South Bay gaming roundup: Bay 101, Garden City

June 26th, 2011 by Hayley Mather

South Bay gaming roundup: Bay 101, Garden City

South Bay cardrooms likely don’t have a marketing slogan just yet, but if they did, they could consider the motto “Quality, not quantity.”

To wit: There are only two rooms worth mentioning Bay 101 Casino and Garden City Casino, both in San Jose but the duo are offering a bevy of exciting tournaments and other gambling options throughout the summer.

The smaller of the two, Garden City (360 S. Saratoga Ave.; ), boasts some of the latest latenight poker tournaments anywhere in the Bay Area. These events start at 10:40 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. Buyins range from $120 to $180 (starting chip amounts vary accordingly), and the contests usually end somewhere between 1 and 2 a.m.

Garden City is in the midst of two “Summer Slam Series” events pointbased tournaments that started in May and extend into September. The main event comprises daily tournaments held at different times during the day; the second event, a LateNight Summer Slam, revolves around tournaments held much later in the evening.

In addition to its regular daily deepstack tourney schedule, the cardroom hosts a deepstack tournament on the first and third Sunday of every month. Buyin is $330.

Bay 101 (1801 Bering Drive; ) is all business after last year’s expansion and continues to be the premier cardroom in the region. This is where poker professionals such as Phil Hellmuth come to sharpen their games, the place that employs superstar tournament director Matt Savage and hosts annual World Poker Tour events. It also happens to boast one of the most extensive tournament schedules anywhere in Northern California.

Of note on the event calendar for this month: an ongoing, pointsbased Sunday morning tournament through June 26 that will land one lucky winner cash and a $10,000 seat at the Main Event of this year’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Buyin for these events is $335. Furthermore, on Saturday, Bay 101 hosts a $125 buyin, singletable tourney at 7 a.m.

A relatively new policy at Bay 101 rewards those players with onetime tournament winnings of $1,500 or more with vouchers plus cash. Vouchers may be used for singletable tournaments and a handful of other events. The vouchers are transferable (which means you can sell them) and can be added to other vouchers to satisfy buyin requirements for bigger events.

This trailblazing policy probably was designed to benefit regular players who hit at least four or five tournaments per month. For amateurs who don’t have the time to play on any sort of schedule, however, nothing celebrates a hardfought win like cold cash. Consider yourselves warned.

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