‘I can’t believe they fill this room like this every day,” boisterous poker pro Will Failla marveled last week, looking around the jammed poker tournament area at Atlantic City’s Borgata, during a week where enough players entered and reentered a $560 tournament to create a prize pool of nearly $2 million.
Yes, if you’re looking for big East Coast poker action, Borgata is your spot this month.
The Borgata Winter Open goes through Feb. 1. It includes everything from tomorrow’s $300 buy-in, no-limit hold-’em tournament — with a re-entry option and a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool — to the $3,500 main event that starts this Sunday. The five-day main event has a $2 million guaranteed prize pool, and the final table will be streamed live (worldpokertour.com).
With such big fields, there are lots of bad players at Borgata, but pros are lurking too. When we cashed in a $400 plus $100 bounty tournament last week, we spent several hours at the same table as Failla — a longtime tournament grinder who won a World Poker Tour main event in Los Angeles for a payday of more than $750,000 in 2011.
Additional Winter Open tournaments will run daily through Feb. 1, and Borgata’s February poker schedule also includes a $400 buy-in, $100,000 guaranteed tournament on Feb. 16, and a $1,000 buy-in, $250,000 guaranteed tournament Feb. 17 to 20.
And if you’re itching for cash games instead, Borgata has Atlantic City’s biggest poker room, with 85 tables and stakes ranging from $1-$2 no-limit to games where pots are about as much as a small automobile or a sizeable mortgage payment. Good luck!
theborgata.com
Stay
The Water Club tower (rooms from $139 in January and February, thewaterclubhotel.com) offers a grown-up experience with child-free indoor pools, Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s room-service menu and a 32nd- and 33rd-floor spa with gorgeous ocean views.
Eat
Star-chef dining choices at Borgata include Bobby Flay Steak, Michael Mina’s Seablue and Wolfgang Puck American Grille, but our pick is Stephen Kalt’s Fornelletto with its “Brooklyn” veal-meatball pizza and its rock shrimp fettuccine with long hot peppers, pecorino and San Marzano tomatoes. Kalt (an NYC and Vegas veteran who recently took over Caulfield’s in the Thompson Beverly Hills hotel) also created the menu at Borgata’s fast-casual Roma, a good spot to grab a chicken parm when you’re on a tournament break.
Party
Borgata has no shortage of high-profile DJs at its Mixx and Mur.mur nightclubs. The February lineup includes Steve Aoki, Samantha Ronson, Ruckus, Vice and Havana Brown.
Follow Andy Wang on Twitter @andywangny.