Card Player Poker Tour Comes To Playground Poker Club in Canada

The 80-table Playground Poker Club will host its largest tournament series ever, the World Cup of Cards, from Aug. 18 to Sept. 14 and the Card Player Poker Tour will be a part of it
The series is a month-long festival with 39 tournaments, all taking place at one of the best poker rooms in the world that continues to elevate the overall poker playing experience.

Playground Poker Club’s motto, “For Players, By Players,” is reflected in its wide range of amenities. The club offers around-the-clock cash games, 75 to 80 tournaments a month, huge cash promotions, and features a high quality restaurant that comps every cash game player all of the food and beverages they want while playing. If that wasn’t enough, registered massage therapists offer their services for $1 a minute, all on the doorstep of one of the world’s best cities for food, nightlife, and culture.

Card Player spoke with Playground Poker’s Chief Marketing Officer Phil Sabbah to learn more about the history and amenities of Playground Poker Club and for more details on the World Cup of Cards, a tournament series no poker player should miss.

Card Player: What is the history of the Playground Poker Club?

Phil Sabbah: Playground Poker Club opened in December 2010 and was defined from the beginning by our slogan, “For Players, By Players”. Everyone involved at every level in those early days was a poker player, and there was a common desire of them all to have a better place to play the game they loved.

There were already plenty of other venues in Kahnawake and Montreal, but none of them lived up to the standards we wanted to set at Playground Poker from the outset. Style, comfort, professionalism – these are not just nice things to have: they’ve been essential elements in the “Playground Poker Club formula” from the very beginning.

In 2011, we held our first Playground Poker Classic series of tourneys, but in 2012 the whole operation moved to a different level as we welcomed the World Poker Tour to Kahnawake for the first WPT Montreal, which at the time was one of the most successful WPTs in history in terms of participation, and was certainly one of the largest tournaments ever held in Canada.

Since then, we’ve hosted seven more World Poker Tour main tour events, each of which is embedded in either a Spring Classic or a Fall Classic festival. We also host two other festivals per year with a Main Event at around the $1,100 buy-in level.

CP: What makes Playground Poker Club Canada’s premier poker destination?

PS: Ever since it opened, Playground Poker Club has consistently “pushed the envelope” in terms of what a poker player should expect and demand from a poker room in terms of service, comfort, dealer/staff skill levels, and the overall poker playing experience.

There are other venues in Canada that host successful tournaments—and we wish them well and support them when we can—but no one else in Canada has either the ambition to achieve what we have—or the ability to make it happen on an everyday basis. Consistency is important in this business, and the same standards of excellence that we apply to a World Poker Tour main tour event also apply to every single $60 afternoon tournament we run. No difference.

CP: What type of player amenities does the poker room have?

PS: The greatest amenity of them all for players is that The Rail Coal Fire Bistro is in the building—it’s an integral part of the whole Playground Poker Club experience. The Rail isn’t just a fast-food canteen tacked on to the Poker Club—it’s a full-featured, high-quality restaurant and bar that does a fantastic business on its own, and also provides players with the best food available at any poker table anywhere in the world. The Rail is famous for its pizzas cooked in a very rare coal-fired oven, but it also serves amazing steaks, burgers, healthy fare…not to mention the amazing breakfasts you can get in the morning.

Every cash game player is comped all of the food and beverages they want while they play. Service is fast and friendly and we serve players tableside. The experience for $2-$5 players and above is exceptional—they can order off the full Rail menu, including filet mignon or salmon or any of the other amazing meals available. The $1-$2 players order from a slightly reduced menu, but by any standard, it’s the best food service in the business.

Aside from The Rail, we also have a team of registered massage therapists to help players who are often sitting for hours on end to work out the kinks and keep themselves limber while they play. We’re very exacting about the therapists we hire for this job, and many of them have an existing sports massage practice when they’re not working their shifts in the poker room. At $1/minute, it’s one of the greatest values of its kind.

