It's a little early to have much info about that kind of thing, and anyhow most of these things are directly managed by Partypoker so I won't know much until the event itself.

In other news - as some people know, we install new felts very frequently (which is nice - fresh tables all the time) and have just started installing the new felts for the Spring Classic!

Some photos:

Don't expect much this year. It was the hospitality at the 2013 partypoker WPT Montreal that made me get out of my online cave and start playing WPT events. Online qualifiers got to spend time with Mike Sexton, two Royal Flush Girls, two partypoker models, Vince Van Patten, Tony Dunst, and a couple of Player Liaisons. Outings included Vortex Racing, hot air balloon ride, or non-stop shots at the Players Party.

There has been very noticeable cutbacks in the hospitality at partypoker WPT events in the past year, so my friends and I have started going to other tours, such as WSOP festivals. Lucky for you, Chuck Bass, Playground is still the best tournament room in the WORLD, even without additional hospitality from sponsors.

Hey everyone,

Partypoker has published their online qualifying set up for this event: https://www.partypoker.com/whats-goi...ip-canada.html

If you're in Canada, there's an alternative as well: http://partypoker.net/promotions/wpt...mpionship.html

I don't think there's anything there for New Jersey Partypoker players, unfortunately - I think there may be some kind of regulatory issue or something like that? I'm not sure.

Are the qualifiers on the regular Party Poker software or do we have to use the .net version?

You're in Canada?

I think you will have to download the no-money .net version to play the freerolls. I would rather play the live satellite SNGs and MTTs at Playground.

Yes. Been to Playground a few times but not sure I can make it out for this event.

I looked in my Partypoker client software earlier and I don't see the freerolls, only the Centroll and the other steps.

How much does it cost to take a taxi/uber from downtown Montreal to the Playground? Are there any other reasonable options? From what I recall from 3 years ago it took ages to get a taxi at Playground and it was like 50 CAD.

I'd like to come play these small multi-entry birds but since I don't have a car it seems pretty undoable if it adds like a hundo of extra rake to cab it up to a $135 tournament. There seems to be some kind of public transport but it apparently takes 1-1,5 hours and has multiple exchanges so meh.

How are people organizing this? Seems like a problem a lot of people would potentially have.

With so many conflicts with the other series, my roommates and I are forced to drive at least two cars from all the way west of Toronto. We'll start playing at noon each day, then if any of us are out before 7 pm, we will have the option to multi-table and drive to Playground with one of our cars.

Taking taxis back and forth to Playground from the other side of the bridge is not worth it. It will be cheaper to rent a car than taxis. I don't think public transportation is a good option for many players like me that want to get to & from the poker room ASAP at any time of the day.

If you will only be playing at WPT CSC, then one option is to stay at the infamous Rustik Motel, where some friends say they would not wish on their worst enemy, but a couple of my friends and I have stayed there and survived without being robbed by a WPT final table chipleader. A taxi cost ~$10 from the motel to Playground, and we walked a couple of times back to the motel for around 20 minutes.

Ya, I'm staying in an Airbnb in downtown Montreal. My intention is to play online every day during my normal hours (8am-5pm or so) and then somehow make it to the casino to participate in all the stuff that starts at 7pm on most days like the multi-heat tourneys. I suck at live poker and don't really want to play the expensive stuff but I have a soft spot for those small timbeys

I'd rent a car but I haven't driven in forever (and I haven't driven in North America in yeaaaars) so I'm not very comfortable driving, and also I don't own a credit card so I don't think anyone would rent a car to me anyway. Or if anyone's aware of someone who'd rent a car vs a debit card or cash deposit, let me know.

I wonder how bat**** insane it would be to buy a bike and just cycle down there? I saw some used bikes for $50 that looked ok. The only problem is that according to google's trip planner the bridge is only for cars and there's no walkway/lane for bikes, and the route it suggests is like 30 kilometres.

