Here are a couple of quick items that need finishing up.

Our Goodbye Girl

The World Series of Poker Circuit Events at Harrah’s Resort championship event, a $1,500 + $100 No Limit tournament played Dec. 10, drew 618 entries, the most ever for Harrah’s for the circuit championship in the eight years the casino has been holding the event.

That’s up 75 percent over last year’s main event, which drew 352 players.

The 2011 winner was amateur Taun Phan, of Vienna, Va., who takes home $188,830.

The Borgata’s Saturday series, a $350 + $50 No Limit game with a $100,000 prize-pool guarantee, that was also played Dec. 10, actually outdrew the circuit championship with 656 players and a total buy-in of $229,600.

The winner was another amateur, Lok Chhantyal, of Harrisburg, Pa., who wins $53,472.

And that’s about it for The Real Deal.

It’s been fun while it lasted (and a little frustrating dealing with tight-lipped casino public relations people), but I hope I helped some grinders enjoy their A.C. experience a little more.

I know it’s a game of skill, but I wish you all good luck. It never hurts.

The Poker Atlas will probably keep functioning, but as for The Real Deal, well, this is the end.

Some readers of this blog have probably asked, “does this guy even play poker?” more than a few times. OK, probably all of the readers have asked it at some point.

Well, yes, thank you every much, I do play. Not well, but I play.

This week I checked out the action at the Borgata’s new bounty tournaments, which have put an interesting twist on tournament play at the casino. You can read the recap here.

The ultimate lesson. Watch out for guys  who wear hoodies in July.

The Borgata has scheduled a couple of big tournament events this month, which should spice up the middle of July.

First comes a $100,000 guaranteed Saturday Series tournament on July 16. The Saturday series events are run in months when the casino does not offer one of its seasonal opens, so you can expect one in August as well.

The $350 + $50 tournament starts players with 15K in chips. The one-day tournament starts at 11am.

The next day, Sunday July 17, continuing to July 20, The Borgata combines three of its most popular gimmicks into one tournament.

In short, the tournament is a Deepstack, Double Play, Bounty tournament.

The buy-in is $1,000 + $90 + $100 (the bounty). The prize pool is guaranteed at $250,000. (more…)

We haven’t done much whining since Gov. Christie vetoed New Jersey’s first attempt at instituting online gaming. Mostly, it’s because we never thought the bill could circumvent federal restrictions on online gaming.

But more importantly, we like live action and tend to stick to the news from the city’s poker rooms, where actual people sit at a table and, you know, look at each other.

Still, there’s no denying that people love online poker, but this story in the New York Times about poker bots might make you rethink that position. There’s a lot to be said for watching your opponent breathe.

Bots, or automated programs that play poker, don’t usually work well and may not be destroying online poker yet. But think for a second. Have you ever seen technology get less effective over time?

What better way to kick off and update of the city’s bad beat jackpots than with the tale of a hit? The Borgata saw its junior bad beat jackpot hit early Wednesday for $51,055.

Playmate Shannon James will appear at the Trop Poker Room Saturday.

Jeong Yoon of San Antonio Texas was sitting on pocket deuces while James Sparacio of Moorestown had pocket eights. Both hit quads.

Yoong took home $20,423 and Sparacio $10,213. The remaining seven players took home $2,917. The hit came about 1:20am.

The casino’s full jackpot (with quad 10s the minimum) is now at about $166,000. The small bad beat (quad deuces the minimum) pays about 25 percent of the jackpot.

There’s also a burgeoning monster jackpot brewing at The Taj Mahal, which has reached about $364,000. That’s pretty good considering that the Taj still plays by the traditional rules, with quad deuces as the minimum.

If it gets through the weekend, we could have another bad beat-zilla on our hands.

Playmate Laurie Fetter will be there too.

The Caesar’s Entertainment combined bad beat is at about $242,000 and the Tropicana’s bad beat was approaching $220,000.

And it’s worth mentioning that the Tropicana will have a special appearance by Playboy Playmates Shannon James and Laurie Fetter in the poker room at 7pm Saturday.

