Sorry for the slow pace of posts this week, but your faithful blogger’s been a little under the weather as of late.

Still, that doesn’t even remotely affect the city’s action and the Borgata, even with the Borgata Summer Open going full blast, has seen another hit of its small bad beat jackpot (quad deuces to nines minimum).

The $47,767 hit brings the total Borgata bad beat pay outs to over $10 million. This is the 80th time the casino has seen a bad beat jackpot hit.

Of course, bad beat jackpots are progressive, so it’s player’s money being paid out, but still, it’s a lot of cash

This hit came Thursday morning.

Here’s the rundown from the casino:

Thomas Davenport (South Amboy, NJ), was holding pocket 4’s, while Kenneth Weliczka (Gansevoort, NY) held pocket 6’s.  Two 6’s on the board allowed Kenneth to win the pot.  However, Thomas’ quad 4’s were good enough to win $19,108 of the Bad Beat Jackpot.  Kenneth picked up an additional $9,553.

The remaining five players at the table each took home $3,821.

I took a spin by The Borgata Thursday to get a feel for the summer open and I have to report, things are looking pretty good.

The room was packed, the casino’s first experiment with a bounty tournament seemed to be a big hit with players and there was just a lot of excitement in the room. All on a sweltering early June day that made the Borgata’s air conditioning system the most popular factor in the tournament

Again, the summer open isn’t one of the casino’s really big events as the World Series of Poker is underway in Vegas, but it’s astonishing how consistent the player’s name are in the results boards for the Borgata’s seasonal opens.

The casino really has the knack of breeding player loyalty and the summer open seems to be specifically aimed at the casino’s regulars.

Anyway, the first event of the open is in the books. (more…)

The Borgata Summer Open started off fairly well Wednesday as 829 players (including re-buys) turned out for the first event, a $350 buy-in Deepstack event.

Undoubtedly, some of those players were looking to take advantage of the casino’s air conditioning as well, because man it’s hot here in A.C. right now. Yesterday set a record for the date in the city at 98 degrees.

The event has a total buy-in of $290,150 .

The chip leader going into today’s second day is Kenneth Smaron of Philly with 1,214,000 in chips.

Some notables in the field include Sheree Bykofsky of A.C., still alive with 94K and Gordon Eng, of Clifside Park, with 105K in chips.

The bubble was broken at the tournament at 81 players and the remaining 48 are all in the money.

Today, the casino launches the first of its “bounty” games, where each player puts up an extra $25 as a bounty. Whenever a player is sent to the rail, that $25 chip goes to the player that took them out. The $200 + $30 + $25 (the bounty) No Limit Hold’em tournament starts at 11am.

Quick note: The Borgata’s blog is saying the bounty is $20, but previous schedules say $25. So it’s one or the other.

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The World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas seems to be off to a pretty good start, drawing respectable fields in some pretty high buy-in tournaments.

So far, predictions that the turnout would be down due to all the frozen online accounts still out there, seem to be off, but we still have to see how the main event in July shakes out.

The first real general event (after a casino employees event and the heads-up championship) was Event 3, a $1,500 buy-in, High-low Omaha tournament which is being called the largest WSOP Omaha tournament ever. The event drew 925 players with Francesco “Cheech” Barbaro of Chicago claiming the title and $262,283.

Event 4, a $5,000 buy-in Hold’em event drew 865 players and a prize pool of $874,116. Another 675 players turned out for event 6, a $1,500 Limit Hold’em event and even the first $10,000 event of the WSOP — Pot Limit Hold’em — drew 249 players.

Obviously there are a lot bankrolls out there that aren’t frozen.

Meanwhile, we got a little info on one of the bad beat hits In Atlantic City over the Memorial Day Weekend.

The Borgata’s bad beat hit Saturday May 28 for $311,110, which is exactly what the jackpot registered at Friday afternoon, so it must have hit very close to midnight – or something.

Anyway, the jackpot winner got $124,446, while the winning player won $62,224.  The remaining six players at the table each won $20,740.

The Borgata has announced the dates — though not the full schedule — for the Borgata Open in September, which includes the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open Championship. The open will be held from Sept. 7-22, keeping up a trend of about two weeks of events at the casino’s seasonal opens.

The championship event, which will be taped for TV broadcast, will be held Sept. 18-22 and will be a $3,300 + $200 tournament.

And, of course, this shouldn’t be confused with The Borgata Summer Open which will be held June 8-24.

