Here’s a quick hit that should bring some players up from the D.C. area tomorrow (Dec. 8). It’s called the Junkies Poker Open; a biannual tournament put on by radio station 106.7 The Fan in the Washington D.C. area.

There’s a bunch of sports jocks on the station that call themselves the sports junkies, so apparently smoking rock isn’t involved.

Anyway, the Borgata says the tournament is open to anyone, though there are invited guests. It’s a $260 + $40 No Limit tournament. The starting stack is 10K with 25-minute levels and antes kicking in at level 4. It doesn’t look like there are re-buys.

You can actually register tonight starting at 8pm or tomorrow morning.

Starting time is 10am.

The WSOP Circuit events at Harrah’s Resort have been putting up some pretty good numbers for the early tournaments in a kind of sneaky fashion.

The opening event of the circuit seemed to be off by a lot from a record 1,250 players in 2010’s opener, but as we cover in Poker Lowdown this week, the attendance for the circuit’s second event was up by the same amount.

So that kind of squares things.

The next three events that followed drew big, if not spectacular, fields and some decent prize pools.

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The World Series of Poker circuit events at Harrah’s Resorts this weekend didn’t set any records for attendance, but still had some pretty strong turnouts and some decent prize pools.

And maybe that’s good enough. Or at least, it will have to be.

As much as we’d like to see Atlantic City as a premiere stop on the WSOP circuit as The Borgata Open is on the World Poker Tour, at least the Harrah’s event is still putting up pretty solid numbers and respectable prize pools.

The opening event of the Circuit tournament was a $300 + $45 No Limit tournament that pulled in 704 players on a Thursday in December. But as we’ve noted before, last year’s opener (on a Saturday) drew 1,250.

The winner was Richard Smith of Warrenton Va., who has apparently taken down his first major cash. The 22-year-old wins $41,995.

And he got a little lucky in defeating runner up John Johnston in heads-up play when his A-6 topped Johnston’s opponent’s A-J on the final hand.  A six on the turn gave Smith a pair of sixes and the title. Johnston wins $25,987.

The second event of the circuit was another $300 + $45 No Limit Tournament that had a double play re-entry on Friday and Saturday. This event brought in 888 players with rebuys and a $258,408 prize pool.

The winner was Jeffrey Gurfinkel of Hallendale Beach Fla., who takes homes $50,446.  Gurfinkel is originally from Brooklyn and has only ever cashed at Borgata events in the past.

His biggest cash, however, comes at Harrah’s, where he reportedly had a major chip lead throughout the final table and was never seriously challenged for the win.

So while this event isn’t coming close to challenging The Horseshoe Hammond (near Chicago) for the top circuit stop on the tour, at least there’s some pretty good action going on.

Those sneaky folks at The Showboat have scheduled a House of Blues Poker Open for the holiday weekend, Nov. 25-27.

The open features seven tournaments overall with a total of $50,000 in prize pool guarantees in three of them

It’s also hosted by the casino’s bombshell calendar models, which is always a nice touch.

Here’s the schedule:

It was a busy weekend at The Borgata Fall Open, which started its main championship event Sunday.

More on that later.

First off,  Alex Queen of Bethlehem Pa. won the open’s heads-up championship, beating Darren Elias of Philadelphia.

Queen wins $29,098, bringing his total tournament winnings to just under $625,000.

The win comes close behind a $111,000 cash at this year’s World Series of Poker in a $1,500 buy-in event. Of course, his biggest cash was a first at the Borgata’s Spring Open championship in 2010, good for $355,000.

Elias, wins $14,450.

Olivier Busquet, winner of the 2009 Borgata Open championship, and Randy Feder of Plainview NY, were the other quarter-finalists,winning $7,275 each.

There were 50 entries into the $1,500 Heads-up tournament.

Saturday, a $1,000 No Limit tournament, one of the highest buy-ins besides the championship event, attracted 260 players.

The winner was Avraham Lipman, who apparently trekked out from his job at the University of Ohio to take his second big tournament cash. He wins $70,614.

As for the $2,500 championship event, Day 1A Sunday produced 230 entries. Day 1B is today for the Double Play tournament and usually brings in more players than a Sunday start.

The Day 1A chip leader is Andrew Interdonato with 233,775, but hanging in third is Queen, fresh off his heads-up win. Queen has about 171K in chips.