One player “amenity” that could easily be overlooked are the chairs players sit in when they play. Every table, cash game and tournament alike, has top-quality executive chairs to help players get through the long hours of an epic cash game session or a long Day 1 in a tournament. Our chairs are so good that every time we welcome new traveling players to the club during a big festival we get a few Tweets congratulating us for having the best chairs in the industry, period.

Tying everything together is our amazing Player Services team, who are there to look after every player’s needs while they’re at Playground Poker Club. They do everything from fielding questions about events to helping people arrange local travel as well as more mundane tasks like making sure your Player’s Card is up to date.

CP: How many tables does the room have?

PS: We have 80 tables split among two rooms. There’s the main cash game room, which was the entire original club, and the huge Tournament Hall, although it’s an everyday thing for cash game action to spill over into the Tournament Hall as well. All cash game tables are fully provisioned with seating management software so we can keep games going seamlessly. Additionally, one way we are differentiated from a lot of other rooms is that our tournament area features the same full-sized, high quality permanent tables as the rest of the club. Tournaments are a core part of the business and have the same high-quality furniture as the rest of Playground Poker Club.

CP: What are the normal cash games the poker room spreads and can you tell us a bit about the cash game action?

PS: Games run around the clock and action is heavily focused on no-limit hold’em. We spread $1-$2 and $2-$5 games 24/7, and most days we’ll add $5-$5 and $5-$10 tables as well. There is a regular pot-limit Omaha (PLO) game. On a daily basis we run a $1-$2-$5 PLO table that almost always becomes a very big game relative to the limits. Occasionally there will be a $1-$2 or $1-$3 no-limit Pineapple game as well, and our floor staff and management will work with players to open any other games they wish.

In addition to the regular cash games we spread, we also have two exclusive high-stakes rooms that spread the largest games in the region.

CP: What does your daily and monthly tournament schedule look like?

PS: Tournaments are a key part of the Playground Poker Club experience. We run from 75 to 80 tournaments a month, including a daily daytime tourney and one, two, or three tournaments each night. The schedule is very consistent from week-to-week and month-to-month, so players develop their preferences and will frequently schedule a particular night to come and play a tournament each week.

Thursdays are pretty representative in terms of tournaments. At noon there’s a $50 + $10 + $25 no-limit hold’em Bounty tourney which typically sees 45-55 players. Then at 7:30 pm there’s the regular nightly tourney, which is a $90 + $10 no-limit hold’em Freezeout with a healthy $7,000 guarantee and there will almost always be well over 100 players in that one. Also, on Thursdays there is almost always a satellite for an upcoming event—currently, this is a $165 + $15 re-entry satellite for the Card Player Poker Tour (CPPT) tourney in September! This satellite has two seats guaranteed.

CP: Poker players love promotions. Your website says “Playground Poker Club offers its players unique promotions unlike any other poker room in North America.” What are the room’s most popular promotions and is there anything upcoming you want to highlight for the upcoming Card Player Poker Tour stop?

PS: The king of cash game promotions at Playground Poker Club is our Bad Beat Jackpot (BBJ). This actually refers to three different promotions. First is the Primary Bad Beat, which is a progressive Jackpot that starts at $250,000 and features a steadily-lowering minimum qualifying hand. At first a player has to lose a hand holding quad Aces to qualify, but slowly but surely through time that requirement goes down and becomes more attainable while the jackpot amount continues to grow. Twice, this progressive jackpot has grown over $700,000, which generates a real buzz. A fact that further separates our primary BBJ from other poker rooms is that 20 percent is shared among all cash game players who are not seated at the winning table. The second piece is the Secondary Bad Beat, which requires that a player lose holding Aces full of Kings (holding a pocket pair). This jackpot is fixed at $25,000 and is won quite frequently. The third aspect of the BBJ is the Omaha BBJ, which is a progressive jackpot.

If the Bad Beat Jackpot is the king of promotions, then Wicked Wednesdays is the crown prince. Every Wednesday from 12 pm to 8 pm, we track the high hand on no-limit hold’em cash tables and every 60 minutes the player with the high hand gets $250. On the last Wednesday of every month it’s Really Wicked Wednesday, and from 10 am to 10 pm we award $250 every 30 minutes…and then from 10 pm to midnight the amount is doubled to $500 every 30 minutes!

