A big problem went down at Thunder Valley Casino last weekend, right before the first flight of the RunGood Season Finale Main Event.
Just before the flight started, a cement truck ran into a power line right outside of the venue, knocking out the electricity in the entire casino.
The casino ended up being shut down for about seven and a half hours. No lights, no working toilets, and a big decision for the operators of the event.
We were in quite a bind. The casino’s security kicked everybody out of the poker room and said that we cannot play.
A million-dollar decision
This $1,000,000 event already had an aggressive guarantee.
Thunder Valley had done the same last year and missed. So this year, they decided to lower the price point. The cement truck accident threw a wrench into the plan, causing the event to lose 25% of its starting flights.
What do we do?
This is one of those acts of God, and a scenario where you can change a guarantee. You're not doing it maliciously, and you're not doing it in an unethical way because losing the power changed everything.
But also, as operators, we want to honor what we say we're going to do. The final decision was to reschedule that first flight as two turbo flights.
The troops rally
We posted a lot of videos on social media to reach out to all the area’s poker players.
Thunder Valley has been so good to their players for such a long time; we were hoping they would come to us and help us in this disastrous situation. And let me tell you, they did.
That tournament ended up hitting the guarantee on its own and reached $1,100,000. We took something that was an absolute lemon, and we turned it into lemonade.
And I think that is indicative of the good people at Thunder Valley, the product they put on there, and the leadership they have over there. It was awesome to be a part of that.
It feels good that the guarantee was honored, and the players got a good product. Sacramento legend JC Tran won it.
After all of that happened, it ended up being a great story. A cement truck knocked out the power. It couldn’t knock out the guarantee.
Justin Hammer is the Live Events Director for PokerAtlas, an online tournament director for the Texas-based poker app Hijack, and a tournament director at Thunder Valley Casino Resort. He also works as a consultant and is a minority owner of Desert Bluffs Casino in Kennewick, Washington.
For more info visit PokerAtlas.com, HijackPoker.com, and bluffs.poker. Follow Justin on X.
