A leftover story from around Christmastime related to the Choctaw bus and an overall decline in U.S. gambling revenues …
I’ve been in Dallas for the holidays, and the other day — New Years Day, actually — I was riding with Sang northbound on Central Expressway (US 75) and saw this pokery transport vehicle, which I found very interesting:
It was a full-size tour bus, and was full of people as the Native American driver shuttled them (for free) across the river to that land of opportunity, El Norte Durant, Oklahoma. I just gotta wonder what Texas legislators think about the Choctaw bus, which offers daily trips not just to and from Dallas, but also Fort Worth … and on Thursdays has a special “bingo route” that picks people up in DeSoto, Garland, Plano, and McKinney.
Interesting charity event going on in Dallas this weekend … a $1,500+ buy-in with $1k going to the prize pool. The rest going toward medical expenses for internationally renowned Russian/American/Dallas artist Vladimir Gorsky, who is suffering from brain cancer. TJ Cloutier writes a little about him and the event here. Some of the other Vlad-loving pros supposed to attend include: Amir Vahedi, Tom McEvoy, Young Phan, Kido Pham, Jennicide, and Warren Karp.
The event takes place at the Westin City Center. Glad to see it. If they successfully pull off this event, it will be good to see charity poker getting back to what it could/should/used to be in Texas — though it does seem a little strange for a charity event to be going on in Dallas that doesn’t have anything to do with Pokerati or Clonie.
Fortunately, I will be able to follow the action on HoldEmRadio.com.
One other really interesting thing about this event: the support it’s getting from the Choctaw Nation. They’re running single-table satellites to this event 24/7 between now and then. And as a show of appreciation for helping out their friend Vlad, the pros slated to be in Dallas on Saturday will be in Oklahoma for Choctaw’s Friday night tourney, reportedly playing with bounties on their heads.
Click below to see the flyer and get more details about signing up:
Today’s the final day of the $3 million River tourney in the Winstar Territories. The $2,000+100 NLH event started six days ago with what would grow to more than 1,400 entries. A few less than 150 made it into the money and play today for the big money. Here are about 90 of the starters, and their starting chip counts:
(Thanks, Alicia, for sending this along!)
…Actually, I’m just the opposite. I went out middle, at level 6. Four PP’s (55,77,99,QQ). I hit one flop, never saw a turn all day, much less a river. Never played a loser through… until about 10 minutes ago. Never been so card dead. *cry,bitch,moan,walk*
Shawn Rice is nursing a short stack of about 7k, as we enter $400/$800+$75. We are at that pivotal point where all you can hear is “Seat Open on X”.
As I noted in a comment to a prior post, one player actually advanced with a single chip. That drive will suck. Another player advanced with ZERO, after coming in 2nd in a 3-way all-in. No word on whether he has to drive in to collect.
I still can’t get my hands on yesterday’s survivors. I’m packing it up and going home. The media table is now officially empty. (Again)
A couple hot poker topics this week have been, of course, WinStar, and Scotty Nguyen’s less than stellar behavior and etiquette in the $50k WSOP HORSE event, as seen on ESPN. Pauly (who actually watched this final table live) assures me a lot of this persona came in the editing — yeah, he was drunk and rude for awhile, but then he sobered up and played like a winner — and indeed, I remember thinking similarly as the day progressed … was rooting for Nguyen … definitely didn’t want a newbie like Michael DeMichele to win $50k Friggin’ HORSE! But after watching the episode(s) this week, I gotta say … was totally rooting for DeMichele, even though I knew he probably didn’t stand a chance.
Anyhow, point being … just wondering if a (bad) performance like Scotty’s could jeopardize his relationship with the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, where he has hosted the biggest events in North-North Texas prior to the current River tourney at WinStar. “I am like a god in Oklahoma,” he has said. “They have my picture on billboard.”
Not saying one incident will — but wondering if it might. Because after all, there was a reason they chose him back in the day … because everyone loves Scotty Nguyen, baby! But now that’s clearly not the case.
According to Craig’s list, the Winstar Thrusday chips are a hot property, as people are asking $3,000-$5,000 for the sold-out $2,100 seats. I’m curious as to how many of those folks are having any luck. Comments? Anybody? Personally, I’m not seeing any deals working and am thinking that there will be a lot of late comers who couldn’t flip their chip.
Thursday is starting up the TV crew is running about. I’ve requested Survivor updates for Wednesday and should have those later today. I would already have posted them, but the person with the goods told me that he didn’t want to walk over to the poker room and get it. He’s a nice enough guy, but when, oh when will Winstar figure out that there’s live “Beyond The Tent”. (Is that domain available?)
Updates to come.
While I hate to push down Dan’s post on the HardRock, here’s some video goodness from the Pokerati people who still give a damn about Texas Oklahoma.
Here’s the survivor data thus far. I’m pretty surprised that I don’t recognize more names than I do. One name that we’ll all know and didn’t make this leader list is that of Mr. Scott Clements, who enters the Saturday play-down with $68,000.
I’m not gonna be here long, but I’ll try to get a chipleader update and at least one interview. Like I’ve told the folks here, without more up-front coordination with online media, their coverage is going to be sparse, if anything. If I had brought my camera, I’d show you the lonely “press table”. But picture this: There’s one semi-handsome fellow seated there all by himself. …And I can shit in his pants. Cumon, Winstar!
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Despite negative reports about a too-fast blind structure and terrible dealers — from players who may or may not have been juiced with some residual Day 1-bustout tilt and therefore focusing on isolated incidents inherent to putting on any event that’s bigger than any other you’ve put on before — I couldn’t stand it … I just had to get in on the action. Sounds like too much fun going on at The River, and who better to buy a small piece of than Karridy? I like his chances. After all the last tourney he played with notably bad blind structures and dealers — he won!
