BARGE was held at the Orleans this year for the first and only time to date (although this will change in 2025).

The NL hold’em tournament saw 177 people enter. John Harkness won, Russ Rosenblum finished second, and Doug Langdon finished third. Rick Mombourquette won the blackjack tournament.

Mike Sexton was the banquet speaker. Mike was discussing the Tournament of Champions (TOC), created by Mike as well as Chuck Humphries. The TOC was an attempt to make a comprehensive tournament that covered all of the most popular games: Limit Hold’em, Limit Omaha/8, and limit Stud, followed by a No Limit Hold’em final table. BARGE has been running a TOC-Style tournament since 2000, greatly outlasting the original event1.

1999 marked the first year in which the "virgin" class was specifically called out, led by “virgin queen” Beth Evan.

Cover image: Russell Rosenblum and John Harkness at the final table of the No-limit Hold’em Tournament. Picture from Andy Hughes' site.

  1. The first two TOC events were won by rec.gambling folks, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Spencer “Zorak” Sun. ↩︎