Make sure you check with the Millionaire Party Locator to see when 'our' rooms are open. Both Kings and Woodys have been changing their hours around a bit to adapt to the time of year and charity 'wishes'.

Woodys is currently open from 1100 to 140 AM straight through with one charity. The room was hopin' yesterday. I think they were pushing $10k by 700 PM.

Just search for 'Millionaire Party Locator' at Michigan.gov. I keep the link on my phone so I can go right to it. LG

Another great day for Woodys ... When I left at 700 or so they only had 1400 in chips left ... and the 2nd table didn't start until 300 or so!! Combination of folks weak work load and Eastbrook screwing up their license helped out this week. Hoping things don't go as well today so we have chips for 2/5 tonight but we'll see.

Heard that Kings had 4 cash tables going BEFORE the tournament the other day .. interesting.

Woodys will be back to 1000 AM start for next week but still on just one charity. Don't forget the free pizza for seated players at 530 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Start saving your pennies for the first Firekeepers 5th Sunday $400 in January. Nice that 2 years in a row the calendar worked out for this to happen early in the year. GL

Yes, there have been a lot of changes. Don't assume that anything is the same as it was a week ago. Kings Room has been changing both hours and tournaments. The top buy-in for the build-a-stack is now $75. All Eastgate tournaments are now build-a-stack.

Woodys ... 1000 AM to 140 AM with one charity this week. FREE PIZZA to all seated players at 530 PM each day. 2/5 made it to midnight last Thursday with chips to spare.

Eastbrook ... assuming their license mess up is solved and they will be back to having cash at 400 Mon to Wed.

King's will start by 400 Thur to Sun ... could start as early as 330

Lincoln ... 'normal' hours with the early Sunday start at 2000

Westgate ... 'normal' hours ... by 500 Thur/Fri and by Noon Sat/Sun

Don't forget the 5th Sunday $400 this month at Firekeepers .. BBJ is almost $50k right now as well. GL

Bump a bit here ...

King's is now on the 2-a-day charity run Thursday to Sunday. Looks like this will be set for 5 or 6 months now that the charities are lined up. Actually got there in time to play the 'build-a-stack' last night. Didn't go so well as I fell victim to a semi-angle in a spot where I didn't really think I was good at showdown. After some decent action all the way through Mr. OMC checks out of turn on the River with a bit of an act. So I fall for it by betting and he shoves into me!! I didn't give him the satisfaction of calling off my last 12bb and did a pretty good short stack routine for a few orbits. He had to show since there was another player all-in at the time. He shoved over the top of a bet into JQK9K with AK. I love the all or nothing attitude here, but does he really think a shove is good here 'most' of the time?

Woody's also goes back to 2 charities this week. Not sure the status of the free pizza deal.

Probably laying low this week looking forward to the $400 at Firekeepers on Sunday.

Look for "Internet Jake" on the HPT stream today from AmeriStar. He was somewhat short late on Day 1 but caught fire and then hit some key hands (set, QQ and AA) on Day 2 to get a bunch of chips. I think he also took advantage of the short handed play when it was down to 13 players to chip up quite a bit. He's not chip leader, but at least 4th of the 9 remaining. GL

Firekeepers $400 on Sunday at Noon .. 40K chips, 30 min levels, 1 rebuy .. $20k for first (most likely) .. plan on 12 hours to win in my estimation

2/5 was good last night at Woodys ... some new players .. started 10 handed and didn't drop below 7 handed until 1230 or so. Internet Jake went on a late session tear that included a $2K pot with boat over boat!

2 charities per day will continue at both Wooodys (Mon-Thur) and Kings (Thur-Sun) for the next 2 months at least. It's tax season ... come get your share! GL

Firekeepers had 290 entries .. finished 44th out of the money (paid 31) ... Structure seemed fine until after 2nd break. Then 'a lot' of folks were in the 5-25bb range. Couldn't get any cards to shove with. Passed on A8 UTG in one spot and would've tripled up v TT and A6, oh well. They blew through the money bubble pretty quick but FT went past Midnight ... $22K up top. Casey Carroll (2016 Spring HPT champ) finished in 3rd ($10K). There were a couple of other WM players there too that cashed a bit lower.

Cash games were good, both 2/5 and PLO had feeder tables for a few hours once the tournament started to break down. They only kept 1 cash table going at the start of the tournament and had 80 alternates that made it into the tournament by the middle of level 8 (600/1200). 40K starting stack. GL

80 alternates? How many people are they able to seat at the beginning. I'm assuming the 290 entries included re-entries or was that total # of people?

