The nice thing about online poker is that you can play cards from anywhere. Rain or shine, hot or cold, weekend or weekday, it makes no difference as long as you have a reliable internet connection. But sometimes it’s fun to pack a suitcase and travel somewhere with natural sunlight, even if it is just to play poker. Enter ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Doyle Brunson and his online poker room, DoylesRoom.
Each Sunday this month, Doyle’s Room will be awarding valuable prize packages for the Punta Cana Poker Classic, which will be held at the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino in the Dominican Republic. The Classic will take place Wednesday, November 10th through Sunday, November 14th in the popular resort city on the eastern tip of the Caribbean nation. Brunson will be there, of course, as will many of DoylesRoom’s top pros and the Brunson 10. The latter group is comprised of up-and-coming online poker phenoms hand selected by The Godfather of Poker himself: Zachary “CrazyZachary” Clark, Amit “amak316” Makhija, Dani “ansky” Stern, Chris “moorman1” Moorman, Alex “AJKHoosier1” Kamberis, Steve “gboro780” Gross, Dan “djk123” Kelly, and David “Doc Sands” Sands.
Each Sunday at 4:00pm ET leading up to Punta Cana Poker Classic, DoylesRoom will hold a $150 + $12 qualifier in which it plans to award a $3,100 prize package. The package includes the $1,000 + $100 buy-in to the $100,000 Punta Cana Poker Classic Main Event, $1,000 for travel (players will need to make their own flight arrangements), four nights at the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino, shuttle service to and from the airport, all-inclusive food and beverage, 24-hour room service, admission to the “Dominican Night” opening event, a 50% discount on golf fees, and additional discounts on spa treatments. While the prize pool for the Main Event is guaranteed to be $100,000, it is expected to reach at least $250,000.
One item of note is that while most online qualifiers award “at least” one prize package no matter how many players register, this is not the case for the Punta Cana Finals at DoylesRoom. If the prize pool does not reach $3,100 (21 players), no prize package will be awarded. In that case, the prize pool will distributed as if it were a normal tournament.
For those who do not want to shell out $162 for a shot at the Punta Cana Poker Classic prize package, there are lower buy-in satellites with which to start. Sub-qualifiers will be held every four hours starting at 1:00am ET and will cost $2 + $0.2. These will feed into the $20 + $2 semi-finals, which will also run every four hours each day starting at 2:00am ET. An alternate daily semi-final will also be held every four hours starting at 2:00am ET. This one will be a $10 + $1 rebuy tournament. Both semi-finals will feed into the finals, which, as stated earlier, will commence each Sunday at 4:00pm ET.
DoylesRoom makes its home on the U.S.-friendly Cake Poker Network. According to PokerScout.com, the Cake Poker Network, which is also home to Power Poker, Phil Laak’s Unabomber Poker, Victory Poker, and its namesake Cake Poker, is the 19th largest network/poker room on the internet. It is technically tied for 18th with Everest Poker in terms of seven-day average cash game game traffic, but Everest’s daily peak is higher. The Cake Poker Network has fallen on tough times over the past year, losing a couple of key skins to the Merge Gaming Network and weathering a security problem with its software. As a result, the network’s cash game traffic has declined 49% year over year.
DoylesRoom anticipates volume to pick up with the recent unveiling of its new Doyles Rewards program, which replaces the network-wide Gold Cards and Gold Chips. The poker room bills it as the most generous rewards program in the industry, boasting valuable cash prizes, bonuses, and a multitude of store items for the poker room’s loyal patrons.
