It’s been a while since I traveled to play cards, but this tournament is a no-miss for me.

The Atlantis has always put on a great tournament and even better, I’ve always done really well there. I think I’ve gone out to Reno for Atlantis tournaments about a half-dozen times and always come back with more money than I left with. The structures are great. The staff is great. The rooms are great. 5/5 stars.

Of particular interest in this iNinja event:

• Sunday freeroll to the $800 Main Event guaranteeing 5 seats. Huge value here.
• $40k guarantee w/ a $280 entry. Play multiple starts and get $1k for your smaller stack if you make day two with both.
• $200 Senior Poker Tour Event — In this event I’ll be one of the young guns at the table.
• Plenty of events at $200 and under, including satellites to both the 40k guarantee and the 100k Main Event
• $200 Limit O8. No one knows how to play this event

Fields for most of these events are traditionally pretty weak. The exception is the main, where the 100k guarantee attracts some good out of town talent.

Couple of stories from previous Atlantis trips:

My first trip to the Reno Atlantis was what I like to call my “California Split” trip. You’ve got to see the movie to understand. I played in six tournaments and cashed three of them, winning one outright (I still have the trophy) and taking third in the other two. As if that wasn’t enough of a payday (it was), I also won in the cash games. At blackjack. At craps. At Pai Gow and slots, neither of which I ever play. They even called my name for an hourly drawing and handed me two hundred bucks in chips. I could not lose.

Usually, this type of story comes with an epilogue where all the money is lost back. Nope. I won all week. Went home loaded. With a trophy.

On another trip, there were six of us left in the PLO8 tourney. Me and another player kept passing the lead back and forth. Whenever one of us had the lead, someone would suggest a deal. One of us always had too many chips or thought the deal not good enough and would stop it. (Deals must be unanimous to go through). Eventually, my opponent had the lead. A deal was put forth that was equitable for all. The blinds had gotten obscenely high, and given that I’d be making nearly second place money with a stack that suddenly couldn’t survive more than a few hands, I was ready to take the deal. But my opponent said that he would only go for it if we gave him another $100. I was just opening my mouth to say no, when one of the two other players (we were down to four) said he’d pay the hundred out of his own stack!

Deal sealed and book another high finish for me.

I’ll live tweet some events, so follow me @adamstemple4 on Twitter some chip chatter.