BorgataPoker.com
The 2016 Borgata Winter Poker Open is just one week away and the excitement is mounting! The series is starting about a week later than in previous years and many players are chomping at the bit to hit the felt. This series is going to be a monster with $6.7 million in guarantees! The WPO series will take place in Borgata’s Event Center as usual, but this year ALL events will play out in the Event Center, rather than relocating to the Poker Room for the last few days.
Online registration is still available for all 22 Main Events. In addition, online qualifiers are currently running on BorgataPoker.com and they will continue through the end of January. Click here for more details.
On-site registration will be open Monday, January 18 from noon to midnight in the Borgata Poker Room. Starting Tuesday, January 19, on-site registration will move to the Event Center lobby and will be open daily from 8am to 12 midnight throughout the series.
During the Winter Poker Open, FOUR events will have live-streamed final tables:
Event 1: $500 + $60 Deep Stack NLH, $2 Million GTD; Final Table: Sunday, January 24, 12pm
Event 10: $400 + $50 Deep Stack NLH, $1 Million GTD; Final Table: Saturday, January 30, 4pm
Event 14: $2,000 + $150 Heads Up NLH; Final Rounds: Saturday, January 31, 12pm
Event 17: $3,300 + $200 Borgata / WPT Championship NLH; Final Table: Friday, February 5, 12pm
Tournament Director Tab Duchateau has already released the names of the commentators for the $2 Million GTD Event 1 final table. Michael Gagliano (@Gags30Poker), Tyler Patterson (@TylerPoker), and Joe Stapelton (@Stapes) will be handling the play-by-play and all three have lots of experience sharing their excellent poker insights from the booth. Anyone interested in providing commentary for the other finales should contact @TabDuchateau.
In addition to the events previously mentioned, there are 18 additional trophy events, including two $100,000 GTD Saturday Series events, two Pot Limit Omaha events, an Omaha/Stud High/Low event, both Ladies and Seniors events, a $1,000 buy-in Six Max NLH event with a $200,000 Guarantee, and a $1,000 buy-in Turbo NLH event. Both the Super Stack Elevator and 40 Big Blinds tournaments, which joined the Borgata Open series lineup in 2015, will take place during the Winter Open.
For the first time ever, this series will feature a Charity Series of Poker (CSOP) tournament as a trophy event (Event 16). The fund-raising tournament takes place Saturday, January 30, at 5pm. For more details on the charity and it’s mission, check out www.charityseriesofpoker.org.
Click here for the full main event schedule.
Live qualifiers kick off Tuesday, January 19th and run through the start of the Championship event. Click here for the schedule of live qualifiers and secondary cash events. Satellites, Survivors, and Bounty events will be running in the evenings alongside the main events with buy-ins ranging from $100+$20 up to $700+$50, giving players plenty of opportunities to get in the action.
All the information you need for this series can be reached online at WinterPokerOpen.TheBorgata.com. Live coverage of the 22 main events will appear here at WinterPokerOpen.Blog.TheBorgata.com, so bookmark this site for future reference. The Borgata blog team consisting of Will O’Connor (@WOCPoker), Steve Horton (@TropicalSteve), and myself (@Kaelaine), with cameo appearances by Matthew Clark (@mattclark345), will be bringing you all the action from the first “Shuffle Up and Deal!” to the final river card over this 18-day series.
Last year, Aaron Mermelstein came out on top of a field of 989 entrants in the WPO Championship event, taking home $712,305. Who will claim top honors this year? Stay tuned to the Winter Poker Open blog for all the news as we make our way through what should be a record-setting series!
Level 4 (100/200/25)
Total Entries: 300
Sunday’s are always action packed here in New Jersey, as BorgataPoker.com and partypokernj always end the week offering their biggest online guaranteed tournaments and this weekend, as the Garden State Super Series continues to ramp up, the guarantees are even bigger.
There will be three events running today, all with massive guarantees and professional poker player and Borgata regular Matt Stout has a message for everyone in or out of the WPT WPO Championship:
If u punt ur day 1a @WPT stack or have ur laptop u can deposit @ cage for #GSSS on https://t.co/MzNKdduPSY! $200/150k, $500/50k, $1k/75k etc.
