The Borgata Poker Open hit the ground running Wednesday and has actually put two events in the books.

The main opening event, however, continues today. The $400 buy-in, No Limit Deepstack event is down to 110 players from an original 964. The event carries a $337,400 prize pool.

The chip leader (932,000 chips) going into today (Sept. 9) is Odette Claire Tremblay of Quebec, who pops up a lot at World Poker Tour and Borgata events. She’s got about $100,000 in career winnings.

According to The Borgata, Tremblay used a balance of good play and good fortune to knock out three players during the last level. All three times she held an ace to take large pots.

Dannenmann hangs on

Pro Steve Dannenmann also made it to Day 2. He’s 91^st in chips with $109,000.

“It was a long day” Dannenmann told the Borgata. “I didn’t have many hands, so it was a grind.”

The first event to finish up was an evening $150 + $30 No Limit Tournament that paid $6,766 to Michael Endress of Staten Island. The open is featuring these evening tournaments through the first half of its run. This one drew 155 players and a prize pool of $23,250.

There was also a survivor tournament Wednesday that paid 12 players $1,500 and one player $770. The survivor tournaments are also held daily until satellites for the open championship kick in Sept. 16.

Today’s events include Day 2 of the opener, a $200 + $30 Deepstack event at 11am, a $200 + $30 survivor tournament at 3pm and another $150 +$30 tournament at 7pm.

OK, we’re back from our Labor Day malaise with a rundown on the opening event of the Borgata Poker Open.

The open started with $350 + $50 No Limit Deepstack event which has drawn an impressive 964 entrants. That’s a prize pool of $337,400.

The winner will take home $73,638 and the tournament pays the top 82 finishers.

Some notables on hand include Steve Dannenmann and Dwyte Pilgrim.

Cards are in the air, the open is underway and all’s right with the world.

Atlantic City’s casino poker rooms, probably expecting a normally busy weekend for Labor Day, have no special tournament action scheduled this weekend.

Bad beats in the city are also pretty mellow. The combined Harrah’s bad beat was at about $150,000 going into Friday. The Borgata was sitting at about $140,000 for their high jackpot (quad 10s as the minimum bad beat hand), the Taj Mahal was at about $107,000 and The Trop comes in at about $77,000.

Of course, the big action will come next week when the Borgata Poker Open begins on Wednesday. The open features 21 major events, but the casino has also announced 32 other events including satellites and some survivor tournaments, most scheduled for evening hours.

Seems like a good time to post the schedule, so here it is.

And here’s wishing pocket aces for everyone and a Happy Labor Day.

The Borgata once again leads the way in A.C.’s poker rooms this weekend with a $500 + $60 entry DeepStack Double Play tournament beginning Sunday, (Aug. 22) and wrapping up Tuesday (Aug. 24).

Double Play Tournaments split day one into Day 1A Sunday and Day 1B Monday. Players that wash out in Day 1A can rebuy for Day 1B.

Players start with $25,000 in chips and levels are 30 minutes. Antes kick in at level 5. Day 1 lasts 14 levels.

There are two qualifiers for the DeepStack event, one on Saturday (Aug. 21) and the second on Sunday. Both start at 4pm. The Sunday event qualifies you for Day 1B of the DeepStack event.

Each qualifier is a $115 + $20 buy-in. One out of every five player wins a seat at the big event. Players start the qualifiers with $8,000 in chips. Levels are 20 minutes.

And by the way, Bally’s big bad beat jackpot (more than $402,000 when last we looked) finally hit sometime in the last week, but apparently the casino wants to keep it on the down low. We’re bugging them for info, but if anyone has the scoop, please leave a comment and fill us all in.

The dog days of August are a slow, slow time for news and happenings and that seems to apply to poker as well. There’s just not much going on in the poker world right now. Well, there’s the European Poker Tour, but that’s like across the ocean or something.

Yet Monday poker headlines are a tradition here at our all of four-months-old blog, so we’re gonna give you what we got

The dog days of poker

The borgata released a winners list for its DeepStack Turbo event held Sunday. The $260 + $40 buy-in event attracted 557 entries for a $144,820 prize pool. The winner was Arman Torosian of Edgewater NJ who takes home $40,021. Joo Kim of Alexandria Va. gets second and $21,071. Both appear to be amateurs.

The tournament paid the top 54 finishers.

In some other news, we’ve been following attempts to bring online gaming to New Jersey. And in so doing, we’ve wondered if Harrah’s Entertainment, which owns casinos in Atlantic City, but apparently also in every other gambling jurisdiction in the country, really wants to see A.C. get the internet advantage?

Well, Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman commented in a recent Harrah’s financial release, “During the past two years, we’ve reduced expenses and debt substantially, increased our liquidity to about $3 billion, and acquired the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas and Thistledown racetrack in Cleveland. I believe we’re well-positioned for an eventual legalization of online gaming in the United States, and more capable of capitalizing on additional growth opportunities than at any time in the past two years.”

No mention of A.C. there. So Harrah’s wants online gaming passed, but it still looks like Vegas will be their hub.

The Borgata offers up Deepstack Turbo tournament on Sunday (Aug.15), which also carries a charitable side.

The tournament is sponsored by Cabot Creamery Cooperative and dubbed the “Put a Bad Beat on Hunger” tournament. The event benefits the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, Southern Branch.

But unlike other charity events, where players usually win donated prizes, this is an actual Borgata tournament with a buy-in and cash pool.

