues starting with 25 May, showing start time, guarantee (if any), buy-in, and fees. It’s nicely laid-out but doesn’t really hold a match to Kenny Hallaert’s summer poker tournament spreadsheet which is the comprehensive source for info on Vegas offerings (and starts on 15 May, with the opening of the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III).

Another consideration you might have is how good a structure is the tournament you’re thinking about playing? Two Plus Two poster plog has a site that evaluates tournament structures through a mathematical formula to derive something they call S-Points, and there’s a list of 2017 tournaments that have been calculated out for you. At the top end of the S-Points in the WSOP Main Event (339), at the bottom is the WSOP’s $1K Turbo Bounty (34). It shouldn’t be the end all of how you decide which events to play, but it can be another tool in the box.

The Young & the General

Results from the Wildhorse Spring Poker Round Up are available on their site, and local player (and a former owner of Aces Full) Bill “General” Patten had a decent weekend, taking 1st place in the Friday tournament after finishing 2nd in Thursday’s (non-High Roller) event.

And I’d be remiss if I missed mentioning Max Young rocketing to the upper section of the WSOP CIrcuit Leaderboard. As of today, he’s in 4th place on the national ranking, with an even 200 points. With only three more stops on this year’s circuit (Cherokee’s already under way, Baltimore starts next week, and New Orleans is in three weeks), he appears to have a lock on a seat to the Global Casino Championship. He picked up four more cashes at the Council Bluffs stop, with three final tables and a brush with another Circuit ring, losing heads-up to the guy who’s at the top of the leaderboard.

High Roller

Poking at the Hendon Mob Oregon All Time Money List, for the first time in a while, I saw a name that didn’t look familiar high up. With nearly $900K in earnings, Vitaly Rizhkov sits in 8th place among the Tam Nguyens, Joe Brandenburgs, and Jordan Riches. Looking at Rizhkov’s cashes, you can see that they’re all from last spring and summer, and all from just six High Roller events at Aria. Four $25K buyins and two $50K buyins (for a minimum of $200K in buyins in the events he cashed in). He also played in the $300K buyin Super High Roller Bowl (without a cash).

I have to admit, I was caught flatfooted on this one. I’ve been following poker—specifically poker players in Oregon and Washington—for a couple of years now, and I thought I had relative familiarity with the big names (if not always the faces for the names). Rizhkov is an Azerbaijan-born entrepreneur who’s once wrote an article titled “What I learned from sacking 100 employees and losing $1.5 million.”

Vitaly Rizhkov, via Poker Telegraph

From the Archive

Coming from a mostly non-gambling family, I never set foot in a casino until a trip to New Orleans when I was 42, when my brother asked my wife and I to meet with him at Harrah’s. Since I didn’t start playing poker (again) until a few years later, my first experience playing in an actual casino was after I started the blog. Thanks, Quinault Beach! Not long after that, I won a noon game at Encore, which got me into the (then) monthly Champions Freeroll (taking second to David Moshe), and I became some sort of casino whore after my first taste of the forbidden, with unfruitful trips to Spirit Mountain and Foxwoods.

This Week In Portland Poker

Nothing announced as of press time.

Only a Day Away

• The Liz Flynt Spring Poker Classic at Hustler Casino continues through the end of April. The series’ big event starts Saturday, a $500K GTD with five entry days ($350 entry).
• Calgary’s Deerfoot Casino Spring Super Stack starts today, with the C$1,100 Main Event (C$100K GTD) up front. Entry days through Saturday, with finals on Sunday.
• The CardPlayer Poker Tour has a stop at San Diego’s Ocean’s Eleven Casino starting tomorrow. It’s a $150K GTD tournament with $250 entry.
• The Wynn Signature Weekend $250K GTD starts tomorrow. Three days of entry ($600) and Day 2 on Sunday.
• Talking Stick Resort’s Getaway Classic starts Friday, with three tournaments ($200, $300, and $300, respectively).
• Battle of the Bay at Lucky Chances Casino in Colma starts with a super satellite  to multiple events in the series on Saturday, which guarantees between $10K and $100K to the first-place finisher. Sunday is the first event, with $40K guaranteed to first place.
• Little Creek Casino is running WSOP package satellites Tuesdays in April at 7pm. $255 buyin plus a dealer addon, every 10 players in the tournament gets an entry to the $1,500 Millionaire Maker and $750 in travel expenses. In May, there will be four Monster Stack packages available.
• The Cal State Poker Championship starts next Friday at Commerce Casino in LA (see last week’s Planner).
• Two weeks from today is the Venetian May Weekend Extravaganza, featuring a $340 buyin $100K GTD tournament.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

