The Borgata has announced the satellite and secondary tournament schedule for the Borgata Spring Open,  April 13-29. Satellites for the April 24 $2,500 + $200 spring open championship event begin April 21.

You can get the main event schedule here.

It’s been pretty much business as usual this week in the city’s poker rooms, but we do have a little slot news to report.

The folks at the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza have been busy updating slot machines at the casino and should have 700 new machines in place by tomorrow, March 31.

And continuing one of the hottest trends in Atlantic City slots, the majority of them will be penny slots.

Here’s the rundown from Trump:

The majority of the games, such as, Water Dragons, Majestic Wings and Jewels of India are multi-denominational penny games that can range from 1 to 300 pennies per pull.  In addition to the penny games, there will be many quarter games, such as, Wine & Roses, Lucky 7 Bar and Princess Diamonds.

Trump Taj Mahal’s 167,000 square-foot Casino floor will be host to 488 of the new slots.  Trump Plaza’s 86,923 square-foot Casino floor will be host to 220 of the new slots.

We were a little tough on Harrah’s Resort and the World Series of Poker when the casino held a WSOP regional, $10,000 buy-in championship drew only 136 players in December. But that turn out actually wasn’t that bad.

The poker room at Harrah's Rincon

Well, not if you look at the turnout for the last regional championship of the year at Harrah’s Rincon near Sand Diego. Day one of the event drew only 91 players Sunday. Some late registration could push the number closer to 100, but clearly these big buy-in tournaments are not packing the casinos that offer them.

The highest turnout for a Regional was 226 players in Chicago in October.

Still, some big names are in the mix at Harrah’s Rincon as former WSOP Main Event champions Carlos Mortensen, Jerry Yang and Phil Hellmuth were all in action. The chip leader was Ali Eslami with 128,500 in chips after Sunday.

And in another story, how much would you pay for a nice poker set?  How about $7 million?

Dying for billionaire playboys

We found this report of what may be the most expensive poker set ever with 384 chips made of 18 karat gold and jewel encrusted. That’s diamonds for white chips, sapphires for blue chips, rubies for red chips, black diamonds for black chips and emeralds for green chips.

And just to pump up the price, each chip is embedded with stingray skin.

The poker set contains approximately 22,364 stones, with 1,012 karats and 12.5 kilos of white gold.

And here’s a quote from the British designer, Max Parker.

‘This is not something your ordinary poker player will be able to afford and is aimed at the billionaire playboys.”

Well, duh.

The set retails for $4.4 million English pounds and Parker says he’s already gotten a few interested calls.

Carmen Electra

After the massive bad beat jackpots of the week just passed, with $1.2 million given out over four days (Sat. to Tue) as three bad beat hit, things should be pretty quiet outside of regular tournament action this weekend.

Still, the Caesars combined bad beat jackpot is starting to get into the hittable range. It started the day at $337,668.26 with quad eights at the minimum. While that’s a pretty high minimum, remember all three bad beat jackpots that just hit had higher losing/winning hands than quad eights.

The Taj Mahal’s bad beat is at $185,936 after hitting for $668K last Sunday (March 20). The Borgata’s bad beat was at $91,466 after hitting for $252K Saturday (March 19) and the Trop’s bad beat was at $120,477 after hitting for $295K Tuesday (March 23).

The Tropicana is also introducing its new “38 Special” bad beat jackpot this weekend.

Nothing would top the week off like a hit on Caesars jackpot this weekend.

And our pic this week is the lovely Carmen Electra, who for some reason is in a Playboy bunny costume, a choice we generally support.

Good luck grinders.

Wynn

Casino mogul Steve Wynn has thrown in with online poker super site PokerStars to push for legalizing online gambling in the U.S. If successful, the two companies will form a new online site.

Read our story here.

Our hats are off to the Cockeysville Patch, which scored a great interview with amateur poker player Walter Alexander Ayers, who scored the winning hand on Sunday’s monster bad beat jackpot hit at the Taj Mahal.

Ayers (front)

Ayers royal flush sent down Jay R. Marlapudi’s quad kings, finally hitting the $668,141 jackpot on Sunday. Ayers took home 25 percent of the jackpot or $167,035.25.

Ayers, of Cockeysville Md. (which until now we thought was a made up name) tells the paper (in an apparent lunchtime interview judging from the clip) that the hit was the first time he’s ever made a royal flush and wipes out about $27,000 in losses over the last several years.

He also says something we suspected. If Marlapudi (who won $335,070.50) hadn’t slow played his quad kings on the turn with a $50 bet, Ayers would have folded. Instead, Ayers hit a 10 of hearts on the river and the rest was just money for everybody.

Anyway he tells it like only a poker player can in this clip. You can read the Cockeysville Patch story here.

