Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln, Calif., hosted the World Poker Tour DeepStacks series April 9-18 with a $250K guarantee for the $1,100 main event. The series saw a slew of players attend, including more than 400 for the main event, which Jasthi Kumar of San Ramon won. He pocketed $80K and a $3K championship package after defeating James Gorham of Vista. Gorham earned $56K for runner-up. The rest of the final table was Theo Tran of Las Vegas (third, $36K), Adam Curzhack of Petaluma (fourth, $27K), Larissa Bushman of San Jose (fifth, $20K), David Forster of Oakland (sixth, $16K), Robert Pacleb of Vallejo (seventh, $13K), Eugene Schwartz (eighth, $10K) and Jimmy Zeledon of San Jose (ninth, $8K).
BAY 101: The Summer Madness series has six events from June 7-12, opening with a $350 event. The second tourney is $350 limit June 8. June 9 is a $350 deepstack while June 10 will be a $350 deepstack turbo. The largest event will be $560 June 11. The series rounds out with $350 Omaha/8 on June 12.
JACKSON RANCHERIA CASINO RESORT: This poker room has some amazing tournaments and promotions for players in June. The main tournament is a $5K guarantee June 12 at 1 p.m. There are Hot Seat Drawings every Monday from 7:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. and Big Wheel Stack Attack on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Also, if you play in the poker room, you can earn free slot play. Call the poker room for details.
TACHI PALACE: The Summer Super Series kicks off this month with $60 satellites on June 4 and June 25 for the Aug. 27 $280 main event, which sports a $15K guarantee.
Other satellites will be July 2, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 13 and Aug. 20. See the ad on Page 36 for more details.
Pacific Northwest
FINAL TABLE POKER CLUB: The Portland Open on April 30, which had a $300 buy-in and a $100K guarantee, was a big success with 240 entrants and a prize pool of $118K. Rich Bak won the event in a chop for $22K.
WILDHORSE RESORT: The $40K-added Spring Round Up completed April 17 with Charlie Prom of Portland winning the overall championship by virtue of winning Events 2 and 8.Here are the winners: Lisa Meredith of Vancouver, Wash., (Event 1, $11K), Prom (Event 2, $19K), Michael St. Pierre of Spokane (Event 3, shootout, $8K), Steve Chanthabouasy of Happy Valley, Ore., (Event 4, Omaha/8, $9K), Ted Naff of Bremerton, Wash., (Event 5, HORSE, $6K), Victor Acevedo of Beaverton, Ore., (Event 6, $3K), Michael Koons of Kennewick, Wash., (Event 7, seniors, $12K), Prom (Event 8, high roller, $19K), Kaylan Tangermann of Phoenix (Event 9, $11K), Steve Dunning (Event 10, $22K), Monty Ford of Wellpinit, Wash., winning the two-day main event ($38K) and Rick Martinez of Pendleton (Event 12, $3K).Wildhorse runs a smaller version of the Round Up on July 20-24. Call for details.
CLOSING: After nearly 40 years of being the leading non-tribal poker room in the Seattle area, Diamond Lil’s closed April 25.Most of the management team, supervisors and dealers have moved just south to reopen the 15-table Fortune Poker Room in Renton.
Las Vegas
The Wynn Summer Classic runs June 2-July 19. The staple of the series is a $400 event that starts at noon most weekdays during the series. This tournament has a $50K guarantee. Some days feature a $550 event with a $100K guarantee. Both are one-day tournaments.
There are several multi-starting flight events. The first starts June 15 with four starting flights. It has a $1,100 buy-in and $500K guarantee. A three-starting flight, $600 tournament starts July 5 and offers a $250K guarantee.
The $1,600 championship has two starting days beginning July 16 and will finish with Day 3 on July 19. The guarantee is $750K.
The $600 seniors event starts at 11 a.m. June 13 and offers a $100K guarantee. It will be completed the next day.
Pot-limit Omaha players get their chance on June 12 with a $400, one-day tournament offering a $25K guarantee.
There’s also a $400 Survivor on June 3. About 7 percent of the field will get $5K each and the total guarantee is $50K.
Meanwhile, the $250K Signature Weekend was completed April 24. James Agate of Las Vegas took home the $45K first-place prize. Eugene Tito of Los Angeles received $39K for second and Nicolas Egarhos of Apollo Beach, Fla., claimed $37K for third. There were nearly 600 entrants and a prize pool of almost $313K.
ARIA: The Aria Classic runs June 2-July 6. The highlight will be the return of the WPT500. The event will be completed before the WSOP main event gets under way.
After seven regular Day 1s beginning June 27 that start at 10 a.m., there will be two turbo Day 1s on July 4, one at 10 a.m. and one at 5 p.m.
In past years, the last few Day 1 flights have had overflow turnouts, so it’s recommended that players enter the earliest starting flight possible.
Everyone who survives Day 1 will be in the money. Day 2 resumes at 1 p.m. on July 5, with the final table being streamed on July 6. This huge event has a $1 million guarantee.
Before the WPT500 gets started, most days feature a $375 tournament at 11 a.m. Evenings will feature a $240 event at 7. The evening tournament will continue when the WPT500 starts as well.
On June 10, there’s a $450 PLO event at 11 a.m., and on June 25 a PLO/8 tournament will run at the same time.
A $450 Omaha/8 event runs June 18. The $450 seniors tournament is June 16 at 10 a.m. while the women have their day on July 6 with a $375 event at 11 a.m.
