Our bar manager Alex has really done wonders over on her side of Encore, making a number of improvements in the bar.  Together with our amazing cook Kalman, they are working on revamping our menu, especially in the evenings.  We’re testing grass-fed ground beef sources to improve our burgers, and we’re buying our bread and buns fresh from Delphina’s Bakery in Northeast Portland.  Alex and I are working together to bring in some new and interesting Scotch Whiskys for our bar, and she is always on the lookout for ways to improve our liquor and beer selection overall.

Over on the poker side of things, I’m always looking for ways to keep Encore in the lead when it comes to Portland poker.  We’ve recently replaced all of our lighting with brighter LEDs, as many of you have noticed.  Working together with our Shift Managers (and listening to customer suggestions) we’re ramping up our promotions as well, with the new VIP email programs and frequent giveaways at random times.  Our much-awaited efforts to build daytime shootouts will be launching in May, with big giveaways as well as a dedicated timer monitor… and that is just the beginning.

There’s one big thing I am really excited about.  We’ve started a phased process of replacing all of our poker tables; manufacturing has begun on our first batch.  These new tables are going to be larger, the cupholders will be in the armrest, the graphics will be beautiful, and we’re switching to a nice speedfelt which will stay cleaner and last much longer.  They’ll be better in every way than our current tables (which are still pretty nice) and I can’t wait to play on them.  They will also provide the foundation for some other fundamental improvements we’ll be implementing in 2013.

I’m personally looking to spend a little more time playing in the club, and a little less time tied up in my office.  While this is certainly an improvement for me, I think it will be good for the club as well.  I really enjoy playing with our customers and many of our improvements are hatched out in between hands in a good game.  I’ll also be trying to visit the other clubs in town a little more consistently, it’s important to build a relationship between all of the clubs. I’ll stop bragging, I know I am incredibly lucky that my job considers playing tournaments a basic skillset.

I want to give a big thanks to all of the customers who have come to me with ideas, comments, and criticism.  You’re the reason we’re here, and I do like to hear how you think we’re doing to make you want to come back.  Feel free to email me with your comments (sean@encoreclub.com) or talk with me at the club.  If you don’t see me on the floor, you can always ask for me up at the desk.

If you’ve been visiting our card room for some time, the chances are good that you’ve either played with someone who has been asked to leave, or have been there when a difficult situation erupted.  In a poker room (especially one with alcohol) these things are bound to come up from time to time.  Reacting properly and getting everything under control is our number one priority in these situations.  However, we try very hard behind-the-scenes to prevent these incidents from happening in the first place.

This this end, our floor people are trained to monitor the tables for excessive behavior, and then hand out warnings and penalties as appropriate.  We base our code of conduct on Robert’s Rules of Poker, which is one of the universal, most comprehensive rule sets for Poker.  Both the TDA and WSOP rules are based off of Robert’s Rules, as well as most Codes of Conduct for poker rooms around the world.  I’ll be working on a concise list of violations to have in posted in our room soon, but the basic idea is that people should be treated with decency and respect while in the card room, and rule-breaking will not go without penalty.

Before a player is asked to leave the club for an extended period of time, they will generally have received several warnings and penalties along the way, as well as a one-on-one talk with the General Manager of the club.  If these steps have failed to improve the behavior of the offender, we hope that some time away from the club will do so.  In most cases, this works, but in some it does not and a permanent ban typically results.

Obviously there are some infractions that result in immediate and/or permanent banning without the warning/penalty steps being followed.  Some examples would include if we have to call the police on someone for their behavior, physical violence is brought upon a guest, or damning evidence of theft, cheating, or fraud are discovered.  Luckily these events are rare.

Excluding customers from Encore Club is one of the most difficult and heart-wrenching decisions I have to make as General Manager.  Each of these decisions are carefully thought through and made with the understanding that they surely will bring about negative word-of-mouth.  I only hope that the benefits of having a safe, fun environment outweigh the costs of having upset former customers.  When players are asked to leave, the reasoning for their exclusion is kept confidential, therefore it makes it difficult for our management staff when they are asked “What happened to so-and-so?”  We can’t come out and say “Oh, they were stealing/fighting/cheating” so instead we must hope that the circumstances for our silence are understood.

If you have any questions or concerns about any of these issues, please feel free to talk with me personally.  You can either contact me through email (sean@encoreclub.com) or come see me here in the club.  My schedule is Thursday through Monday, from open until 5:00, although I am generally here later.  I thank all of you for your continued patronage and support, we have the best players in Portland and together we’re only making Encore Club better.

$5000 Guaranteed Friday 8pm Tournament : We’ve changed our 8pm Friday tournament to a $5000 Guaranteed game, with a $50 buy-in and a $25 add-on.  You start with T9000, add-on for T6000, and the tournament follows our Main Event blind structure with 20 minute levels.  The first time we ran this, we had a prize pool of $10,600 and 121 players.  This is the game to play on Friday nights!

