One of my favorite places on the Biloxi coast is the Hard Rock. It has one of the best comp ratings in live play: $5 in food for every two hours logged. Plus, complimentary food and beverage while you’re playing.
Hard Rock has a great thing going with daily tournaments. Buy-ins are affordable and the schedule doesn’t stick to the typical noon and 7 p.m. start times. Monday features a 3 p.m. bounty tournament where $40 will cover everything, with $10 going to the bounties and $20 to the prize pool. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday all feature a $45 event ($10 is an optional add-on). These tournaments all start at 3 and the price includes dealer-appreciation chips. Saturday’s 3 p.m. is the same tournament with a slightly bigger buy-in ($80) and a larger starting stack. Thursday’s 3 p.m. is $30 and allows re-entries. Sunday is a 3 p.m., $30 freezeout. All tournaments award more chips to players in live play before the start of the tournament. For more info, visit hardrockbiloxi.com.
Across the street, the IP has a unique promotion called Tuesday Shootout. Every Tuesday in October there’s a $60, 7 p.m. event. Stacks are 3K with 2K more for a $10 dealer add-on. The tournament is limited to 66 players. If there are five tables or fewer, the top two from each table advance to the next stage. When there are six tables or more, the winner of each table will advance to the next stage. Then players combine and restart with equal stacks. This is the only scheduled freezeout recurring on the coast.
Up north just a little bit in Choctaw, Miss., at the Pearl River Resort, all sorts of fun changes are under way.
“The newest upgrades to our room include the Bravo Poker System, shuffle machines, high-definition digital TV signal, new tournament chips and a terminal to direct order tableside food from the popular Stats Bar and Grill,” poker room manager Neal Atkinson said.
The investment in poker is going to be even bigger next year a new room on the way. “We are going to have a new, larger state-of-the-art poker room, second to none,” Atkinson said.
He also took this opportunity to discuss promotions.
“The $225 buy-in $25K bimonthly tournament series has been a huge success, averaging 175 entries with the next event slated for Oct. 9-12. We’re also excited about our $100K Fantasy Football Challenge exclusive to poker players. Players get free daily entries on the Fantasy Football kiosk with $1K in weekly prizes and can score $100K by picking a “perfect lineup” in any week of the Sunday and Monday NFL games.”
Next month I’ll cover Tunica promotions and recap some tournament scores.
— Email Jen at jennifergay80@hotmail.com.
