The gambling ramblings of Pauly -- a writer, traveler, and degenerate

 
New Truckin', Gavin Smith Charity Satellite, and Tanner Evers



Well, I finally published another (late) issue of Truckin'. It's late again. It's always late but my excuse this month was being on location in Las Vegas for two months covering the WSOP. I promise that next month I'll get this out closer to my target deadline.

Here's the good news... this issue is packed with some of the best stories that I've published in the last few years.

We have six returning writers including Mella, Falstaff, Sigge, Craig Cunningham, and Sean A. Donahue. It's also a pleasure to introduce, Dr. Chako, who makes his debut with a Bukowski inspired story.

Truckin- August 2006, Vol. 6, Issue 8

1. The Menagerie of Tweakers in Puerile City by Paul McGuire
Las Vegas is a magnet for the absurd and peculiar. I don't know too many places where you can order a Mai Tai at 4am from a bartender named Sully or find a hooker to take a dump on your chest for $300. Sometimes you can find both at the same bar... More

2. Root-Man and the Eleven Foot Rattler by Craig Cunningham
Will Percy, was a local eccentric and legend whose cavernous home was a revolving door of all things my father was not. Writers, gamblers, vagabonds, philosophers, and well-to-do intellectuals came and went like a Greek gypsies... More

3. The Album by Mella
I look at her now, carefully slicing through a long brown onion, still beautiful - despite a toothless smile and soft cheeks that sink in around her lips. Her eyes are the same sparkling green, but lined at the corners with delicate crows feet... More

4. Fairbanks by Dr. Chako
I look up over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of chestnut hair and a leopard tattoo on her right arm. I give her my best one-eyebrow-up look, yet she is already moving down the aisle, perhaps embarrassed by the audible hmmm-ing... More

5. Hangover: A Bukowski Poem by Sigge S. Amdal
A short-haired dog with contractions on its rear part,
turns his ass to me and shits a large turd right there on the street.
This does not make me hungry... More

6. Salt by Falstaff
I can still taste the salt on your lips -
Sun-kissed blonde and sweet, sweet seventeen
Graduation week daiquiris, sand surf... More

7. Training Camp, the Cleveland Browns, and My Father by Sean A. Donahue
I remember the games like they were yesterday, 70,000 fans packed into old Cleveland Stadium. What a lousy stadium, falling apart and just pitiful... More

I ask that if you like these stories, then please do me and the rest of the writers a huge favor: Tell your friends about your favorite stories. It takes a few seconds to pass along the URL. I certainly appreciate your support.

* * * * *
There are a couple of chairty tournaments going down on Full Tilt Poker. The Gavin Smith one is this week and Tanner is next week. I'll do my best to play in both.





posted by Pauly at 8/30/2006 08:00:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Tao of Three

My poker blog silently celebrated it's third year of existence last week. Caught up in the post-WSOP malaise, I totally forgot about the milestone until a buddy pointed it out to me. Three summers ago, friends of mine who were loyal readers of the Tao of Pauly got sick of all the poker content. They formed a mutiny and ordered me to start a new blog... the Tao of Poker. Within a few weeks I picked up two readers Iggy and Mr. Decker.

The rest was history. Thanks to everyone for reading and for the support on those numerous dark days when the weight of the world sits heavy on my shoulders.

The inception of the Tao of Poker in August of 2003 set forth a chain of events in the cosmos. And through the blog I've been able to cross paths with so many of you especially a handful of folks that I've been able to become good friends with. Somewhere along this wild journey, I puked in Daddy's car in Indiana, announced the final table of the EPT in Barcelona, picked up a job writing for Fox Sports, and went to the Playboay Mansion with seven other bloggers. In the past twelve months, I tied for first place at the Brad-o-ween Poker Open, got my junk grabbed at the MGM sportsbook, quit blogging for a few weeks, rented out the Tao to a casino, and had my work translated into Swedish and Italian. I spent more time on the road than living in NYC visiting G-Vegas, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Providence, Foxwoods CT, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cincinatti, Kentucky, Tennessee, Denver, Boulder, and of course Las Vegas.

I'm leaving Vegas later today for the first time in over two months. I couldn't escape Sin City without dropping the Hammer and hitting up a strip club one last time. In a fitting moment I won a big pot with a Hammer bluff and used that money to fund my excursion to the Rhino. Some people look at a pile of red chips and think of money. I looked at that same pile and saw nine lapdances.

The one lapdance that stood out were the two I got from Chyenne a dead ringer for Katie Holmes in her pre-Scientology but post-Dawson's Creek stage. Chyenne liked to chit chat about whiny sounding indie rock bands. I ran into a hipster stripper. Plus, never trust a woman who has the first name of a city, especially Las Vegas strippers.

I'm taking a short detour before my triumphant return to NYC after Labor Day. I'm heading to Colorado for a long weekend to spend time with hippies. I'm also seeing one of my favorite bands from New Orleans called Galactic play concerts in Fort Collins and Boulder. I'm going to write up a review for a Euro-trash music rag.

I'm also writing a spec piece on the Boulder Kickball Association. My buddy Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot is a proud member of the BKA and invited me to one of their practices. Of course, there's also the latest wrinkle in the Jonbenet Ramsey case and I might as well poke my nose around and try to dig up something interesting and try to sell that story. I'm gonna to try to sell three different pieces and none of them are about poker. I couldn't be happier.

Oh and I forgot to mention.... Daddy is going to be making a rare and special apperance in Colorado. Should be an interesting weekend of hippies, kickball, Jonbenet, donkeyfuckers, and New Orleans slamfunk.

After Colorado, I head out to Hollyweird for a week to lounge around at Zuma Beach with Change100 and finish work on the August issue of Truckin'. Aside from that, I'm gonna reacquaint myself with the characters I created almost four years ago in Jack Tripper Stole My Dog. I'm going to read it at least five times when I'm in LA before I return home to NYC. I need to read it ten times to jolt my memory back on track. I'm 18 days away from starting the new draft and I can't wait to write fiction again.

In the meantime, read my archives over the last 12 months. The third year of the Tao of Poker featured some of my best poker writing.

The Archives:
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006


The Best of the Tao of Poker (over the last 12 months):

Existentialist Conversations with Strippers: Crazy Horse and Sapphire
Masturbation and Poker
Bash at the Boathouse 5
Empiricism, Kierkegaard, Catholic High School Girls, and Poker
Female Ejaculation and Squirting
Tao of Risk
Bathroom Fucking incident
Hammers, Hilton Sisters, Dial-a-Shots, and other Post-Modern Poker Vernacular
Strip Club Advice
Circles and Poker
Poker and Porn Funk
Meeting SirWaffle
Crashing Murderer's Row
Gallery of Champions
Bloggers in Wonderland

Guest Post: Daddy's bad Beat Story
Turn This Mother Out
Gilligan's Island and Poker
Muck Marissa Cooper
Market Corrections, Bozos, and Bolos
L.A. Prop Bets, Groovy Sunsets, and Fear the Jaywalker
Bukowski & Poker
Strippers & Blow
The Mansion Part I: The Arrival
The Mansion Part II: Where's AlCantHang?
Female Intern Wanted
April Sojourn
Rebirth
WPT Championship
Glass Eye, Red Rocks, and Omaha Suckouts
The Warrior Within: Bruce Lee, Taoism, and Poker
Through the Looking Glass: April Maelstrom
Mother Lovebone
LaFeltah Vermouth and the Village Drunk
The Wall St. Game
Tao of Keno
Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins
Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound
Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider
Born to Gamble Part IV: Ramblin' Man
Born to Gamble Part V: Whipping Post
Born to Gamble Part VI: Revival
First Day at the WSOP: Buffets and Hookers 1, WSOP 0
2006 WSOP July
2006 WSOP August

I'm not going to predict the future of the Tao of Poker. I do my best work and have the most fun when I don't make a plan. I've been making up stuff as I go along for the past three years. That formula seems to work. Just when I think I've said everything there is to be said about poker... I think of something else to write about. Part of me wants to go on vacation and never come back.

* * * * *


I posted a photo gallery of Red Rock Canyon
over at the Tao of Pauly
posted by Pauly at 8/24/2006 04:19:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Le Poisson du Jour, Five Random Hands, and the Grubby Void

Grubby left Las Vegas for good on Monday as every casino exec in the Las Vegas Valley shed a tear for the loss of one of their most degenerate and dedicated gamblers. During his two year stint in Las Vegas, from poker to slots to blackjack to buffets and strip clubs, Grubby became a Las Vegas legend as I was fortunate to cross paths and share along in the hijinks. His waking life represented a dreamlike and surreal atmosphere as so many of his readers vicariously lived through his posts that were well written and featured literary moments replicating the winner's high to magnifying the testicle shrinking horrifying losses.

I'm lost in Las Vegas without Grubby. The buffets don't taste the same. The poker room isn't what it used to be without spotting Grubby sip a Strawberry Julius as he dropped the Hammer. And the lap dances at the Rhino aren't quite right. Well, that's not true. The lap dances always feel amazing especially from the girls at the Rhino. It was just a little odd going to a strip club and not seeing Grubby entertaining a stripper with witty banter like something from one of my Truckin' stories:

Senor had his hands filled with a not-so-good-looking stripper with a pot belly bigger than mine. When she asked him if wanted a dance he told her, "Look I don't want any lap dances. But if you want to sit down and chat for a while, that's cool. But if you want to go make money, by all means, go visit some other guys."

That wasn't a line or anything. That was the "nice way" Senor wanted to let the strippers down who he didn't think were attractive. That time, it totally backfired. She sat down for over an hour, possibly longer. He did everything to get her to leave. He talked about his wife. He talked about his son. He talked about the dog he never had. He even tried to draw me into the conversation. I avoided that trap pretty quickly. He finally got her to leave when he asked Rebekka for a lap dance.

Grubby was being entertained by an Asian stripper named Sterling. She had it written out in small studs on the back of her black leather panties. I giggled when I overheard Grubby ask, "Are you 24 carats?"

That's when a curvaceous woman in a black bikini came over to me. Her long dark hair cascaded over he round breasts. She looked like J. Lo and had a lot of junk in her trunk.

"Your friends have girls and no one is paying attention to you," she nearly screamed over the loud music and sat down on my lap.

She asked how we knew each other. I told her that we were friends from Harvard Medical School... More

* * * * *
Grubby is back in Chicago, while Change100 went home to LA over the weekend and I'm finally alone and can sit around in my almost empty apartment playing online poker with my pants off and jazz music blasting while I'm ripping bingers.

I finally got some decent sleep on Monday night... almost six hours which is a lot for my tired mind and body. Been catching up on hundreds of pieces of unread emails and playing through my reload bonus at Full Tilt. I stopped playing poker on the crowded Strip and have been splitting my time between at the local poker rooms at Red Rock and Green Valley Ranch. For every hour of poker that I play, I get the equivalent of $1 in food comps at any of the Station Casinos. Over the past few days I've grinded away enough for a free dinner buffet at Green Valley. Grubby would be proud.

I've had a decent run over the last 48 hours both online and playing live. When I'm running hot I don't want to leave. When I get kicked in the junk, I wanna get as far away from Vegas as possible. It's always better to leave this town on a positive note. I've wiped out all my Pai Gow and craps loses and it looks like I'm leaving Vegas with a padded bankroll which is a needed confidence boost. Although I've been here for over two months, I had only about ten days or so of poker. I played rusty the first few days and now I'm back in a groove.

Here are some random hands that I jotted down on some stationary that Grubby stole from Silverton:


6d-7d: 6/12 Limit with a Half Kill at Red Rock

I only played 6-7s to a raise because of the bad beat jackpot. On a board of Kx-10d-9d, I flopped a gutshot straight flush draw from EP and bet out, hoping that someone was playing Jd-Qd and we'd catch the miracle 8d. There was a reraise behind me. I turned the bitch end of the straight flush when the 8d hit. Another 8 fell on the river and I won the pot. A guy about my age said, "I folded eights."

The entire table including the dealer looked at him like he was burning stacks of $100 bills. He made the right play in folding his 8-8 on a board with three overcards, a straight possibility, along with a bet and reraise in front of him. I would have done the same thing. He needed running nines to catch quads. The old guys were bitching at the 8-8 guy for playing his hand right. They were bitching, moaning, and complaining about losing approximately $200 each (every player in a Station Casino poker room shares in the jackpot when it's hit) when I should have been the one yelping about missing $30K or so.

Of course I didn't think about that at the time. It wasn't until I told Grubby about the hand when he mentioned how much I lost on that hand. If anyone fucked up, the guy who raised me on the flop should have drawn the ire of the table. If he just called instead of raising me, the 8-8 would have seen one more card and then stuck it out when he hit a set on the turn. Alas, everyone played their hands the way they should be in the normal world. But when bad beat jackpots at local casinos are involved, the locals play any pair and any suited connectors through the turn. Most of them check the flop especially when they flop a set. This makes these BBJ games at Station casinos slightly more profitable because your premium hands get paid off because everyone with a pocket pair pays to see the flop and the turn.


As-8s-Kx-8c: 2/4 Pot Limit Omaha on Party Poker

I like the action at the PLO tables on Party. I flopped quad 8s and played them fast. Too bad I got felted and pissed away over $400 when I lost a monster pot to a straight flush and lost a side pot to quad tens. All the money went in on the turn on a board of Jh-8h-8d-10x. They rivered both their hands when the 10h spiked.


