Opportunities are now available for local poker players to play in the World Poker Tour's first Niagara Frontier event.Satellite tournaments have started for people to play their way into the WPT's North American Poker Championship, slated for Oct. 25-29 at Niagara Fallsview Casino.Unlike many WPT stops, there will not be online entrants into the field or a multitude of peripheral tourneys. The event, the tour's third trip out of the United States, will feature only one other tournament - the Canadian Poker Open Championship (open to Canadian residents only) from Oct. 22-30.Local players have a chance daily to play their way - and avoid the $10,300 (all funds are Canadian) entry fee - into the main event. Hopefuls can spend as little as $90 or as much as $1,200, depending on how many rounds they want to go through, to try and play their way into the big show.The Niagara Falls stop will be the tour's sixth on its 2006-07 schedule. The locally filmed shows are tentatively scheduled to be aired on the Travel Channel in April.For those who don't want to wait, tickets to the taping will be made available through the casino once the tour comes to town in late October, tour representative Erik Stein said in the spring (tour officials did not return a query seeking an update). Main event play will take place in the casino's Avalon Ballroom.
While watching poker may not be as much fun live as on television, where table cameras catch players' hole cards, there should still be a thrill for anyone who's able to attend and see most of the game's best players do their thing.
This is also a big step for the Niagara Frontier in terms of its status in the gaming world. While still a long way from Las Vegas or Mississippi River gambling boats, remember that poker has been here less than three years (and casino gaming as a whole for about a decade).
The WPT is taking a chance on this tournament, its first in neither a casino hotbed nor major city. It will still take some time for Buffalo/Niagara Falls to join the likes of Atlantic City, N.J., and Foxwoods, in Connecticut, among the East Coast's gambling hotspots (with those sites having the advantage of much more available land for casino development). Hosting this event, which in past years was held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, could help raise our stature.
While the price tag will prohibit all but the most serious gamers from taking a chance at getting into the tournament, anyone who can correctly spell "Daniel Negreanu" should think about attending the taping and showing the world that poker can thrive in the Niagara Frontier. And to those throwing their hat in, good luck.
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