Experiments

I’m a sucker for innovation, and I heard about something the other day that—even if Montreal wasn’t already one of my travel goals—would put the Canadian capitol on my radar.

partypoker was one of the first online poker sites, but they saw the writing on the wall and pulled out of the US long before Black Friday, after the 2006 passage of the UIGEA. They have moved tentatively into the regulated US market in recent years, with a toehold in New Jersey. partypoker never left Europe or Canada however, and as PokerStars seems to have faltered since its acquisition by Amaya Gaming, partypoker has stepped up to challenge them on the live poker front.

The partypoker Million North America is coming to what has become the premiere tournament venue in Canada: Playground Poker Club outside Montreal. The partypoker Million has a C$5M guarantee ($3.75M in US currency, with C$1M guaranteed for first place). The buyin is C$5,300 (US$3,980) for 1M in chips (with starting days on 5 & 6 May), but the innovative thing about the tournament is how you can buy in for lesser amounts.

Yes, there are the usual mega satellites, but there are also several days of Phase I entries. From 2—4 May, you can enter a Phase I tournament for C$550. You receive 100K in chips (starting at 200bb deep) then play down to 10% of the field. Instead of survivors winning a seat and starting Day 1 with 1M chips, they start with whatever chips they’ve won in Phase 1. The average stack from the Phase I games will be 1M, but given the usual distributions for satellite tournaments, the median stack will be lower than that; more than half of the players will have less than the average and probably between 30—40% will actually have more than the starting stack, some with perhaps as much as 5M. It’s an exciting prospect when you buy in for 10% of the regular price. There’s even an option on 30April and 1 June to get into a Phase I for C$275 (50K in chips, with 5% of the field getting to Day 1).

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

Nothing to do with the Wildhorse Spring Poker Round Up (which it looks like I’m going to miss this year). No, everyone from TMZ  to the Daily Mail is reporting that the 79 69-year-old doctor from Lexington, Kentucky who was bloodily dragged from a United flight in Chicago the other day is named David Dao, calling him a “poker champ” (the Mail) who “killed it as a pro poker player” at the WSOP as the TMZ headline would have it.

A little perspective might be needed, since most of these headlines were written by non-poker players.

Dao is certainly accomplished, with his biggest cash over $117K for a second place finish in a 2009 WSOP Circuit Championship event with a $5,150 buyin at Tunica. But “poker champ” or “poker pro”? He took 30th place in last year’s 6,761-entry Crazy 8s WSOP event, but the $20K he got for that,—and his lifetime reported tournament winnings of $266K over 11 years—isn’t exactly doctor money, and it comes out to $24K/year before expenses. That’s getting-by money. He’ll hopefully make more from the lawsuit.

“Fat Dude Asleep At the Poker Table,” photo by Sean Gentry, June 2011

From the Archive

Back in the early days post-Black Friday, five-figure guarantees at Portland poker clubs were more or less unheard of, but with PokerStars and Full Tilt shut down, the clubs started catering to the newly-orphaned online crowd. May 2011 saw Ace of Spades and Aces Players Club both put on what I believe were the first above-ground $10K guarantees in town. I didn’t get close to the cash of either one; but I’d cash one at Encore Club the next month, and outright win one in November, which was for a brief time the biggest individual cash in a $10K in Portland.

This Week In Portland Poker

If you aren’t able to make it out to Pendleton for the Main Event this weekend—say, you’ve got family coming over for Easter dinner or some such—Portland Meadows is putting on a $20K Freezeout on Saturday at noon. $165 buyin. No rebuy, no addon and a 25K stack.

Deal of the Week: The Social Experiment

Ever gotten tired of everyone at the table slowing things down because they’re squeezing in the last work on a call between hands, watching a movie on their tablet, or eyes
closed grooving to the tunes over their headphones? Coming up at Los Angeles’s Commerce Casino at the end of the month is the 2017 Cal State Poker Championship. One of the first events on the schedule is a one-day $100K GTD tournament with a $350 buyin (29 April). No phones, hoodies, sunglasses, or headphones allowed; it’s been dubbed The Social Experiment by   the Commerce Tournament Director Matt Savage and Tournament Coordinator Justin Hammer. Increasing punishments for infractions are promised, starting with 3 hands according to the structure sheet.

