While Las Vegas reigns as the undisputed "mainstream" king of poker, Northern California (NorCal) and the Bay Area represent one of the game's most successful, and storied, "underground" scenes.
Along with the region's natural beauty, the Bay Area features a variety of casinos and cardrooms, some of which have been in operation for decades and decades. A rich history, combined with the underground elements of a tight, grass-roots community, makes Northern California a unique poker destination for both the new and old-school player.
Here is a look at some of the poker rooms that dot the region.
Bay 101
Bay 101, in San Jose, boasts the largest poker room in the Bay Area with 40 tables. It offers 24-hour action from $2-$4 to $100-$200. It also offers spread limits with $2, $3, and $5 blinds, and $5, $5, and $10 blinds. A $4-$8 Omaha game is also offered.
Bay 101 is Northern California's home of the
World Poker Tour, with its very popular
Shooting Star tournament in March, which offers $5,000 bounties on 50 professional poker players and celebrities.
The luxurious poker room features tournaments every morning and at 1:45 a.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bay 101 will be hosting two additional large events this year, June 21-June 27 and Aug. 20-Aug. 29, with buy-ins ranging from $300 to $2,000. There is a tournament every day of the week, with buy-ins starting at $60. Satellites for
World Series of Poker and
LIPS tournaments are also held.
American and Asian food are available tableside. Bay 101 also has an on-site salon, and many hotels and attractions are available within a few miles.
For more information, visit www.bay101.com or call (408) 451-8888.
California Grand Casino
The California Grand Casino has enjoyed a rich and colorful history. Poker games have been played there since 1854, when its original namesake, The Woodford Hotel and Saloon, served as a pony express stop.
Today, this popular cardroom features 14 tables spreading Texas hold'em, Omaha, Pai Gow poker, and Hot Action Blackjack®, and bad-beat jackpots starting at $70,000 are offered.
Every Sunday, there is a no-limit hold'em tournament at 10:40 a.m. (sign-ups start at 8 a.m. for seated players only).
In its high-stakes Pai Gow poker games, the joker is always wild.
Hot Action Blackjack® was invented by the owner of the California Grand Casino, Wil Wilkinson. It is played with multiple decks and each player gets to be the player/dealer.
For new poker players, $20 in cash gets them $50 in chips. Players can get $40 in chips for a $30 buy-in in the daily $3-$6 hold'em and $4-$8 Omaha games. Also, $100 gets players $120 in chips in the daily $6-$12 and $12-$24 hold'em games.
California Grand offers free breakfast or lunch for players (no free lunch on Saturday or Sunday), daily players menu specials (available from 2:30 p.m. to 4 a.m.), special tournaments, buffets, an annual barbecue, and various promotional events.
For more information on California Grand, visit www.calgrandcasino.com or call (925) 685-8397.
Colusa Casino
Colusa Casino Resort, located right off I-5 an hour north of Sacramento, offers guests a full complement of entertainment, dining, and gaming. The poker room hosts a wide variety of tournaments, including daily events ranging from freerolls to sit-and-gos to multitable action, as well as main-event satellites for many of the world's most prestigious poker tournaments. The room offers a variety of games, limits, and structures, more than $85,000 in guaranteed tournament and promotional prize money each month, and a only players club program.
Limit hold'em games range from $3-$6 with a full kill to $20-$40 with a half-kill, in addition to $40 to $200 capped buy-in and $200 minimum buy-in (no cap) no-limit hold'em.
For more information on Colusa, visit www.colusacasino.com or call (530) 458-8844.
FLB Sports Bar
FLB Sports Bar & Casino features a fully electronic poker room. It has five state-of-the-art Poker Pro tables and two No-Bust 21 blackjack tables. The Poker Pro tables deal an average of 47 hands per hour with zero mistakes.
The tournament schedule consists of three daily tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $20 to $100. All 10 a.m. tournament and live-action players get a free breakfast every day between 10 a.m. and noon. Hold'em players getting into a live game between 10 a.m. and noon get $100 in chips for $80. FLB offers a variety of limit games, from $2-$4 to $10-$20, and $1-$1, $1-$2, $2-$3, and $2-$5 no-limit hold'em games.
Omaha games average 40 hands per hour with zero mistakes.
The casino offers a progressive bad-beat jackpot of A-A-A-J-J beaten by four deuces or better that is seeded at $10,000. Monthly freeroll tournaments are sending players to the
World Series of Poker $10,000 main event.
For more information, visit www.Folsomlakebowl.com or call (916) 983-4411.
Garden City Casino
Garden City Casino has 40 tables in a 20,000-square-foot casino, offering hold'em, seven-card stud eight-or-better, Pan, double-hand poker, Pai Gow tiles, 21st-Century No-Bust Blackjack, and Super Pan 9. Free instruction for all games is available. Tournaments start at 10:15 a.m. Monday through Friday, with tournaments on Saturdays and Sundays coming soon. Garden City Casino also offers 24-hour dining, featuring American and Asian cuisine.
Garden City has new owners, Eric Swallow and Pete Lunardi III, who plan to continue to improve on the Garden City experience.