K-K: 3/5 NL at Green Valley Ranch

A solid and pensive player who just had his Queens cracked two hands earlier was on mega tilt. He's one of those quiet guys that lets all the bad beats and suckouts build up to a point where he turns beat read and instead of kicking his chair over and screaming at the table, he internalized everything and tilted off most of his stack with bad calls.

I sensed weakness with his raise to open the betting. A guy who's a dead ringer for Sweet Sweet Pablo flat called my re-raise of 40 and so did the Silent Tilter. I flopped a set on a rainbow board of K-Q-10. Only A-J beats me and I try to peak in the souls of the other two guys to see if they have it. Silent Tilter bet out half the pot, I raised to the size of the pot and Pablo's Clone smooth called. That scared me.

The turn was a Queen. Only quad Hiltons busts me and I'm hoping for action with my boat. Silent Tilter moved all in for the rest of his stack. I didn't but him on quads. I had him covered and just called. With about 700 in the pot, Pablo's Clone moved all in for another 300. I counted out 260 or so and called. Silent Tilter showed A-K. Pablo's Clone showed A-J and slammed his fist on the table when he saw that his flopped Broadway straight was outdrawn. River was a blank and I picked up a monster pot.Too bad I let about 200 of that get away when I got Aces cracked a few orbits later.


Jc-9c: 10/20 Limit with a Half Kill at Red Rock

I saw a cheap flop in the big blind with junk in a four way pot. On a 10 high board, I flopped a flush draw. I fired out because anyone with a decent hand would have raised preflop, so I thought. I got one caller, a young Asian guy in a Dodgers hat, and everyone else mucked. I bet out on the turn when I picked up a gutshot straight draw. I made my flush on the river, but the board paired so I was afraid of a boat as well as a higher flush. I check/called the river with my baby flush. He showed Q-Q. If he raised preflop or on the flop, I would have mucked. I tilted the Dodgers fan but I couldn't take advantage because the game broke five minutes later.


A-Ko: 5/10 Limit on Party Poker

I call this the "Party Poker Wet Dream." Raised in EP with Big Slick. The CO and BB called. The flop was A-K-Q rainbow. I bet out and got raised by the CO and re-raised by the BB. I figured that I ran into J-10. I called and the CO capped it. I turned a boat when a King hit. The betting was capped on the turn. River was a blank. Only K-K A-A beat me and I took my chances. Betting was capped on the river. I showed A-K. One of the other players didn't show, but the hand history revealed Jc-8d and Ks-9c. Neither of them had J-10 nor A-A and I led all the way. Had no idea what the CO was doing, but he was quickly tagged as Le Poisson du Jour and shall be hunted down in the future.
posted by Pauly at 8/23/2006 06:08:00 AM | Permalink |

 
The Menagerie of Tweakers and LLT

Las Vegas is a magnet for the absurd and peculiar. I don't know too many places where you can order a Mai Tai at 4am from a bartender named Sully or find a hooker to take a dump on your chest for $300. Sometimes you can find both at the same bar.

The temptation to gamble at any time makes it difficult for people with feable minds to live here. And if your gambling addiction is coupled with a penchant for liquor or drugs, you're heading down a rabbit hole of misery and despair. Everyone is entitled to one vice and one fetish, especially in this town. Having multiple addictions hampers your decision making ability and a city like Las Vegas was built on those unfortunate souls and their addictions. Maintaining solid play at the tables takes a tremendous amount of concentration and discipline. But being an action junkie and a drunk or a compulsive gambler and a tweaker makes it impossible to win over the long term.

I waited for my seat at Red Rock to be called when a sweaty lanky guy in his 30s walked over to me muttering something about the Jonbenet Ramsey killer.

"They got the wrong person, man. That John Mark Karr guy is evil but he's copping to a hit he didn't even do. Everyone knows it's not him. Everyone knows," he spurted out in three seconds.

"Everyone knows the brother did it," I said.

"He did. And that guy they picked up is the patsy," he quickly babbled as he wiped a a quart of sweat off his face.

"They are giving him three names before he's even tried like all the other serial psychos. John Mark Karr," I added.

He stopped and looked right at me with his shifty eyes. His pupils were dilated as he furiously scratched a rash underneath his unshaven face. He reeked of a slimy chemical aroma and that gave him up. I crossed paths with a tweaker roaming around in a casino ready to piss away every dollar in his pocket before he came down.

Crystal meth sits in your system for up to 6 or 8 hours depending on the purity of the dosage and some folks are up for a week at a time. Unlike other forms of intoxication, inside of five or size hours only 50% of the drug leaves your bloodstream. That leaves hours of tweaking which is that in between phase of being jacked up and crashing.

Some addicts walk around in circles when they are tweaking. Others clean their houses. Some drive for hours on end. Some put all their money in slot machines and Las Vegas is cluttered with those tweakers. You don't see them because they don't like going near the Strip and other touristy areas like the Bellagio Fountains. They lurk in the shadows of downtown or hang out at local's casinos playing single deck blackjack or end up offering to trade their rifle for Grubby's TV after reading his ad on Craigslist.

A tweaker ran into Red Rock itching to play poker. And he sat at my table talking to himself and playing as erratic as he behaved. I couldn't figure out how he scraped together $220 for the buy-in because that guy doesn't look like he's held a job in several months. He probably has been up for over a week without eating or showering.

Deep dark ovals encircled his eyes as he constantly scratched his ashen face. He looked like one of those zombies from The Serpent and the Rainbow and failed to keep eye contact with me when he rambled on about the Jonbenet conspiracy. He couldn't sit still and kept repeating, "The brother. The brother. The brother. He did it."

Smelly jumpy tweaker guy played every hand and raised too frequently. He had the kill button for three or four hands in a row on more than one instance so the stakes were bumped up to 15/30 most of the time he played. He'd lost a ton of chips in a big pot when he overplayed second pair. He'd also picked up a lot of pots playing junk hands and having good ones when the other players didn't give him credit like me for instance when I has A-J and lost to his Big Slick when we both flopped an Ace.

After I lost another big pot to the tweaker and I came to the conclusion that you cannot bluff tourists, tweakers, and Scandinavians... because they will all call you down to the river with nothing.

* * * * *
I took 7th place out of 97 in an EPT rebuy satellite on Poker Stars. I missed a seat to the $450 satellite by 3 spots. The blinds were up super fast that it became a push fest ninety minutes in. I bluffed off all my chips with the Hammer shortly before the rebuy period ended. I flopped a 7 but busted.

I did a rebuy with three minutes to spare. The very next hand I found A-K in the big blind. When four players limped in, I pushed. All four called as my hand held up in a multi-way pot. I had 5K in chips and jumped up to 18th out of 64 by the first break.

I doubled up with J-J against a maniac who moved all in before me with K-8s. I won another pot with K-Js and was 3rd in chips with five tables to go. By the time two tables remained, I was 8th in chips. The only bad beat that I issued all day happened when I cracked A-J with K-J. I flopped a King to survive an all in and moved up as high as 3rd in chips with 13 left. When the final table seated I found myself as one of the short stacks 6th overall. With accelerating blinds I made a move with 9-9 and lost a race to A-10. Out in 7th. Making the final table was worthless.

* * * * *



Of course I didn't forget about Liz Lieu Tuesdays. Last week we had Liz with puppies. This week it's back to the pool.
posted by Pauly at 8/22/2006 05:56:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Tilting Locals, Four Random Hands, and Return of the Poker Grub

"Don't burn the locals." - Hunter

On Saturday afternoon, Grubby and I ate lunch across the street at PT's, a chain of bars with good food which are sprinkled all over Las Vegas. Grubby had a 2 for 1 coupon so we drove across the street because we're too lazy to walk in the sizzling Nevada August sun.

Our server was named Heather and she was waitress cute although nothing special stuck out aside from the tattoos of red stars on both of her hands. We ordered pints of beer while I kept an eye on the Little League World Series. The team from NY played Georgia. It was tied 2-2 in the 6th inning and I had money on my hometown state. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger burger, the pounder special.

"You sure you want it? It's huge. It's a pound of hamburger," she said trying to talk me out of my choice.

"Yes of course. This ain't my first rodeo."

I destroyed the cheeseburger, yet barely touched the fries or nachos. It was actually a double cheeseburger of two patties drenched in Swiss cheese and layered in bacon. Over the hour lunch, Grubby and I freaked out our waitress by using her for a series of prop bets. She had a weird accent. I detected either Vancouver or Minnesota. Grubby had two choices (one city and one state). He said California or Seattle. If either of us were wrong, we were going to pay her the money. Our waitress wrote down where she's from on a cocktail napkin.

"Big Bear, CA," it read.

I tossed Grubby $1 as she rolled her eyes.

Halfway through our meal, she came over and we did another prop bet, this time using her birthday. I picked the dates of 1-10. Grubby had 11-20. And if it was 21-31, we'd give the money to the waitress.

"March 7th," she said as I screamed, "Ship it!"

We also bet on her siblings. I put her on one and Grubby said he got an "only child vibe." We were both wrong. She had two brothers and two sisters. We tossed her the money.

* * * * *
On Friday, I hung out with Miami Don and Sin City Carmen at Red Rock casino. I got there early and played 6/12 with a Half Kill. The game lasted an orbit before it broke up and I had to cash out because they used $2 chips. When the game broke, I sat at 4/8 with a bunch of locals as I waited for them to open an 4-8 Omaha High table.

I lost a huge pot early when I misread my hand. I had a straight and didn't see the flush on the board. Seven people limped in front of me and I called with 5s-7s on the button. I flopped bottom pair and turned a gutshot. I was so happy I hit my straight, that I overlooked the fact that the same card filled in someone's heart flush. It was until I was reraised a second time when I saw the three hearts on the board.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me," I said as he showed me his flush.

I was wearing my glasses too. That's the hard part to stomach. I wasn't paying attention. And yeah, I have glasses now. Shortly before the WSOP began, I lost a hand because I thought I had a flush when I had nothing at all. It wasn small pot but the message was clear... my vision was not up to snuff. I noticed over the last few months that I was squinting more to see the cards at the tables when I was covering tournaments. I chalked it up to the fact I wasn't sitting at the table and standing up sometimes another table away. But when I lost the hand by a misread I made a mental note that my vision was slipping.

Halfway through the WSOP I accepted the fact that I need glasses and made a point to getting an eye exam as soon as everything ended. On our way home to Henderson late one night, Change100 handed me her glasses at a stop light. I put them on and it was a different world.

"Holy shit. I can see everything," I said.

Now I only use the specs at the poker tables and while driving. Sorry for the tangent. Back to Carmen and Don...

It was Carmen's day off after working 10 straight days. Working everyday or logging long hours in a party town is tough because you are surrounded by folks on vacation and gambling and getting wasted at every turn. She was looking to let loose and we headed over to Red Rock because along with Green Valley, those are my two favorite casinos. I loathe the Strip these days. It's too crowded, parking is a chore, and traffic is awful.

I played poker for a while before I joined them at the bar near the sportsbook. I watched the second game of the Yankees-Red Sox double dip and drank free beers as I played through the same $20 of video poker. Those video poker machines are much tougher than the ones at the Hooker Bar in the Rio.

We eventually wandered over to the craps tables to throw some dice. Carmen got in first at a super crowded table. By the time Don and I got spaces, she was stuck $100. That was until the lesbian with the mullet stepped up and rolled for almost 20 minutes straight. It started out after I tossed out a chip and said, "Hard eight for the boys!"

The boxman and stick guy thanked me for the impending generosity. Three seconds later, the red dice whizzed by me and danced on the felt before both stopping on four.

"Eight. Hard eight!" screamed the stick man as he pointed to me and said, "Thank you sir."

My favorite lesbian nailed point after point while Don and I kept pressing our bets. Carmen got unstuck inside of minutes as the table livened up. A craps table is the epicenter of excitement and constant action in a casino. The louder we cheer, the bigger the crowds that gather.

One older guy on our end was shooting with his wife. Before he took the dice she said, "Come on Honey. It's time for a Yo!"

After that we kept calling him Honey or a variation there of, like Honeybear or Honeycakes. He also rolled for fifteen minutes and nailed consecutive Yos. Spaceman would have been proud.

To keep the shooter hot, Carmen started showing him her cleavage. He kept rolling and she kept displaying the goodies.

"Why don't I just take off my shirt and just stand here in my bra?" she said. "I'll get more cleavage that way."

She kept the shooter hot while the boxman and pit boss were on mega tilt. By the end of the night, they all knew Carmen's name.



* * * * *
"I'm so addicted. I can't stop," Grubby said on the phone when I woke him up after only an hour of sleep. He was up until 4pm playing slots and crashed for a while before I reminded him about the Sahara tournament.

In honor of Grubby's last night in Las Vegas, we played in the 7pm Sahara tournament. My buddy Friedman joined us along with Grubby's friend Carla and special guests Miami Don and Carmen.

The sleep deprived Grubby outlasted all of us as he went deep taking 13th out of 151 but he still missed the money by three spots. The Sahara MTTs are a donkfest to start then become a pushfest after the second break. But for around $62 it's hard to pass up.