The funny thing about poker opens is that you never know when a big crowd is just going to suddenly show up for an event.

Grau

Take event 12 of the Borgata Open, a seemingly innocuous $200 + $30, NLH event on the schedule that was played Wednesday. Lo and behold, the tournament drew 963 players.

The lower buy-in certainly allowed for a few more re-buys (which went to level 8), but that number almost matches the 970 that turned out for the Open’s kick-off event (also on a Wednesday).

The tournament drew a $192,600 total buy-in an paid its winner, Edward Grau of Middle River Md. $42,044.

The Borgata reports that the tournament, which had registration lines out the door, was so popular they had to split play between the signature room and poker room.

It’s probably a sign of the economic times, but it looks like low buy-ins are attracting the most attention at the open.

The Borgata always seems to have a charmed existence and once again there’s  a perfect synergy going on in its poker room. Not only is the Borgata Fall Poker Open going on, the casino also has the highest bad beat jackpot in the city at $397,000.

That’s crowding both tournament tables and cash games.

You might remember that this also happened, well sort of, during the Borgata Open in September. During that open the casino’s bad beat jackpot climbed to $465,000 before hitting in the first week of play. That was a record jackpot for the Borgata, but at the time, The Tropicana’s bad beat jackpot was higher.

Of course, the Borgata’s jackpot frequently gets clipped by small bad beat hits (minimum quad deuces to quad nines), which lop of $50K, but still, you have to take notice when a jackpot hits the $400K mark.

Meanwhile, The Tropicana’s bad beat jackpot has topped $300K at $301,644. The Caesars Combined bad beat jackpot is at $151,921 and the Taj Mahal’s bad beat jackpot is at $140,456.

Btw, our pic this week comes for our story on the Showboat’s HOB Party Pit.

As for the Borgata Open, here’s some of the action for Saturday and Sunday. You can get the secondary tournament schedule here.

Purple Chip Bounty
No Limit Hold’em (Re-Entry)
Day 1 Sat. 11/12 11am
Day 2 Sun. 11/13 Noon
$500 + $60 + $500

Deep Stack Semi-Turbo
No Limit Hold’em (Re-Entry)
Sun 11/13 11am

$260 + $40

Ladies No Limit Hold’em

Sun 11/13 noon

$200 +$30

The inaugural Borgata Fall Open seems to be off to a healthy start as early reports have today’s opening event attracting more than 950 players as re-buys (through level six) have ended.

Play begins at The Borgata

That’s no record setter to be sure, but not at all bad for a new event.

Plus, 950 buy-ins to the $400 + $50 Hold’em tournament easily covers the casino’s $200,000 guarantee for the event. The total buy-in should be about $380K.

There are also two other events on today’s schedule, a $200 + $30 survivor event at 4pm and a $150 + $30 No Limit event at 7pm.

The Borgata has also posted some unusual discounts for players from 20 percent off Starbucks to $20 haircuts. Hey, every little bit counts.

Check it out here.

Caesars Entertainment has released the schedule for the World Series of Poker Circuit event to be held Dec. 1-12 at Harrah’s Resort.

Missing from the schedule is the high stakes, $9,700 buy-in regional championship held at last year’s event (won by Chris Bell). That high buy-in led to low turnouts at the four regionals held last year (only 136 at the Harrah’s event), so the WSOP discontinued them.

There are 12 “main” events on the schedule, which award WSOP circuit rings, and plenty of satellites and secondary “non-ring” events.

The three-day championship event will be held starting Dec. 10. It carries a $1,500 + $100 buy-in.

Satellites for the championship event start immediately on Dec. 1.

Here’s the schedule:

We’ve already covered the massive bad beat jackpot action in Atlantic City lately, but there’s still some tournament action this weekend thanks to The Borgata.

Sunday, Oct. 16, starts a major tournament event at the casino, a $300,000 guaranteed prize pool, Double Play event that starts Sunday.

The event is a $1,500 + $150 No Limit event with Day 1A Sunday and Day 1B Monday. Both start at 11am.  As always, a Double Play means players can buy-in on both opening days, even if they wash out Sunday.

There are also two satellites for the event this weekend.

The $330 + $50 No Limit games are at 4pm Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Money is flying out the door down around here grinders. Take advantage.