Half-hour blind levels starting 300bb deep, with levels moving to 40 miinutes after the bubble bursts (12.5% payout). It’s not worth the trip to LA just for this event, but that night there’s also a mega satellite to the $1M Main Event a couple of weeks later, as well as a $75K GTD Bounty tournament and $15K GTD (for Facebook friends of the casino) the next day, an Omaha HI-Lo tournament on Monday (1 May), HORSE on Tuesday, plus Omaha Hi-Lo/Stud Hi-Lo and NLHE Survivor  on Wednesday. Not to mention a couple of other events and more mega satellites. I’m freaking out trying to figure out how to get time off of work with each day of the schedule I read,

Follow the @LAPC, @SavagePoker, and @TheJustinHammer for more.

Only a Day Away

• The Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza II is coming into its final weekend. Friday is the last of four entry days for a $150K GTD ($250 entry). There is a $40K GTD on Saturday ($400, 1 day) and a $30K GTD on Sunday ($300 with $100 rebuy).
• Little Creek Casino is running WSOP package satellites Tuesdays in April at 7pm. $255 buyin plus a dealer addon, every 10 players in the tournament gets an entry to the $1,500 Millionaire Maker and $750 in travel expenses. In May, there will be four Monster Stack packages available.
• The Liz Flynt Spring Poker Classic at Hustler Casino continues through the end of April. Tomorrow through Saturday are entries for the $150K GTD ($175 buyin). Earlier flights on each day get smaller stacks and qualify fewer players for Day 2, and Thursday’s flights qualify more players than Friday’s or Saturday’s. Not sure what the ratioonale is for that. The series’ big event starts 21 April, a $500K GTD with five entry days.
• The Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up has been running since last weekend. Tomorrow is the High Roller and a regular NLHE even, Friday is the $340 entry, and Saturday is the Main Event start day ($550 entry).
• WPTDeepstacks Thunder Valley starts its $300K GTD Main Event on Friday and Saturday, for a $1,100 buyin, Day 2 on Sunday, and the final table on Monday.
• Calgary’s Deerfoot Casino Spring Super Stack starts in a week, with the C$1,100 Main Event (C$100K GTD) up front. Entry days next Thursday through Saturday, with finals on Sunday.
• The Wynn Signature Weekend $250K GTD runs 20—23 April. Three days of entry ($600) and Day 2 on Sunday.
• The CardPlayer Poker Tour has a stop at San Diego’s Ocean’s Eleven Casino from 20—23 April. It’s a $150K GTD tournament with $250 entry.
• Talking Stick Resort’s Getaway Classic happens 21—23 April, with three tournaments ($200, $300, and $300, respectively).
• The Cal State Poker Championship starts 28 April at Commerce Casino in LA (see above).
• Battle of the Bay at Lucky Chances Casino in Colma starts with a super satellite on 22 April to multiple events in the series, which guarantees between $10K and $100K to the first-place finisher. See last week’s Planner.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

Nice Casino You’ve Got There…

Been feeling a little beleaguered by legal attacks on Portland’s card room scene instigated by, y’know, people who want to muscle out the competition? Don’t think that you’re alone, although there may be someone with more muscle pushing back.

The Ilani Casino in Ridgefield, Washington is just about to open—the Cowlitz Indian Tribe performed a dedication ceremony for the new Interstate 5 overpass yesterday—the same day that the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case where the owners of the La Center card rooms challenged the legal status of the tribe itself in an attempt to stave off its construction.

It’s hard to know whether they thought they really had a chance at this point or if it was some sort of last gasp of an effort that kept the case going. Ilani has been under construction at the cost of half a billion dollars since well before the case was up for consideration at the highest court of the land. The state of Washington doesn’t lightly undertake freeway overpass construction. And New Phoenix Casino just closed in La Center a couple weeks ago.

Indications are that Ilani won’t have a poker room to start, but as the largest gaming facility within an hour of Portland (assuming you can get across the Interstate Bridge in less than an hour), its large conference area could conceivably host a regional or national poker tour stop.

Not Ready for Live at the Bike

Everyone’s got problems this week.