Friedman and I were seated at the same table. He turned quads on one hand. I was card dead and played 3 hands total in the first hour. I limped and saw flops with 2-2 and 3-3. I only won one hand the entire tournament when I doubled up with Big Slick. I busted out by a river suckout after my table broke just before the second break. I flopped two pair and got some guy to push all in on the turn with his two pair. He boated up on the river to send me to the rail.

Around Midnight, Grubby and I decided to grab a bite to eat at Green Valley Ranch. Since we both drove to Sahara, we bet $1 on who would get to GVR first from the Strip. He won by six minutes. In my defense, I took two smoke breaks along the way.

* * * * *
After almost a three month hiatus, I'm back to playing everyday. I got the time to play a slew of poker now that the WSOP ended. Been focusing on live games and online at Party Poker and on Full Tilt where I've been grinding out a reload bonus at 3/6 and 5/10. As of now, I'm stuck my full bonus on FT! But there's still a lot of poker left. Hopefully I'll come out on the healthy side of variance and the numbers will even out for me.

Here are some random hands that for some reason or another I jotted down in my notes over the past week or so.


A-Ko: 5/10 Limit 6-max on Party Poker

I raised UTG and both the blinds called on a non-bad beat jackpot table. I flopped an Ace on a board of A-2-x and bet out. One guy called. The turn was a 2. I bet and he called. The river was a 2. I bet and he called. He flipped over K-2 for quads. I welcome the action with K-2, but I'm stumped to know why he didn't raise me on the turn or river.


A-Ko: NL MTT at Sahara

Blinds were 50/100. Two limped in front of me and I raised to 400 with A-K. I had been playing super tight and that was my first hand that I played for a raise. Everyone folded except one very loose and drunk Haitian with the gigantic stack of chips. The flop was a rainbow with Q-8-2. Drunk Haitian checked and I moved all in for 1200+. It was a slight overbet but I didn't want him to call and suckout since the drunk Haitian was a calling station. I was happy to take it down right there. After a few minutes of indecision, he called with K-5. He had worse than nothing. No redraws and was dominated drawing to three outs. My Big Slick held up and I doubled up to over 4K.


A-A: 3/5 NL at Green Valley Ranch

I'm a Limit guy but my mouth started salivating like Pavlov's frothing dog when I spotted a walking and breathing ATM playing 3/5 NL that Derek referred to as a "Superfish." In his late 40s with nicotine stained fingers, the guy wore mirrored sunglasses a la Sheriff Buford T. Justice from Smokey and the Bandit lore. He sat in the Seat 5 at a 3/5 NL table and we used to see him rebuying all the time in the 2/6 Spread Limit at Excalibur. Calling him a horrible player would be a compliment. He looked like a cab driver who's a part-time pedophile (CDPP).

Grubby likes the 3/5 structure because the squeeze play works at that level if there are a couple of limpers and you can throw out a big bet in late position or from the blinds, unlike the plethora of tourist-centric 1/2 NL games on the Strip.

I found A-A on the button. Four players limped in front of me as I glanced to my left and noticed that both the blinds already had looked at their cards. With the LB intending to muck his cards, I picked up five red chips and tossed them out.

"Raise it up," I said.

Usually 7.5x the BB is a standard big raise in a 1/2NL Strip game. At the 3/5 game, 5x the BB gets people out of the pot. Not in that instance. The big blind and all four limpers called. Flop was ten high with two clubs and I didn't even have to peek at my hole cards because I knew that I had the ace of clubs. The players in early position all checked as CDPP moved all in for roughly the size of the pot. I asked the dealer to count out his stack before I called. An old guy in his 60s with a golf tan wearing a nice Rolex in early position check-raised me. He had me covered and moved all in for about 500 more. I thought for a moment as I took a deep breath and counted up my remaining chips looking for a good reason to fold A-A. I called for the rest of my stack as I said something like, "I hope you don't have a set."

He flipped over A-A. CDPP showed K-10 with the King of clubs. I was free rolling a flush draw with my pocket Aces. The turn and river were both clubs and I dragged the $1K pot. Having the dealer pick up stacks of red chips and place them down in front of you is an orgasmic feeling.

The CDPP left the table and old golfer went on mega-tilt. On the very next hand he moved all in for the rest of his stack with A-10o. He was called by a guy with K-K and the pocket Kings held up.

That's when the old golfer guy berated me for sucking out on him. His angry tirade of insults lasted a couple of minutes as he sat without any chips in front of him.

"That guy (the cab driving part-time pedophile) had you beat too. At least I had Aces," I said. "You gonna rebuy or do you have to get up early for your tee time?"

He pulled out a wad of cash and tossed it on the felt. The dealer called a chip runner over for the rebuy. The old golfer guy continued to needle me. I said nothing back and gave him a sarcastic look like, "OK tough guy."

Over the next ten minutes the old golfer would not shut up as I kept counting my chips that I won from him. That seemed to piss him off even more. The dealer had to say something to him and he snapped at the dealer. I decided to leave since I doubled up inside of two hours. Plus Superfish aka CDPP left and getting yelled at by a bitter unlucky poker player is not fun.

"I'm not going to sit here and be verbally abused by you," I said as I racked up his chips. "That's what my mother is for."


Ks-10s: 6/12 Limit with Half Kill at Red Rock

This one should be subtitled, "Never slowplay pocket aces especially in kill pots." I won two straight hands and had the kill button at the cut off as the blinds bumped up to 9/18. With two limpers in the kill pot including both blinds, I raised my option from the kill button because in kill games the kill button acts last pre-flop.

Everyone called my raise in a five-way pot. An ace of spade flopped with two small cards. Everyone checked to me. I bet and everyone called. The turn was a small spade as I picked up a nut flush redraw. Everyone checked and I fired out. Two players called including the big blind and Seat 5. The river filled in my flush. Big blind checked, Seat 5 bet, I raised, the big blind called, and Seat 5 raised to three bets. When I made it 4 bets to go, the big blind moaned as he relunctantly called and Seat 5 finally called.

Big blind (who looked liked NY Knicks assistant coach Brendan Malone) showed A-A. The guy in Seat 5 showed a Nine high flush. I had the nuts as the dealer shoved two handfuls of chips my way. Brendan Malone played that hand terribly, slowplaying pre-flop and on the flop. If he re-raised me preflop and fired out on the flop, I would have mucked. Instead he tried to get fancy in at a limit table in a local's casino. That hand opened up the flood gates for Malone, because during the next two orbits he painstakingly listed and described every single bad beat he took over the past week.

"You should start a blog," I suggested.
posted by Pauly at 8/21/2006 04:27:00 AM | Permalink |

 
2006 WSOP Black and White Photos

I took all of these at the Rio's Amazon Ballroom on the tournament floor of the WSOP. All of these have been posted before, but this is the first time that I pulled together my favorite B&Ws in one photo dump. You can click on the photos to see an enlarged view.



DoubleAs flips me the bird


Evil Otis


The dealers


Johnny Chan


Wil


CK Hua and Tanya


WSOP Shot of the Day (7.20.06)


Spaceman


Otis


Snake from Wicked Chops Poker


The floor


Shaniac


Mad Genius


TJ daydreaming about "boxcars"


Minneapolis Jim Meehan


Jason in his bathrobe


Amarillo Slim


Birds on the rail


The action unfolds
Don't forget to stop by and check out Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos.
posted by Pauly at 8/20/2006 12:18:00 AM | Permalink |

 
SoaP and Pai Gow

I saw a midnight viewing of Snakes on a Plane with Change100 at Sunset Station. The audience was half crocked, a little bit rowdy, and the rest were tweakers.

Here's a quick synopsis. There were snakes on a plane. The snakes on a plane killed a lot of passengers. Samuel L. Jackson killed a lot of snakes on the plane. The snakes bit a chick's nipple and a guy's junk. The token black guy from SNL saves the day. There's a Thai hooker joke too. People gave Samuel L. Jackson a standing ovation when he said his catch phrase, "I'm tired of these motherfuckin' snakes on this mother fuckin' plane."

Go see it for yourselves. And get either very drunk or super baked before you go. It's everything what's great and horrible about Hollyweird wraped inside of an 1 hr 40 min film. And don't forget to smoke a lot of weed before you go.

The flick cost me $83 to see. I had about an hour to kill before the movie start time, so I played about 45 minutes of Pai Gow. I got kicked in the junk and at one point I ran into A-Joker as the dealer's low hand and J-10-9-8-7 as the dealer's high hand. By the end of the session, I was playing two hands at once channeling my inner Otis while drinking SoCo.
posted by Pauly at 8/18/2006 05:17:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Good Causes: For Peyton and the Paul Hannum No Limit Hold'em Charity Tournament

First of all, I encourage all bloggers to post about For Peyton. In the insane cut throat world of poker, it's refreshing to see people step up and donate their time and money towards a worthy cause. Stop by and check out the items up for auction.

Secondly, WPT photographer Paul Hannum passed away during the last week of the WSOP. His appendix burst and he died in the operating room in LA. I only knew Paul in a professional sense. My first encounter with him was when he yelled at me for walking in the middle of his shot when I covered my first WPT event. It was totally my fault and since then I'm extra aware of any photographers on the floor when I'm covering tournaments.

Since then, we've had a professional relationship and Paul was one of the nicest people that worked on the WPT. All of those winners photos I took of WPT champions took place under the direction of Paul. Since he was the official WPT photogrpaher, he got the initial shot and made sure the rest of the photographers got their shots before he asked the players to pose differently (holding up the money) or getting other people in the shot like Courtney Friel or the unlucky guy who came in second place.

Gavin Smith is arranging a charity poker tournament will be held at the upcoming WPT Legends of Poker tournament.

Paul Hannum Chairty Tournament
When: Tuesday, August 29th at 7pm
Buy-in: $1,000
Where: Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, CA

Announced Prizes:
FIRST PRIZE: 25K Seat WPT Championship Event at the Bellagio

SECOND PRIZE: Paradise Poker Conquest Prize Package (May 12-18th, 2007 Atlantis Resort, Bahamas which includes $5200 seat to the Conquest of Paradise Island Main event, 6 nights accommodations at Atlantis, plus $1K cash to your Paradise account)

THIRD PRIZE: Seat into the WPT Invitational

You can play for a shot at winning those cool prizes. All monies will go directly to Paul's fiancee Sarah Percy and their unborn baby girl which is due in October. Here's a chance to play with pros to help raise money for Paul's unborn baby girl.

If you are unable to play in the event and would like to donate some money, you can stop by www.babyhannum.com for info on how you can help.

Please help spread the word about Paul Hannum. "He genuinely loved and played the game - he bluffed with the best of them!"

If you would like to donate prizes for this event please shoot an email to Kristin@pokerpadz.com. Also if you want to play in the event, send her an email to RSVP for the tournament.

Thanks for spreading the word about For Peyton and Paul Hannum.
posted by Pauly at 8/17/2006 01:05:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Inside the WSOP: Disgruntled Supervisor Speaks Out

I've been involved in an email exchange with a suit from Harrah's who descrbes him/herself as a disgruntled supervisor. Here's the latest email that I got. I asked them if they could confirm the rumor that Jamie Gold tipped the dealers $1 million as he promised. I aslo asked about their theory on the WSOP extra chips controversy.

Pauly,

I have not talked to anyone that could confirm a tip or not from Mr Gold. But the dealers get their final toke checks on Thursday so I will know before then. I find it interesting that you knew the figure quoted without asking. If he did, man did I pick the wrong side of the coin to work this year. Oh well, I can count on the good karma for being there til the end. I'll have to keep you posted on this.

As far as the extra chips. I don't buy the skimming off the top theory. For only one reason. The paperwork involved for the Harrah's corp is staggering. The single table satellite mgr, received a report with 114 (114 is not a typo) errors from the auditing dept after one night for example. Every form, count, registration etc was reviewed by 4-5 people. Just witnessing the payout procedure should be enough to convince one of that. Getting paid was such a pain in the ass, it took 4 people to get you to the window. And at bubble time and right after... forget about it...

The final chip counts for the daily final tables varied from short as much as 60k to over as much as 40k. The chip control was one area where there was little or no control. But with the number of events, chips, days, entries, etc I' not sure of a good way to control them better so they don't get introduced later. The easy solution is different chips for the Main Event, but that is so easy, it would never happen.

There was never more than a 10k chip out except for late in the main event, so it would take 400 5k or 2,000 1k chips to alter the count as much as it was. And that amount of missing chips would for sure turn up in the balancing of the chips on hand vs those in play at any given time. You always lose some chips as souvenirs but not that many. Matter of fact, some have been on eBay already.

Color ups, and dealer mistakes are for sure part of it. There was not a night where the color up didn't get fucked up somehow, usually by the same 2 people. Even by myself once. Even with the dealers watching every move as I required it is an easy mistake to make at times. Or a shift supe would not do a scheduled color up, "because it would give the players less chips to play with." Duh! no shit, kinda the point. Less chips = more gamble. But it also leaves more chips on the tables for possible theft or whatever.

But then, the same man added a stack on the 2nd day of a tournament at the fucking World Series of Poker, and then did it again later and kept his job, sigh. But given that I had several dealers replaced with others because they could not count or cut chips, counting mistakes were common.

I think there were a lot of dead or unpaid stacks that were left in play and blinded off. The control for that was poor as well. I'm not positive that all 10 stacks at every table on every first day were accounted for in the final tally of stacks vs 10k received. this is something that could have been ignored or just plain covered up, don't know which one.