The math for me was off by 10 .. They are supposed to have 23 tables but they told me that they started with 210 and had 80 alternates ... with one cash table going. That would've left an open table somewhere. But I see Bravo says they have 22 tables so now it makes sense.

The alternates include folks putting in a 2nd bullet ... so it's not 290 'people', it's 290 entries. I'm assuming that there were about 20-30 2nd bullets fired, but that may be high and I didn't ask.

Ah ... might make sense if they have no 'table 13' for some reason (bad luck). I will have to check the next time I'm there.

Woody's 2/5 was good again last night ..full table past 1200 and ran til closing. Not sure the chip sales but there were plenty of rebuys and add-ons. I played pretty passive and missed out on a couple of spots where I got fooled by the plays being made but ended up exactly even on 2 buy-ins.

PLO tournament at King's starts Saturday .. call them for details. Remember that they are on 2-a-day charities now, so make sure you know when the break is if you plan to go down there around 5PM. I didn't check the Millionaire Party site today.

WSOPc is in Milwaukee the next 2 weekends. Should be lots of action in both tournament and cash. The weather looks good for both weekends if you want to make the drive. There is a hotel rate at the casino, but the're much cheaper options near by as well. GL

Any Plo cash games beside the occasional one at soaring eagle or fire keepers? Ill have to check out that plo tourney at kings.

You can find PLO in the Monday RxR at Woodys (7pm, call ahead) and typically PLO will run Thursday and Saturday (for sure) while Friday and Sunday are hit or miss (more hit) at Firekeepers. The higher stake list(s) typically start around 2pm and the table gets going by 4pm or so.

There is a little game at Firekeepers between PLO and 2/5 as players put their name on both lists just to break away from the 1/2 action. Depending on how many PLO regs get onto the initial 2/5 table they will try to convince the table to change to RxR or PLO after a short time.

I think the PLO at Firekeepers is pretty tough, but I don't have enough hours to make a full opinion .. there are 2-3 regs that win 'every' time I see them in the game. As with most scenarios that I've seen, it's better to be on the feeder table than the main table. With FK also being a 'match the stack' spot it adds a dynamic that the skillful reg can take advantage of after a bad beat.

Straight PLO cash is a rare site in the GR charity poker scene since the majority of the players aren't deep enough to handle the swings IMO. We'll see if the tournament carries on. GL

King's must be holding a $100 (every Sunday?) tournament on it's first charity. Based on one source there were close to 30 players and 10 or so rebuys so it was a decent tournament with a 3 or 4 way chop for $900 per player. Not bad for a pre-Super Bowl time killer!! GL

Got word that King's had a RxR going on 2nd shift Saturday night until they ran out of chips (time?). There is no rhyme or reason but the only thing rooms can do is make things available and hope the player pool rides it out.

King's wanted to have a steady 2/5 on Sunday nights, but their 'Build a stack' tournament is very popular and the player pool for Sunday nights can be pretty thin if the players struggled on Friday or Saturday.

There is increasing, but reliable word, that Rounders (Woody's) will open a room 'in' Holland (near D&W?). Should be a much better location than the West Olive location with somewhat easy access to 31/196. This would be a Thursday to Sunday room. More to come ..

Firekeepers BBJ is near $70K .. Quite large for that room and room share kicks in at $75K. AAAJJ beat by quads .. GL

Will Rounders be a cash-only room? If so, perhaps West Olive will stay as the Holland area tournament room.

West Olive was only open 1 or 2 weeks .. and that was Rounders. They aren't going back to that location from what I've been told.

Will they have tournaments? I'm not so sure if they have space for it but I'm sure the customer base will dictate a lot of what they do. GL

Woodys 2/5 was a great game last night. Only 6-handed but there were plenty of chips flying around. It did get up to 8-handed for a short time. By 12:30 AM it was 3-handed but all three stacks were over $2k. Lots of fun .... Lots of poker being played, not just ATC.

2/5 is a slower game (everywhere I've seen it) and that may turn off some folks. But I think you really start to get into playing poker and not just pure math/luck. Of course the types of players dictate as well. But 2/5 requires you bring your opponent into the hand as well as your hole cards and the board. GL

So what are the current hours for woodys and kings? Hoping kings is open early

Currently Woodys runs 2 'shifts' Monday to Thursday. 10:00-4:40 and 5:30 to 1:40. 1-2 cash only with 1-3 RxR on Monday nights and 2-5 on Thursday nights (both 7pm)

Currently King's runs 2 'shifts' Thursday to Sunday. 12:00-5:30 (earlier if ready) and 6:00 to 1:40. Cash with tournaments each night and Sat/Sun during the day.

Eastbrook runs Monday to Wednesday .. 4:00-1:40 Cash with tournaments if they get enough to enter.

