500 Club Casino

After officiating at my niece's wedding at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo on Saturday afternoon, I had time to kill on Sunday, since I was not driving back to Las Vegas until Monday morning and I wanted some live practice before I enter my first WSOP event in two weeks (when I return from a working vacation in Colorado. Looking up the local poker tournaments on Poker Atlas, the Club 500 Casino looked like the best bet with a $50 Buy-in tourney scheduled for 12:05 PM. I loaded the address shown on Poker Atlas into my Garmin and headed off from my hotel. The Garmin had me take a round about way to the Clovis Ave address. As I approached it, it was 5 minutes till noon, so I hurried into the 500 Club. Not seeing any poker tables in the restaurant or bar, I asked where the poker tournament was. I was told they closed the room in back, and moved the casino to a new location. The Casino is now located at 771 W. Shaw Ave., Clovis, CA 93612. I got there about 12:03, after calling ahead and asking them to hold me a seat. When I got there, I took the last seat, since the tournament had started at Noon.
It was a decent small room tournament, with all five tables in the separate tournament room filled to 10 seats. Once the first five players were removed (after the first break, since there was one re-buy) the tables all removed a chair and the tournament remained 9-handed until the end. A misread (I saw AK instead of the AA that beat my JJ) a few hands after a bad beat took a majority of my chips knocked me out in 12th. It was a friendly, fun tournament and I highly recommend the 500 Club Casino to anyone spending time in the Central Valley.
I saw no problems with the running of the tournament, and did not hear any disgruntled players frustrated by bad floor calls. The room seems to be well managed and run well.
The Casino is not simply a poker room. Besides the five tables in the tourney room, there are 50 tables playing a wide spread of games and limits.
Besides the expected Limit and No Limit Texas Hold'em, they also offer Omaha Hi-Lo, Pai Gow and Fortune Pai Gow, Black Jack, Spanish 21, Baccarat and 3-Card Poker. They have recently added the carnival-style table game Ultimate Texas Hold'em.
Tournament wise, they have a nice range of low buy-in tournaments daily (except Wednesday and Friday) including an Ante Only Tourney on Monday Mornings.
Looking at their website, they have a wide variety of promotions for top hand and bad beat jackpots for their cash games.
The competition was mostly locals who knew each other well. There were a few better than average poker players (where I place myself), but no one that played at a really spectacular level.
The food at the table was from the connected restaurant and what I saw, smelled and sampled after my tourney exit was first rate. They have a varied menu of entrees and sandwiches, as well as Asian and Mexican fare.
- Doc