PokerNews Mid-States Poker Tour at Meskwaki Hosts $300,000 Guarantee
The Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel has hosted five PokerNews Mid-States Poker Tour events, and the stop has quickly become one of the most popular tournaments in the upper-Midwest, creating prize pools totaling $1,595,372 since 2012. The next PokerNews MSPT event will kick off at Meskwaki on Saturday, Oct. 26 and will run through Sunday, Nov. 3. The $300,000 guaranteed $1,100 Main Event will begin on Friday, Nov. 1 and feature two starting days.
Hometown favorite Andy Van Blair of West Des Moines, Iowa earned a win and an RF Moeller diamond championship bracelet at Meskwaki in July — he defeated a 348-runner field to take home $88,958. Van Blair joined Muneer Ahmed of Dassel, MN, Dan Sun of Cedar Rapids, IA, Mike Reynolds of Chicago, IL, and Terry Ring of Durant, IA as players to earn a big cash prize and a PokerNews MSPT title at Meskwaki. The five players combined to win $423,919.
The MSPT's Lead Pro Blake Bohn — who recently cashed in the WSOP $111,111 One Drop High Roller event and earned $496,182 during the 2013 World Series of Poker — had this to say: “I’m looking forward to getting back on the felt at Meskwaki with the goal of winning my first MSPT bracelet. It's been on my annual goal list since Bryan Mileski launched the tour in 2010. It's been a great year for me personally, and an MSPT title would be the icing on the cake. We’re looking forward to closing out this season with three big events and rolling into 2014 where we will announce the best MSPT event schedule to date.”
The Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel is located in Tama, Iowa, between Des Moines and Cedar Rapids on Highway 30. The beautiful property draws players from all over central Iowa, and PokerNews MSPT events draw from a wide player base in the center of the country. Meskwaki was the first venue to offer a $300,000 guarantee for an MSPT event, and it has paid off with huge fields. This time will be no different.
With a huge bingo hall, table games, active craps tables, good blackjack games, horse book, indoor pool, exercise room, spa and a large number of hotel rooms, it's hard to think of anything that Meskwaki doesn't offer. One of the great features is that Meskwaki has the ability to host tournaments as well as cash games all in the spacious event center. There’s not a jaunt back-and-forth to the poker room, it’s a one-stop shop.
The Des Moines Airport is beautiful and easily accessible, just a 50-minute drive to Tama. The most common cash game in the room is $1/$2 no-limit hold’em, but the $5/$10 pot-limit Omaha game gets going every time the MSPT rolls into town. At one point during a prior event, there were so many cash game chips in play that the casino ran out. Needless to say, there's a ton of action to be had.
For further information on all of the events, you can head over to the MSPT website.
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