Jason Somerville Bringing Run It Up to Reno This October

August 12th, 2015 | by Brian Corlisse

Jason Somerville previously held a Run It Up event in Reno last May. (Image: Jason Somerville/Instagram)

When Jason Somerville planned some Run It Up themed events at the Peppermill Reno last May, he was thrilled to see about 25 of his fans stop by for a few days of poker fun.

It’s probably a safe bet that the next Run It Up event is going to attract a slightly bigger crowd.

We’ll all find out this October, as Somerville has announced that Run It Up Reno will be taking place at the Peppermill over the course of six days this fall.

The series, which will run from October 20-25, will mark the first official Run It Up live poker festival ever held.

Series Will Be First Official Run It Up Live Event

“We’ve done RIU events in the past, but they’ve always been a part of others events, they never lived on their own,” Somerville told PokerNews. “RIU Reno will be hosted at the Peppermill Reno, which is a beautiful resort.”

The festival will include a number of poker tournaments, culminating in a $500 buy-in Main Event. There will also be seminars on poker, a Survivor watch party, cash games and plenty of other fun activities.

“I played about 100 sessions of [five-card Pot Limit Omaha] during the last stream, and I am guaranteeing you for sure there will be five-card Pot Limit Omaha cash games running at the Peppermill during this tournament series,” Somerville said.

It goes without saying that Somerville has been a leading proponent of using Twitch to promote poker, and he plans to do that in Reno as well.

According to Somerville, the Main Event of Run It Up Reno will be the first poker tournament designed especially for Twitch, with Somerville himself doing commentary for the final table (provided he isn’t playing in it).

More details about the tournament series, including event structures, are expected to be released in the weeks to come. PokerStars will be offering online satellites to the series for players who want to win their way to the Reno series.

Somerville Signs New Deal with Twitch

News of the series comes as Somerville has signed a new agreement with Twitch that will see him streaming on the site for at least two more years.

“This was something that was a slam dunk,” he said. “It was just a matter of the details and how exactly we were going to work it out.”

Somerville’s live streams have become tremendously popular. In the spring, he streamed 78 consecutive days, attracting over three million unique viewers and drawing as many as 25,000 people watching him at any given time.

While he took a break for the summer, it won’t be long now before Somerville is back on Twitch.

His next season is scheduled to begin on Sunday, August 16, and while he’s not making any promises about how many consecutive days he’ll be broadcasting this time around, fans can still expect to see a lot of him over the next few months.

“I’m still gonna try to be consistent, but maybe with less ‘rules,’” Somerville said, replying to a tweet asking about how firm his schedule would be this time around.

Somerville was the first prominent poker pro to regularly stream sessions on Twitch. Since then, luminaries such as Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth have also used the platform to play and talk poker with fans.