Travel Report: WSOP-C Atlantic City, Pregame

Not a lot of time for scribblin’ this morning as I’m getting things together for a quick trip to Atlantic City to help cover this weekend’s WSOP Circuit event for PokerNews. In a few hours I will be heading to Caesars Atlantic City where the $1,650 buy-in event begins tomorrow.

The newly-refurbished WSOP Circuit schedule has succeeded in getting the tour some extra attention. Announced last summer and kicked off in August, the 2010-2011 schedule featured added events as well as a new points system in which top finishers win their way into a WSOP Circuit National Championship event in a couple of months.

I believe the plan is still for the top 100 point-getters to play in that Championship event (to be held at Caesars in Las Vegas), with the top 10 finishers in that one dividing up a handsome $1 million prize pool. Additionally, the winner will be getting a WSOP bracelet, too, right there before the WSOP proper gets going at the end of May.

Some players have clinched spots in the Championship already. These include those who have won the Main Events at each WSOP Circuit stop, the "Casino Champion" at each stop (i.e., the player earning the most points in the overall series at a given site), and those who made the final tables at the “Regional Championships” played thus far (at Horseshoe Hammond and Harrah's Atlantic City). Two more Regional Championships are still to come -- at Harrah's Rincon and Harrah's New Orleans -- before they get to Caesars in Vegas at the end of May.

Here’s the full WSOP Circuit schedule, here’s how the points system works, and here’s the current leaderboard.

This will be my second trip in just a few days to an east-coast poker destination, as Vera and I just got back from a quick visit to West Palm Beach, Florida where I made a brief return to the poker room at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. (Wrote about my visit there a year ago.)

They were still buzzing, actually, about the WSOP Circuit event that just concluded at the PBKC, won by local boy John Riordan. I say local “boy” because, well, Riordan is only 19 years old, and while he’s allowed to play in tourneys in Florida (where legislation regarding poker has opened things up considerably since last summer), he won’t be eligible to go to Caesars Las Vegas to play in the Championship.

Am definitely looking forward to the AC trip, as I’ve never been. Have mentioned it to a couple of people who in response brought up Monopoly, the game we’ve all played in which all the streets and place names (in the U.S. version) were taken from the New Jersey city. Indeed, Caesars Atlantic City is on Pacific Avenue, where the rent has probably gone up a bit since the mid-1930s when that deed card was printed.

Been rereading Jesse May’s Shut Up and Deal lately, a book set in the mid-1990s and with several scenes there in AC just after poker was legalized (in 1993). Further whetting my interest to see at least some of the place, albeit a couple of decades later.

I hope to deliver a few trip reports here, but we’ll see how the time goes. Looking at the structure sheet for the Main Event, it appears we are in for a long day of reporting tomorrow. Check in over at PokerNews to see things are going.

And come back here, too, where I’ll be sure to let you know if I see this guy high-steppin’ around.