Player of the Year contest underway
By Paul Giambroni

First we brought you Northern California’s only poker newspaper. Next came our website giving you easy access to our comprehensive cardroom directory and tournament schedule for Northern California. Now, The Cardroom is pleased to announce that the race to be named the NorCal Poker Tournament Player of the Year is officially underway.

We have worked long and hard over the last five months, polling casinos and our readers about the best way to set it up and start applying points right away. After much deliberation, the official rules and forms are now posted on our website (www.norcalcardroom.com). Naturally, we encourage everyone to review it as soon as possible.

Our goal is to create a system that is fun, competitive, and free of charge. The winner will receive a magnificent trophy, full coverage in the newspaper, and all the bragging rights that come with being named the NorCal Player of the Year.

As of this announcement, we already have 14 participating casinos stocked with registration forms and ready for you to sign up (see map, page 8). They will relay these completed forms to us every week along with the results from their tournaments. Player IDs will be assigned shortly thereafter to streamline the process and maintain security.

We will apply the points formula detailed on our website and rank players accordingly. We expect to post results on the web every couple of weeks and print a summary in each issue of the newspaper (first web posting will be  late March).

Between our paper and the website there will be a great deal of visibility for those who choose to participate. Currently, we print 40,000 copies of this newspaper with approximately 1,300 distributors. We are also advertising the POY program on Poker Room Radio every Friday night in the Sacramento area and Saturday night in the Bay Area.

Needless to say, we expect this to be the next big thing. For the last year and a half Northern California has had its very own poker newspaper. Now it has its very own player ranking system.

Be sure to keep an eye out for our sign in the lobby or at the tournament desk of your favorite cardroom, or ask them if they are participating. There’s no reason a player can’t leave town for a week and still rack up points at a new and exciting venue.

At the end of the year, we’ll have over nine months worth of competition to determine who the Player of the Year is. With a little luck (and some help from our friendly neighborhood cardrooms) we should be able to implement a system that is good for the players and the entire Northern California poker industry.

We think it’s long overdue. Don’t you?

As a postscript, we wanted to inform the cardrooms not on our list that the open registration period has ended. For reasons of security, administration, and transparency, we are limiting the number of cardrooms that will be participating this year. A few more may still be added as the year progresses and will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Cardrooms currently offering points toward the Player of the Year (see map):

•   Cameo Club, Stockton

•   Casino Marysville, Marysville

•   Club One Casino, Fresno

•   Colusa Casino, Colusa

•   Comstock Casino, Tracy

•   FLB Casino, Folsom

•   Lucky Buck Card Club, Livermore

•   Lucky Derby Casino, Citrus Heights

•   Napa Valley Casino, American Canyon

•   The 101 Casino, Petaluma

•   Phoenix Casino, Citrus Heights

•   River Card Room, Petaluma

•   Rogelio’s Poker Room, Isleton

•   Wine Country Cardroom, Lodi