Tao of Poker

Bellagio Challenge Cup Final Table

Back to the Bellagio, home of the aromatic flowers in the Conservatory and the gawking tourists snapping photos of the dancing fountains out front. The Bellagio is notorious for it's late night hookers and the scrumcious eye candy that wanders through. On a hot summer day like today, the combination of braless ladies and air conditioning means plenty of perky nipple watching.

I am not live blogging this event today. The Bellagio doesn't offer power outlets for me to plug in at their poker room. Plus there is no Wi/Fi access and the poker room gets crappy cell phone signals, so the air card doesn't work half the time in there. Alas, I ran home to write up this entry and then I'll head back to the Bellagio to watch it all until the end. If you are desperate to know how everyone is doing, BJ from Card Player is doing some semi-live blogging. I suspect he's only there because his boss made the final table!

Good news... Flipchip got the OK to take photos. The suits busted his balls and made him fax in his request. But he snapped a few and as soon as he uploads them, I'll point you in that direction and throw a few up on here.

I ate lunch at the snack bar near the poker room. I ordered the chili and it was better than the Rio's version, but not as spicy as I wanted it to be. I'm sure The Fat Guy could whip up a batch of kick ass Tejas Chili. Some of the best chili I ever had was made in Texas.

Moving on...

Here are the payouts for this $10K buy in, 97 player event:

Bellagio Challenge Cup Payouts:
1st $364,200 plus a $25K seat at the WPT Championships in 2006
2nd $228,850
3rd $119,000
4th $64,075
5th $59,345
6th $41,195
7th $32,040
8th $22,885
9th $18,310

Here 's who made the final table (including chipcounts from BJ):

Seat 1: Fuat Can (Linkoping, Sweden) $47,900
Seat 2: Tobey Maguire (Los Angeles, CA) $68,500
Seat 3: Jeff Shulman (Las Vegas, NV) $190,300
Seat 4: Quinn Do (Seattle, WA) $494,000
Seat 5: Scotty Nguyen (Henderson, NV) $377,000
Seat 6: Annon Filippi (New York, NY) $362,100
Seat 7: Chad Layne (Las Vegas, NV) $40,800
Seat 8: Sam Grizzle (Las Vegas, NV) $214,200
Seat 9: Mimi Tran (Los Angeles, CA) $146,900

The Skinny on The Cup: The day started off with $1500/$3000 blinds and a $400 antes. Chad Layne was busted in 9th place by Amnon Filippi's pocket eights. I saw Sam Grizzle crack Amnon's pocket aces when he rivered two pair on him. I also watched Tobey Maguire show a little emotion and even a smile when he moved all in with the short stack and tripled up. His A-Q beat out Scotty Nguyen's pocket tens and Mimi Tran who mucked her hand.

Eventually Tobey was busted when his pocket aces were cracked by Fuat Can's pocket tens. He caught a runner-runner straight to send Tobey home in 8th place. He played well against some of the top names in poker. Tobey was wearing his usual get up... a plain white t-shirt and a plain olive green hat.

Scotty Nguyen lost a big hand to Amnon, only to be finished off by him a few hands later. Scotty's AJs did not beat out Amnon's pocket queens and he went home in 7th place. Amnon Filippi must like the Hilton Sisters. They held up against Sam Grizzle's A-J and Grizzle was eliminated in 6th place.

Bouncin Round the Room: During one of the breaks, I spotted Scotty Nguyen taking pictures with tourists. I have never seen him once turn down an autograph or picture request. I must say that he treats cordial fans with the utmost respect. Scotty always wears some serious "bling" and his most recent item is a huge gold chain with a Ultimate Bet logo. Hilarious, right?

I spotted Paul Darden on the rail watching the action. I also saw the Shawn The Sheik, the guy who made the female dealer at the WSOP main event TV table cry. He also won $25K off of Sammy Farha making prop bets during the WSOP... picking high cards and doing coin flips. The Sheik was nice to me and shook my hand as he said hello. I also chatted with Charlie Shoten for a while. He was playing in the afternoon tournament and was on a break. We're gonna do a review on his book very shortly. Stay tuned for that. I almost played in that tournament too! Rest assured, I'll slack off later today and play some cash games at the Bellagio.

Late Night Update: Mimi Tran was busted in 5th place when her A-3 ran into Fuat Can's K7s. She led all the way until the river, when Can picked up two pair. Jeff "Happy" Shulman finished in 4th place when his QJs were no match to Amnon Filippi's pocket Kings.

The final three players, Fuat Can, Quinn Do, and Amnon Filippi played three-way for over two hours before someone was busted. Fuat Can was the short stack and Quinn Do and Filippi both had about the same amount in chips. Unfortunately Fuat Can was the guy who was eliminated in 3rd place when his Q-10 lost to Filippi's K-Q. At that point both players decided to resume play on Thursday. When they left, Quinn Do was behind with $775K. Amnon Filippi had over $1.1M in chips.

More Bouncin Round the Room: I was bored out of my wits so I played some more $4/8 with tourists. I saw Linda playing $15/$30 and wanted to jump into those waters but the cool thing about the low limit is that I can wander off for several minutes at a time, drink cocktails, watch the baseball game, and not have to worry about focusing on the game. I ended the day up $40 when my pocket aces held up in a 6 way pot! One chick was tilting so hard she ran through five hundred inside of an hour.

There was a token Liz Lieu sighting after she stopped by to cheer on her friend Quinn Do. Sherry took a pic of Liz with Steve. Lucky guy, eh?

I also never saw Flipchip so excited after he ran over to tell me that was recognized by a fan of his photography. I've been getting noticed for several weeks and I'm used to it by now, but Flipchip is not as recognizable as me because there aren't any pics of him on the web. Anyway, he was snapping photos of the final table when some guy on the rail asked him who he worked for. Flipchip told him and the guy asked, "Are you Flipchip?" Apparently, he's been reading my poker blog and been checking out Flipchip's 2005 WSOP photo gallery.

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A full recap of today's events will be posted over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog. Heads up action will resume on Thursday at Noon.