It’s every avid poker player’s dream. End the year playing poker—and start the year playing poker (of course, it is already understood that you spent the entire year playing poker too). To answer this pressing need (that only die-hard poker players would understand), the Bellagio is hosting two tournaments on December 31 and January 1.

The Bellagio poker room in Las Vegas will hold two New Year tournaments with $540 buy-ins that will keep the Las Vegas casino’s normal daily tournament structure. This means blinds will be 40 minutes each. There’s a major incentive, however. Instead of starting with 6,000 in chips, the Bellagio will give each player 15,000 in chips.

Due to the change in chip number, enabling players to play more pots, around 100 players is expected to show up for the marquee event that will take place on New Year’s Day. The event will begin at 2 p.m. The New Year’s Eve tournament is expected to start at 5pm (and how many people will join this tournament is anybody’s guess since I’m sure even poker players find something else to do during this occasion).

If you’re too strapped for cash (or just too cheap in general) to cough up the $540 buy-in but you’re desperate to play some poker to celebrate the coming year, you should be pleased to know that single table satellites are being held every day, starting at 9am. The satellites will consist of 10 players forking over the $130 buy-in. The final two competitors will win seats to the $540-buy in tournament and an additional $30 in cash.

Just in case you’re too busy on New Years but you wish to spend some time playing poker at the Bellagio, you should also check out their Friday and Saturday tournaments. The buy-in is $1,000+$80 and the tournament begins at 2:00pm. Players start with 10,000 in chips. You can also join satellites for these tournaments for $240 (the usual 10 players with 2 winners). The satellites also begin at 9:00am.

For more information on Bellagio tournaments, you can contact the Bellagio poker room at 702-693-7111.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under Poker Events, Poker Industry News, Poker Tournaments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.