— Matt Stout (@MattStoutPoker) January 25, 2015
While those “big” tournaments are running today, the rest of the series has buy-ins ranging from $5 to $1,000 and a full list of the entire GSSS II series schedule can be found HERE.
Level 8 (300/600)
Total Entries: 112
Players Remaining: 72
partypoker Team Pro Scott Baumstein grinds the GSSS and WPO Event 7
We mentioned earlier in this series how spoiled players were this month at the Borgata, as there is not only a superb “live” tournament line up, with over 20 main events guaranteeing just over $6,500,000 in prize money, another 20 side events, as well as the online Garden State Super Series II brought to players by BorgataPoker.com and partypokernj.
This allows players to grind on the felt during the day and on the screen at night, with most of the GSSS events starting after 6 PM.
But, this also allows players to “multi-table” if they are deep in an event playing into the night or playing an event like the PLO/NLH Six Max that started at 4 PM.
Many players in this field have laptops to the side of them at the table, playing multiple tournaments on the virtual felt, while grinding towards a Borgata Winter Poker Open title.
One player who is always grinding on partypoker.com is team pro Scott Baumstein, who came off a deep PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event run to get to the Borgata in time to fire a bullet in Day 1D of the $2,000,000 GTD Event 1, bagging up a top five stack heading into Day 2.
He parlayed that into a decent score and will look to make deep runs in all the tournaments he’s playing tonight, both online and here in the Event Center.
Level 33 (Blinds 120,000/240,000/30,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 12
Chip Average: 6,750,000
The following players have cashed in Event 1 of the 2015 Borgata Poker Open for $11,654:
13. Stanley Lee (West Hartford, CT)
14. Sergio Loureiro (Wayne, NJ)
15. Matthew Stout (Clifton, NJ)
Level 10 (Blinds 500/1,000/100)
Total Day 1D Entries: 1,505
The registration window is closed, and players that bust this flight from here on out will have their hopes of winning Event 1 and the live streamed final table dashed. The unofficial number of entries for this Day 1D flight alone was 1,505, bringing the total number of entries for the tournament up to 4,178. The top stack from todays earlier flight was that of Vinny Pahuja (372,000), but players are still chasing the Day 1A chip leader Michael Dobbs, who ended up putting 428,000 in the plastic.
There will be two more levels played before the final break of the night, with players then returning to finish out four levels before starting the bagging process.
Interested in playing a Borgata Winter Poker Open Event but don’t want to move from your couch? No problem!
$3 Million Guaranteed Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship Event Online Qualifiers
Date: January 12 – 25
Qualify your way into the $3 Million Guaranteed Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship Event happening at Borgata January 25 – 30, 2015.
1 Seat Guaranteed
(1 in 10 win entry into BWO Championship Step 2)
- Daily at 18:15 ET
*Winners will be auto-registered for that day’s BWO Championship Step 2 Qualifier
2 Seats Guaranteed
(1 in 10 win $375 entry into BWO Championship Step 3)
- Daily at 21:15 ET
*Winners will be auto-registered for the BWO Championship Step 3 Qualifier
3 Seats Guaranteed
(1 in 10 win $3500 entry into Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship)
- Sunday, January 18 at 17:15 ET
- Friday, January 23 at 18:15 ET
*Winners will receive entry into the Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship event
Be sure to check out a full list of qualifying events right here: https://poker.theborgata.com/tournaments/major-tournaments/winter-poker-open.html
Also running online this week is the return of the Garden State Super Series! The GSSS II will run parallel to the Borgata Winter Poker Open land-based tournament series, and features improved payout structures providing participants with a unique opportunity to maximize their poker experience between live and online tournament action.
Buy-ins for GSSS II events range from $5 up to $1,000 while providing players with the opportunity to take on the biggest fields to win more cash at all buy-in levels. Be sure to check out that full list of events right here: https://poker.theborgata.com/tournaments/major-tournaments/GSSS.html
Level 7 (250/500/50)
Total Entries: 1,150
Christopher Horter (Jamison, PA)
Sticking with the Poker Room Update theme for one more installment, we are featuring a few online players who have experienced live success over the last few Borgata Poker Opens.
