Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Just wanted to say Thank You! to everybody that attended our first ever poker tournament:  Poker Gras .  Think it was a big success.  Definitely looking to continue the positives everybody raved about as well as expand the options a little bit in the future. Big thank you to Chase Haydel and Harrahs New Orleans for giving us this opportunity and I think they'll agree everybody won after our first time out.  More to come. By the way, check out this article on Chase by Ben Saxton Also, feel it's important to highlight the tireless efforts by Chase, Robbie Gertsner, Joella McIntosh, Mel Emnon and Timmy Louie.  As TDs they busted their butts to put together an in house tournament and had everything moving fairly seamlessly.  Not to mention just about every one of them asked me to put the spotlight on the hard work of somebody else.  Humble, smart, hard-working, what more could you ask for? Our first ever winner of Poker Gras, Mihail Karasoulis, is...

Once again guest writer Ben Saxton... Planning for the Future at Harrah’s New Orleans Poker Room For almost twenty years, Harrah’s New Orleans has offered one of the biggest and most entertaining poker rooms on the Gulf Coast. I recently chatted with manager Chase Haydel about an addition to the weekly tournament schedule, the return of popular promotions, and his plans for the future. Before he joined the room in July 2017, Chase didn’t have much experience with poker. The New Orleans native comes from a long line of restaurateurs—including Chase’s grandma, Leah, who runs the famous Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. Chase was a dealer at Boomtown Casino in 1994 before moving with his wife to Atlanta. When he returned in 2013, he joined Harrah’s New Orleans as a table games supervisor. Now, as poker room manager, he’s focused on outpacing the competition. “The poker world is becoming saturated,” Chase told me. “There’s a lot more rooms than there used to be, a lot more tours. A...

Gulf Coast Poker Winners Week at WSOP Nola As many of you probably know, Harrah’s New Orleans partnered with www.gulfcoastpoker.net to get local poker enthusiasts into WSOP Circuit Event tournaments for free. Poker room manager Chase Haydel gave away over two hundred seats, and seven of them were part of GCP’s social media giveaway. After catching up with most of these recipients, I’m pleased to share a few of their stories. ** Originally from Spokane, Washington, Todd Cowan moved to the Gulf South in 1997 on assignment as a locomotive engineer. In those early years, he often played 10/20 limit hold ‘em at the Isle of Capri in Lake Charles (not to be confused with the Pile of Debris on Lake Marl). After Chris Moneymaker lit the no-limit hold ‘em world on fire, Todd traveled to Las Vegas in 2005 and enjoyed the highlight of his poker career: a victory in the $1,000 Bellagio Weekly NLH Tournament for $45,396. This year, thanks to his free seat, Todd entered Event #1:...

First off: Hello world, it's been some time:   Some quick GCP thoughts : -After much delay decided to add a Group to our Facebook page. Originally wanted the GCP Facebook page to essentially become what Facebook's group are primarily and that's a  forum/community. However, when people post on our main page it's generally not obvious to the reader. Tends to get buried. So hopefully on the new groups page it will allow for the exchange of ideas, selling of packages, sharing of news, hand analysis, and generally be a positive community. Please asked to be added and please don't indiscriminately "add" people... more than a few of us feel quite spammed when other groups do that, so I'd rather that ill will not be directed to the site. Moderating is generally not my thing but if everybody keeps things civil and we'll be all good. Who knows maybe there are too many other places already for this to take off but it's an option we feel is overd...

Last time I left you with some threads dangling... So...  I had to get to 202 lbs.  I barely made it.  Two days before weigh-in I was under.  A day before I was over.  Morning of...  did it.  32 lbs down and bets won. Also, the man, the myth, the mega-master Kenny Milam went without his mustachio nor the remainder of his hair and honored his bet.  Here's the new Chrome Dome himself. Crypto...  it's crashing (as I type this).  I think it'll be a great time to buy, soon (or already is). Not sure if bitcoin will fall to 5k but it might--if it does jump in with both feet.  Why?  The app Robinhood going to offer the two big crypto coins  "fee-less" which will result in a nice short term uptick in both bitcoin and ethereum.  Robinhood will not be alone in expanding the potential market for investors.  I also think the money moving out and continuing to move out will force the popular Coinbase to add new al...

I'm looking forward to the Beau Rivage's Million Dollar Heater which begins... tomorrow. Somewhat fairly well known on the Gulf Coast is Kenny Milam and Charlie Gelvin's annual prop bet decided by the Arkansas-LSU football game.  Last year Kenny had to play day one of the re-entry event in a dress.  Good sport that he was, he did so.  This year the loser (again, Kenny the Arkansas fan) has to shave his entire head.  That includes that cigarette and coffee imbued flavor savor of a mustache for Kenny (look at that in all it's glory in the pic) which makes sense as Charlie has, shall we say, a "fuller" head of hair.  What will they think of next year?  Also, guys, why not throw in the LSU-Arkansas basketball battles for another prop bet? That's not the only prop bet that will be settled this weekend.  Known perhaps only by the participants themselves is a weight loss bet for me.  In late October I weighed (a gross!) 232 pounds.  I challen...