BELLAGIO: The Bellagio Cup is July 13-19. A $1,090 super-satellite for entry into the main event kicks things off at noon on July 13. The next day, the $10,400 tournament gets started. It will run five days, finishing on July 18.
Players may enter as late as 3:30 p.m. on Day 3. Turbo super-satellites for $1,100 run at 8 a.m. on July 14-16.
The other event during this series is a three-day $2,140 Seniors Summer Championship that begins on July 17.
HOLLYWOOD POKER OPEN: The season-ending championship event returns to the M Resort on June 23-26. The $2,500 main event has two starting flights beginning at 11 a.m. on June 23. The tournament plays three days. Satellites with a $235 buy-in run June 23-24. A $555 seniors championship will be June 25. Once again, 2003 WSOP main-event champion Chris Moneymaker is the event’s ambassador.
TREASURE ISLAND: The mid-Strip room has been running a Get Paid to Play promotion. Players who play 60 hours during the week get $599 cash. It’s $450 for 50 hours, $325 for 40 hours, $225 for 30 hours, $125 for 20 hours and $50 for 10 hours of live play.
Additionally, a $1K freeroll runs Sundays for the top 10 point-finishers each week. Points are earned for high hands, hours played and for playing in live games after tournaments.
The main cash game is $1-$3 NLHE with a $100 minimum, $500 maximum buy-in.
They also offer a $2-$5 game with a $200 min and no max. The $3-$6 limit game has a $60 min and has a maximum rake of $3. Players in all cash games get $2 an hour in comps.
High hands are $200 for straight flushes and $599 for royals. There’s a mini-bad-beat jackpot for aces full of 10s beaten by quads or better. The losing hand receives $1K, the winning hand gets $500 and all players who were dealt in the hand at the table receive $50.
The room runs four tournaments a day. At 11 a. m. and 7 p.m., it’s a $65 buy-in for 8K chips. At 2 p.m. and 10 p.m., it’s $75 for 12K chips. The 2 p.m. has a $500 guarantee and the 10 p.m. guarantees $1K.
The $65 version is Saturday nights (Sunday mornings) at 1 a.m. All tournaments have 20-minute levels.
There are two weekly tournament leaderboards. Points are reward for dollars won in each tournament. The top prize for the daytime leaderboard (the 11 a.m. and 2 p.m) is $250. For the two evening tournaments, it’s $500. Both leaderboards pay 10 places.
SOUTH POINT HOTEL AND CASINO: If you’re close to qualifying, there’s still time to get your 100 hours of play for the $155K June Freeroll. Qualifying ends May 31. First place pays $35K and the tournament pays 60 spots.
An interesting feature has been added to this event. If the tournament is played down to one player, instead of there being a chop, which has grown popular these days, the winner will get another $5K as a Last Man Standing bonus.
GOLDEN NUGGET: The Grand Series runs May 31-July 3, including multiple seniors events during Seniors Week, featuring a $10K buy-in Seniors Super High Roller on June 26 presented by Oklahoma Johnny Hale.
CLOSING: The poker room at downtown’s Plaza Casino closed. The room had five electronic tables.
— Check out Rob Solomon’s blog at robvegaspoker.blogspot.com.
Southern California
QUANTUM TOURNEYS: The Bicycle Casino’s trademarked and patented structure offering different buy-ins, multiple start times and varying starting stacks to create a large prize pool, is branching out to other Southern California poker rooms and into Las Vegas.Quantum tournaments allow players different options to enter a tournament.
April saw several tournaments in the SoCal area giving players a lot of options for play with larger prize pools and payouts.
Tony Zand of Oceanside took down the Pala event that ran April 7-10.This event had three buy-in options.April 7 was a $75 buy-in with a 10K stack and the top 10 percent advanced to Day 2. April 8-9 had two flights each day for a $125 buy-in with a 15K stack and the top 15 percent from each flight advanced to Day 2. April 10 was Day 2 and had a buy-in of $500 with a starting stack of 110K.This event attracted 275 entries for a prize pool of $32K. Zand qualified on Thursday for $75 and took home $4,500.
OCEAN’S 11: The San Diego Classic also used the Quantum format and drew 778 entries.This event featured three Day 1 options with two flights each day with a $240 buy-in for 15K chips.The top 15 percent from each of these flights advanced to Day 2.Some players bought in to Day 2 for $1,500 and received 100K chips.The prize pool grew to $199,464, almost doubling theestimated $100K guarantee.
Robert DeAgazio won the title and $23,813. He had some tough competition down the stretch, including 2012 WPT Legends of Poker champion Joshua Hale (fourth, $19,465).
This was only DeAgazio’s second live tournament result, having finished 32nd in a $100K guarantee at Ocean’s 11 in 2009.
BIKE: The Summer Series will run June 1-30.This event will offer 21 events with buy-ins $75-$1,900.
There will be a variety of games, including Omaha/8, HORSE and NLHE.Satellites will run throughout the series.For more information, go to bike.com.
HARRAH’S SOCAL: One lucky player will be going to Alaska aboard an Ante Up Poker Cruise out of Seattle. The Valley Center, Calif., casino is including one Ante Up Poker Cruise package for two for the Aug. 26 sailing as part of $10,000 in prizes to be given away during its Cash and Splash drawing on June 25. Players can earn drawing tickets all through June by playing in cash games.
Reno
PEPPERMILL RESORT SPA CASINO: Since Ante Up released this issue early, there may still be time for you to enter the Run it Up Reno event hosted by Jason Somerville. The series, which is May 24-30 and has a variety of events, sports a $565 main event with a $150K guarantee. Somerville also will host a poker seminar, so call the poker room for details.
