Horseshoe Council Bluffs Poker Room Manager Andy Brock Talks Poker
The WSOP Circuit Horseshoe Council Bluffs doesn’t attract big fields, but having the event toward the end of the schedule seems to play to assist with that as dozens of amateurs and pros chase points toward the season-ending National Championship.
PokerNews recently sat down with Andy Brock, the poker room manager at the Horseshoe Council Bluffs, to find out what it’s like when the WSOP Circuit comes to town.
PokerNews: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Brock: I just started here at this property in July. Before then, I spent the majority of my time at Wynn Las Vegas. I was there from 2005-2011, then I went to bestbet Jacksonville. I was only there for 3-4 months when I got the call to come up here. It’s home. I’m originally from Omaha.
I moved to Vegas probably 10 years ago. I liked that, but got the call to Florida. Living on the beach and working that new room there was great, but when I got the call for poker room manager back home, it was pretty hard to turn down. Obviously I didn’t.
What sort of things do you do to prepare for the WSOP Circuit?
We started promoting right when I got here. I worked with tournament director Kevin Ferguson on getting the schedule, met with marketing who were great on getting the schedule on the website, Facebook and around town. We started to promote it in our local community, and of course the World Series marketing was great. We’re one of the last stops for point chasers, so I think that works in our favor. It’s been a long process.
The tournaments are actually held in the Whiskey Roadhouse, which is a cleared-out bar. It’s unique, but seems to work well.
Yeah. It’s spacious. Usually we have concerts here on the weekends, but it’s nice that we can steal it for two weeks. Last year, we heard some complaints that it was a little too cramped, so we actually removed five tables. We kind of gambled with some of our sizes and satellites, but we thought removing some tables would be better for the players.
How do the local players respond to the WSOP Circuit coming to town? Do they like it?
Absolutely. We have plenty of tournament players as we run two $235 Fat-Stack tournaments a month — the second Saturday and last Saturday of the month. We always get over 100 players for those, so they’re happy. We have a good group that play here locally, but also ones that travel the Circuit like Drazen Ilich and Brandon Fish. We’re happy they get to play in their home casino, maybe win some points and play in the National Championship.
How are the cash games during this time?
We’ve been running some great cash games. We had PLO going, which was a great game, a couple of $5/$10 no-limit, $2/$5 no-limit games. When I got here, we made a big change based upon players’ request: You can buy in for 75% of the biggest stack. We’ve had good reaction to that, and it’s made the games a lot more interesting. I encourage those who bust from a tournament to go on into the poker room and play some cash games.