Pot Limit Omaha High : We’ve made our PLO Freeroll into a $30 buy-in game.  PLO is a fun action game that is a great transition for Hold’em players.  It plays just like Hold’em, except you have four hold cards instead of two.  Two cards must play at showdown, along with three board cards.  If you haven’t given the game a try, you should!

Deepstack Sunday : Sundays are a special day for us here at Encore.  We start off the day with the $500 Added Freeroll that everyone has come to love, but the real action starts at 2pm.  We have a $40 freezeout at 2 starting with T7000, a $30 rebuy at 4 for T6000, a $1000 Guaranteed $50 freezeout at 6 (T7000), another $1000 Guaranteed at 8 ($40 buyin T6000, no rebuy, $20 addon T4000), and our nightly $500 Guaranteed turbo at 10 ($25 for T6000, 1 rebuy, 1 addon T3000).  Sundays are the day to get your deep game on at Encore!

Midnight Express : We’ve added a new midnight tournament, the Midnight Express.  This is a super-turbo $20 buyin tournament that is really a lot of fun.  After a few weeks of testing and player feedback, we’ve settled on a 10k starting stack, 10 minute blind levels, and 2 rebuys at 5k or less.  It’s a fast-paced game full of laughs and excitement, and a great way to get one last game in before heading home.

Improved Blind Structures Overall : If you know me, you know I’m a blind structure nerd.  My inner geek means great value for our players, as I’ve gone through and added a blind level here and there in nearly every blind structure.  Gone is the steep jump from 500/1000 to 1000/2000, replaced with a more gradual progression.  Even our already balanced freezeout structures have an additional level in the fourth hour, slowing down the “shovefest” feel of some final tables.

As always, I’ll continue to think of ways to make your experience better here at Encore, and I hope you’ll enjoy the results of my work.  If our busy room is any indication, people seem to enjoy it already!  Thanks again for choosing Encore, I look forward to talking with each of you in the weeks to come.

It’s been a fun year.  We started the year off as one of the newcomers to the Portland poker scene, and now that December is here I dare say we’ve positioned ourselves well as one of the major movers in town.  A lot of great things have happened along the way… we had Micheal Mizrachi visit at the end of March, we ran so many sold-out monthly $10,000 Guaranteed events that we decided to do them weekly, and we expanded our noon tournament from a modest open game to our exciting daily $1000 Guaranteed event.  The crown jewel of 2011 was our amazing $37,000 prize pool anniversary event which set the bar for major tournaments in Portland.

We’re always looking for ways to grow and improve here at Encore.  I’ve heard nothing but good things from our last major initiative when we bumped up our day-to-day schedule and moved our $10k to a weekly event.  It’s very gratifying to see so many happy players coming back again and again.  We’re going to make some modest changes and additions in January, and you can be sure that I will be out talking with players and dealers looking for ways to keep our club at the front of the line when it comes to exciting games, big prize pools, and customers satisfaction.
2011 has been an exciting time for everyone involved, but none of our success could have come about without the great players and friends we have developed in the last twelve months.  Our players are the reason we’re in business, and I love to hear from any of you about the things we do well, or those we could do better.  Thanks for being here for us, and I hope we can make 2012 an even better year for everyone!

Happy Holidays, everyone, and I hope each of you has a successful and joyous 2012.

I want to thank all the players who have been coming out recently to keep things hopping here.  Some of the highlights of the last ten days:

Our first ever $250 Added Saturday Freeroll attracted over 40 players and had a prize pool of $1000!

Our Monday $200 Added Pot Limit Omaha Hi tournament attracted over 40 players and had a prize pool over $700!

We had our biggest ever $1000 Guaranteed Noon tournament last Monday, with 46 entries and a $1970 prize pool.

Our new Monday and Tuesday 8pm $1000 guaranteed $40 buy-in $20 add-on freezeout are big hits, with 46 entries, $2600 prize pool, and $1000 first place prize!

Our Sunday $50 PLO8 tournament brought in 17 Pot Limit Omaha 8 players and a nearly $1500 prize pool!

Our first weekly $10,000 Guaranteed Main Event attracted 87 players and a prize pool over$16,000!

Things really are going well for us here at Encore.  It’s no surprise, since we’re offering over $150,000 in guaranteed prize pools monthly.  And as always, our guarantees are REAL, requiring only 5 players to start.  That’s right!  As long as there isn’t a blizzard, ice storm, or other natural disaster… and it’s not a major holiday, we’ll meet ALL of our guarantees as long as five people show up to play a tournament.  That’s because we’re confident that you’ll come back again and again to play here.

So thanks, Portland, for your support.  I look forward to seeing you here in the club!

To begin with, I’ll introduce myself for those unfamiliar.  I am Sean Gentry, the General Manager of Encore Club, and I hope you’ll all recognize me from the photo I’ve included.  I’ve been working for a few weeks on the improvements you’re about to see, and I know they’re going to grab the interest of all of the Portland players.

