Are You Ready for Run It UP! Reno? Jason Somerville Is!

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Oct 11, 2015 5 min read Last updated Sep 28, 2019

Run It UP! Reno hosted by Jason Somerville is just around the corner. The six-day festival will take place Oct. 20-25 at the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino in Reno, Nevada, but it plans to be much more than just your run-of-the-mill poker tournament series. Events on and off the felt will be taking place everyday, and those in attendance will have the chance at a truly one-of-a-kind experience .

Somerville took some time to speak with PokerNews recently about the upcoming event.

"We've already got about 100 people confirmed that are flying in, plus the locals, so I can imagine that we're probably going to hit between 150 and 200 people participating in the whole thing, and it's going to be awesome," Somerville said about the Run It UP! Reno event. "I'm very excited about it!

"Reno is going to be absolutely awesome. RunItUPReno.com has all of the information, the schedule is posted on there, etc. We've got a very interesting array of people coming to hang out and participate, including UFC fighters T.J. Dillashaw and Martin Kampmann, Paige VanZant, who is a rising strawweight fighter in the UFC, two Survivor champions coming to hang out with Boston Rob Mariano and Tyson Apostol, and then Dan O'Brien, Danielle 'dmoongirl' Andersen, and I've heard there's a chance that Daniel Negreanu might come. If Negreanu came it'd be pretty cool, but even if he doesn't come, it's already very, very cool! There's so many cool things going on and so many cool people going to be there. Everyone's going to love it!"

One of the things Somerville has been focusing on with his streams is playing more than just the popular variant of hold'em. He's really been trying to incorporate as much variety as possible into his events, and this idea will continue at Run It UP! Reno, where Somerville hopes to spend much time with those there playing different games and "mixing it up."

"One of the things we're doing is called Stud Club one night, where we're just going to hang out and play stud cash games all night. One of the final tables I made during WCOOP was the $1,000 buy-in stud hi-low event. We had 27,000 people at max peak watching me play stud hi-low. There has not been that many people watching stud poker since it aired on ESPN 10 years ago. That's the power of the stream."

And then, one can't forget about the premier event of the series — the Run It UP! Reno $565 Main Event with a $100,000 guarantee. This event will feature two starting flights and take place over three days, Oct. 23-25, with the final table streamed on Twitch.

"The most marquee event is obviously the $100,000 guaranteed Main Event," Somerville said with an excited voice. "We're going to be live streaming that event on Twitch and I'll be doing the commentary. That's going to be awesome in a lot of ways, and it's taking a lot of effort and energy to make sure it's all done right, but it's going to be done correctly."

Effort and energy is something Somerville was certainly born with, and we've highlighted his drive many, many times on these pages. In recent time, not only has he been planning and preparing everything for his Run It UP! Reno event, but he's been participating in the online poker world's biggest tournament festival and streaming every minute of it for his latest Run It UP! season. Somerville also spoke about his recent success in the 2015 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and the conclusion of yet another season of streaming.

"It was great," Somerville said of WCOOP. "I had eight WCOOP cashes, three final tables, and every event I played was played on the stream. I believe I ended up cashing eight of 40 events, or something like that, and ended up winning around $30,000 overall. This past season, I was up about $43,000 while one-tabling with no HUD or anything like that, just one-tabling while streaming and talking about my hands. I'm pretty happy with that."

Indeed, Somerville did profit from both the latest Run It UP! season and the 2015 WCOOP. In the latter, he banked a profit of $28,717.29 from eight cashes in 42 events players. As he stated, Somerville made three final tables, and his total buy-ins amounted to $46,694. You can find all of Somerville's stats online at RIUstats.com.

"It's pretty crazy how fast things have changed, now 1,000 hours later," Somerville said, who started streaming on Twitch just over one year ago, on Oct. 1, 2014. "You know, I had an Ultimate Poker deal a year and two weeks ago, and now that seems so long ago. It feels like it was years ago, but it was just over one year ago that it all fell apart. So it's obviously been a crazy year for me — getting the Twitch deal, then getting the PokerStars deal, this last season of Run It UP!, then getting the Peppermill deal and the DraftKings deal. We qualified 20 people to Run It UP! Reno through DraftKings — 20 Americans and Canadians won their way to the event through DraftKings, which is awesome."

Changing the topic back to the approaching Run It UP! Reno event, Somerville was sure to remind us about the off-the-felt activities that will be going on, including two morning workouts hosted by the UFC fighters, Dillashaw and Kampmann, plus a Survivor viewing party.

"It's really going to be a poker experience unlike anything that you and I have ever been to before."

Here's a look at the Run It UP Reno Event schedule:

Hotel rates for attendees start at $59.99. Call 866-821-9996 and mention code "RUNITUP" to make sure you're included in all the festivities. For more information, visit RunItUPReno.com.

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