Blackjack players at the Ute Mountain Casino, which is the largest casino in southwestern Colorado, USA, is holding preliminary blackjack tournaments to prepare the way for the winners to win a seat at the 2006 World Series of Blackjack, which is reportedly to be taped and shown on TV in the first half of next year. Three lucky blackjack winners will be awarded seats at the World Series of Blackjack in 2006 at Las Vegas, which has a total prize pool of US $1,000,000...that's 1 million United States dollars, folks.
"The staff and guests of Ute Mountain Casino, Hotel and Resort are very excited to be the exclusive home of the World Series of Blackjack in the state of Colorado and the Four Corners area," said Robert Mudd, General Manager of the Casino/Hotel, "By bringing this national event here we are continuing to prove that we are a premier destination resort; we are Colorado's place to play." Says Ian Valentine, Senior Vice President of Programming for the sports network GSN, which sponsors and will air the World Series of Blackjack broadcast. "We are looking forward to having three of the winners from Ute Mountain's tournament take on the best blackjack players in the 'World Series of Blackjack 2006' on GSN."
The qualifying tournaments which will take place at Ute Mountain Casino for the World Series of Blackjack will be held on December 2-3, 2005, January 6-7, 2006, and January 20-21, 2006. The World Series of Blackjack debuted in March 2004 thanks to GSN, when 25 blackjack players competed for a prize pool of US $250,000. Blackjack players who participated in the inaugural year included Stanford Wong and Anthony Curtis, among others you've probably never heard of. The second season of World Series of Blackjack premiered on GSN in January of this year, and included a larger playing field (40 players), as well as a larger prize pool of US $500,000. |
