With the World Series of Poker starting this month, several rooms around town are offering inexpensive ways to earn seats to bracelet events.
Flamingo and the Quad are adding seats to their twice-weekly freerolls, which take place Mondays and Fridays. Only six and eight hours, respectively, are needed to qualify. Everyone at the final table of each freeroll gets $200. The first-place finisher earns a seat to a $1,500 WSOP event and the runner-up gets a $1K WSOP seat. Hours at both rooms combine.
Harrah’s is adding a WSOP seat to its weekly freeroll. Twelve hours are needed to qualify for the Sunday tournament. The top 10 finishers get $500 and the top two each get a $1K WSOP event seat.
ORLEANS: The popular locals room has announced its Orleans Open schedule, which runs May 24-June 1. All events start at 2 p.m. and feature $225 buy-ins (12,500 starting stack) for the early part of the schedule. Featured are no-limit hold’em, Omaha/8, PLO and ROSE (HORSE without the hold’em).
On May 30, the buy-ins go to $330 (15K stack) for NLHE and Omaha/8. The main event on June 1 is $540 (20K stack). All events feature an optional $10 add-on, which gets 2,500 extra chips for the $225 events and 5K for the larger buy-ins. The Orleans is offering tournament players special room rates, starting at $35 a night mid week.
The Orleans recently changed its Thursday noon tournament to $125 for a 12,500 starting stack with 30-minute levels. The blinds start at 50-100, but it’s a player-friendly structure. Antes kick in on the sixth level, where the blinds are 200-400. The Orleans is clearly trying to lure some players away from the popular, early afternoon tournaments on the Strip that are similarly priced.
POKER PLUS AT STATIONS: Players at Stations Casinos are qualifying for the $300K freeroll that will take place at Texas Station on June 28-29. Players need 60 hours of live play by June 15 to qualify, and play at all six Stations rooms (Red Rock, Green Valley Ranch, Palace Station, Santa Fe Station, Boulder Station and Texas Station) is combined.
BOULDER STATION: Every local Omaha player in Vegas is familiar with the wild $4-$8 game at Boulder Station. Visitors who love the game should plan a visit. The game has a $1-$2 kill and only a $40 minimum buy-in. There are multiple tables of it going strong day and night. The pots are huge; you won’t believe it’s a $4-$8 game. There’s also a bad-beat jackpot specific to Omaha, a Steel Wheel bonus on Wednesdays and a $500 bonus to the player who makes the best Omaha hand on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays.
The room also spreads $2-$4 and $4-$8 hold’em, as well as a $1-$2 NLHE game that usually runs on weekends. Boulder was one of the last rooms in Vegas to allow smoking, but it went smoke-free last year.
MGM GRAND: MGM has added a 10 p.m. turbo tournament Sunday through Thursdays. It has the same structure ($50 buy-in, 10K starting stack, 10-minute levels) as its 2 p.m. daily.
MGM also has revised its promotions. The cash drawings are twice a day, four days a week (Monday through Thursday) at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. The qualifying period for an entry ticket is four hours before the drawing with a flush or better needed to earn a ticket. Prizes range from $100 to $1K.
High-hand bonuses are featured 24/7. Winners get to draw a cash prize that’s between $50 and $1K for quads, $150 and $3K for a straight flush and $500 and $5K for royals.
WYNN: Brandon Allen of Florida took first place and $80K in the $5,200 championship event at the Wynn Classic. Harrison Beach ($70K) and Joseph Tehan ($64K), both from Las Vegas, took second and third. Eighty-six entrants resulted in a $417K prize pool.
In an unusual move, on the third day of what was scheduled to be a four-day event, the five remaining players decided to finish the tournament that night and unanimously agreed to reduce the remaining levels from 90 to 30 minutes.
CAESARS PALACE: First place in the championship event of the Hoops and Hold’em series went to Arizona’s Nathan York for a $9,300 purse. The $350 tournament had 135 entrants and a $39K prize pool. Las Vegas’ John Robertson earned $6,600 for second and France’s Arnaud Blesz took home $4,800 for third.
VENETIAN: The schedule for Deep Stack Extravaganza III has been released. The series runs from May 22-July 15. It features more than 70 tournaments and $5.2 million in guaranteed prize pools.
The $5K heads-up event with a $75K guarantee will be June 22. The main event will have two starting flights on July 12-13. It has a $5K buy-in and a $1 million guarantee.
— Email Rob Solomon at rob@allvegaspoker.com. Follow him on Twitter @Robvegaspoker and read his blog at robvegaspoker.blogspot.com.
