Well, it looks like it might be the Bi-State poker tour as it looks like the Illinois Gaming Board frowns on 3rd party companies coming in to run events. I will be having my attorney reviewing the riverboat gaming act to see if there are any loopholes, sorry to the Illinois players .

And here Illinois is so conveniently close...

Yeah, I know. It seems kinda silly that they don't have more of an open mind. Don't worry though, when one door closes, another one opens. I'm still pretty sure that I can still produce 24-30 tournament a year even between just Iowa and Missouri. Maybe I can call it the The Corridor Poker Tour, you never know.

I just wanted to stop in and update everyone on our progress. We have decided we need to scale down and test the waters first in Iowa only for now. Missouri will be added if all goes smoothly and if we can determine that we can be profitable in the long run. Illinois is not being cooperative with allowing us to come into their casinos, so we are not going into Illinois, sorry. We are working on the proposals and tournament schedules to be presented to all the casinos that have shown an interest in hosting our tournaments. We have meetings at the end of the month with 3 of the 6 casinos that are interested to discuss formats, fees and rakes, advertising info, hotel discounts for players, and several other details so they can approve them and submit the itinerary to the gaming commission. Website development is being worked on as we speak but will probably not be live until later in the year. My main goal is to have an online feature which will allow you to pay for your entry to the tournament on the website (for a small surcharge), similar to what pokertickets.com does, but that is not a for sure thing yet.

The schedule will initially consist of 11 tournaments plus the Iowa State Poker Championships. The standard buy-in will be $730 + $70 entry fee ($800 total) and a $1000 + $100 entry fee for the Iowa State Poker Championships. We will still have the mystery bounty in each tournament along with a variety of satellite tournaments during the week with the buy-ins still to be determined. We will also still be giving away a WSOP Main Event seat to the Iowa State Champion. In order to maximize the number of entries, we will run 2 flights on Saturday and Sunday (A and B) starting with Flight A on Saturday at 10 am and ending at 3 pm. Flight B will start on Sunday at 1 pm and run til 6 pm. All remaining players will come back at 7 pm to finish the tournament and declare a winner. We are doing it this way to allow a couple of last chance satellite tournaments in between the flights to build up the main event for those who want one last crack at getting in. We may also have a few single day tournaments as well if the casino can support the tournament in a larger area other than the poker room.This will be discussed in our meetings with the casino management.

I did mention before that we were working with several sports insurance companies to check on premiums to be able to add additional prize money to the WSOP main event prize if it is won, but the premium are too high for what we wanted to do. So until our revenue allows us to afford those premiums, we are limited to giving the person who wins the state tournament and then goes on to win the WSOP Main Event and additional $100k. I know it's not much compared to the winnings you'll get from the Main Event, but it what is allowed with our budget and it is something extra that you won't get with the Heartland poker tour or with the WSOP Circuit events.

I will update everyone with the results from our meetings and keep you updated on further developments.