Casino City’s Friday Five: Main Event edition

With the summer sailing along, we have another busy week of stories from the gambling world. As mentioned last week, Casino City was on scene for the grand openings of two Atlantic City casinos. We will touch upon that again, along with another jackpot story, a BingoBilly anniversary and Chris Moneymaker’s poker tour. However, the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event began this week, so it is necessary to include that, along with a third-time bracelet winner story.

5. BingoBilly celebrates 13th anniversary
BingoBilly is having a $22,000 Cash Raffles promotion in honor of their success for the last, you guessed it, 13 years. As part of the celebration there will be a $713 raffle every day in July, and on the final day of the month, there will be a $1,300 supersized raffle.

This promotion is following another that BingoBilly had in the final days of June, the 3-Day End of June Slots Tournament. So, if you missed the tournament at the end of June, don’t miss out on another great opportunity at BingoBilly for the entire month of July.

BingoBilly Hosts 13th Anniversary Countdown Throughout June #bingobilly #bingogames #bingobonuses #freebingo https://t.co/XKopZx7WKn pic.twitter.com/LwezNmbRxT

— Ball Bingo (@ballbingo) June 1, 2018

4. Lucky player wins Hall of Gods jackpot
NetEnt has been paying out players left and right so far this year. A player in Finland won nearly €2.75 million from a €2 mobile spin while playing on the online casino Paf.

This jackpot win adds to the €1.4 million and €4.25 million that were paid out to players via NetEnt’s Arabian Nights and Mega Fortune Dreams games, respectively. Not only that, but this is now the eighth seven-figure jackpot prize to be won on NetEnt games in this year alone.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Hall of Gods payout had an additional €350,000 bonus win to the player in part of the NetEnt Mega Million campaign. This campaign awards an additional sum of money to the winner of the Hall of Gods or Mega Fortune mega jackpot. Separate from the jackpot cash prize, NetEnt’s Mega Million campaign also offers players the chance to win €3,800 every day a match is played at this year’s World Cup in Russia.

3. Moneymaker PSPC Tour
With the WSOP still going on and the Main Event underway, the attention in the poker world may be all directed to that. However, let’s go back 15 years to a historic event in poker, when Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event in dramatic fashion. He turned $86 into $2.5 million after beating over 800 opponents, leading to a boom in the game's popularity that later became known as the “Moneymaker Effect”.

In this Moneymaker PSPC tournament, which begins on 4 August, players will have the chance to follow in his footsteps and win life-changing sums of money by parlaying their initial $86 Moneymaker PSPC Tour buy-in into a Platinum Pass, worth $30,000, to the PokerStars Players No Limit Hold’em Championship (PSPC).

The tour will debut in Sacramento this summer from 4-5 August 2018 and continue through October at different venues across the country.

So excited to host and play in these event with everyone. #PSPC #PlatinumPass. #MoneymakerTour. https://t.co/gq86eG9fiG

— Chris Moneymaker (@CMONEYMAKER) July 3, 2018

2. Top 10 thoughts and observations from Atlantic City
Our own Gary Trask attended the grand openings of the Ocean Resort Casino and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino – Atlantic City. The two openings took place within just hours of each other on 28 June.
Gary talks about the top 10 things that stood out and are of importance when it comes to these two new casinos, including the sportsbook situation — now that New Jersey has made it legal, casinos are ready to take full advantage of the opportunity. There are two sportsbooks open currently in Atlantic City. Those are located at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa and Ocean Resort Casino.

William Hill U.S. is operating the sportsbook at the Ocean Resort Casino after opening the state’s first sportsbook at Monmouth Park in mid-June. The plan for the Ocean Resort Casino sportsbook is that by the fall, there will be a 7,500-square-foot space dedicated for the sportsbook with huge-screen TVs and ample seating.

The @WilliamHillUS Sports Book opened for business today at @TheOceanAC and will expand to 7,500 square-foot space by the start of football season. Mark Wahlberg placed first bets: $200 on over 5.5 wins for Browns and $100 on Patriots to win Suoer Bowl at 6-to-1. pic.twitter.com/YijJN8DF7z

— Gary Trask (@casinocityGT) June 28, 2018

1. World Series of Poker highlights
We are down to the final events in the 49th WSOP. As more events come to a close, we see new champions and some repeating winners.

Phil Galfond won his third piece of WSOP gold and $567,788 after winning Event 60: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship earlier this week. The tournament took three days to get down to the final player after beginning with 237 participants.

Galfond won his first WSOP bracelet ten years ago in a PLO Rebuy event and his second bracelet in 2015 in the No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw.

Event 60: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8 or Better went to @PhilGalfond, winning his third career bracelet.https://t.co/NpjFU8lkN1 pic.twitter.com/q9brXY56sr

— WSOP (@WSOP) July 2, 2018

Of course, the biggest story of the week has to belong to the WSOP Main Event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas. It began on Monday and has already had a few outstanding statistics to go along with it.

There were 7,874 entries, which is the second largest field ever. Day 1C had 4,571 players enter to become the largest ever in one sitting at the WSOP. The Main Event is #65 out of the 78 scheduled events for the WSOP. So far through the 65 events, there have been 109,463 entries and $213,425,143 in prize money distributed, both on pace to be 49-year highs (120,995/$231,010,874 set in 2017).

1st flight of Main Event off to a good start. Over 900 playing today with reg still open, up 14% already over last year's first flight. pic.twitter.com/XCi9m0F8zV

— WSOP (@WSOP) July 3, 2018

Last year’s Main Event winner is entered in this year’s as well, and looking to take home part of the $74,015,600 net prize pool. Of course, every player has their eyes set on the $8,800,000 first place prize.

2017 Main Event winner @SBlum2711 has taken his seat on Day 1A of the Main Event. (photo credit @JayneFurman of @PokerPhotoArciv)

845 players in today's field, a 60-minute break starts at 3:21pm pic.twitter.com/Rk3d1mHD0g

— WSOP (@WSOP) July 2, 2018