More Borgata news — because there’s always Borgata news — as the casino has announced the winners of its $1,000 buy-in Deepstack Double Play event that began Sunday, May 15.

Queen at the 2010 Spring Open

The winner was Alexander Queen of Bethlehem Pa., who wins $111,774.

You gotta figure Queen is liking the Borgata (Over say the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem) as he also picked up $355,535 at last year’s Borgata Spring Open by winning the championship event. He now has about $560,000 in tournament winnings.

The second place finisher for the tournament was Alek Givotovsky who wins $64,527.  Givotovsky had  first in the year’s spring open taking $47,287 in another No Limit Double Play event.

It’s no wonder the Borgata attracts such player loyalty.

The event attracted 451 players. Here’s the top five finishers:

1. ALEXANDER QUEEN (BETHLEHEM, PA): $111,774

2. ALEK GIVOTOVSKY (NEW YORK, NY): $64,527

3. ROBERT FETZKO (JOHNSTOWN, PA): $39,372

4. JOHN WHITWORTH (MYRTLE BCH, SC): $31,717

5. EUGENE TODD (BROOKLYN, NY): $24,937

The Borgata has released the schedule for the main tournaments in its Summer Open, June 8-24, and they’ve sprinkled in some exciting twists to keep things interesting.

The open competes directly with the World Series of Poker in Vegas and is probably the most regional in its player draw of the casino’s four opens. So to spice things up, The Borgata is introducing a new twist on bounty tournaments.

Three of the main events will include bounties. The twist is that everybody who plays will be a bounty.

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Sabina Gadecki

The Borgata saw another hit on its small bad beat this week, a more and more frequent occurrence, paying out another $50,000.

The hit came Wednesday morning at a $2-$4 Hold’em game. Joseph Kirkpatrick of Brigantine had his quad 7’s beaten by the quad kings of Peter Pragid of Little Egg Harbor. Nice to see some locals in on the win.

Kirkpatrick took home $20,001 (that extra dollar must feel sweet) and Pragid got an  even $10K. Seven other players at the table received $2,857.

All the recent bad beat hits have kind of depleted the reserve funds casinos keep to replenish the jackpots, and The Borgata’s small bad beat (quad deuces to nines minimum) has been stuck on $50K for awhile. The full bad beat (quad 10s the minimum) is at $269,451.

The Harrah’s combined bad beat is at $172,345 and the minimum should be at quad 10s. The Taj Mahal comes in at $142,735 and the Trop comes in at $214,570.

Sunday also marks the return of some actual tournament promotion as The Borgata (who else) puts on a $250,000 guaranteed Deep Stack Double Play tournament with a $1,000 + $100 buy-in. Day 1A is Sunday at 11am and Day 1B is Monday at 11am. The tournament runs through Wednesday.

Players start with 30K in chips

The point of the Double Play is you can rebuy on Day 1B if you wash out Day 1A.

There’s also a satellite for the event Saturday at 4pm. The $220 + $30 buy-in, No Limit Hold’em tournament will seat about one in five players in the Sunday event.

Good luck grinders.

The Borgata hasn’t even finished up its spring open — looks like they got better than 200 players for today’s main event finale, a $250 + $30 Deepstack No Limit event — and the casino is announcing dates for its summer open.

This year’s summer open will run from June 8 to 24 with the championship event to run June 19 to 22. The championship will be a $2,500 + $200 No Limit tournament with a $500,000 guarantee.

While an exact event schedule hasn’t been released, that sounds suspiciously like the schedule for the spring open. Both are 17 days long and have the same buy-in for the championship event.

Still, the summer championship has a $500 bump from last year’s summer open championship (that $2,000 buy-in No Limit tournament drew 361 players in 2010).

The summer open, of course, competes with the World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas, which starts May 30, but does avoid the WSOP main event, which starts July 7.

And if you want to nitpick, only the last four days of the Borgata event actually happen in the summer.

But whatever.

The Borgata Spring Open Championship has gone to a New Jersey based player, Russell Crane of Howell Twp. New Jersey, who scores his biggest payday yet with the $276,949 win.

The Champ

All we can say is ‘Whoo Hoo, go Howell’ (which just happens to be your blogger’s hometown).

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” Crane told the Borgata’s poker blog. “It felt great to have a lot of people from my home state supporting me.”

Crane had about $376,000 in live tournament cashes before his Spring Open win. He had a huge $220K cash at the 2009 World Series of Poker (a 3^rd place finish in a No Limit Hold’em six handed event), but most of his other cashes have come in Atlantic City during his about six- year career.

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