News has come down of another big hit of a bad beat jackpot, this time at The Tropicana. The jackpot hit for $294,992.78 about 9:30pm Tuesday.

That means in a span of four days, Atlantic City’s bad beat jackpots have hit three times and paid out more than $1.2 million dollars to 25 players.

This hit was a classic quads losing to quads and made the Trop’s quad eights minimum.

Michael Gendal of Coram NY hit quad nines at a $1/$2 No Limit table. A player wishing to remain anonymous (try that with the IRS, pal) hit quad jacks.

Gendal wins $117,997.78 while anonymous boy wins $58,998.58. Six remaining players won $16,856 each.

The about $295K bad beat was pretty high for the 35-table room at the Trop. With hits at The Borgata, The Taj and now the Trop, the Caesars combined bad beat could be next. It’s at $327,633 with four eights as the minimum.

Gendal and another big check

The Tropicana will introduce a new twist on bad beat jackpots this Friday which it’s calling the “38 Special.”

Basically it works like this.

If a player is dealt a three and an eight in the hole, they have a shot at the jackpot. If another three and an eight come out, giving them two pair, they’re in it. If their two pair goes down to quads, they win the jackpot.

The jackpot is split 70 percent, 30 percent between the two players.

Both hole cards must be in play for the hand winner, making it possible to win without a pocket pair. If a player matches three on the board, he or she must also hold the best kicker, or basically be able to beat the board’s kicker.

Ok, sounds like a long shot, but according to Bruce Pearlman, poker manager at the Trop, he’s just trying to pump some energy into the bad beat scene.

“I actually saw this at a small place in California years ago, so its been around,” says Pearlman. “What I’m trying to do is to liven up the bad beats. I think things have gotten a little stale.”

The vig for the 38 Special bad beat will come from the regular bad beat take, at about 10 percent. The opening jackpot will be $1,000.

“We won’t be taking anymore money out of the room,” he says. “You know, we’ll monitor this and see how it’s playing out. The point is to do something new and hopefully exciting.”

Of course, part of the idea is to make one of the worst starting hands more playable and hopefully fun. But Pearlman did acknowledge that the three, eight combo leads to a much better name than the “27 special.”

By the way, there’s no actual connection between this jackpot and the southern rock group 38 Special. We just like this album cover.

It was a bad beat bonanza in Atlantic City this weekend as the Borgata also saw its full bad beat jackpot hit in a wild hand early Saturday morning.

Of course the other big hit came at the Taj.

Still, the Borgata bad beat paid $252,680 in a battle of straight flushes.

Bad beat bonanza hits A.C.

In a $1,$2, No Limit game, Ronald Shatilla of Hague NY, saw an eight-high straight flush lose to a 10-high straight flush in a classic case of an open ended straight hitting on the wrong side. His consolation; he wins $101,071.

The winner of the hand was a local, Nicholas Marzelli of Northfield, who wins $50,535.

Shatilla played a four, five, suited clubs (God only knows why) while Marzelli held nine, 10 suited clubs.

You can guess the flop right away can’t you? It came eight, seven, six of clubs.

We can only imagine the betting from there, but it was probably pretty intense, even for a $1,$2 game.

Six other players at the table won $16,845. The Borgata splits the jackpot 40 percent for the bad winner/loser, 20 percent for the hand winner and a pretty generous 40 percent for the remaining players.

One of the reasons the Borgata never seems to make a run at really high jackpots like we saw at the Taj can be traced to simple luck. The Borgata hits some version of its jackpots (its small jackpot, minimum deuces to nines, pays 25 percent of the jackpot) every 11 days on average.

The Taj Mahal bad beat jackpot hit at 2:40pm Sunday, just shy of setting a new record, but still paid a 25-year-old Pa. man an amazing $335,070.50.

The  jackpot hit for $668,141, about $4,000 less than the record $672,115 set in June.

Still we doubt Jay R. Marlapudi, of Trevose Pa. cares much about the record as he takes home the second biggest bad beat jackpot in the city’s history, and probably anywhere.

Walter Alexander Ayers, of Cockeysville Md, was the hand winner and received $167,035.25. The seven remaining players at the table split the remaining  $167,035.25, good for $23,862.18 each.

The hit came on a $1, $2, no limit game.

Marlapudi had pocket kings on the hand and it looks like Ayers had jack, queen, both hearts.

The flop came Kh, Ah, 6s, leaving Ayers on the draw and Marlapudi with three kings. In a $1, $2, game, Marlapudi clearly couldn’t chase Ayers out as he hit a king of spades on the turn. The river was a 10 of hearts, making Ayers’ royal and both players rich men.

The Taj bad beat jackpot is back down to $172,000 today.

Marlapudi (left) and the Taj's Tom Gitto with the big check