Profit mongers they are for sure....... I wish them luck finding quality people with out some changes for next year.

Disgrunted Supervisor

I admire this person's courage to tell their side of the story. Thanks for all your input.

By the way... I'm looking for WSOP dealers who would like to anonymously share their horror stories. Please shoot me an email and I'll publish those too.
posted by Pauly at 8/16/2006 03:43:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Wayward Yearning, Veggie Prop Bets, and Liz Lieu Tuesdays

"You guys left and didn''t say good-bye!" screamed Kary, one of our favorite Tilted Kilt waitresses.

The WSOP ended on Friday morning and as much as we were all glad it was over, we missed the people we saw and hung out with everyday. Like my fellow bloggers. And the slutty Milwaukee's best girls. And the British and Irish bloggers (especially Snoopy!) And the creepy security guard that kept checking out my junk when I'd walk by. And then there were the Tilted Kilt waitresses.

The waitresses at the Tilted Kilt also missed our group, as much as we missed them. Like little angels in tiny plaid kilts and exposed mid-drifts, they brought us cold pints of beer to help ease the pain. Kary wanted to say good-bye to everyone and never got a chance. One day we showed up and came in every fuckin' day afterwards for seven weeks... then pooof!

The Tilted Kilt was the new Hooker Bar.

"And you can't say Hooker Bar anymore," Kary warned me. "It's a crime knowing about the location of it and not reporting it."

"Guilty as charged," I said.

The Hooker Bar was my escape during the 2005 WSOP. This past several weeks, the Tilted Kilt became an oasis away from the insanity of the WSOP. The waitresses were hot and cool and the food was decent. Plus they usually had on the Yankees game.

I ended up meeting my buddy Coach at the Tilted Kilt for dinner on Monday. Coach is the guy who writes Coach's Corner segments on the Tao of Poker. he's also a regular at the Blue Parrot homegame back in NYC. He was staying at the Rio and in town for a few days. He suggested dinner at the Kilt. I thought my last Kilt trip for the year went down last week when we brought Michael Craig along since he was running out material to write about and he chose me as his latest subject.

If you haven't read Michael Craig's blog specifically the entry called Mayor of the Tilted Kilt, then you need to read it. This is my favorite part for obvious reasons:

We had just sat down when the hottest waitress in the place - and they are all hot - said to Pauly, "I read your blog last night. I love your writing."

The other bloggers were howling in protest. One said, "Jesus, I can practically feel Pauly's erection poking me in the leg." As I wrote this down, another said, "Don't write that. It'll be all over the web. His head will get even bigger."

The waitress went on to say that she was reading this at 5 AM and she was "pretty hammered," but that didn't seem to diminish Pauly's enthusiasm about the compliment, or any of our collective disgust, for that matter... More

And yes, that exchange put Wil and Otis on mega-tilt.

Anyway, I met Coach for dinner on Monday and Kary was happy to see us. In an ironic twist of weirdness, Wil happened to call me just as we were sitting down. I gave Kary the phone and she chided Wil for leaving town without saying good-bye.

I've been around and traveled the world with a lot of interesting, funny, and entertaining people in my life... but the group of folks I bonded with the past seven weeks are in their own class. I'd gut salmon in a frigid Alaskan fisheries seven days a week or ten hours a day (without piss breaks) if it meant I got to be with these people again.

The WSOP was brutal but the people kept me sane and entertained and happy on the tough, sad, dark days. The last seven weeks was like summer camp for some of us. Wil described it like shooting on a movie on location and the camaraderie that comes with working in such close quarter together. Michalski kind of described it like being a war reporter or being a group of plane crash survivors.

To me hanging out with the WSOP it's like attending an AA meeting. Everyone has a worried and hungover look about them, while most of them need spiritual guidance after living a bankrupt existence for one day too long. Sometimes the media room reminded me an Irish wake. Everyone's raging drunk, talking too loud, and telling wild stories about a dead guy while others are in the corner sobbing uncontrollably.

* * * * *


I wish I was the puppy!
Even though the WSOP is over, I'm still loyal to making Tuesdays... Liz Lieu Tuesdays. Here's Liz Lieu with some puppies.

* * * * *
I won $100 from a food prop bet. Sunday night was my buddy Friedman's birthday, so we went out for sushi. At some point, JW offered me $300 to eat some cabbage that was in my soup. I wouldn't do it for less than $1000. He bumped it up to $500 and I was so close to calling... but folded. I hate cabbage.

JW knows my weakness for proposition gambling. He picked up a piece of broccoli. For $100 he wanted me to eat it. I obliged and ate the entire thing without spitting it out or drinking water.

"Ship it!" I said.

"It's healthier than a Keno crayon," said Change100 as she videotaped the entire event.

$100 is $100 and I was happy to have it. But I'm still stuck for the WSOP in food prop bets. A couple weeks earlier I lost $100 to Change100 because I couldn't eat a small plate of veggies. I also donked off $400 on the now infamous Otis Keno crayon bet that's made Otis famous in exotic places as far away as Sweden and Hoboken.

* * * * *
I haven't played much online poker the past three months. My time on Party Poker over the last 100 days hasn't been serious. I'd play for 10-15 minutes at a time. I withdrew everything on all the other sites except for like a grand to tinker around the aquarium at Party.

Now it's time to reload. Full Tilt has a reload bonus which is perfect timing. It lasts until August 16th. You can get 50% up to $300 which means if you reload for $600 you get a $300 bonus. They release their bonus in $20 intervals.

I also did a reload (no bonus) on PokerStars to play some EPT satellites and I'm considering playing in a WCOOP event or two. Derek told me about one of the WCOOP satellites he played in this weekend. I stopped playing online tournaments because they were draining my bankroll and I'm a profitable Limit Hold'em and PLO cash game player. But I'm gonna play a few NL tournaments for fun and to mix up the monotony of grinding away at the limit tables.

The WCOOP schedule features Razz and HORSE. Yes, it's true PokerStars is now Razz and Horse friendly during the WCOOP.

September 16: Razz ($200+$15)
September 17: NL Hold 'em ($500+$30)
September 18: PL Omaha (rebuys) ($300+$20)
September 19: NL Hold 'em Match Play ($200+$15)
September 20: Limit Omaha High/Low ($500+$30)
September 21: NL Hold 'em (rebuys) ($200+$15)
September 22: Limit Hold 'em ($200+$15)
September 23: HORSE ($200+$15)
September 23: PL Hold 'em ($500+$30)
September 24: NL Hold 'em ($1,000+ $50)
September 25: Seven Card Stud ($300+$20)
September 26: PL Omaha8 ($300+$20)
September 27: PL Hold'em ($300+$20)
September 28: Seven Card Stud High/Low ($500+$30)
September 29: PL Omaha ($500+$30)
September 30: HORSE ($5,000+$200)
September 30: Limit Hold'em ($1,000+$50)
October 1: NL Hold 'em ($2,500+$100)

I'm thinking about playing the $500 PL Omaha and the $300 Stud if my schedule is open during those times. I'm also considering backing Derek in the Razz event. The Rooster considers Derek and F Train as the two best online Razz players in the NYC tri-state area.

I played only live poker a handful of times during the WSOP. I sat in a mixed games table at MGM (mainly 3/6 HORSE) with some bloggers that included April, Amy, Jay Greenspan, Jen Leo, Tim Lavalli, BJ Nemeth, Ryan, Wil, Otis, Tuscaloosa Johnny, and Brian Raymer (Greg's brother). Even Miami Don and Carmen stopped by. I forgot how much I love Stud and was reminded about my faulty vision. I had a tough time seeing cards dealt to Seats 2 and 3 during Stud and Razz.

I played NL at the MGM and at Mandalay Bay with mixed results. I had K-K cracked by a junk hand. I knew I should have played my flopped set fast, but I chose to slow play and I got felted for trying to outwit a tourist. MB now spreads a juicy 2/4 NL game in addition to my favorite game on the Strip... 4/8 Limit with a 1/2 Kill.

Grubby returns to Las Vegas this weekend to clean up the rest of the apartment and box up a few remaining items. I'm pretty sure he wants to play poker one last time together.

* * * * *
Take a peek at Otis' caption contest of the picture below. I'm gonna pick out my favorite caption and give that person $5.


Jen Browning snapped that photo while Wil and I covered the final three tables at the WSOP.

* * * * *
Check out Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos and don't forget about For Peyton.
posted by Pauly at 8/15/2006 01:04:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Aloha

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. - The Serenity Prayer

I glanced in the rearview mirror and I saw the outline of the Las Vegas Strip. The Luxor's light was not visible because it was 6am and the sun slowly crept over the mountains. I smiled. How could I not? Since June of 2005, I spent 24% of my life living in Las Vegas covering the World Series of Poker. As I sped off towards Henderson, the shrinking image of the Strip in the mirror was a welcomed reminder that the gig was over. Just a couple hours earlier Jamie Gold won $12 million. The WSOP was complete and that meant I finally got to go home.

Think about what I saw over seven weeks. ESPN crams that into dozens of hours of poker programming. That's the exciting stuff. I had to sit through the boring shit (do you even know who won 1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo?), the drama (dealers quiting on the spot), the excitement (Chip Reese winning $50K Horse), the hype (insert Jeffrey Pollock), the bitterness (see the faces of the red badge media), and now the post-WSOP hungover lingers after a 46 day bender. I actually feel a little lost by not driving to the Rio every morning.

Living at Treasure Island was tough. Staying in any casino for more than a week sucks you into looming suicidal tendencies of the Plathian sort. You always hear about the old woman from Arizona who won a $1 million jackpot, but you never hear about the lonely guy who leaps to his death after one last bender in Las Vegas, or the shifty-eyed serial killer who shacks up at the Redneck Riviera with a transvestite hooker before he offs himself with a nail gun to the temple.

For the last two weeks of the WSOP, the first human interaction I'd see when I stepped off the elevator was a blue haired 80 year-old chain smoking grandma. She'd be sitting a row of slot machines and pumping her entire social security check in a Wheel of Fortune machine.

That's the first reminder from the unlucky fallen angel that has the troublesome assignment of steering me away from danger in order to get back in the good graces of the Almighty. I can hear her whispering into my ears the names of six of the Seven Deadly Sins. As I take my first wobbly steps onto the casino floor, temptation surrounds me everywhere. Behind every slot machine. Behind every deck of cards. Behind every rattle of the dice. Behind every "all you can eat buffet." Behind every stripper pole. Behind ever seat at the Hooker Bar and underneath every kilt of the waitresses at the Tilted Kilt. Depravity, decadence, and desperation are within my grasp.

It's so easy to fall in this town. And when people fall, they fall hard. And fast. God's angels are not here to catch you. They stay the fuck out of the Las Vegas valley. Only the Mormons on a mission dare enter Sin City and most of them get hooked on Keno or crystal meth before they head back to Utah.

Just walk through the airports and look around. You'll discover that the people waiting in line to board JetBlue flight #199 to JFK are cluttered with losers. Peek into their souls. Feel what they feel. The hangovers. The indigestion. The sexual indiscretions. The losses. The bad beats. The bad luck. The foul stench of failure keeps the lights shining and the table games going and the free cocktails coming.

Jamie Gold won the WSOP championship and I can't tell if that's good or bad for poker. A lot of folks don't like Jamie Gold or what he represnts (BoDog and Hollyweird). I gathered this from the word on the street, from the talk in the hallways at the Rio, from the small sample of emails and comments I've gotten since Gold won, plus the fact he hired body guards to follow him around due to threats of physical violence. Gold might be the first world champion since the poker boom started that the public might vehemently hate. And Americans love to hate someone. Ask Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds, George Bush, or the French. Without hate it would be hard for most of us to get out of bed in the morning.

Regardless, Gold's win will ensure both me and my friends in the media a job next year. Thanks to Gold, I have job security through next year's WSOP. I can take off the next four months to travel and write, and still get a gig for the 2007 WSOP... which is going to be bigger, more badass, and 1000% more commercialized. The suits made promises to have nightly shootouts in the parking lot, naked models turning tricks in the port-o-poddies, plus a fast-food burger chain will take over all of the catering and serve free McSandwiches to all the players provided they were a McHat or McShirt if they make a McFinal table. And they agreed to force feed Zoloft to all of their dealers next year. They won't complain as much and promise not riot when they get stiffed in their paychecks.

Seriously, some of the online poker sites paid up to $250,000 on models this year. That's where your rake went... to pay some ditzy blonde with fake breasts (that cost more than your bankroll) to stand around freezing their nipples off while they pass out free poker chips. I mean how seriously am I supposed to take the WPA when they have a booth in the hallway of the Rio a few feet away from the Sapphire Lounge strippers?

The WSOP was a farce. Poker is not a sport. It's a cheap thrill. Playing in the WSOP main event used to mean something. Now it's as common as a tourist scoring weed in the airport in Montego Bay or flying to Paris to take the same picture of yourself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower than eighty fuckin' billion other uncreative souls took. Online poker sites sent over 4,000 players to the WSOP. Half those guys can't even balance their checkbooks or hold a steady job. They had no business playing in the most prestigious tournament in the world.

