Since its inception a few years ago, the Colorado Poker Championship at Golden Gates has grown into the go-to series for local players every few months. With its affordable buy-ins and solid play level, the series of 28 events (plus a 20-person no-limit hold’em tournament of champions for a paid World Series of Poker seat) has something for everybody.
Organizers are promising even bigger payouts for CPC8, which runs Dec. 6-23, followed by the TOC (comprising players with the top point totals from the earlier events) Dec. 26.
Larger payouts should ensure greater participation than usual, and the CPC7 turnout in May was impressive, including a 183-player field for the $1K main event and a 212-player field for the final event, a $130 deepstack. Zach Whitney and Donald Angstead chopped $76K in the main event.
WORLD RECORD: A motorcycle poker run might not technically be “real” poker, but when a charity generates $130K for abused children and earns a Guinness World Record in the process, that’s certainly worthy of note.
Guinness recently confirmed a poker run conducted in May in Fort Collins earned the world record for largest poker run with 1,494 participants. The Realities Ride & Rally poker run, which is in its 12th year, is run by Realities For Children Charities, a Larimer County nonprofit that helps abused and neglected children.
In a poker run, participants travel from place to place, picking up a poker card at each stop. The participant with the best poker hand at the end wins the event. For the world-record event, Kayla Brookhart won with quite a hand: a king-high straight flush (spades).
In a statement, event creator Craig Secher said he hoped the event would “show the entire world that in Northern Colorado, we are serious about our commitment to providing for abused and at-risk children.” Congratulations to Realities For Children for finding a fun way to help out the community while having a great time in the process.
HPT BLACK HAWK: The Heartland Poker Tour released its schedule for its next several stops and Golden Gates, which typically is its most popular event (despite weather-related major road closures the past two series), will host its event Feb. 7-16.
This will be the 16th time the HPT has come to Black Hawk. Prize pools regularly top $1 million for the Golden Gates stop, despite a blizzard last winter and floods in the summer that each closed major roads leading to the casino.
— Email Rick Gershman at rickgershman@gmail.com.