First, I’d like to talk about what won’t be different.  Here at Encore we’re dedicated to providing you with the best tournament experience in town, with proficient and friendly dealers, on-time tournaments, quality equipment, and a fun atmosphere.  That will never go away… we’ve got a fantastic group of volunteer dealers who love to be here at the club, so you can look forward to that continuing.  Another constant will be our starting times… we’ll continue to have the same 12:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, and 10:00 starting times that we currently have, so you won’t have to worry about learning new times to arrive.

As for what we will be changing… well, the list is long.  We’ll be adding new freerolls to the weekly schedule, with great opportunities for new and experienced players alike to enjoy a free chance at some money.  These will be money-added freerolls, where all add-ons and buy-ins go on top of the starting pot.  Encore is dedicated to giving away thousands of dollars a month in freerolls, which is great news for our players and the club alike.

We’ll also be providing new games to play and more opportunities to play them.  We’re putting our 7:00 Tuesday Mixed Game tournament on the official schedule, with a set $35 buy-in, and that is just the start of the new interesting tournaments you’ll find added to the schedule you love.  We’re looking to build a solid following for our non-Hold’em game selection, and you’ll see a consistent effort on that front from us here at Encore.

This Saturday 10/08 at 7pm will be our final $10k Main Event, and I’ll be announcing the new schedule and other improvements at that time.  It should be an exciting night and I am looking forward to the positive reaction these adjustments will bring.  After all, poker players love bigger prize pools, more guarantees, new games, and more freerolls… and that is exactly what we’re going to deliver.

Of course, our one-year anniversary is coming on Saturday October 29.  Encore is going to put on an amazing Birthday tournament that will be the buzz of the poker community in Portland for some time.  It’ll be something Portland has never seen, and something Encore is going to be proud to host.

I look forward to seeing each of you this weekend, and thanks for the great year we’ve had!  Here’s to an amazing second year for Encore and all of our great players!

We’ve also added a guarantee to our monthly $320 High Roller event.  Guaranteed $9000 in prizes for this monthly tournament, next up on Saturday September 17 at 12:00 pm.

Our guarantees are just minimum prize pools, of course… typically our tournaments beat the guarantees by a wide margin.  Our Friday tournament tends to attract 50 or more players a week, with prize pools exceeding $5000.  We’re all expecting bigger and better things with these bumped up guarantees, so come on down and take part!

We really appreciate our frequent players here at Encore, and it’s very rewarding to look across the room and see every table packed with familiar faces.  Looking at all of our friends who came in to join us, we can appreciate the community that has built up around our club and our favorite game.

In the end, there was an adjustment of the prize pool for the final four players, but it was a lot of fun for everyone involved.  Congratulations to our winner, David Moshe, as well as all of the players who finished in the money.  We’re looking forward to seeing more of you next month in the August TOC freeroll.

Final Table Results:

1 $1915 David Moshe
2 $1180 Darrel Plant
3 $1030 Aurelia Wong
4 $910 Black Stallion
5 $500 Mark Castle
6 $350 (name withheld)
7 $270 Barry Bonds
8 $230 Ben Carmel
9 $210 Lisa Sanchez

I hope all of you enjoy the photos and recap, thanks for checking out the blog.  Sorry about the formatting with the photos, I’m incompetent with this sort of thing… they’re still nice, right?

The basic concept of Chinese is fairly straightforward.  You are dealt thirteen cards.  From these cards you must make three poker hands; two five card hands and one three card hand.  You then arrange these hands in order of strength, your strongest five card hand on the bottom, your medium five card hand in the middle, and your weakest hand is the three card hand up top.  To put it another way, the bottom hand must be able to beat the middle hand, and the middle hand must be able to beat the top.

After all hands are set, players play against each other.  The top hand (3-card) is compared against the opponents top hands, the middle hands are compared against middle, and bottom versus bottom.  The idea is to win 2 out of 3 against your opponent (or 3 of 3, of course) and win points.

It might sound complicated, but it’s actually fairly straightforward once you play a couple of hands.  This is a great game for passing the time, and I feel it also is good exercise for poker thinking in general.  If you see any of us hanging around the club playing, don’t be shy about asking what we are doing or sitting down and taking a hand.  I’m always happy to teach new people the game, and we’re hoping to start offering some sort of ladder or ranking system for our Chinese players in upcoming months.

2007 WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider explains the game in the video below, as well as offering some basic strategy in hand setting.  Enjoy!

Pot-limit games tend to have more action on the flop as the better is capped pre-flop by the “pot limit” aspect.  PLO8 is an action game with plenty of big draws and wild results.  If you haven’t had a chance to play this exciting game, we offer a monthly PLO8 game here at Encore to give you the opportunity.  Tomorrow at noon we’ll be running this tournament, with a $100 buy-in, one rebuy, and a $50 add-on.  We’ve had as many as 42 players for this game with a prize pool of $7400… come and give it a try!