Yet they flocked to the Rio like branded pilgrims heading to Mecca. The most religious piety that poker players will undertake is their own personal Hajj to play in the WSOP sponsored by PokerStars, Party Poker, Full Tilt, Paradise Poker... dot net, of course.

Alas, there's nothing I can do about this insanity, aside from think about the good old days, when men were men and poker players packed heat at the tables as they sat with their backs to the wall in a cramped smoky back room at the Horseshoe. You'd find Doyle Brunson chomping on a cigar, flinging around chips and enticing Johnny Moss to play back at him as Puggy Pearson told racist jokes and they sure as hell didn't drink Beast Light. Those memories are warm fuzzy black and white photos. Memories evaporate as do the halcyon years which represented an era so close in the mind, but very far away in real time.

Yeah, that's back in the day when disco ruled the airwaves, our current President used to be a raging cokehead, and when the WSOP Championship used to be a three table SNG.

Poker's popularity is not fading. It's a destructive tidal wave heading to every house and apartment complex in suburbia. We haven't even seen the top of the forty-story wave as it keeps rising. It's going to hit as far as China and Africa. And when it does, the flood is going to destroy a lot of people lives, fortunes, and dreams.

For now, we're all riding the wave and as much as the dark side sends me spinning into an abyss of self-destruction, the rush is still hard to shake. Like a monkey on my back, poker has me hooked. At least for one more year.
posted by Pauly at 8/14/2006 01:26:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Jamie Gold Wins 2006 WSOP Championship


2006 WSOP Champion: James "Q-9" Gold
Photo courtesy of Flipchip
Yes, after a 14 hour final table, a Hollyweird agent is the new world champion of poker. Here's the final hand:

3:40am... Recent Elimination: Jamie Gold busted Paul Wasicka and we have a new WSOP Champion. Gold limped and Paul Wasicka checked his big blind option. On a flop of Qc-8h-5h, Wasicka bet 1.5 million and Gold moved all in. Wasicka called with 10-10. Gold showed Q-9 aka "The Gapped Toothed Hooker." The turn was an ace and a 4. Gold's Q-9 held up and he became the 2006 WSOP Champion winning $12 million. Paul Wasicka finished in second place and won $6,102,499.

Final Table Results:
1: Jamie Gold $12,000,000
2: Paul Wasicka $6,102,499
3: Michael Binger $4,123,310
4: Allen Cunningham $3,628,513
5: Rhett Butler $3,216,182
6: Richard Lee 2,803,851
7: Doug Kim $2,391,520
8: Erik Friberg $1,979,189
9: Dan Nassif $1,566,858

After his victory, Gold called his dad to tell him that he won. His father has ALS and was sleeping. He said that his winnings will help his father out.

Here are some Jamie Gold quotes:

"I played the best poker of my life. I feel real fortunate that the cards came my way."

"If I was going to lose, people were going to have to get really lucky on me. When I had all these chips, I knew that people would have to get lucky to take me out."

"I figured out everyone except the last player, Paul Wasicka. Paul was awesome. I was fortunate to get the hand to take him out. I play the players. I don't play my cards. I get in there with pretty crappy cards most of the time."

"I got lucky."

"This never would have happened without these amazing people who love for me and care for me. I have the greatest group of people around me. There's no question that this would not have happened without them. I'm very needy. I needed massages, water, blueberries, and food. They kept me sane, happy, and focused. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Not because of winning the championship, but because of them. These people believed in me for a very long time."

"Blueberries are brain food. I love to eat them. They make me feel good. Blueberries were probably the reason why I won."

"I left a message on my dad's answering machine. I hope he wakes up to find out that I made him really proud."

Flipchip posted winner's photos post over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog. I'll have a recap soon for here and my newest client... a Swedish newspaper!

Take a peek at some things that have already been published:

Jamie Gold Wins 2006 WSOP Championship (LasVegasVegas.com)
Golden Moment: WSOP Championship Timeline (Fox Sports)
Day 8 Final Table Recap (Fox Sports)

Congrats to Jamie Gold. He played much better than people will give him credit for.

That's it for now. Thanks to everyone for the support and putting up with my madness for the past two months. Special thanks to the bloggers who linked up my coverage. There are too many of you to name right now. Thanks again to Paradise Poker, Poker Prof, Flipchip, Otis and PokerStars, ESPN, Fox Sports, and even Harrah's for not kicking me out. Thanks to April for the milkshake on Thursday which kept me off of mega-tilt.

Las Vegas nearly killed me for a second year in a row, but I survived the 2006 WSOP without losing any limbs, going to prison, or getting my badge revoked. I'm going to go to sleep for a couple of hours.

Now, go read my live blogging updates of the final table and feel free to re-read the last two months of WSOP coverage.
posted by Pauly at 8/11/2006 07:21:00 AM | Permalink |

 
2006 WSOP Main Event Championship Final Table

It's 9:50am and I arrived at the media room at the Rio to get ready for one of the biggest moments in poker history. Someone is going to win $12 million and become the next poker superstar. That person's life is going to change as every degenerate gambler on the planet is going to group that person together with like likes of Moneymaker, Raymer, Hachem, Brunson, Chan, Hellmuth, Jesus, and Ungar.

Quick Links and Stats:
Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog
My Sponsor: Paradise Poker

Remaining Players: 9
Chipleader: Jamie "Ari" Gold $26.5M
Avg. Stack: $9.7M
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Money Payouts:
1 - $12,000,000
2 - $6,102,499
3 - $4,123,310
4 - $3,628,513
5 - $3,216,182
6 - $2,803,851
7 - $2,391,520
8 - $1,979,189
9 - $1,566,858

Final Table Starting Chip Counts:
1 Jamie Gold (Malibu, CA) 26.5M
2 Allen Cunningham (Las Vegas, NV)17.7M
3 Erik Friberg (Stockholm, Sweden) 11.82M
4 Richard Lee (San Antonio, TX) 9.725M
5 Paul Wasicka (Westiminster, CO) 7.97M
6 Doug Kim (Hartsdale, NY) 6.77M
7 Rhett Butler (Rockville, MD) 4.815M
8 Michael Binger (Atherton, CA) 3.14M
9 Dan Nassif (St. Louis, MO) 2.84M

There is one big named pro left... Allen Cunningham. Flipchip picked him to win befre the WSOP began and I told him, "You're fuckin' crazy. No way is a pro going to win this year."

Flipchip shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "We'll find out soon enough."

That soon enough is now. After 46 days of non-stop poker we've arrived at the single most over-hyped moment in poker. ESPN is even televising this on PPV without hole cams. Sure someone is going to win $12 million tonight, but that's just another story inside of a full book I'm gonna write someday about the 2006 WSOP.

It's been a wild ride the past six weeks with players getting robbed in the parking lot, media reps getting screwed by the man, dealers quitting and walking out on the spot, players bitchin and moaning about the juice, models and strippers running rampant in the hallways, Harrah's selling out the WSOP to the soul-suckers in corporate America, crashing a Mexican Wedding, Otis eating Keno crayons, monkeys trying to get into the WSOP, Bill Chen winning two bracelets, a 21 year-old kid Jeff Madsen coming out of nowhere to win 2 as well, Phil Hellmuth geting his 10th (after three tries), Andy Bloch and Chip Reese playing that marathon heads-up battle for the $50K HORSE bracelet, Joe Hachem getting kicked in the junk on three of the worst beats I've ever seen, scantily clad waitresses at the Tilted Kilt, Michalski and I comparing bald spots, Foiled Coup and I checking out all the hot chicks in the hospitality suites, finding the Tao of Poker's Blonde of the Day and Pothead of the Day, my buddies Stormy, Tuscaloosa Johnny and Ryan cashing in the main event, the online poker sites bidding ridiculous sums of money to get their shirts and hats on final table players, Liz Liu Tuesdays, Irish players threatening to boycott CardPlayer and ESPN, European pros wicked pissed at the lack of respect and coverage, sweating Greg Raymer for 4.5 straight hours, "I love Wicked Chops Poker!", checking out Jen Leo and John Caldwell's mansion, groping Amy Calistri in the hallways, playing "Clown or Cowboy?" with Otis, watching Andy Black play cash games at 3am, Texas Dolly surrounded by a bevy of Doyle's Room girls, getting stopped in the hallway by fans asking me, "Where's the hooker bar?", Wil Wheaton's wife pointing out hookers to me at the Hooker Bar, losing a $100 prop bet with Change100 because I couldn't eat a plate of veggies, meeting Jeff Pulver, drinking screwdrivers with Otis at 2:30pm, eating cheeseburgers with CJ, driving to work every morning with CC, hearing Mad's amazing story that she found out regarding the two brothers who found their long lost father through PokerStars, talking books with Storms, Jen from Blobde Poker taking a nap underneath one of the tables in the media room, plugging Jay Greenspan's new book, getting stories and gossip from Tim Lavalli, calming down Spaceman after he wanted to drop kick one of his co-workers, passing out at a Pai Gow table, and pissing on the hood of a Honda (thanks for reminding me April). And lastly, I'm still waiting for Snoopy to get me a chocolate milkshake!

And yes, there's more. But that's for another time.

Thanks to everyone who linked up the Tao of Poker's coverage over the past six weeks. I appreciate the pimpage and support, especially your kind emails and comments and text messages and phone calls of encouragement.

* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
11:11am... I'm here to pimp a few things, like For Peyton. There's new stuff up for auction.

Antonio Esfandiari Photo
Michael Gracz Photo
Erick Lindgren Photo
T.J. Cloutier Photo
Carlos Mortensen Photo
Daniel Negreanu Photo
David Williams Photo
Layne Flack Jersey and Photo
Kenna James Cowboy Hat
Card Player Package
Hellmuth DVD Package

11:30am... The final table starts at 2pm and spectators are already lining up to get in to watch. The media room is filled with people I don't know and have never seen before. They decided to show up on the last day and eat all the free food in the media room.

11:35am... I decided to leave just the last two previous posts up on the Tao of Poker in order for the page to load faster for some of you. If you want to read more WSOP coverage, click on my August 2006, July 2006, and June 2006 archives.

11:40am... Take a peek at something from my buddy, a former lawyer turned NYC comedian Charles Star. He introduced me to the Blue Parrot homegame a few years ago. He has a video clip of his comic routine on his MySpace page. Take a peek at his cornrows photos.

12:01pm... WSOP Final Table Bios: Let's meet the final table players!

Seat 1: Richard Lee (San Antonio, TX) $11.82M
Lee is 55 years old. He has the hottest railbirds out of all the final table players. His wife and his daughters are all beautiful and I expect them to get a lot of camera time. He's originally from Hawaii and this is his second WSOP. He has never cashed before aside from the 2006 main event. His best career finish was 12th at the 2005 Grand Slam of Poker in LA. He's been retired for eight years and his wife was sick of him moping around the house, so he took up poker. His hobby landed him at the final table. His deceased father taught him how to play when he was a young kid. He admitted, "My father would be smiling on me right now."


Richard Lee

Seat 2: Erik Friberg (Stockholm, Sweden) $9.605M
Friberg is a 23 year old online pro and part of the Scandi invasion. His home country of Sweden is the most successful country in the percentage of players who made the money in the Main Event. Friberg is the 2005 Swedish Poker Challenge Champion. His nickname is "Lilar" which roughly translated in Swedish is "gambler." Emma, one of the writers from Sweden, said that he's writing a poker blog on Expressen, a nightly Swedish newspaper. "The citizens of Sweden are hoping for a victory," she said.

Seat 3: Paul Wasicka (Westminster, CO) $7.97M
The former bartender and restaurant manager was born in Dallas, TX and now resides in Colorado. He's been playing for two years and took 14th place in a NL event earlier this year.

Seat 4: Dan Nassif (St. Louis, MO) $2.6M
Nassif is an ad exec from St. Louis who took his summer vacation to play in the WSOP. He had to ask his boss at the Riverfront Times for a few extra days off. He banned his friends and family from sweating him at the WSOP unless he made the final table. I guess they'll be there today.

Seat 5: Allen Cunningham (Las Vegas, NV) $17.77M
The 29 year-old Cunningham is the most successful player at the final table. This is his 15th WSOP final table. He's won 4 bracelets: Stud (2001), Deuce-to-Seven Lowball (2002), and NL (2005 and 2006). He's part of the original "young guns of poker" including Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Layne Flack, and John Juanda. Cunningham is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet in a game full of liars and assholes. He's Flipchip's pick to win it all. I'm rooting for AC today.


Allen Cunningham
Seat 6: Michael Binger (Atherton, CA) $3.14M
The 29 year old is a part-time pro who wants to be a theoretical physicist. He recently earned a PhD from Stanford. This is his second WSOP. He took 6th at the $1,500 NL event and won over $100K a few weeks ago.

Seat 7: Doug Kim (Hartsdale, NY) $6.77M
Doug Kim is a 22 year old recent Duke grad who will be working in the financial district in NYC. He's roomies and friends with Jason Strasser, who's one of the up and coming online pros. Even his best friend said, "I never thought he'd make it this far. What a trip." This is Doug's first ever cash in any live tournament. He's a Yankees fan too.

Seat 8: Jamie Gold (Malibu, CA) $25.6M
The Hollyweird agent to the stars (James Gandolfini and Felicity Huffman) is Johnny Chan's agent too. He's a TV producer and this is his 15th cash in a major tournament. He's been the chipleader the last three days and is trying to win this for his ailing father who has Lou Gehrig's Disease.