The Bicycle Casino was shut down yesterday after a raid in a criminal fraud investigation involving nine state and federal agencies (“Everybody wants to get into the action…at The Bike!”) According to CBSLocal, agencies involved included “the Los Angeles High Intensity Financial Crime Area Task Force, the IRS, the California Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” as well as US Immigration & Customs Enforcement. News late Tuesday says they’ll be opened back up by Wednesday afternoon, which may be good news for Christopher Sigman, who mentioned that he is supposed to be playing Thursday on Live at the Bike on the NW Poker group (it’s $5/$10 NLHE, according to the calendar, 7—10PM Pacific on Twitch and YouTube).

From the Archive

The sixth anniversary of Black Friday is coming up in a week-and-a-half (thanks, Obama!). It happened just a few months after I started the blog, which art the time consisted mostly of obsessively noting the results of every single game I played, no matter how small. Encore Club had a $500 GTD Freeroll that day.

A couple of weeks later, I had my first-ever win in a live tournament of more than two tables, at a promotional event for Portland Players Club‘s new ownership.

This Week In Portland Poker

I haven’t seen an announcement yet, but this is the First Friday of the month and there should be a $20K GTD at Final Table at 7pm, $80 buy-in with live rebuy and $40 addon. It’ll be my return to live poker after a couple of weeks off; I’ll be there with the Portland Poker Championship Series trophy!

Deal of the Week: Lucky Changes at the Battle of the Bay

It’s the time of the year for the Battle of the Bay series at Lucky Chances Casino just south of San Francisco. BoB is a week’s worth of tournaments featuring first-place guarantees (rather than guarantees of the entire prize pool).The series gets started with a Super Satellite 22 April and runs through 1 May. There are five events in the series, with first-place guarantees of $40K (13 April, $625 entry including dealer addon), $20K (24 April and 26 April, $375), $10K (27 April, $225), and $100K (entry days on 29 and 30 April, $1,105). All events begin at 9:30am, and they’re all one-day tournaments, except for the $100K, which ends on 1 May.

Lucky Chances is another casino that tends not to report tournament results to Hendon Mob, The last Battle of the Bay results they provided only included the winner’s name and payouts for 27 players, but it did show $371K for the total prize pool (so 371 entries) and what looked like the results of a deal that gave about $80K to first and $50K each to the next three players. Last November’s Gold Rush event with the same buyin had a prize pool of $461K, 461 entries (45 payouts), and a more than $15K going to 10th place with $70K at the top.

It’s entirely possible to catch a morning flight to San Francisco and make the start of the tournament with time to spare; the casino (in Colma) is less than 10 miles from the airport; maybe 15 minutes in weekend morning traffic.

Only a Day Away

• The Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III has two days of entry to theur $400K GTD, $1,600 entry tournament tomorrow and Friday.
• Little Creek Casino is running WSOP package satellites Tuesdays in April at 7pm. $255 buyin plus a dealer addon, every 10 players in the tournament gets an entry to the $1,500 Millionaire Maker and $750 in travel expenses.
• The Heartland Poker Tour n St. Charles, Missouri starts three flights of their $1,650 Main Event on Friday (with two on Saturday). Last year’s St. Charles Main Event (in May) had nearly $500K in the prize pool; the fall stop got over $575K.
• Friday is the start of the Main Event at the Council Bluffs World Series of Poker Circuit. Last year had 321 entries ($1,650 buyin) for a prize pool of $481K,
• This weekend at the Liz Flynt Spring Poker Classic at Hustler Casino is a $250 buyin $250K GTD tournament with four entry days (Thursday through Sunday) and a final day on Tuesday (11 April).
• Peppermill Casino’s Run It Up Reno is in full swing, with the $100K GTD Main Event (600 entry) starting on Friday.
• The Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up starts tomorrow. The first real event is Friday at noon ($175 buyin), with noon events on Saturday (NLHE) and Sunday (NLHE Shootout), with Big O on Sunday night at 7pm.
• Elk Valley Casino in Crescent City, California has a WSOP Main Event Satellite on Friday and Saturday. There are two qualifying sessions (6pm on the 7th, 10am on the 8th), with the final session at 4pm on the 8th. Entry is $250, with 1st place receiving the Main Event seat and $2K in expenses. Maximum of 160 players.
• The first event of the WPTDeepstacks Thunder Valley is Friday, with a $260 buyin $100K GTD 8-Max. Entry flights on Friday and Saturday (two) with Day 2 on Sunday.
• Calgary’s Deerfoot Casino Spring Super Stack is back in two weeks, with a C$100K GTD C$1,100 buyin and three entry days.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!