Atlantic City Weekly

Walking into the Event Center at the Borgata on day two of the casino's sixth annual poker open, you can't help but feel something hanging in the air of the packed room. Maybe, you think, it's the smell of money. This preliminary no-limit Hold-em tournament has a buy-in of $560 and has attracted more than 700 players; not bad for a Thursday morning.

But looking around the room you realize it's something else -- it's arrogance. The Event Center is packed with guys (and a few women) who are absolutely sure they're going to win. They're decked out in the requisite sunglasses and carrying iPods and lucky charms. They all seem to know each other and they all seem sure their buddies will be left in the cold. They posture, strut, shout out to each other and finally sit.

Then they start dealing the cards. The room falls quiet except for a steady rustle of chips. One by one, they start falling. One guy hits an inside straight, another goes home. One flops a set of 10s, another busts out. Chairs start opening, tables start condensing and the real winner, whoever it may be, starts getting closer.

Welcome to big-time tournament poker.

"My advice to anybody is keep your day job," says Matt Brady of Philadelphia, a regular player at the Borgata Open the last few years who survives to the first player's break. "This is hard work. Keep it a hobby. Do it for fun. But don't think you're going to make a living off it without working. There are some very good players in this room."

Still, as many as 12,000 players will turn out for the open which began Sept. 3 and runs until Sept. 18. Tournaments will run every day of the event. The culmination will be a five-day main event. For a $10,000 buy-in, the Borgata is guaranteeing a $5 million prize pool, the second largest in the country. That assures the winner of a cool $1.4 million top prize, which could go higher depending on the number of players. A prize pool like that almost assures that a fair amount of celebrity poker pros will turn out, not to mention a steady stream of amateurs and pros combined.

"The tournament just keeps growing each year," says Ray Stefanelli, director of poker marketing for the Borgata. "We should have well over 500 players in the main event and it could go higher. We've been very committed to this event and to poker in general and we think we have become the premier poker destination on the East Coast."

Brady agreed. "This is the only place I play," he says. "This is really the cream of the crop. I've played all over the world and they really do a great job here. Right now I think the East Coast has some very strong players. I wouldn't say they were better than what you get in Vegas and on the West Coast, but it is still very strong."

So is poker in general nearly five years after amateur Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003. Since then poker has become one of the hottest casino games in the country and has become a constant on television. Even the Borgata Open will be shown on Fox Sports. But after five years, is there any chance the poker craze will die down?

"You could argue that the American market is getting saturated," says Paul Maguire, who, along with Michael Friedman, will file constant blog reports on the tournament for the Borgata. "But at the same time poker is exploding around the world. It's very hot in Europe and Asia, pretty much everywhere."

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