Are there any "normal" restaurants other than the casino one in Playground's vicinity by the way? (Say within 1km)

If you won't be playing at Montreal Casino, I would switch from downtown Montreal to Rustik Motel or closest hotel to Playground. It is batsh*t insane to me to buy a bike with the crumbling infrastructure between downtown and Kahnawake.

There is a Quiznos 1.2 km from Playground and sit-down restaurants farther, within walking distance of Rustik.

I am doing the same staying downtown.
Was planning on just using uber to get to and from playground, Am i better off just renting a car or should uber be fine?
Not quite sure which would cost more

Have stayed at Rustik my last 2 trips to playground and will most likely do the same for this event.

Showers suck, and I probably wouldn't leave money in the room, besides that it really isn't that bad tho. If only grinding playground it is hands down the best option.

I'll be staying in an Airbnb about equidistant between Casino Montreal and Playground, and I'll definitely be renting a car. The difference in price between renting and uber for that time is negligible, and with the added value of convenience it seems like a no-brainer.

Rustik is apparently sold out.

I just realized that I can rent a scooter/motorbike without a cc and I'm comfortable driving them, so I think that's what I'm going to do. One time no random snowstorms plz.

Unfortunately had two guys back out of the airbnb I've rented for Apr. 24-May 6, so I now have 2 spots available. 3 bedroom house with 4 beds. Please PM me for details if interested or you know someone who is.

Hey gang - the Spring Classic kicked off yesterday with the first 2 of 4 starting flights in The Wild $150 and numbers are very very strong - 500 entries so far and we're starting to think that tonight's Day 1c might be huge - one estimate is around 300 more entries.

As well cash game action has exploded. There's our "regular" $1-$2-$5 PLO game which plays very big but overnight there was a $5-$5 Pineapple table open that kept going all morning before morphing into a $5-$5 Mixed PLO/Pineapple game. I just wandered by the table and... it's big. And there are 10 players on the waiting list, so it should keep going indefinitely.

There will also be high stakes action tonight in the room... so it's shaping up to be a great festival both in terms of tournament participation and cash games.

There's a joint Eagles of death metal/Death from above 1979 gig on the 5th with $29 tickets from stubhub. If anyone wants to join hmu, I'm def going. I'm also up for drinks/dinners around the plateau pretty much any day.

Hey gang - the WPT starts tomorrow! If you have any remaining questions be sure to get them out here and I'll do everything I can to get you an answer.

Numbers have been up for our events in the Spring Classic across the board from last year so I'm expecting a strong turnout for the WPT, although Day 1a will - as usual - be the smallest of the Day 1s by a longshot.

Is the traditional WPT/partypoker at the Playground bar on for tonight or Sunday night?
The first-ever Seniors Event in Canada (AFAIK) had more players (151) than many of the conflicting WSOP-C Montreal's open events, so I look forward to many more Seniors Events in the future at Playground.


Sent from my iPad Air using Tapatalk

TLDR: Never schedule WPT & WSOP Montreal at the same time ever again!



After WSOP had announced that it would finally return to Canada in 2016, I found out that WPT CSC Main Event would be scheduled on April 29 - May 5. Casino Montreal soon announced that its WSOP events would be on April 20 - May 1. Playground Poker Club then announced that its Spring Classic would start from April 17, meaning a direct conflict for players like me who wanted to go for both a WSOP ring and a WPT Playground trophy. Casino Montreal turned out to be the biggest loser along with shot-takers, but Playground also lost. With three major series in Montreal this year, it did not make sense to schedule two of them at the same time.

See below for the number of entries in the ten WSOP events (seven $365) with the most comparable Playground and WSOP Lac-Leamy 2013.

