The Taj Mahal should be the city’s poker room of choice this weekend as it offers up both a chance for a five-night stay in the Dominican Republic (with a major poker championship involved) and sees some bad beat mania take root.

Playboy Bunnies at the Trop

The casino’s bad beat jackpot was at $457,000 Friday, as once again the Taj shows amazing luck (or is it player’s bad luck?) in creating super-sized bad beats.

As we’ve said, the Taj still offers the traditional bad beat, with quad deuces as the minimum and 50 percent of the jackpot going to the bad beat winner/hand loser. The hand winner gets 25 per cent and the remaining players at the table get 25 percent.

Saturday, the Taj also offers up a satellite tournament that will award prize packages to attend the Puerta Plata Poker Championship at the American Casino in the Dominican Republic on March 23-27. The satellite will award seats at the $100,000 guaranteed prize pool, $1,100 + $150 main event as well as travel expenses, five nights accommodations and a chance to meet poker great T.J. Coutier.

Meanwhile, the Caesars combined jackpot sits at about $328,000 with the minimum hand down to four eights. The Borgata’s full jackpot, quad 10s or better, is at $131,000 with the smaller jackpot, quad deuces to quad nines, at $32,816. The Tropicana’s jackpot was over $240,000.

Speaking of the Trop, there are no scheduled Playboy bunny appearances as there was at the casino’s poker room a couple of weeks ago, but it’s always nice to reminisce.

With the Borgata Winter Open finishing up today, the city’s extra-curricular tournament action goes into a bit of a winter sleep until the WSOP Circuit returns to Caesars on March 2.

The Borgata's Holly

In the meantime, it’s just regular action and some occasional bad beat mania until then. And that includes this weekend.

Fortunately, The Taj Mahal may have a shot at creating some of that bad beat excitement as its jackpot has climbed to $326,000.

The Taj still does it the traditional way with 50 percent of the jackpot going to the bad beat winner/hand loser, 25 percent to the hand winner and 25 percent to the remaining players at the table. The minimum bad beat hand is set at four deuces.

Remember, the Taj is still the site of the city’s biggest ever bad beat jackpot, $672K, in June, so you never know.

The Borgata’s bad beat is at $180,000 while The Trop’s is at about $206,000. The Caesars Entertainment combined jackpot is at about $204,000, having hit last week.

And for today’s pic, we give you a fine example of diagonal photography from the Winter Open.

Enjoy.

No need to guess where the action is this weekend as The Borgata Winter Open continues.

The WPT's Melanie Iglesias

The open’s highest buy-in to date is set for Saturday (Jan. 22) with a $1,000 + $90 No Limit Hold’em two-day event starting at 11am. There’s also a $350 + $50 at noon Saturday.

Sunday, there’s a $400 + $50 Deepstack tournament at 11am and the open’s ladies tournament ($260 + $40) starts at noon.

Go here for the full schedule.

As for the bad beat jackpots, The Caesars combined bad beat had climbed up to about $300,000 Friday while the Taj Mahal bad beat is at a healthy $260,000. The trop was over $180,000 by midweek and The Borgata, which hit yesterday, sees its bad beat at about $129,000.

And we should point out again that we’ve added The Poker Atlas to the blog. Look to the right side of the Real Deal’s main page, under the blog roll and ads, and you’ll get an updated list of the day’s tournaments in the city. Go here for the weekend’s full schedule.

Good luck to all the grinders.

It’s a pretty normal tournament schedule in Atlantic City for a cold January weekend as we wait for The Borgata Winter Open to kickoff Jan. 19.

And coincidentally, it’s The Borgata that has the largest bad beat jackpot in the city right now after the Caesars combined jackpot hit for more than $400K Tuesday.

The Borgata’s bad beat is at about $274,000 for the full jackpot, which requires a minimum bad beat hand of quad 10s. The lower jackpot (quad deuces to nines minimum) as always is about 25 percent of the total, or about $58,500 going into Friday’s play.

The Borgata bad beat, for whatever reason, always seems to hit when the numbers get into the $200K range and the casino never seems to make a run at record jackpots.

Who knows? Maybe this one will last.

The Caesars combined bad beat jackpot is back to about $222,000 and the Taj Mahal was at about $203,000 as of Friday. The Tropicana was at $161,000 as of Thursday.

And this week’s shot is just to remind us of warmer days. Aloha.

As we say goodbye to 2010, it looks like there will be pretty normal poker tournament action in the city for the holiday weekend.

Only the Borgata is advertising a special New Year’s Eve tournament, a $200 + $30 buy-in Deepstack Turbo, No Limit Hold’em game that starts at 3pm.

The Taj Mahal also continues its satellites for the $10K main event of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure at the Atlantic Casino & Resort in the Bahamas Jan. 7-16.

$1,600 + $50 satellites are scheduled for noon Friday and Saturday.

Everything else seems to be on a regular schedule.

The Caesars Entertainment combined bad beat is starting to get hefty again and was sitting at about $380,000 Thursday. The Tropicana’s bad beat started the week at about $140,000 with the Taj Mahal at about $166,000 Thursday. The full Borgata bad beat jackpot (quad 10s minimum) was at about $238,000 with the lesser bad beat (quad deuces to quad nines) at about $60,000.