After that, there’s pretty normal action in the city through February.

That gives this blog a chance to take a much-needed break next week. The daily tournament listings will still be updated through the Poker Atlas, but the posts will be pretty scarce.

In the meantime, have a lucky Valentine’s Day (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

As the Borgata Poker Open starts up today, the casino seems to be in a giving mood if any poker players want to take a turn on the slots.

Sunday, two players hit slot jackpots worth more than $4 million combined.

And if you think slots suck, consider that one guy won more than $3 million on a penny slot. Yes, a penny slot.

“This is one of those cases where lightening struck twice for two of our customers on the same day and with the same type of machine,” said Joe Lupo, Borgata’s senior vice president of operations. “We couldn’t be happier for our winners. We’ve always said that Borgata is a lucky place to play. I’m sure that these two customers would readily agree.”

According to the casino, both machines were “Wheel of Fortune”® models, manufactured by IGT, and feature progressive jackpots that are linked to multiple properties.

The biggest jackpot came on a one-cent “Wheel of Fortune Special Edition” machine and paid $3,491,146.57 which ranks it among the biggest penny jackpots in Atlantic City. The last time that the one cent Wheel of Fortune progressive jackpot hit in Atlantic City was in May of 2008.

The second jackpot came a bit later on the same day on a 50-cent “Wheel of Fortune” machine and paid $700,161.82.

Both winners are from New York, and each chose to remain anonymous.

So luck is in the air at The Borgata.

The Real Deal just got realer thanks to our hooking up with The Poker Atlas, which lets us bring you up-to-date daily poker tournament info in the city.

Just look to the side of this blog’s main page, under the blog roll and some very informative advertising (we like the current ad so much we’ve run it three times) and you’ll find a list of the day’s poker tournaments in A.C.

The Poker Atlas sent us this as an introduction.

“The Poker Atlas is a comprehensive guide to legal brick and mortar poker rooms in North America. Our Atlantic City Poker pages feature poker tournament schedules, special events, maps and reviews.

Players can stay updated on Atlantic City Poker Tournaments via TPA’s main Atlantic City page http://www.thepokeratlas.com/city/atlantic-city/18/and their Twitter account http://twitter.com/NewJerseyPoker.

While that’s a bummer for people looking for non-legal “underground games,” it suits us fine and gives you more of the poker info you need from A.C. casinos.

So welcome Poker Atlas, looks like this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

There may be another reason than just trying to cut down on tells that has most poker player these days wearing sunglasses at poker tables. As many as eight out of ten players at the table could be stoned.

Photo by Mark Christopher

That’s the findings of a study conducted by researchers at The University of Florida and reported by Pokerroomreview.com. The study showed that as many as 80 percent of poker players use performance enhancing drugs while playing, which is about the same rate as 1990’s home run hitters.

And a third of those players said their drug of choice is marijuana.

Players said they used “cognitive and performance enhancing medications” in order to improve their focus and concentration, calm their nerves, stay awake and/or improve memory function.

The pot smoking seems to fall under the “calm the nerves” category, rather than the “eat a bag of M&Ms and take a nap” category.

One player was quoted as saying that “marijuana is by far the most safe and effective substance used to aid in poker performance …” while another admitted “I am a tilt monkey, then I smoke weed. I then stop being a tilt monkey.”

The researcher that the use of “marijuana and other substances allows players to better focus and concentrate on their game, giving them a competitive advantage.”

It also may explain why tableside food service in poker rooms is so popular.

Still this may not be as shocking as it seems. The list of substances the researchers say players are using includes caffeine, energy drinks, marijuana, alcohol, nicotine and cocaine. So popping a few Red Bulls gets you on the list.

And the study doesn’t seem to distinguish between players playing online or in real life poker rooms, though most of the respondents were found through Internet poker sites.

Pokerroomreview.com has the story (and is also where we found the very cool toking jack picture, courtesy of Mark Christopher).

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.