The Deepstack event is a $260 + $40 Turbo event. Player’s get $25,000 in chips. Blinds go up very 15 minutes and antes kick in at round five.

The tournament starts at 1pm. The winner also wins a seat at the Borgata Open Championship in September, a $3,500 buy-in tournament.

Little scoop, poker pro Eric Buchman is expected to play the tournament.

Meanwhile, Bally’s bad beat jackpot has still not hit and has passed the 400K mark at $402,618 at about 3pm Friday.

Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

So, despite a slow week of poker news, there’s still action to be had this weekend.

The Borgata is being a little tight-lipped about it’s new bad beat system, but the move is obviously designed to create some bad beat hysteria on par with what happened at the Taj Mahal in June when the bad beat hit for a record $672,115.

Basically, the Borgata will now have a high bad beat jackpot and a low bad beat jackpot

The high jackpot only kicks in when four 10s or better falls to a higher hand. The low jackpot covers four deuces to nines.

It goes without saying that the high jackpot won’t hit very often and should build up to some impressive totals.

Ironically, under the old system of one jackpot with four deuces as the minimum, the Borgata’s bad beat has hit three times in about as many weeks. That kind of proves the casino’s point.

Payouts of the Bad Beat Jackpot are as follows:

• 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded to the Bad Beat hand (losing hand)

• 20% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded to the winner of the hand

• 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded equally among the balance of the seated players on the game who received cards at the beginning of the hand.

We’re not exactly sure how the rake on this breaks down, but we’ll keep digging.

The high jackpot was at just over $113,000 with the low jackpot at $28,000 as of Friday.

Meanwhile Bally’s bad beat jackpot remains the highest in the city at $388,000.

Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

We just barely got the results from The Borgata’s Double Play tournament that was held Sunday to Tuesday and the casino has already announced another Double Play tournament set for Aug. 22-24.

When something works, you stick with it.

This weekend’s Double Play was a $1,000 + $100 buy-in that attracted 513 entries for a total prize pool of (marvel at the math here) $513,000. Of course that doesn’t mean that there were actually 513 players in the tournament.

The whole point of a Double Play tournament is that players busting out on the first day, or Day 1A, can buy in again on Day 1B. The re-entry also allows you to get back in if you bust out before level three each day.

All in all, the official payouts (barring any deals between players) were pretty nice for an early-in-the-week event. The winner was Robert Rudovic of the Bronx, who takes home $141,765,

Rudovic at the summer open

By the way, Rudovic has to be loving The Borgata as he just won a  $170 buy-in No Limit event at the Borgata Summer Open in June, winning close to $22K. Clearly, it gave him the confidence to go for a bigger tournament.

Second place went to Gennadi Josovich of Brooklyn who wins $74,640. Third paid about $38K and 54 players cashed.

The new tournament is halved with a $500 + $60 buy-in. Day 1A is Sunday, Aug. 22. with 1B Monday, Aug. 23, both at 11am. Players start with $25,000 in chips, levels last 30 minutes.

In some other Borgata news, the casino’s bad beat hit again early today (Aug. 4) when quad sixes fell to a straight flush. Ardian Maracaj, again of the Bronx, won about $54,000.

But The Borgata has made some serious changes to its bad beat structure, basically implementing a high and low jackpot. If four 10s or better gets beat, the high jackpot kicks in. Four deuces to nines gets the low jackpot.

We’re running down the details.

The Borgata has released a schedule for the main events at the Borgata Open to be held Sept. 8 to Sept. 23. The open championship starts Sept. 18 and is a $2 million guaranteed prize pool, no limit tournament with a $3,300 + $200 buy-in.

The Open is a World Poker Tour stop and the championship’s final table will be televised.

Some other obvious big events are Event 5, a $1,000 buy-in No Limit Tournament on Sept. 11 and Event 11, a $2,000 buy-in double elimination No Limit game on Sept. 14. There’s also a $1,500 buy-in No Limit game on Sept. 16 (Event 14) and a Six-Hand Max No Limit Hold’em , $1000 buy-in on Sept. 17 (Event 16).

The casino will probably release a schedule of satellite tournaments for the bigger money events and the championship event in the next few weeks.

Here’s the early schedule (after the Jump):

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Bally's bad beat - slow growing, but impressive

Another week gone and another about 13K gets added onto Bally’s bad beat. The jackpot now sits at about $373,000 as of 4pm Friday. With a smaller 20-table room, the bad beat has been growing like a bonsai tree, but hey, $373K is nothing to sneeze at.

As always, we point out that Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

This weekend also starts Borgata’s latest Double Play poker tournament, which runs from Sunday (Aug. 1) to Tuesday. Double plays basically allow for re-entry if you should wash out on the first day. Day one is split into two days. Go out on the first (Day 1A), and you can buy in again on the second (Day 1B). The tournament is a $1,000 + $100 No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Players start with $15,000 in chips. Each level is 40 minutes. Day 1 action ends after level 12.

The Borgata is also offering some satellites for the tournament as $220 + $30 buy-in satellites are scheduled for today (July 30) at 5pm, Saturday, July 31, at 11am and Sunday, August 1, at 4pm.

Players start with $10,000 in chips with 20-minute levels. One in five players wins a stake in the Double Play.

The Sunday tournament is presumably only good for Day 1B, since the Double Play itself begins at 11am Sunday.