Pretty normal action is on tap in Atlantic City’s poker rooms this weekend. Well, that is if you think a $526,000 bad beat jackpot is normal.

The Taj Mahal’s bad beat jackpot stood at $526K at about 3pm Friday, which means the jackpot and the Taj poker room are poised to take over the city’s poker action for the Memorial Day Weekend unless it hits soon. With the Taj’s 70-table room and the holiday weekend, the jackpot could easily top the record bad beat jackpot of $553,000 set at Caesars in January by Monday.

If you don’t want to fight the madness, Bally’s bad beat was at $250,000 and the Borgata’s was just under $200,000 going into Friday. Regular tournament action is also scheduled for the city’s rooms.

With a little luck, one table of players in the city could have a spectacular holiday weekend.

Harrah’s World Series of Poker satellite event, which ran from May 12 through yesterday (May 27), seems to have been dominated by amateurs and burgeoning pros and drew low to moderate fields for most of its events, according to some partial results from Harrah’s.

And if you think about it, that makes perfect sense.

Annie Duke at Harrah's

With the World Series getting underway today at The Rio in Las Vegas, most pros have probably been in Vegas gearing up for the 57 event tournament. Today starts the The Poker Player’s Championship and  $1,000 buy-in No Limit event starts Saturday.

And one other factor can’t be ignored. The Taj Mahal’s bad beat jackpot has been climbing towards record heights all during the Harrah’s event, reaching $516,000 as of Thursday. Until it hits, The Taj is going to be the center of poker play in the resort.

Most of the action at the Harrah’s events drew respectable to small fields of 50 to 100 players. Event 4 was one of the earliest events with a high buy-in, a $1,000 + $100 Deepstack event. The event attracted 77 players, (so a $77,000 prize pool) with the winner Wazir Baksh taking home $20,913.

Event 11 featured a $2,000 + $150 Deep Stack with one of the highest buy-ins of the tournament. Judging from the payouts, we’re guessing it attracted about 40 players. The winner was Joseph Ressler of Md. with a cash of $36,531. The event included a seat at the WSOP main event July 5.

The casino has not released results for its main event, held Thursday, which offered up one WSOP main event seat for every 10 players in the field, and should have drawn the largest field.

Still, the tournament offered up some excitement in the city, especially when poker pro Annie Duke made a couple of appearances last weekend in the Harrah’s poker room. Harrah’s will still offer three more chances to win seats at the WSOP main event. Go here for details.

We’ve scored some tournament results out of the Borgata today and also a little more info on the upcoming Borgata Summer Poker Open, June 11 though 30.

First things first:

The Borgata’s $500,000 guaranteed Deep Stack tournament. which was held May 16-19 drew a field of 330 entrants for the $1,500 + $150 event. That means the guarantee had to kick in a little, (just 5K) and the prize pool was $500,000.

The winner was William Kakon of Aventura Fla. who takes home $140,694. Kakon has had good success at The Borgata, taking a first place at The Borgata Spring Open this year in a 6-hand max No Limit event. He’s closing in on $300,000 in tournament winnings.

At the Borgata’s Double Play tournament last weekend, 333 players entered the $330 + $50 tournament for a $99,900 prize pool. The tournament allowed for players busted on day 1A to buy-in again on day 1B.

The winner was Eliano Mesquita of Toms River who takes home about $28K.

As for the summer open, the entire open includes 46 events including satellites. The schedule for the 22 main events has been posted.

Here’s some info from The Borgata (after the jump):

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Even though the last event of Harrah’s World Series of Poker satellite meet is already underway today, there is still a few chances left through June to win a $10,000 seat at the WSOP main event in July.

Harrah’s will run “Last Chance” satellites for the WSOP starting tomorrow (May 28).

Coincidentally, the WSOP starts tomorrow with a five-day, Poker Player’s Championship. The main event, however, doesn’t begin until July 5^th.

Harrah’s will run $58 + $12 satellites daily for three final super satellites that award WSOP main event seats.

The daily satellites are at 4:15 pm (except June 5, 12 and 19).

The $512 + $44 super satellites, each awarding two $10,000 seats, will be held at 4:15 pm on three successive Saturdays June 5, 12 and 19 (which is why there are no daily satellites those days.)

This appears to be the absolute last shot at pulling a Chris Moneymaker-like run starting in A.C. this year.

The 500K bubble has been broke and the Taj Mahal’s bad beat jackpot stands at $505,000 as of about 4 pm. Wednesday.

That’s the highest bad beat jackpot the Taj has ever had and it’s closing in on the record of $553,000 set at Caesars in January.

So that’s pretty much the whole update: Taj Mahal — bad beat jackpot $505,000 —  long lines — see you there.

The Taj Mahal’s bad beat survived the weekend and was at $483,000 about 4pm Monday (May 24). But there was still some pretty impressive bad beat action over the weekend.

Greeley gets $114K

The Caesars bad beat hit Saturday for $229,607 when player Bryan Greeley saw quad sevens lose to quad nines. He collected $114,803. The “winner” of the hand made $57,401. The remaining eight players at the table got $7,100.

Meanwhile, Harrah’s Resort’s bad beat hit Friday, but the casino hasn’t released the info yet.

And just to keep things even, Bally’s bad beat was sitting at about $244,000 going into Monday and The Borgata’s bad beat was at about $166,000.

The Borgata is coming fast and furious with the poker tournaments these days. Take, for example, The Borgata Summer Poker Open, which begins June 11, or 10 days before summer begins.