James "Ari" Gold
Photo courtesy of Flipchip
Seat 9: Rhett Butler (Rockville, MS) $4.815
Besides the weird name, Butler is a 44-year old insurance agent from Maryland. He's married with three kids and his friends bought him into the WSOP. He's been paying poker for more than two decades and this is his first live tournament.

12:50pm... I wasted 15 minutes of my life watching Jeffrey Pollak's press conference when he talked about how great of a job he did this year. When asked about all the gripes about Harrah's and the WSOP he said, "We can't please all of the people, all of the time." We should have interviewed the stack of $12 million. That's why we're here... for the cash. Not to see some suit talk about the WSOP.

1:00pm... Michael Craig said that there's $2.41M in extra chips on the final table. Where did they come from? Some are dead stacks like Minh Nguyen's snafu. Some are color ups. And some are chips stolen from other tournaments and introduced into the main event.

1:20pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: Michael Craig is sitting with us in media row. Two dudes from Aerosmith are in the media room practicing the National Anthem. Too bad it's not Joe Perry or Steven Tyler. It's the other two guys in the band. I asked them if they were going to segue into an accapella Sweet Emotion. They looked at me like I was talking in Sputnik.

1:50pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: Johnny Chan wandered into the media room. He said, "Hey Captain!" to Michael Craig.

2:01pm... Jack Effel announced all the players. Paul Wasicka had some of the loudest railbirds. There are Swedish fans rooting on Erik Friberg waving Sweden's flag. The bleachers are packed with fans, family members, and spectators. The media is stuck in the back as photogrpahers were snapping away photos. I must say I got goose bumps when they introduced the final players. For the first time at the WSOP this year, the room is filled with energy and electricty. It still doesn't compare to The Horseshoe last year, but the Amazon room is alive.

2:12pm... Cards are in the air. Joe Hachem said, "Shuffle up and deal." We're on Level 32. Blinds are $80K/$160K with $20K antes. There's 1:40 left in this level.

2:29pm... Recent Elimination: On the fifth hand of the final table, Jamie Gold opened with a raise/ Nassif popped him for a re-raise of 700K and Gold flat called. Dan Nassif moved all in on the flop with A-K on a board of 2-3-5. Gold quickly called with 2-2 after he flopped a set. Nassif caught an ace on the turn, and had outs for a Wheel chop but didn't get help on the river. Nassif is out in 9th place. Nassif won $1,566,858. Nassif should have pushed all in preflop because Gold would have folded his 2-2... so Gold said. Jamie Gold busts another player.

2:40pm... Doug Kim moved all in on the river on a board of 7-J-2-5-Q. And Gold folded.

2:45pm... I miss BJ Nemeth's hand to hand coverage of the final table that he did last year. No one has done it better since then.

3:05pm... Updated Chipcount: Gold is back over $30M.

Jamie Gold $31.6M
Allen Cunningham $16.8M
Richard Lee $10M
Erik Friberg $9M
Doug Kim $6.6M
Paul Wasicka $6.5M
Rhett Butler $4.4M
Michael Binger $3M

3:10pm... Richard Lee took a pot off Jamie Gold with Q-J. Lee flopped trips and the turn and river were both aces to give Lee a boat. Both players checked the turn and Lee called Gold's 600K bet on the river. Gold mucked his cards. The pot was well over $2.5M.

3:20pm... Read this funny piece called Mayor of the Tilted Kilt that Michael Craig put up on his blog.

3:25pm... On the 22nd hand of the final table, on a board of 8-9-9-5-A, Allen Cunningham took a huge hit when he got outkicked by Jamie Gold. Cunningham had 9-7, while Gold had 10-9. That was the largest pot of the tournament worth almost 12M, not 8M as CardPlayer reported. Cunningham slipped to 3rd in chips with 12M. Richard Lee is now second with 16M.

3:40pm... Doug Kim is wearing an away grey NY Yankees jersey. The number on the back? 42. That's Mariano Rivera's number, the Yankees closer who's nickname is The Hammer of God.

3:55pm... Jamie Gold took a pot off of Erik Friberg when he turned a Broadway straight with Kd-8d. On the river, Friberg check-called a 1.8M bet from Gold. In disgust, Friberg mucked his cards. Gold took about 2M off of Friberg on that hand.

4:00pm... Updated Chipcount:

1 Jamie Gold 35M
2 Richard Lee 15.9M
3 Allen Cunningham 13M
4 Doug Kim 7.3M
5 Erik Friberg 5.9M
6 Paul Wasicka 5.1M
7 Rhett Butler 4.9M
8 Michael Binger 3.5M

4:10pm... Players are on a 20 minute break.

4:20pm... Smoke break.

4:35pm... We're on Level 33. Blinds are $100K/$200K with 30K antes.

4:45pm... Jamie Gold lost a $6M plus pot to Richard Lee's Ac-Jx. Lee turned a pair of Jacks and missed a nut flush draw. But his pair held up.

4:50pm... I apologize for the delay in updates. This was the cause:Blogger is temporarily unavailable due to planned maintenance. This maintenance will last 45 minutes from 4 pm to 4:45 pm (PDT). Comments have been restored.

5:10pm... In the last twenty minutes of action, Gold picked up a pot from Friberg. Cunningham won a pot worth $4M plus off of Richard Lee. Cunningham is back into second place in the chipcount.

5:15pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: There's one douchebag sitting near by us in the media room. I think calling him a douche bag is an insult to all douche bags. Anyway, he's annoying and I was already on serious work tilt due to technical difficulties so his crap is hard to tolerate. Wil and I walked outside to cool off in the scorching Nevada sun. As we walked back inside through a service entrances, we were stopped by some of the biggest security gaurds I've seen. They were carrying several silver breif cases with Milwaukee's Beast logos on it with several Harrah's suits following behind them. I assumed they were a part of the faux money presentation and were getting ready to bring it inside. "You can't be here!" they barked. "Why not? It's not really $12 million." I said as I shrugged my shoulders and cut past them. They use fake TV money or throw a $100 bill around a stack of $1 bills.

5:20pm... Recent Elimination: Erik Friberg is out on the 57th hand of the final table. Both players were all in preflop. Jamie Gold had Q-Q and Erik Friberg flipped over J-J. The flop was 2-3-7 rainbow and Friberg was still behind. The turn was a 10 and Friberg was down to two outs and needed a Jack to fall in order to stay alive. The river was a Queen, as Gold won with a useless set. He's up to 40M. Friberg busted out in 8th. The young Swede won $1,979,189. "I'm pretty disappointed," Friberg said. "I'll probably gamble away my winnings," he admitted.

Updated Chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 37M
2 Richard Lee 20.1M
3 Allen Cunningham 14.4M
4 Doug Kim 7.8M
5 Rhett Butler 4.5M
6 Paul Wasicka 3.5M
7 Michael Binger 3M

5:35pm... Michael Binger doubled through Allen Cuningham. Binger raised UTG with A-10s and Allen Cunningham called with A-Qs. The flop was Q-J-8 and all the money went in the pot when Binger moved all in with a gutshot. Cunningham quickly called and was ahead with TPTK, but Binger caught a Broadway straight on the turn when a King fell. The river didn't help Cunningham. That had put Richard Lee back into second in chips. Cunningham slipped to third with 13M as Binger jumped up to 6M.

5:38pm.... Paul Wasicka moved all in from the button and Mike Binger pushed all in. Binger had A-9o vs. Wasicka's A-J. Binger must have thought Wasicka was on a button steal. The flop was A-A-8. The turn was a 5 and the river was a 10. Wasicka doubled up and Binger was crippled. Binger is back in the basement as the short stack while Wasicka jumped up to 5th in chips.

6:00pm... CC told me that two-time bracelet winner Jeff Madsen got in trouble for using a media badge. He used a badge from Poker Royalty to get inside the ropes and got busted.

6:03pm... Paul Wasicka won a big pot and jumped up to 4th in chips. Kim raised $2.1M and Wasicka pushed all in. Kim got caught with his pants down and mucked.

Updated chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold $35.5M
2 Richard Lee $21.28M
3 Allen Cunningham $13M
4 Paul Wasicka $9.1M
5 Doug Kim $5.6M
6 Rhett Butler $3.8M
7 Michael Binger $2.7M

6:16pm... Talk about a shitty break. Mike Binger and his short stack moved all in with K-K and was called by Jamie Gold who had K-K. They chopped the pot.

6:23pm... Jamie Gold mucked A-10 preflop to a raise from Allen Cunningham that was flat called by Doug Kim. Gold's hand was accidently flashed to the players. The flop was K-Q-J.

6:30pm... Recent Elimination: Doug Kim busted out when his 9-9 ran into Paul Wasicka's Q-Q. On a flop of 4-3-4, Wasicka bet $1M and Kim pushed all in. Wasicka called with his Hiltons, which held up. Doug Kim won $2,391,520 for 7th place. Paul Wasicka is on fire. He's 3rd in chips with $14 million. Jamie Gold still leads with $35M. "I tried to play my best making reads and adjusting to the blind structure. I didn't have a set game plan," Kim said in his exit interview. "I play 3-6 on Poker Stars. That's where I got most of my experience."

6:45pm... Flipchip is live photo blogging! Stop by and check out his stuff.


Check out Flip Chip's final table photos
6:55pm... Players are on a 20 minute break.

Updated Chipcounts:
1 Jamie Gold $37.4M
2 Richard Lee $17.03M
3 Allen Cunningham $15.23M
4 Paul Wasicka $14,87M
5 Rhett Butler $3.365M
6Michael Binger $2.28M

7:15pm... During the break, 10 WSOP champions were on the final table stage including Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer, Jesus Ferguson, Tom McEvoy, Berry Johnston, Scotty Nguyen, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, and Brad Daugherty.

7:25pm... We're on Level 34. Blinds are $120K/$240K with $40K antes.

7:33pm... Michael Binger doubled through Allen Cunningham. Binger had A-6 against Cunningham's 2-2. Binger flopped two pair. Gold is still the chipleader with almost 40M.

7:45pm... I'm looking for a sublet for a couple of months in NYC. Does anyone have any leads? If so, shoot me an email.

7:55pm... Allen Cunningham shifted gears. He's been raising almost every pot picking up the blinds. He didn't play too many hands in the first level today.

7:58pm... We passed the 100 hand mark. Jamie Gold showed a monster bluff with 2-3o with four face cards on the board.

Updated Chipcount:
1. Jamie Gold $41M
2. Richard Lee $17.54M
3. Allen Cunningham $13.4M
4. Paul Wasicka $10.5M
5. Rhett Butler $4.3M
6. Michael Binger $3.64M

8:10pm... On a board of 8-8-Q-3-2, Allen Cunningham made a great call with just A-9 against Jamie Gold. He said "I don't have a very good hand." Then Cunningham quickly called with just Ace high.

8:22pm... Michael Binger moved all in with his shortstack of $2.85M with A-Qs. Allen Cunningham called with Q-J. The flop was all clubs, which gave Binger a flush draw, but he was still ahead. The turn and river were blanks and Binger doubled up. He now has over $7M. Cunningham has $13.7M and is in 3rd place behind Richard Lee's $18M and Jamie Gold's $37.5M.

8:51pm... Recent Elimination: On Hand 122, Richard Lee is out in 6th place in one of the largest pots of the entire tournament. Jamie Gold limped at the cutoff and Richard Lee raised from the small blind to $1.2M. Gold re-raised to $4M and Lee pushed all in over the top with J-J. Gold quickly called with Q-Q. The flop was K-3-K. The turn was a 6 and the rover was a 10. Gold's Hiltons held up. Lee won $2,803,851 for 6th place. Gold now has over $52M in chips. Lee played stellar poker the past few days and it's sad that he went on on a cooler hand like J-J vs. Q-Q. He should have folded his Jacks after the limp/re-raise from Gold. Lee gave Gold more ammo. That's the second time that Gold won with Hiltons against Jacks. He busted Erik Friberg with the same hand. After the hand, Gold dropped his pants, bent over and pulled the horseshoe out of his ass once again and showed it to the crowd. "I'm disappointed, but I play to win," Lee admitted after he busted out. "That's how I play."

9:00pm... Players are on a dinner break until 10:30pm. I'm going for food and/or a smoke break with Change100.

Chipcount courtesy of Poker Wire:
1 Jamie Gold 51.26M
2 Paul Wasicka 14.56M
3 Allen Cunningham 13.68M
4 Michael Binger 7.44M
5 Rhett Butler 3.235M

10:35pm... There are 28 minutes left in the current level with 120K/240K blinds and 40K antes.

10:53pm... Rhett Butler moved all in against Paul Wasicka. Butler had A-10 vs. Wasicka's 8-8. Butler doubled up when a 10 flopped. He waited until he had a hand and finally made a move. He won a coinflip and is still alive with over $6M in chips. Allen Cunningham is second in chips with $13.68M. Wasicka slipped to third with $11.2M.

11:00pm... Stephen Noh told me that a bunch of pros were playing high stakes Chinese Poker in the stands. Included in the menagerie of degenrates were Mike Matusow, John Juanda, and Phil Hellmuth.

