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November 4, 2013
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This is probably the best forum to put this in, hopefully.
I play a lot of live poker, and have only recently made the transition to playing more online than I do live. I have a certain love for live poker festivals that I just can't replace online.
That being said, I'm faced with some interesting problems in my local area. I live within 2 hours of two major cities, both of which have good poker communities. I also have a smaller poker community 15 minutes from my doorstep. My local casino runs 2 daily tournaments, with “high light” tournaments on the weekends. We have 2 100$ buy ins, 1 200$ buy in and 1 300$ buy in every month, all held on Saturdays. We have a decent variety of tournament styles through out the week with some beginner ones (rules are less strictly enforced, and coaching players is encouraged), as well as some KO events and team events.
If I want to travel 2 hours, I have access to literally 2000$ a week of buy ins, just in 100$+ tournaments. This creates a major problem of player pool dilution, and I feel it ruins what could be some great turnouts. The competing casino's hate each other, and the one tour we did have his covered in bad blood and broken bonds now. This plays a large reason in why I have turned to online.
So, I'm curious what your markets are like. Do you have tours in your area, or is it just a free for all? Are the tours successful? What do you look for when you are deciding to travel to a festival more than a 2 hour drive away? What is your live poker market like? What would you do to improve that market?
December 16, 2013
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I live in Jersey so I'm not too from Harrahs Chester (I'll always call it that), AC of course, but I'm closest to Parx. There's not much of a need for me to travel to play but will try to find a casino when I do.
For daily tourneys, my choice is Parx. They have decent structures with good turnouts. You can expect to be playing for about $3500 up top during there regular nightly ones. They have a good variety of games. Ironicly, the only structure I don't like of their's is there Saturday deep stack. I feel that structure is too fast for an advertised deep stack.
Chester's daily tourneys are usually too low a turnout for me plus I'm going to Parx if playing a nightly.
But Chester has more special events and tourneys. At least every other month there is a special series that brings in a bigger field and bigger pays. The structures are pretty good but sometimes can go much longer than a tournament that size should.
Parx has the Big Stax series which is an unlimited re-entry series with large fields and therefore large prize pools. I usually don't get to play them because my ful time job gets in the way. But if you do, bring enough cash for some extra buy-ins…others are.
As for AC, it seems that Showboat and Borgata were the only ones who would get a decent tourney size going. With Showboat closing, hopefully the new WSOP poker room in Bally's will have some good dailys and/or series events.
Of course, Borgata is the king of poker on the east coast. They will draw well during them with good structure and prize pools. Some of the large GTD tourney will get crazy, such as their usual first event with a large guarentee and affordable $560 buy-in. I've heard some professionals will shoot 6 or more bullets.
I play on line too and hope to take down this tourney I've been playing since I've started writing this. Its been 4 handed for like the last hour!
Hope this helps any members in the area or those of you planning on taking a trip to this region. Thanks for reading my long post.
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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Sadly here in NC we only have one casino. and it is 4.5 hours away. Good news is, we get two WSOP stops this year!
November 4, 2013
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I totally forgot I wrote this post, but it's interesting that I'm getting replies to it right now… I just wrapped up playing a festival that was put on by the promoter mentioned in the OP (covered with bad blood and broken bonds). The good news is they seem to have turned things around drastically in the last year. While they still have a long way to go, they are on the right track, with a sponsorship from IveyLeague and ca.pokernews.com and a real drive to get a consistent series/tour going. The event was an absolute success, with over 300 players showing up for a 1k ME. That may seem small to some american players, but for Western Canada it's absolutely HUGE. It doubled the gaurantee and is by far the biggest ME we have had in probably 5 years. I also finished 10th, but only because I make bad decisions at 10 handed FT's lol.
The problem however, is that competing casinos are holding their own events which bookend this one. Last week there was a series 3 hours away from this one, and this very next weekend another local casino is hosting another big series with over 4k worth of buy ins. It's absurd. We also have two DSPT events coming up soon, with one in Calgary one month and Edmonton the following month.
IIRC, when I originally posted this, I was starting to take a serious look at starting my own tour. I've realized now that I'm slightly late to the game, as CPT has recovered some and DSPT seems to have gotten a foot hold in the area. The main killing force was trying to deal with the provincial gaming commission. They are so ignorant that even the WPT has walked away from events here. They were supposed to be involved with the DSPT events, but the demands the gaming commission put forth are honestly absurd.
The good news is that the poker economy here is, like everything else in Western Canada, booming. I'll do my best to keep TPE updated on good tours/events we have in case anyone wants to travel up for some. This last series proved to be very whorthwhile for people to travel to, and I'm sure there are more coming up.
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