The casino has just announced the schedule for the event, which leaves the casino with an “open” for each season of the year including the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Poker Open, held in September (which usually crosses over into the fall).

The tournament runs from June 11 to June 30 and includes 22 events. The championship event will be held June 25-29 and has a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool. Buy-in is $2,000 + $200. Another big events is a $1,000 + $90 event June 19.

There’s no word on early registration yet.

Here’s the schedule: (more…)

Annie Duke

While Annie Duke was making appearances at Harrah’s Resort this weekend, poker players around the country were watching her score a major win on NBC’s National Heads-up Poker Championship against Eric Seidel. The $500,000 win actually came in March, but was shown on NBC Sunday. Duke won the final hand when her pocket 9s held up against ace-deuce.

In our recent talk with Duke, she says the win was a bit of a vindication for her since she doesn’t play as many tournaments as other pros, instead focusing on her family and charity work.

“The thing is that I play so much less poker than my peers,” Duke says. “And while I understand what the balance of my life is, and why I focus on other things like my children and my charity work, sometimes I hear the whispers of ‘She’s not really a poker player,’ or ‘She’s not good and she hasn’t been playing.’

“So to be able to pick off that particular tournament — because the heads-up format takes a lot of skill, and it’s a really big tournament — It’s just nice because you sort of feel like, ‘So there. Look I can still play.”

She also pointed out that she recently had a 19^th place finish at a tournament at the Commerce Casino in California which attracted more than 700 players. She feels the two strong showings prove she’s still on her game.

“It says, look, I really am playing well,” she says. “And I deserve to win this and I do take the game seriously. Poker is still a centerpiece of my life and I do care whether I’m good at it.”

Not sure who’s saying she isn’t good, but we’re with you Annie.

Phil Ivey

In another headline, Phil Ivey — who we always like to keep track of because of his A.C. roots — now has a poker room named after him at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. If you want to play there, however, you better bring some cash. The Associated Press reports the room is a one-table, high-limit room.

“I come from nothing, and now I’m here… I never thought there would be a poker room named after me. I never thought poker would be televised … I was just a kid who had a passion for poker, and I’m very grateful for my life,” Ivey told PokerNews. “No one has any idea how much this means to me.”

The room was opened this weekend with a $1 million, invitation only freeroll tournament.

You think you get busy at your job? Just be thankful you don’t have to answer the phone at the Taj Mahal poker desk right now as the casino’s bad beat jackpot has hit $441,815 (as of about 3pm Friday, May 21).

“The phone is ringing every two minutes,” says Tom Gitto, poker room manager for the Taj. “’What’s the bad beat at?’ ‘Has it hit?’ ‘Can you make sure it doesn’t hit until we get there?’ As if we have any control over it. It’s been funny, but it’s also brought a lot of excitement into the room.

“This is the highest we’ve ever had the jackpot go,” says Gitto. “I think the next highest was the last one we had at about $314,000. So we haven’t been getting that many hits lately. I can tell you the room is going to be jumping this weekend and we should have all the tables going.”

Considering that the Taj has a 70-table room, that means either the jackpot will continue to grow fast, or hit really soon.

“We still have a lot of tables where we offer seven card stud,” Gitto says. “And we have a lot of Omaha tables. The bad beat is only on Texas Hold’em and those players, regular players, are all jumping to the Hold’em tables. At this rate, we may go all Hold’em.”

The minimum hand for the bad beat at the Taj is any four of a kind. The record for a bad beat jackpot in A.C. is $553,000 set at Caesars in January.

Also, bad beat jackpots at Caesars and Bally’s were at about $224,000 and $237,000 respectively going into Friday’s play.

Along with the bad beats, a couple of major tournaments are on tap for the weekend at Harrah’s and The Borgata (more after the jump). (more…)

Duke

We saved a little of our interview with Annie Duke for today just to celebrate her appearance tonight (May 21) and tomorrow in the Harrah’s poker room.

Duke, as we noted in the interview, spends a lot of time teaching poker and we asked her what are the most important points she tries to get across to players. The answer: position is everything and bluffing, well, just don’t fall in love with it.

“I think a lot of players don’t really value position properly,” says Duke.  “And particularly nowadays you see a lot of people play a lot of goofy hands right up front. I try to drive home just how big a disadvantage it is to be out of position on a poker hand.”

But Duke was much more pointed about players who over rely on bluffing.

“I talk about what bluffing is and when it’s appropriate,” she says. “Because I think right now bluffing is overused and generally badly executed. And that’s a really disastrous combination. If you do it too often and not well, that’s pretty bad.

“One of the things that people don’t realize is that the hands you choose to play are intricately linked to bluffing,” Duke continued. “Because when you choose to play a hand, you’re actually at that moment setting your bluffing frequency. Meaning that clearly the worse the hand, the more likely you’ll have to bluff to win.

“So if you choose to play a hand like seven, six of hearts, chances are on the flop, if you want to win that pot, you’re going to have to bluff most of the time. Where if you play pocket aces, you never have to bluff. So you have a lot of control over your bluffing frequency.

“You should only play bad hands in situations where you can bluff effectively,” she says. “Because that’s probably what you’re going to end up doing. But what people think about with those hands is making the straights and flushes, but you should actually be thinking about making nothing, because that’s what’s most likely to happen.”

Duke appears tonight in the Harrah’s room at 6pm with a Q&A session with the public scheduled for 8 pm. Saturday, Duke will be playing in the poker room at 11am. Her appearances are to promote the WSOP super satellite event at the casino going on through May 27.