He also apparently got the last spot available for Thursday, and if I learned anything from running Lodge tourneys, it’s that late-late entrants seem to have a disproportionately high percentage of Top 3 finishes. Seriously. Not sure why that is, but it’s true. I’ve seen it. You know, math …
Anyone got any updates from WinStar? So far 60 people have moved on … presumably 60. Yesterday’s field didn’t sell out — like 265ish runners or thereabouts. Not sure if they stuck with 10 percent of the field moving on (26 or 27 players) or went with the full 30 to keep Friday’s Saturday’s action at a nice, round 150 players fighting for the final table.
Surely some names we know and care about have advanced, right, along with some others that we don’t yet know we care about? I’ve reached out to my hookups at WinStar, but let’s just say they’re no Nolan Dalla … so info is hard to come by.
One of the guys playing The River today yesterday is/was ItsOverJonny — not sure how he’s doing or how anyone’s doing … don’t think they have phones yet in Oklahoma … but regardless, if you’re not reading IOJ, well I’m not gonna say you should be, because, hey, we’re all busy people. But think Gary Carson, only more bitter and jaded. Good stuff, as you could imagine.
Though Jonny did play in the big $2k event yesterday, he wasn’t exactly happy with the WinStar crew after playing in a $500 event — and he spells it out, plain as day, what beefs he has with their dealers. Though I suspect the WinStar may poo-poo his free-of-charge poker room consultation because who cares when you’re making so much damn money these days, I can attest that he definitely knows a thing or two about how good games are supposed to run, and just about any poker room management should wanna use his post as a litmus test for what their dealer crew should and shouldn’t do. Some highlights from his blog:
Jonny played in Winstar’s $500+50 today. 61 players. Same shitty Winstar structure. Dealers were fucking horrible, and between dealers fucking everything up, maddening noise from all directions, and idiot clowndick players, I was tilting beyond belief, even though I hadn’t hardly played a hand for a while at the time. Seriously – where do they get these retard dealers that they stick in the tournaments? It’s not like it’s a $60 nightly tournament – it was $550 – get some dealers that can run a table without making repeated stupid mistakes, and then giving me attitude when I correct them until they finally figured out that they had indeed made a mistake. Your job consists of the most basic of math, making a little change, and distribution of cards. How do you manage to fuck that up?
So what do you do after beating TJ Cloutier to win $230k? That’s not exactly lottery money, after all — especially after taxes — but it was enough to (kinda) change the life of Vik Vijay, the Oklahoma poker dealer who won the 2007 Red River Roundup (now called, more elegantly Oklahoma-y, The River) and then delivered on his post-victory promise to quit his job and move to Las Vegas with highly energized bankroll in hand. Since then:
hey dan -
yeah, im headed down to winstar next week to defend – ive got the last starting day – thursday the 21st. hopefully it will go well. the last year has been interesting – i moved to vegas and have mostly been playing. i worked at the venetian this summer, dealing poker for their summer tournament set, but they didnt keep any of us on for anything regular. the poker has been going well, but i really got to lay off the blackjack. other than that, life is pretty good.-vik vijay.
I think cards are already in the air for the pseudo-shootout River Tournament at WinStar in Oklahoma. Alas, I am not there … am still in Vegas as the first of five groups of 300 players play down to 30.
Though this is not yet confirmed, we think with 1,500, a $2,000 buy-in, and a guaranteed $3 million prize pool that this might-well be the biggest non-WSOP event at $2,000 or more in the history of ever. At a minimum, it’s the biggest event of the year for Texas poker — and Oklahoma poker, too, of course. Was hoping I’d be able to make it back to glorious Thackerville to bring you some WSOP-style coverage of this biggity poker hoedown, but it just doesn’t seem likely.
Last year’s runner-up TJ Cloutier starts today. I’m sure lots of other players we know and love are also there — in fact, if anyone has any updates, be sure to let us know. (Send me an email if you want me Ed to set you up to CSR from the felt/rail.)
Also, last I heard, today is sold out, but 140 seats overall remain. I gotta imagine they’ll fill up if the WinStar is still running single-table satellites … and I know at least two Dallas poker rooms are running sats, so …
Paul in Dallas sends along some info about the upcoming River Touranment in Winstar, Oklahoma. (OK, technically it’s Thackerville, but Winstar is what puts this border town on the map, so …)
As for the River tourney, I’ve been up several times during the months of “qualifying,” and it has been fairly impressive. More impressive is the price you can get for your seats, nearly full price. I won a single table satellite and was able to sell the chip on Craig’s List for $1900 (buyin is $2100). The rake they’ve been able to steal on many satellites has been most impressive- they have been running big tournaments each month ($400+40) for seats, which isn’t too obscene at 10%, but they have been been running $55 single table sat’s to those tournaments, 10 to a table, with winner taking a seat ($440 value) and the house keeping the other $110. And yet people keep playing them.
Not sure if you’ve been kept abreast of the Winstar goings-on, but they did start serving liquor during the summer, and it has changed weekend play considerably. Many tables running 24 hours from Thursday to Monday morning each week. Squishy soft.
Wow. Damn. I did not know. Go WinStar! Should be interesting to see how this $3 million tourney plays out. Would expect to see a virtual who’s who of Texas poker contending.
(Last year, you may recall, this event was called the Red River Roundup and had a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million, in which Vikram Vijay of Oklahoma defeated TJ Cloutier heads-up, making it seem a little bit like an old-fashioned version of the WSOP main event for both of them.)
@BJNemeth or perhaps ahead of his time? Thinking he might have a very different experience today.
Great crAAKKer post by @Grange95: http://t.co/KcaobMfP) I wish I could write like Michael. Maybe someday. #poker #onlinegaming