It’s been a great opening year for The Real Deal and thanks to everybody who found us (pretty amazing in itself) and stuck with us. In 2011, we only hope to expand our coverage and reports on A.C.’s poker and gambling scene.

Here’s to a Happy New Year.

Sunday marks the start of the World Series of Poker regional championship event, a $9,700 + $300 No Limit Hold’em tournament and the highlight of the circuit events at Harrah’s Resort. Start time is 11am.

The tournament is a four-day event, and as of now we’re saying the winner will be awarded a WSOP ring and a seat at the $1 million freeroll WSOP circuit national championship (there’s been some conflicting info on this, but now we’re 99 percent sure this a “ring” event).

The event will also be televised next year on VERSUS.

Here’s a rundown from the WSOP:

“The four-day tournament’s structure is one of the most optimized in poker, with 30,000 starting chips and 60-minute levels through the first day beginning with 25/50 blinds. 75 minute levels will be played through the remaining three days.

Players can late buy into the event through the end of the fifth level.”

Officilly, this is Event 10 of the WSOP meet. Event 9, a $300 buy-in tournament began today (Friday, Dec. 17), but smaller tournaments are scheduled throughout the weekend.

Go here for the full schedule.

The biggest event of The Borgata December mini-series, a $1,500 buy-in Deepstack event, got underway today, but tournaments are scheduled through Sunday. Go here for that schedule.

The Taj Mahal is offering satellites for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure tournament at the Atlantis Casino in the Bahamas in January. This weekend’s events are first step satellites for the main satellites later in the month. Go here for that schedule.

Finally, and almost forgotten in all this tournament mania, are the city’s bad beat jackpots.  The Caesars Entertainment combined jackpot — good at Harrah’s Resort, Caesars, Bally’s and Showboat —  was sitting at about $308,000 Friday. The Borgata’s full jackpot was at $255,163, (quad 10s of better) while the lesser jackpot (quad deuces to quad nines) was at $63,791 or about 25 percent of the full jackpot. The Tropicana’s bad beat is at $122,000 and the Taj Mahal comes in at $114,000.

Quick update on a bad beat hit at the Trop, which happened early today at 1:40am. We don’t have the hand rundown, but the jackpot had grown to $270,850, which is pretty high for the Trop’s room.

The losing/bad beat winning hand was paid $111,540, the winner of the hand got $55,770 and seven other players at the table were paid $15,934.

AJ Alexander

The Real Deal will be taking a bit of a holiday break (Happy Thanksgiving by the way) so a quick reminder that there is tournament action this weekend in Atlantic City.

The Showboat/House of Blues Open, hosted by Playboy playmates Lindsey Evans, A,J. Alexander and Francesca Frigo, will be held Friday through Saturday in the Orleans ballroom.

You can get the full schedule here.

As for the bad beats, The Tropicana’s bad beat has climbed to about $236,000, which is pretty impressive for the Trop. The Borgata’s bad beat is at $141,903 (quad 10s or better). The Harrah’s combined bad beat, which is now the Caesars Entertainment’s combined bad beat, is at about $175,000 and the Taj Mahal’s bad beat is listed at $20,000.

Now, for a drumstick.

This weekend in A.C. should be dominated by the championship event of the United States Poker Championship, which carries a $5,000 + $250 buy-in. At last report, the event had brought in 90 players (entry wasn’t closed, however), good for an about $450,000 prize pool.

Ok, it’s not a huge turnout, but the U.S.P.C. hasn’t really caught on this year and this event does carry a steep buy-in. And the city as a whole isn’t exactly on fire right now economically.

Still September’s $3,500 championship event at The Borgata drew in more than 1,000 players. Obviously, this year’s U.S.P.C. has been hurt by something and the low turnouts don’t bode well for the future of the independent tournament unless the Taj can pick up a major sponsor (The Borgata event was a World Poker Tour stop) and better TV coverage.

Still, the event has drawn in a couple of name pros.

Seen in the room were Eracles Panayiotou (final tabled Event 6 of this year’s USPC, and final tabled WPT Bellagio in July), Jamie Gold (2006 WSOP World Champion), Eugene Katchalov (2007 WPT Champion, $4.9 million on career poker tournament earnings), and Brock Parker (2009 WSOP double bracelet winner, $2.6 million in career poker tournament earnings).

And of course, as we said yesterday Internet poker star Daniel Cates was in the mix.

The event was scheduled for four days, but that seems unlikely now.

There are still events scheduled through the weekend.

Saturday has a $300 + $40 No Limit Hold’em tournament at 11:15am and Sunday has a $300 + $40 No Limit Seniors event at 11:15am and a $265 + $35 ladies event at 2:15pm.

Harrah's bad beat back to quad queens

As for the bad beats, it looks like the Harrah’s combined bad beat hit some time this week and has been reset to about $150,000. This is the third time the combined bad beat has hit, and for the second time, the high minimum hand (four 10s, most likely) didn’t stop the jackpot from hitting. The minimum should be back to quad queens.

We’ll pass along the details when we get them.

The Borgata’s bad beat was at $111,381, ($27,845 for the small bad beat) and The Taj Mahal was at $41,290.

That leaves the Tropicana’s bad beat as the highest in the city at $227,000.