The 2024 WPT bestbet Scramble has kicked off here in Jacksonville, Florida, the 13th time the World Poker Tour has visited the Jacksonville cardroom.
The Day 1A championship field is led by Josh Reichard with WPT commentator Tony Dunst trailing in second on a list of 56 survivors from a field of 156 entries. Both players bagged up over 100 big blinds to lead a top ten that also includes Joe McKeehen.
The four-day $5,000 WPT bestbet Scramble Championship boasts a $1,000,000 guarantee and features two flights on Friday and Saturday.
No surprises: Josh Reichard has a top stack for Day 2. But what’s with the Scramble name? It all goes back to a series of gambles from Jesse Hollander, the bestbet Jacksonville Executive Director of Cardroom Operations. Hollander, who began his career as a blackjack dealer in Colorado in the early 90s, opened up the Wynn poker room in 2005, which has evolved into one of the best cardrooms in the world.
Hollander bets on bestbet
After opening the Wynn and a cardroom in Minnesota, Hollander left his very secure position in Las Vegas in 2010, taking a huge risk to grow poker in the state of Florida.
“When I moved to Jacksonville in 2010, there were two cardrooms: one in Orange Park and one in St. John’s County. I came here to manage both of them. The laws had changed in July of that year, which really changed the face of poker in the state. Previously, there were 25-cent games with $2 maximum bets, which had evolved to $10 max bets with $100 maximum buy-ins before moving to true no-limit poker.
“So in July 2010, Florida removed all the restrictions, and I came here because the opportunity to really change the game of poker in Florida was too good to turn down. I already knew how to operate no-limit cardrooms, something the people here were unfamiliar with.
“So Deborah Giardina (Vice President of Cardroom Operations, formerly at the Wynn) and I came here and brought our experience to build the biggest cardroom in Florida. I also had two children and thought that Florida was a much better place to raise them.”
Jesse Hollander and Deb Giardina at the bestbet Scramble in 2019. 
The power of golf
Shortly after opening the bestbet Jacksonville cardroom in 2012, Hollander used the power of golf to attract the masses to the Sunshine State for their premier event. The gamble paid off and helped turn bestbet Jacksonville into Florida’s largest cardroom.
“We opened this cardroom in March 2012 and had scheduled a World Poker Tour event in April."
That was the first event at this location, a $3,500 buy-in with 477 players, won by Noah Schwartz ($402,970).
“It was called the bestbet Scramble because we had attached a golf event for the players as an incentive to get more people out here to the Jacksonville area and give them something to do. The golf event itself didn’t have anything to do with the poker tournament but everybody had a great time and the atmosphere on the felt was top-notch.
“Although we don’t have the golf attached to the event anymore, we thought the name still sounded really cool, so it’s still called the bestbet Scramble.
“It then evolved into the bestbet Bounty Scramble in 2014, where it turned into a $5,000 event with $2,500 bounties on the heads of certain players. We've since dropped the bounty aspect and it's pretty much stayed a $5,000, $1 million guarantee ever since. We get a great field every year, and we’re not going to fix what’s not broken."
Hollander awarding a Last Bounty Standing prize to a young Tyler Patterson in 2016.Bigger and better than ever
"It’s our biggest event of the year. We’ve grown the series over time with a bunch of preliminary events, which now span a total of three weeks. We’ve introduced a $1,700, $300K GTD multi-flight Mystery Bounty event and we’re going to keep doing more as time progresses.”
As for the Scramble part, Hollander wants the swings to return off the felt in the near future.
“You know, I would really like to see it return. It’s still called the Scramble and we really should bring the golf element back and add a number of other activities as well.”
The cardroom at bestbet Jacksonville is now one of the biggest rooms in all of Florida, boasting nearly 70 poker tables and 23 table games, including three-card poker and Ultimate Texas Hold’em, yet there’s still plenty of room to grow. There's even more space on the other side of the wall, which may be used to either host more tables or add more gambling options if Florida gambling laws change in the future.
Images courtesy of World Poker Tour/Joe Giron/Katerina Lukina
