Ray Long
posted 410 days ago
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The PokerNews Cup NLHE $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool tournament is being held between Thursday 29 June and Monday 03 July at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas NV.
In past years several Badger Poker players, most of whom did not win any packages, made the trip to Vegas to hang out, play some poker, and see the sights during the same week. This year, since we are no longer invited to BPO, we will be there a couple of weeks later than usual. This trip is a lot of fun and is even better if a lot of us are there together.
Ray will be in Vegas the Monday or Tuesday of that week and leaving on 04 or 05 July. Ray will be splitting time between playing poker and doing family events. Tim will be there for the Thursday through Monday for poker.
For those planning to travel, airfare will be the cheapest to buy in March and possibly into April. That is the usual trend for buying airline tickets. You can certainly find some great deals in some other time windows but those are usually pretty short windows and hard to hit. There are flights from Madison, Milwaukee, Rockford, and Chicago. Madison is probably the priciest and also hardest to get a direct flight from. The trade off for the other airports is cost of transportation and parking (if you leave a car). In years past most people have flown from airports other than Madison. Quick search shows the following options
*cheapest flight from Madison is United Airlines with one layover each way at $538. Not sure if that includes
checked bags or not.
*Rockford has crazy layovers but would be worth keeping tabs on
*Midway (Chicago) has round trip direct flights from $309. bags not included so make sure to add that to final cost if exploring this option more
*Milwaukee Southwest (book directly on their site, not listed on the budget aggregators) with one layover $328 roundtrip
Hotel rooms at the Golden Nugget for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights will average $100 per night PLUS @$30 per night resort fee AND 17% room tax. Tim will contact the hotel to see if we can get a room block with resort fee waived which will be easier if more people are going. The Plaza, a block down, usually has the cheapest rooms per night however my quick check shows the savings to only be about $5 per night. The Four Queens, right next door, does NOT charge a resort fee and room rates for those dates are currently advertised at @$60 per night. That is about $450 total for the four nights. I believe Binions, across the street, is owned by the same people and also does not charge a resort fee. There are also hotels off the tourist strips that will not have resort fees but may or may not be “nice”.
Here is how the tournament is structured. Entry is $1100 and I am not sure if that includes extras such as dealer tip etc. For players that won a package Badger Poker will cover any extras to the entry fee.
There are three Day 1 slots for this tournament. They are on three separate days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Players on each of those days will play down to the cut line. I don't know what that cut line will be but I am guessing around 30%. You can play on all three of those days but each day will cost you a separate entry fee.
Day 2 is on Sunday where all the players that made the cut on Day 1 will play as one group until the final table is reached. You can only play on Day 2 if you made the cut on Day 1, you cannot buy into Day 2.
Day 3 is Monday and will be the Final Table. Play ends when someone wins. Day 3 has a 2pm start time.
There is also some sort of mystery bounty aspect to this tournament and I know nothing about it or how it works. My guess is that certain seats will have a bounty attached and you won't know until you knock them out and get awarded your bounty. There are several other ways to run bountys so we will find out when we get there.
The total prize pool for the entire tournament is $1,000,000. Actual prize breakdowns won't be available until the start of Day 2 but with that prize pool the final table payouts should be significant.
For those traveling there are a few different ways to approach it. You could come a couple of days early to sight see and maybe play in a smaller tournament or two to warm up for the big one and leave on Tuesday in case you make the final table. You can come on Saturday morning and leave on Monday unless you make the final table. In that scenario you need to adjust your flight and add a hotel room somewhere but will have made enough prize money to not care about that. Or, the most common in years past, come on Thursday. Play Day 1 on Friday or Saturday, and fly out on Monday unless you make the final table and need to change your plans. You can hedge a little and make your flight out on Monday at night so you can play and still fly out on time.
If you are thinking about going please let us know ASAP. No obligation but the sooner we get an idea of how many people want to go the sooner we can explore room rate options and coordinate our time together. Again, if you know you are going for sure think about making your travel arrangements sooner than later to get the best deals and rates.
Let us know if you have any questions about the tournament, travel arrangements, or Vegas in general. Ray in particular spends quite a bit of time in Vegas and knows the area pretty well.
We hope to have a good group taking the trop this year and look forward to hanging out in Vegas with you.
Cheers!
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