For more information, visit www.gardencitycasino.com or call (408) 244-3333.
Jackson Rancheria Hotel and Casino
Located in the foothills southeast of Sacramento in Jackson, California, is Jackson Rancheria Hotel and Casino's 15-table poker room offers low-limit, high-limit, and no-limit poker games, daily and special tournaments, "no-wait" pager service, promotions (including bad-beat jackpots), and numerous amenities.
The poker room holds daily tournaments at 10 a.m. and a 7:30 p.m. tournament Sundays through Thursdays. The tournaments' buy-ins range from $30 to $120. There are also sit-and-go tournaments offered, along with a World Series of Poker tournament package satellite on May 14, in which six seats to the WSOP main event will be up for grabs. Satellites are being held every Monday night through May 7 for this tournament, or you can buy in for $550. It is limited to a maximum of 150 entrants.
The casino also has a first-class hotel with conference center, salon, pool, hot tub, and numerous dining options.
For more information, visit www.jacksoncasino.com or call the poker room at (209) 223-8469.
Lucky Chances Casino
Lucky Chances Casino is located 10 miles south of the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, and AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. This 15,000-square-foot, 43-table casino features a zero-tolerance, player-friendly atmosphere, and a variety of games. It offers one of the biggest no-limit hold'em games in the Bay Area, along with lower-limit games, including hold'em, spread-limit and limit, seven-card stud, and Omaha eight-or-better.
The
Aces Cracked promotion runs from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. daily, the $500 royal flush promotion is offered around-the-clock daily, and
Double Jackpot Days are offered for Omaha and stud.
Lucky Chances hosts two major tournaments yearly - the
Battle of the Bay in June and the
Gold Rush in November. Each of these tournaments features a main event with a $1,060 buy-in and guaranteed first-place prize money of $100,000. In these events, because of limited seating, Lucky Chances has added as much as $39,000 to first place. All weekly tournaments feature a minimum first-place prize guaranteed by the casino. On weekdays, first place is a guaranteed minimum of $3,500, and on Sundays, it is $10,000.
Lucky Chances also offers Vegas-style blackjack, Pai Gow poker, Pai Gow tiles, and Super Pan 9.
Lucky Chances also offers two restaurants, Rene's Fine Dining and Colma Café, a cocktail lounge with entertainment nightly, and a bar on the casino floor.
For more information on Lucky Chances, visit www.Lchances.com or call (650) 758-2237.
The Oaks Card Club
The Oaks Card Club is located less than a mile from the Bay Bridge and minutes away from San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.
It has 36 tables spread across three rooms. The poker side offers Texas hold'em, seven-card stud, Omaha eight-or-better, Pan, and lowball, while the Asian side hosts double hand, Pai Gow tiles, and 21st-Century Blackjack. Most of the games have bad-beat jackpots, which often get as high as $100,000.
Hold'em tournaments are held every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, with special tournaments held once a month on Saturdays. The buy-ins are small, and there is always money added by the Oaks to the prize pool - sometimes in cash, sometimes in the form of
World Series of Poker seats.
The Oaks has been owned by the Tibbetts family since the mid-1930s, and current owner John Tibbetts is extremely friendly and visible on the poker room floor.
Despite the fact that the room is packed nearly every night, there is always a table set aside for $1-$2 hold'em for novice players. At the same time, there are plenty of other tables with limits as high as $30-$60 hold'em and $120-limit lowball.
The Oaks Corner, a full-service, 24-hour restaurant and sports bar, is open seven days a week. There are daily lunch and dinner specials, the bar offers wines from throughout California's wine country and beers from around the world, and there are happy-hour drink specials daily.
For more information, visit www.oakscardclub.com or call (510) 653-4456.
Palace Poker Casino
Palace Poker Casino is located in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area in Hayward, California, and is open around-the-clock daily. It has been owned and operated by Katherine Bousson for more than 50 years, and it features a very friendly atmosphere. The business is currently being managed by Katherine's three children - Chuck Blanchard, Cathy Aganon, and Pam Roberts.
The casino has eight gaming tables and currently spreads $3-$6, $4-$8, and $6-$12 limit hold'em, $4-$8 limit Omaha eight-or-better on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (call), $1-$2-$2 ($100 minimum/no maximum) no-limit hold'em (daily), blackjack, double-hand poker, and daily no-limit hold'em tournaments.
For more information, visit www.thepalacepokercasino.com or call (510) 582-1166.
Turlock Poker Room
The Turlock Poker Room is a fun, friendly place with some of the best poker action in the Central Valley. It's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A no-limit hold'em tournament is held twice daily, and limits of live games range from $2-$4 to $9-18, with a full kill. The Turlock Poker Room offers seven tables of action, as well as bad-beat jackpots often worth more than $100,000.
There are five different ways to get to the
World Series of Poker by playing at the Turlock Poker Room, where
Super Sunday events, high-hand-of-the-day qualifiers, and other tournaments give players a shot at the big Las Vegas events.
Coming soon are no-limit hold'em and an increased number of tables with blackjack, Pai Gow, and three-card poker.
For more information on Turlock Poker Room, visit www.turlockpoker.com or call (209) 668-1010.