There’s also a well-loved promo for Tournament players—the Tournament Leader Board (TLB). In every “regular” (non-satellite, non-festival) tourney of the month the top 40 percent of the field are awarded TLB points, and at the end of the month the top 30 are invited to participate in an $11,000 Freeroll.

CP: For the upcoming stop on the Card Player Poker Tour, what tournaments will Playground be offering as what are the highlights of the series?

PS: The CPPT – World Cup of Cards will be one of the cornerstone events in the largest festival we’ve ever run at Playground Poker Club!

The World Cup of Cards (WCC) is a month-long festival with 39 tournaments including the Card Player Poker Tour, but also a WPT National event, a huge Grand Prix Poker Tour event (a live-online hybrid), and a PPC Poker Tour event, alongside a complete range of side events including 25 percent non-hold’em tournaments! There will be well over $2 million in prize pool guarantees during the WCC.

World Cup of Cards (WCC) Highlights:

Event 1 is a Quantum Tournament with ten Day 1s at various prices throughout the WCC (Aug 18- to Sept 12). Day 2 is on Sept 13 and players may buy in directly for $2,050 + $150. $200,000 guaranteed!

The WPT National World Cup of Cards is another innovative event with seven Day 1s from Friday, Aug 19 to Tuesday Aug 23. The top five percent of the starting field in each Day 1 will qualify for Day 2, but 12 percent will be paid. Players may play multiple Day 1s and be paid for each – even if they aren’t able to qualify for Day 2!

The All-Stars for Starlight event is a tournament benefiting the Starlight Children’s Foundation Canada—a great chance for poker players to give back to the community! It’s a next-day re-entry event and the normal $25 tournament fee will count as a donation to this excellent organization. $100,000 guaranteed!

The Grand Prix Poker Tour is making its first stop in North America! This innovative tournament includes both live and online flight (on partypoker) and features a massive $500,000 guarantee! For $109 per starting flight, that’s an amazing value!

The PPC Poker Tour event will be a $300 + $30 no-limit hold’em Mega Stack, and a portion of the prize pool consists of packages to the PPC Aruba World Championship in November 2016. These events have proven to be extremely popular over the past few years.

There will also be 22 single-day side events – including hold’em events but also a wide range of non-hold’em events (pot-limit Omaha, pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better, Pineapple, Dealer’s Choice, and more).

Plus, there’s a three-day $5,400 no-limit hold’em Freezeout—the largest buy-in in the WCC has the most traditional format possible!

CP: What other large poker tournaments does Playground have planned for the 2016-17?
PS: In addition to the World Cup of Cards, the two most important festivals we host at Playground Poker Club are the Fall Classic and the Spring Classic. This year’s Fall Classic will run from Oct. 30 to Nov. 17, culminating with a televised WPT main tour event, the WPT Montreal, alongside a wide range of other great events, and the Spring Classic has traditionally been “home” to the WPT main tour season kick off event, the WPT Canadian Spring Championship.

CP: Besides the poker action, what other entertainment, recreation, and cultural offerings are near the club?

PS: Being located just 20 minutes from the city, and not having a hotel on the property, most players choose to stay in Montreal, one of North America’s great cities for food, nightlife, culture, and all manner of indoor and outdoor activity.

CP: What makes Montreal a great poker city and great place for poker players to visit?

PS: Montreal is a relatively new market for poker, but it has developed extremely rapidly and besides being the home of a world-class facility like Playground Poker Club, the Montreal area is also home to a critical mass of great online poker players as well as players who have made a big splash in the international live poker scene. We count among the locals a WSOP main event champion, another November Niner, and two other top-15 finishers—just in the past six years. Local players have won major events on the _EP_T, WPT and at the WSOP in the past few years and every season a couple of new players from the area burst on to the international scene. ♠