Recently, the Canterbury Park Racetrack and Card Casino announced a new partnership with the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) and PokerStars, the tour’s headline sponsor. What makes the partnership interesting is that there are no NAPT events held at the Shakopee, Minnesota poker room.
With the freshly inked deal, Canterbury Park will host four super satellite tournaments for various NAPT events, starting with the Los Angeles stop, which will take place at the venerable Bicycle Casino from November 12th to November 17th. The first super satellite is tomorrow, October 21st, at 6:30pm local time. One $7,000 NAPT Los Angeles prize package will be awarded for every $7,000 in the prize pool (we assume that at least one will be awarded even if the prize pool falls below $7,000, but there are no terms that state this). The prize package will include the $5,000 seat in the NAPT tournament, airfare to Los Angeles, and accommodations.
The super satellite has a $100 buy-in and $20 entry fee, so it is likely that more than one prize package will be awarded. Considering that the tournament is part of Canterbury Park’s popular Fall Classic series and this Monday’s Noon $200 + 30 event attracted 231 players, chances are the super satellite will have a healthy field. Extra money in the prize pool once the prize packages are taken out will be paid out to other top finishers. Each player will begin the competition with 5,000 chips, blinds will start at 25/50, and levels increase every 20 minutes.
Canterbury Park’s card room also runs Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Lo, and Seven Card Stud cash games with betting limits ranging from $2/$4 to $30/$60. The racetrack and casino is located approximately 20 miles southwest of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.
While the $5,000 Main Event is the big attraction at the North American Poker Tour’s Los Angeles stop, the entire poker festival will actually feature 35 different tournaments, including super satellites to the Main Event and to next year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA). The first two days, November 8th and November 9th, will see only super satellites run. The first “real” event, on November 10th, is a $645 bounty tournament, with $100 of the buy-in set aside for the bounty prizes. The first of many $5,000 events will take place the next day, as a maximum of 64 players will sit down for a heads-up tournament. The final day of NAPT Los Angeles will be November 21st, featuring a 128-player heads-up tournament, a randomized bounty event, $200,000 guaranteed re-entry event, and 2011 PCA super satellite.
The NAPT was launched by PokerStars in January 2010 with its inaugural stop at the PCA in the Bahamas, which is also part of the European Poker Tour (EPT). 1,529 players turned out for the $10,300 Main Event, 974 of whom were PokerStars qualifiers. Harrison Gimbel put his name in the record books as the first NAPT Main Event winner ever, taking home $2.2 million. The other headline tournament at each NAPT is the $25,000 High Roller event. 84 players took part in that one at the PCA and William Reynolds emerged victorious, winning $576,240.
In February, the NAPT moved to the Venetian in Las Vegas. The field for the Main Event was 872 players, just more than half what it was the PCA. The buy-in was reduced to $5,000, producing a $827,648 first prize, won by Tom Marchese. In addition, Ashton Griffin took down the High Roller event for $560,000.
The last NAPT stop was way back in April at the Mohegan Sun. Two popular young players won the big events: Vanessa Selbst bested 715 opponents in the $5,000 Main Event to win $750,000, while Jason Mercier won $475,000 in the High Roller event.
