On New Year's Eve, a little more than a week after the opening of Caesars Palace's $12 million poker room, Nicky Hilton and boyfriend Kevin Connolly hosted an inaugural tournament at the new poker room. The tourney, dubbed the "Nicky Hilton & Kevin Connolly New Year's Eve Poker Tournament", had a prize pool of $120,000 and was eventually won by actress and celebrity poker player Shannon Elizabeth.
The tourney was part of a much larger event that celebrated the first anniversary of PURE, Caesar's exclusive night club owned in part by Celine Dion, Shaquille O’Neal, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. The event culminated in Ms. Hilton uncorking the largest bottle of Champagne in the U.S., the "Nebuchadnezzar", valued at more than $100,000.
The tournament itself was entered into by 92 players, mostly poker professionals, including Antonio Esfandiari, Evelyn Ng, Cyndy Violette, Jennifer Tilly, Phil Laak and Mike Matusow. Ms. Hilton must have been practicing playing poker a lot lately, as she survived more than two hours of play, outlasting many of the professional players. Eventually the first prize was cashed in by actress Shannon Elizabeth, who already showed some serious poker skills at the 2005 WSOP.
The
new Caesars Palace poker room has 30 tables available for cash games
in the very spacious 8,500 square-foot main room. It is located next
to the Caesars Palace Race and Sports Book, and offers a wide variety
of games (Texas Holdem, Omaha, Seven Card Stud) with limits both catering
to the professional and recreational poker player.
Directly adjacent to the main poker room is a separate 6,000 square-foot tournament room with 33 tables, so tournaments won't interfere with live games, as is often the case in other poker rooms. The tournament room features Sit and Go's around the clock, and regular tournaments are scheduled each day, mostly Limit Holdem in the mornings, and No Limit in the afternoons and evenings. Finally the tournament room will host two televised events in the coming months: the Heads Up Poker Championship in March and the World Series of Poker Circuit Event in April.
Related information:
Caesars Palace official website