Date - - WSOP MTL - Lac-Leamy 2013 - - WPT Playground
Apr 20. . . . . . 132 . . . . 282. . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 ($150 1d)
21, #2. . . . . . 147 . . . . 265 . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 (#2 $220)
22, #3. . . . . . 214 . . . . 163 . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 (#3 $250 1a)
23, $1125 . . . 123 . . . . 165 . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 (1c)
24, $580 . . . . 125 . . . . 170 (avg of 2). . . . . 217 (1e)
25, Monster . . 321 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 (#4 $110)
26, #7. . . . . . 114 . . . . 158 . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 (#5 $550)
27, #8. . . . . . 105 . . . . 237 . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 (#6 $220)
28, ME $1675. 520. . . . 371 . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 (ME $3500; 370 in 2015)
May 1 . . . . . . 151 . . . . 106 . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 (#13 $550)


Except for the Main Event, Casino Montreal had substantially less players than the corresponding event three years ago in the smaller Casino Lac-Leamy. The five regular $365 of Casino Montreal only averaged 142 players, or 30% less than Lac-Leamy's average of 202 players in seven $365. The most number of $365 entries was 214 on Friday, April 22. The new format of Monster Stack and Turbo were relatively popular.

Except for three events, Playground dominated Casino Montreal every day. Most people I knew chose to play at the Playground 11 am tournaments instead of going for a WSOP ring. Playground is the #1 tournament room in the world, so I would have loved to play both instead of having to choose WSOP, with the Playground nighttime tournaments as my early busto back-up.

The first-ever Seniors Event in Canada (AFAIK) had 151 players on April 29 at Playground, which is more than most of the WSOP Montreal events! I hope that both Playground and Casino Montreal will include Seniors Events in their future series.

One of the few things that I liked better about WSOP Montreal over best-practices Playground was: all freezeouts except the single re-entry ME, while Playground has a lot of re-entries. Free things at Casino Montreal included: $50 free CASH for new players, nightly dinner buffet, drinks, card protector, WSOP LED flashlight, WSOP earbuds, WSOP water bottle, and WSOP luggage strap.

I talked to the poker manager of Casino Montreal if WSOP will return next year, and he said that he will look at the numbers. Here are my suggestions:

1) Do NOT go head-to-head against WPT Playground. I would prefer that the WSOP start after the first Day 1 of the WPT ME, or finish before the first Playground side event.

2) IF Casino Lac-Leamy is more popular than Casino Montreal for poker, move the next WSOP back to Lac-Leamy.

3) Apply early to Loto Quebec for approval of English cards; players like me hate the &^%$#@! RDV cards.

4) Unless Loto Quebec changes its policy about discriminating against men with bags while allowing women's huge bags without inspection, give out a WSOP "man purse" that Security will allow into the casino. After Security disallowed WPT Fallsview bags, plastic bags, transparent bags, etc., I finally found a partypoker bag that Security considered to be a man purse and allowed into the casino.

Great stuff Nash. Thank you for taking the time.

As a general principle, scheduling is a huge issue and it's great input for us to have well thought-out pieces like this in the mix. I can guarantee that management at Playground will read this and I'm sure you already know that we take input like this seriously (we couldn't have the success we have without taking varied viewpoints into account).

As far as re-entries go, I think the customers have spoken on this question. The $150 and $250 are among the most popular events in Canada, even when we run 5-6 events with the format and price of the $150 every year and 2 like the $250. These are overtly re-entry events as well - we actually are extremely conservative about re-entry in other circumstances. There are entire festivals with 20-30-40 or more events in which Every Single Tournament offers same-day re-entry. In fact this is the new normal in tournament poker, not having true freezeouts as the vast majority of events on our schedules still are.

One last thing - a personal opinion - you have to block off or exclude all of May for a major series or festival - the impact of the WSOP Vegas Series (aka the regular summer WSOP) is THAT huge. Possibly a huge casino in AC or Florida could manage it, but not in any market in Canada I don't think. It's tough, because it means if you're not going to schedule in April, you have the prospect of inviting masses of people in March when the snow is still flying...