Westgate runs Thursday to Sunday .. 5:00 (Noon on Sat/Sun) to 1:40 Cash only

Lincoln runs Thursday to Sunday .. 4:00-11:40 (Th/Fr), 4:00-1:40 (Sat) and 2:00-11:40 (Sun) Cash and tournaments, not sure the schedule.

All hours are subject to change and charity issues. Search for Millionaire Party Locator on the michigan.gov website for licence information. Licence hours don't always match 'open' hours. GL

Eastbrook closes at 11:30pm. Also the last few times I have been there the tournaments have had 30-40 runners so they appear to be fairly healthy.

Yep .. little slip up there. Tourney last night was pretty thin.


Firekeepers BBJ is at $72K .. AAAJJ losing to quads. Right now the payout is at the table only (50/25/25). Once it gets to $75K a room share kicks in (40/20/20/20). So to max your winnings be at the table when it hits before it gets to 75K ... Or if you don't care, then head down there and start folding for hours trying to get a room share!! GL

I found an article on pokernews.com about a new poker site. It kind of sounds like WPT.com in some ways, and in other ways it sounds like they think that they can use cryptocurrencies (not exactly a new idea since Winning Poker Network already takes bitcoin) and that it's legally bulletproof for both the site and US players. There are as yet no posted responses to the article.

I've also seen articles about a site that Andrew Lichtenberger, aka Lucky Chewy, is trying to set up.

I'm confused about this entire situation. Since the Department of Justice has ruled that the Wire Act was only meant for sports betting, it would seem that there is no legal impediment to set up a site for all US players, and in fact, if I understand correctly, online poker is already explicitly legal, by state or District law, in New Jersey, Nevada and Washington DC.

Still, I'm dubious about all this. It's been a while since black Friday and it seems to me that if it was possible to set up a good site for US players it would have happened by now.

Sorry, I forgot the link: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2017/...rica-27183.htm

There are a couple sites that take US players. I play on Ignition and I know America's Card Room is another one. The problem is depositing and withdrawing money from them. Most banks won't allow transactions overseas to their payment processors so you have to find a way to get the money in there first. They have a lot of options like Western Union and other fee based sources. They also do accept and pay out in bitcoins as well. I use a Visa thru a bank source that allows the transactions so I've been able to put money on no problem. I haven't yet withdrawn any money but I've read on here that some people in the US have no problems and some people do. I haven't read too much about it yet since I haven't needed to withdraw any money but some people were saying you want to cash their checks thru a credit union? Or thru an ATM not directly with the bank. Not entirely sure on that. Ignition is a great site, good number of people, good tournaments and at least a way to practice against people playing for real money while waiting to get out to a casino to play.

Those locations do have legal online poker but you have to live in those states in order to play so I think the player pool is pretty shallow. Michigan has been working on something like that as well but I would doubt we'll see much on that in the near future. I've heard people say that if California ends up legalizing it that states would start to follow suit but each one would setting up their own sites.

I am on Americas Cardroom (good traffic, fairly easy and cheap withdrawals and lots of game choices, but tournaments crash or freeze a few times a month) and Juicy Stakes (very low traffic and it's hard to withdraw.) There have been a lot of complaints on Juicy Stakes that because of the low traffic it's almost impossible to hit the amount of rake that earns a no-fee withdrawal.

Our choices definitely are not great.

I don't think that state-by-state is going to work unless the states get together. Some New Jersey online players say that they have low traffic issues with their site (sites?) and I think their population is about the same as Michigan. Obviously a one-state player pool won't work in states like Alaska. Montana, Rhode Island and many others.

I get tired of reading on Poker News or Poker News Daily that the next big thing is going to come and fix US online poker, which of course doesn't happen.

There is some 'movement' for online poker in Michigan, which is a surprise under the current Governor but they know that it will take awhile anyway and he's may be gone by the time they work out all the details.

Currently for the areas that allow online poker in the US you only have to be in that area, not 'live', to play poker. I'm sure you could play some IP address magic but would it really be worth it? New Jersey has had the most success so far with Poker Stars, but it is NOT a pipeline to Poker Stars everywhere else in the world. NJ players can only play against other NJ players.

On a more specific note, there are bills in both the Michigan Senate and House that would define the Millionaire Party Rules as law rather than leave them up to the whims of the Gaming Commission. Initially I was pleased, but after a couple of days I'm not so sure that we want the specific rules to be law which may make them harder to change. One of the positives is that the chip sales would bump to $20K per charity per day. I have spoke to the offices of both sponsors of the legislation and am expecting a call from the Michigan Charity Gaming Commission for more discussions. GL