First up, is Scott Blumstein (Morristown, NJ) who just missed out on the $1,000,000 GTD Event 10 live streamed Final Table during the September WPT BPO. That score was for just under $10,000 and Blumstein’s biggest live score to date, on top of many solid finishes in some of the biggest guaranteed online tournaments that the NJ sites have to offer.
Someone who is very familiar with those big online tournaments is Christopher Horter (Jamison, PA) who was just recently named New Jersey Online Player Of The Year, after a stellar 2014 on the virtual felt.
Hotter ended his “live” 2014 with the biggest score of his career on the tangible felt, as he finished as the runner up in the $100,000 GTD Event 8 during the Fall Poker Open, for just under $25,000.
With the GSSS running on both BorgataPoker.com and partypoker.com during the entirety of the Winter Poker Open, these two players and many others, will be players to watch as we expect to see plenty of big scores made, both live and online.
Before Day 1A of the $2,000,000 GTD opening Event 1 got underway, players were seen huddled around the informational booth, looking at not only the structure sheet for Event 1, but also at the complete Winter Poker Open schedule.
Players were pleasantly surprised to see some “new” events, like a $500 Bounty event, a semi-turbo event and a two day Shoot-Out event, added to the schedule on top of some Borgata “staples”, $100,000 GTD Saturday Series, the “Borgata Million” and of course, the $3,000,000 GTD WPT WPO Championship.
The schedule also includes multiple “mix game” events, including an Omaha 8B event, a HORSE event, a PLO/NLH mix event and a PLO H event.
With buy-ins ranging from $230 to $3,500, three “live streamed” Final Tables, a WPT Championship Event and over 40 tournaments throughout the series, there is truly something for everyone at the Winter Poker Open.
A full schedule of the main events can be found HERE.
A full schedule of qualifiers and side events can be found HERE.
On top of the “live” schedule, the GSSS II, on BorgataPoker.com, will run parallel to the Borgata Winter Poker Open land-based tournament series, and features improved payout structures providing participants with a unique opportunity to maximize their poker experience between live and online tournament action.
Buy-ins for the GSSS II events range from $5 to $1,000 and a full list of the entire GSSS II series schedule can be found HERE.
With the Winter Poker Open just a few days away, some players will be descending on the East Coast’s preeminent poker destination over the next few hours, with many getting in more than a day early to settle in before the two and a half week long series.
Well, the Borgata Poker Room and BorgataPoker.com has added an extra incentive for players to arrive early, as there are two live qualifiers to be held on Monday January 12th, for two of the biggest WPO events of the series, the $2,000,000 GTD opening Event 1 and the Winter Poker Open WPT Championship, as well as additional online qualifiers for WPO events.
The first online qualifier offered will start today at 5:15 PM, with players able to qualify for Event 1 for just $60. Two seats are guaranteed for the $2,000,0000 event.
Furthermore, “step” qualifiers will be running daily until the WPT Championship, with more information about all online qualifiers at BorgataPoker.com.
The first live qualifier, for Event 1, will start at 12 PM and will boast a $110 + $20 entry fee, meaning close to 1 in 5 players will qualify for the opening WPO event.
The next qualifier, for the WPO WPT Championship, will start at 4 PM and will sport a $350 + $50 entry fee, putting 1 in 10 players into the $3,000,000 GTD Championship event.
Information about both live qualifiers can be found HERE.
All of these qualifiers offer players a chance to play in two of the biggest WPO events for a fraction of the price, perhaps parlaying a small buy-in qualifier into a piece of a multi-milllion dollar prize pool.
With players traveling from all over the world to participate in the preeminent East Coast poker destination’s biggest event of the year, the Winter Poker Open, it is no surprise that BorgataPoker.com and partypoker.com are again hosting a Garden State Super Series to run hand-in-hand with the WPO.
After a massively successful GSSS during the Borgata Poker Open, held in September, New Jersey’s largest online poker series will return January 11-25th with sixty-nine main events featuring over $1,000,000 in guaranteed prize money.
The GSSS II will run parallel to the Borgata Winter Poker Open land-based tournament series, and features improved payout structures providing participants with a unique opportunity to maximize their poker experience between live and online tournament action.
Buy-ins for the GSSS II events range from $5 to $1,000 and a full list of the entire GSSS II series schedule can be found HERE.