11:20pm... Paul Wasicka doubled through Jamie Gold. On a flop of K-Q-x, Wasicka moved all in with K-10 and Jamie Gold called with A-K. The turn was a 10 and asicka took the lead. The river didn't help Gold and Wasicka doubled up to over $18M. "Now if we believe in fate, luck has finally turned its back on Jamie Gold," Michael Craig said to Change100 and myself after the hand.

11:30pm... I snapped this photo of the first place prize. I love that Johnny Chan is on his cell in the background.


What $12 million looks like
11:35pm... We're on Level 35. Blinds are 150K/300K with $50K antes.

Updated Chipcount:
Jamie Gold $44.075M
Paul Wasicka $18M
Allen Cunningham $12.8M
Michael Binger $6,9M
Rhett Butler $6.5M

11:45pm... On a board of A-8-2-6-2, Jamie Gold moved all in on the river against Allen Cunningham and took down a $9M pot.

11:50pm... Mike Binger and Jamie Gold chopped a pot with K-10.

11:55pm... Tells, tells, tells. The pros are picking them up. Hellmuth said that he knows about Jamie Gold's tell regarding how he handles his stack when he's got a hand or bluffing. Johnny Chan said he picked up on a tell against Allen Cunningham. According to Steve Rosenbloom at ESPN, Chan told Jamie Gold at dinner break, "I gave him a hint," Chan said. "Anytime Allen bets and puts his eyes down, he's got it. Pay attention to that."

12:03am... Allen Cunningham picked up more chips when he won a $6M pot by pushing all in during a three-way pot on a flop of 8-6-2.

12:10am... Flipchips posted more WSOP final table photos. Take a peek.

12:15am... Binger's making a move. Michael Binger moved all in K-K against Paul Wasicka's K-Q. Binger had Wasicka dominated, but the flop was Q-7-3. The turn was an ace and the river was a 2. Binger doubled up and has 17M to put him second in chips behind Jamie Gold's 47M. Wasicka slipped to 12.5M. Cunningham has under 10M and is in 4th place.

12:25am... Michael Craig just brought us Full Tilt M&Ms. The red ones make you play loose. The white ones make you horny.

12:30am... Paul Wasicka outkicked Jamie Gold with K-Js vs. Q-Js. He won a $4M pot.

12:35am... Rhett Butler just showed the Hammer.

12:43am... "This tournament will be lasting until Noon," said Mike Matusow. Phil Gordon set the line at 6am. Matusow said he'd bet Gordon.

12:45am... Recent Elimination: Rhett Butler moved all in and Allen Cunningham and Jamie Gold both called. Gold bet out on the flop of J-6-5 and Cunningham folded. Gold showed K-J and Butler had 4-4. Butler's hand did not improve and he took 5th place. Gold busted another player. Yikes. Butler won $3,216,182. "I was happy to get two callers," Rhett said. "I had to make a move and 4-4 was the best hand I saw in a while."

Updated Chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 49.5M
2 Michael Binger 14.3M
3 Paul Wasicka 12.5M
4 Allen Cunningham 9.5M

12:55am... Bouncin Round the Room: I pissed next to Jamie Gold's entire entourage.

1:11am... Allen Cunningham moved all in and took down a nice sized pot against Jamie Gold.

1:15am... Gold has 51M while Cunningham and Binger have 13M each and Wasicka has around 10M.

1:20am... Paul Wasicka just re-raised all in with K-Q and took down a pot with a bluff on a board of A-J-9-A.

1:27am... Disgruntled Supervisors: I got an email from someone claiming to be a "disgruntled Harrah's supervisor." They spilled the beans on the behind the scenes action. Here it is:

Dear Pauly,

Interesting to note as I read the various blogs about unhappy dealers that the floor staff or "suits" are never mentioned.

Things you may not know:

1) All the suits were paid an hourly wage varying from $25 to $37.50 depending on your level of responsibility.

2) We were NOT ALLOWED to accept personal tokes. Any tokes given to us had to be put in the DEALERS toke pool. Between myself and one other supervisor, we dropped over $12,000 (12K) in the dealer toke pool.

3) The suits are NOT part of the toke pool. Rio officials justified the exclusion from the toke pool by saying "there will be as much overtime as you want to work". Then after the series started mandated days off and less or no overtime depending on your level of responsibility.

4) I verified that the expected down rate (or 1/2 hour period) is currently around $33 per down or $66 per hour. Add the $5.25 wage and and they are up to $71.25 per hour for Main Event hours. The average down rate previous varied from $13 to $25 or $26 to $50 per hour.

We knew what we were getting into or so we thought. But I think it is important to get facts out if they are to be talked about. Of the 5 MILLION that Rio got from the Main Event 1.25% (as I understand) goes to the DEALERS and DEALERS only. Any side tokes will go 100% to the dealers.

It is rumored that a final table player has promised a large toke to the dealers and floor staff if he were to win. While I hope that he does in fact win and the dealers benefit, I also hope he is either assured in writing that a toke will be distributed to floor staff if he desires or leaves none at all for that part of the team.

I do not begrudge the dealers the money they have earned during the WSOP, for I have worked my way up through the box and into a position of responsibility, and knew what I was going into, for this was not my first WSOP. I only wanted facts to be facts if they were out there.

sign me....

A suit

P.S. I would like to add that we were aware of weak links in the team, and although I was not in a position to make personnel changes, those of us that knew what we were doing tried to make the WSOP experience as pleasant as possible. Many improvements need to be made for next year, in many areas.

Thanks for the email. I wanted to give a perspective from one of the suits at the WSOP. Hope this helps.

1:35am... Players are on a break. Jamie Gold is still the chipleader.

2:00am... We're on Level 35. Blinds are 200K/400K with $50K antes. Alan Cunningham needs to make a move and pick up chips this level. With 800K in the pot, these pots are not small. He's the shortstack.

Updated Chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 47.5M
2 Paul Wasicka 19M
3 Michael Binger 15.4M
4 Allen Cunningham 7.6M

2:03am... Cunningham picked up a small pot.

2:19am... Recent Elimination: As the final table hit the 12 hour mark, Allen Cunningham pushed all in with 10-10 on Hand # 208. Jamie Gold called with K-J. The flop was K-A-8 and Gold took the lead. The turn was a 7 and the river was a 3. Cunningham won $3,628,513 for 4th place. Gold busted yet another player. Three remain and the last named pro is out of the 2006 WSOP.

Updated chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 48.675M
2 Paul Wasicka 17M
3 Michael Binger 14.8M

3:05am... Recent Elimination: Michael Binger busted out in 3rd place on Hand #229. Guess who busted him? Jamie Gold. Guess how? Suckout. Gold limped on the button and Binger raised 1.5M from his big blind. Gold flat called. Gold picked up an OESD on a flop of 10-6-5. Binger bets $3.5M and Gold moved all in. Binger called with A-10s. The turn was the 7which gave Gold his straight. Binger won $4,123,310 for third place. Gold is way ahead of Paul Wasicka in chips almost 7 to 1.

Updated Chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 75M
2 Paul Wasicka 11M

3:25am... Good morning East Coasters. We're playing heads up between Jamie Gold and Paul Wasicka. Gold busted like 2,372 overal players in the main event, and busted every single player since the final three tables began. OK, I'm exaggerating a tad. But Gold has been busting guys left and right ever since he took over the chiplead several days ago. He's got a massive advantage heads up against Paul Wasicka who flew under the radar for most of the day. Let's hope this goes quick.

3:40am... Recent Elimination: Jamie Gold busted Paul Wasicka. We have a new WSOP Champion. Gold limped and Paul Wasicka checked his big blind option. On a flop of Qc-8h-5h, Wasicka bet 1.5 million and Gold moved all in. Wasicka called with 10-10. Gold showed Q-9 aka "Tha Gapped Toothed Hooker." The turn was an ace and a 4. Gold's Q-9 held up and he became the 2006 WSOP Champion winning $12 million. Paul Wasicka finished in second place and won $6,102,499.

"I couldn't have done this without the support of the people in my life," Gold said as he was nearly in tears. "I'm a very needy person. And they helped me out a lot over the last few days getting me water and massages and blueberries."

Gold called his father who has ALS. He was sleeping and Gold left a message.

"I hope he hears that I won. I wanted to make him proud," Gold continued.

Yes, a Hollyweird agent is the new world champion. That's it for now. Thanks to everyone for the support and checking in. Flipchip will have winner's photos and I'll have a recap soon. Congrats to Jamie Gold.
posted by Pauly at 8/10/2006 01:15:00 PM | Permalink |

 
2006 WSOP Championship Final Table

Here's the nine lucky fuckers who are going to try to win $12 million on Thursday.

Chipcounts courtesy of PokerWire:
1 Jamie Gold 26.5M
2 Allen Cunningham 17.7M
3 Richard Lee 11.82M
4 Erik Friberg 9.725M
5 Paul Wasicka 7.97M
6 Doug Kim 6.77M
7 Rhett Butler 4.815M
8 Michael Binger 3.14M
9 Dan Nassif 2.84M

I'll be back on Thursday at 2pm with semi-live blogging updates and even some photos. I'm rooting for Allen Cunningham. Flipchip picked him to win before the WSOP began.
posted by Pauly at 8/09/2006 05:49:00 AM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 7 (and Liz Lieu Tuesdays)

Poker is big business. Just look at all the numerous ads on the poker tables. Televised poker is even bigger business. Online poker is such a tremendous cash cow that our Government is threatening to shut it down unless they get a fat cut. And the slanted wealth at the WSOP is both enticing and sickening in the same breath.

Today is the 11th day of action at the WSOP Championship. There are 27 men left trying to position themselves for a shot at $12 million. Greg Raymer won $5M in 2004. Joe Hachem won $7.5M last year. This year's winner will take home almost as much as the last two champions combined. In fact, when Texas Doyle took down back-to-back championships in the 1970s, he won a combined $560K. Whoever makes the final two table will get more than Brunson won for both his world titles.

Whoever wins the $12 million first place prize is going to discover that the title is both a blessing and a curse. The rabid poker fans want every second of your time. The other jealous-ridden poker players will do anything to take down a champion. And the unsympathetic media will rummage through your garbage and call up your ex-wife and ask how small your penis is.

The vultures are already circling the Rio, looking to pick apart the poker carcasses. Immoral agents, slick managers, shady online poker sites, scumbag lawyers, and gold digging pieces of ass are trying to chummy-up to the money winners during the breaks. While broke family members, old coworkers, former highschool chemistry lab partners, and every scam artist on the West Coast are all crawling out from under the rocks where they live trying their best shot to grab a piece of the remaining players. These are the world's angle shooters. The lazy fucktards who will try to cash in on the celebrity and financial success of their family, friends, or strangers. I feel bad for the remaining 27 players... because a handful are gonna get played by people they thought they could trust.

My advice to the new crop of WSOP millionaires? Trust nobody. Especially a suit or someone you meet roaming the halls. It reminds me of how Hunter Thompson described Hollyweird as, "a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

There's one guy who's been hanging on the rail. He wears a cheap off-the-rack suit from JC Penny and has that $40 used car salesman smile. He's been promising players that he'll become their manager and make them a huge star.

There's one smoking-hot blonde who's been keeping her eye on the action. She'll suck and fuck and anal lube her way into the lonely life of one of the big money winners. She's sell out her depraved soul to get her hands on a big wad of cash.

Then there's the long lost out-of-work cousin who had been following the action online. He jumped in his car last night and drove 15 hours to Vegas to "sweat" his family member. He's just here for a handout and a chance of getting in the background shot when ESPN airs the WSOP.

The biggest pitfall at the WSOP is not getting trapped for all your chips... it's falling prey to the dark side of this town. While the media and ESPN are over-hyping the tournament, the dregs of society are on the rail ready to beg, borrow, lie, or cheat their way into getting a cut.

But you already knew that.

Moving on...

There are 27 players left after one of the fastest days at the history of the WSOP. The biggest name pro left in the mix is Allen Cunningham (along with Jeff Lisandro), while online legends Eric "Rizen" Lynch and Parhlad Friedman are trying to make the jump from online-stud to live poker mega-star.

Jamie Gold doubled his stack two days in a row and sits at the top with over $13M. He'll be fighting off the wave of Scandis in Erik Friberg and William Thorsson, while the karma seems to be going to David Einhorn who pledged all of his winnings to the Michael J. Fox foundation. Allen Cunningham is in the middle of the pack in 13th place. I think he's in perfect position to make the final table.

Quick Links and Stats:
Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog

Remaining Players: 27
Chipleader: Jamie "Ari" Gold $13M
Avg. Stack: $3.2M
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Money Payouts:
1 - $12,000,000
2 - $6,102,499
3 - $4,123,310
4 - $3,628,513
5 - $3,216,182
6 - $2,803,851
7 - $2,391,520
8 - $1,979,189
9 - $1,566,858
10-12 - $1,154,527
13-15 - $907,128
16-18 - $659,730
19-27 - $494,797

Top 10 Chipcounts (courtesy of PokerWire):
1 Jamie Gold 13M
2 Erik Friberg 7.735M
3 David Einhorn 6.905M
4 Rhett Butler 6.4M
5 Dan Nassif 5.43M
6 Richard Lee 5.275M
6 Michael Binger 5.275M
8 William Thorsson 3.765M
9 Jeffrey Lisandro 3.75M
10 Kevin Aaronson 3.67M

The Rest:
11 Doug Kim 3.595M
12 John Magill 3.275M
13 Allen Cunningham 2.65M
14 Leif Force 2.265M
15 Kevin O'Donnell 2.13M
16 Prahlad Friedman 1.85M
17 Eric Lynch 1.785M
18 Lee Kort 1.7M
19 Rob Roseman 1.685M
20 Fred Goldberg 1.611M
21 Dustin Holmes 1.21M
22 Sirious Jamshidi 1.19M
23 Luke Chung 1.1M
24 Paul Wasicka 700K
25 Siddharth Jain 675K
26 Mark Garner 635K
27 Richard Wyrick 570K

Yeah, I caved into the demands of Liz Lieu Tuesdays. Here's a token pic of Liz on her birthday.



* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
11:00am... According to Snake at Wicked Chops Poker, he took a look at the Tao of Poker's coverage of the 2005 WSOP and figured out that it took 12.5 hours to go from 27 to 9 players last year at the Horseshoe.

11:30am... Poker Books: Buy these books written by some friends of mine:

1. Take Me to the River
2. Hunting Fish: A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players
3. All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker
4. Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker
5. Pressure Poker
6. The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time

One of the cool things about being around the WSOP is that whoever has a book out usually hands me a signed copy. Peter Alston wandered into the media room a few weeks ago. He's the author of One of a Kind (with Nolan Dalla) and Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie. I like Peter because he's from Brooklyn and he's an exceptional writer. We had a chat about his latest book Take Me to the River, which chronicles his attempt to raise money for his wedding by playing in the WSOP. I haven't finished it yet, but as soon as I do, I'll post a complete review.

Another Brooklyn guy, Jay Greenspan also gave me a copy of his book Hunting Fish: A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players. I met Jay at last year's WSOP and he's one of the better writers in the poker community. Jay hit the road and played in games all over the country in search of the largest fish. It's highly entertaining and one of the best poker books I read in a while. Michalski suggested I write a book called Hunting Phish.

I had gotten a copy of Storms Reback's book All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker a couple of months ago. I recall picking it up and not putting it down until I finsihed it. Another perk for me is getting to talk to these writers everyday. Storms had been writing for Full Tilt over the last few weeks and we've sat next to each other frequently in the media room.

Lou Krieger (who also grew up in Brooklyn... can you sense a theme here between poker writers and Brooklyn?) has a book out called Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker. Take a peek at his latest book especially the chapter on money management.

And if you don't know, DoubleAs finally released his book Pressure Poker. Take a peek at the book that some of your favorite bloggers like Pauly, Otis, and Grubby helped write.

I've gotten to know Michael Craig over the past few weeks and he's got some of the most amazing stories in poker that I've ever heard. His book came Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time came out at last year's WSOP. If you haven't read it... you should.

11:50am... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


JJ Liu and Jeff Pulver playing in the "other" WSOP event


Setting up the final three tables
11:55am... Michael Craig devoted an entire journal entry about me. Yikes. He spelled my last name wrong, but it's OK. Check out... The Doctor is In.

12:10pm... Play will start shortly.

12:20pm... Cards are in the air.

12:30pm... Recent Eliminations: Three in the first 10 minutes. Mark Garner's 5-5 ran into Dustin Holmes A-A. Garner finished in 25th place. Richard Wyrick took 27th place when his A-7 lost to Jamie Gold's A-K. Siddharth Jain's 8-8 ran into K-K. He finished in 26th. There are 25 players left.

12:50pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Allen Cunningham


John Magill (green shirt) and Willam Thorson
1:00pm... Recent Elimination: Rizen is out in 24th place. Eric "Rizen" Lynch took a hit when his A-6 lost to Jamie Gold's 10-10.

1:25pm... Recent Elimination: Rob Roseman busted out in 23rd place when his A-J ran into Leif Force's A-A.

1:35pm... Recent Elimination: Lee Kort, who's budies with Jamie Gold, busted out in 22nd place. There are 21 players left. Players are on a 30 minute break while they race off chips.

The following players won $494,797:
22 Lee Kort
23 Rob Roseman
24 Eric "Rizen" Lynch
25 Mark Garner
26 Siddharth Jain
27 Richard Wyrick

1:36pm... In the last hand before the break Allen Cunningham doubled up with a set of 5s against Erik Friberg who had 9-9. That pot put Cunningham over 6M in chips. Flipchip's pick to win the entire 2006 WSOP is making a legit run for the final table.

2:05pm... We're on Level 28. Blinds are $30K/$60K with $10K antes.

2:35pm.... Recent Elimination: Kevin O'Donnell is out when his K-K ran into Allen Cunningham's A-A. O'Donnell is out in 21st place. 20 players remain. Cunningham is now second in chips with 11M or so.

2:43pm... Recent Elimination: Online cash game guru Parhlad Friedman became another victim of Jamie Gold's lucky streak. Friedman was all in with A-3 against Gold's 7-8. "Wow, I'm not as far behind as I thought!" he said. The flop was 4-5-6 as the crowd went nuts. Gold's cheering section led by his mother, let out shreiks of joy. The turn was a Jack and Friedman was drawing dead. He finished in 20th place. Gold is up to over $20M.

Top 5 in Chips:
1 Jamie Gold 20.1M
2 Allen Cunningham 11.75M
3 Dan Nassif 6M
4 Rhett Butler 5.9M
5 David Einhorn 5.7M

3:20pm... Recent Elimination: Dustin Holmes is out in 19th place. Luke Chung is on a rush. Down to 18th place.

The following players won $494,797:
19 Dustin Holmes
20 Parhlad Friedman
21 Kevin O'Donnell

Updated Chipcount (courtesy of Poker Wire):
1 Jamie Gold 18.2M
2 Allen Cunningham 13.4M
3 Dan Nassif 6.2M
4 David Einhorn 5.94M
5 Rhett Butler 5.7M
6 John Magill 5.3M
7 Erik Friberg 5.2M
8 Doug Kim 4.9M
9 Michael Binger 4.68M
10 Sirious Jamshidi 3.65M
11 Leif Force 3.15M
12 William Thorsson 2.92M
13 Jeffrey Lisandro 2.82M
14 Luke Chung 2.145M
15 Kevin Aaronson 1.8M
16 Fred Goldberg 1.7M
17 Richard Lee 950K
18 Paul Wasicka 950K

Gold with Hellmuth lurking in the shadows
3:50pm... Play resumes. Here's the new table and seat assignments:

Feature Table:
1. William Thorson
2. Michael Binger
3. David Einhorn
4. Leif Force
5. Rhett Butler
6. Jeff Lisandro
7. Jamie Gold
8. Allen Cunningham
9. Luke Chung

Table 2:
1. Richard Lee
2. Paul Wasicka
3. Dan Nassif
4. John Magill
5. Doug Kim
6. Kevin Aaronson
7. Erik Friberg
8. Fred Goldburg
9. Sirous Jamshidi

4:45pm... Recent Eliminations: David Einhorn is out 18th place. He was felted by Jamie Gold who called a 250K preflop raised with Q-6s. The flop was Q-J-6, and Einhorn thought he was good with K-Q and bet out 1M. Gold came over the top for another 2M for 3M total. Einhorn pushed all in and Gold quickly called. Turn and river was 3 and an 8 and Gold's hand held up.

5:10pm... We're on Level 29. The blinds are $40K/$80K with 10K antes.

5:20pm... Recent Eliminations: Jeff Lisandro took a huge hit when his J-J lost a monster pot to Paul Wasicka's K-K. He was down to about 70K, when Rhett Butker busted him on the very next hand. Lisandro is out in 17th place.

5:35pm... Recent Eliminations: Two more bustouts. Sirous Jamshidi's 7-7 ran into Rchard Lee's J-J. Jamshidi took 16th place. Kevin Aaronson made a move with 10-4 and pushed all in. Erik Friberg called with A-Q. He flopped trips and rivered quad Queens to send Aaronson to the rail in 15th place. 14 players remain. I am the "cooler" today. As soon as I walked over to Table 1, two players busted inside of 5 minutes. Otis said, "Get back out on the floor."

5:55pm... Recent Elimination: Guess what? Jamie Gold busted another player. Luke Chung's A-5 ran into Jamie Gold's A-J after Chung outflopped Gold with A-5-4. All the money went in on the flop and Gold turned a higher two pair when a Jack hit the turn. After the hand, Gold dropped his pants and pulled the golden horseshoe out of his ass as ESPN's camera caught every moment.

The following player won $907,128:
14 Luke Chung
15 Kevin Aaronson

The following players won $659,730:
16 Sirous Jamshidi
17 Jeff Lisandro
18 David Einhorn

6:30pm... Recent Elimination: The Jamie Gold onsluaght continues. Gold's K-K sent Swedish pro William Thorsson and his J-J to the rail in 13th place. Thorsson won $907,128. There are 12 left.

6:55pm... Jamie Gold has 1/3 of the chips in play.

7:00pm... Bouncin Round the Room: The area around the final two tables is packed with media, fans, and suits. Some of the railbids are family members and friends of the final 12 players, while others are interested fans who are drinking heavily. There's very little room to operate with the crush of media both yellow badges (ESPN), green badges ("official media"), red badges (me), black badges (Harrah's), and purple badges (VIPs). ESPN's mobile camera crews run over anything in their path to get the shot. According to Tom Murphy, one camera guy was blatantly being a dick and tried to hit a Mad from PokerStars in the head with his camera. Murphy saved Mad from a head bashing and several stitches as the guy swung around quickly with the intent of hurting the woman standing on the rail just doing her job. The camera guy was unsympathetic and did not apologize. Most of the guys at ESPN are cool guys who bust their ass. But this one guy pissed off the Irish guys. Bad idea. If they see him after the WSOP is over, they'll kick his ass. Tempers are rising due to the arrogance and stupidty of some of the other reps here.

7:15pm... Players are on a dinner break. Here's a chipcount:

1 Jamie Gold 31.17M
2 Allen Cunningham 14.59M
3 Paul Wasicka 8.7M
4 Erik Friberg 7M
5 Fred Goldberg 6.7
6 Rhett Butler 4.5M
7 Dan Nassif 4.33M
8 Doug Kim 4M
9 John Magill 3.96M
10 Richard Lee 3.125M
11 Michael Binger 2.725M
12 Leif Force 1.98M

9:00pm... We're on Level 30. Blinds are $50K/$100K with $10K antes.

9:40pm... After the action slowed down, Erik Friberg doubled through Jamie Gold. Friberg had 10-8 against Gold's Ad-Q. All the money went in on the board of 9d-4d-3h-10d. Friberg had a pair of 10s and Gold had the nut flush draw and two overs. Gold missed and Friberg doubled through Gold.

9:52pm... Recent Elimination: John Magill busted out thanks to Fred Goldberg. Magill's 5-5 ran into Goldberg's 9-9. We're down to 11 players.

10:05pm... Tilt-a-Gold: Jamie Gold lost a 4+ million pot to Allen Cunningham. The river gave Gold a middle flush with 10-8s. Cunningham had A-Ks for the nut flush and Gold paid him off.

10:10pm... Tao of Poker's Pothead of the WSOP is Leif Force. Check out his Ultimate Frisbee profile at FSU. This was my favorite line... "Picture a monkey in the woods on a hammock with a banana in his mouth and tofu in his hand. Cut your hair hippy." I think that I bought mushrooms off him in the parking lot of a Phish show in Miami in 2003.




10:55pm... Recent Elimination: Leif Force busted out in 11th place by Sweden's Erik Friberg. Force missed his flush draw. Emma, the Swedish journalist sitting next to me said, "Your weed guy lost to my guy."

Top 10 Chipcounts:
1 Jamie Gold 26.7M
2 Allen Cunningham 17.7M
3 Richard Lee 7.8M
4 Dan Nassif 7.4M
5 Doug Kim 6.54M
6 Paul Wasicka 5.6M
7 Erik Friberg 5.06M
8 Fred Goldberg 3.9M
9 Rhett Butler 3.82M
10 Michael Binger 3.8M

Final Table Seating:
1 Richard Lee
2 Erik Friberg
3 Paul Wasicka
4 Dan Nassif
5 Allen Cunningham
6 Michael Binger
7 Doug Kim
8 Fred Goldberg
9 Jamie Gold
10 Rhett Butler

11:45pm... Boncin Round the Media Room: I lost a $20 prop bet to Wheaton on an empty water bottle toss. A couple of media reps are huddled around the TV monitor in the back of the media room watching the final table.

11:50pm... We have reached Level 31. Blinds are $60K/$120K with a $20K ante. We will end play when one more player busts out.

12:15am... Jamie Gold doubled up Paul Wasicka who flopped a set of 5s. Gold dropped down to $26M. He walked off the set, past Wil, Ryan, and Jay Greenspan with a camera crew and his entourage consisting of two goombas and a random chick.

12:20am... Here's what the guys are playing for:




1:00am... Play is super slow. I'm bored. Wil and I stole an inflated Milwaukee's Best can and brought it into the media room.

1:15am... Jamie Gold has not tightened up at all. He's won two big pots, and lost another one. Gold scooped a $1M plus pot from Mike Binger. Gold lost a $2M plus pot to Rhett Butler. And Gold won a $2M pot off of Doug Kim.

Top 5 Chipcounts:
1 Jamie Gold 26.6M
2 Allen Cunningham 17.3M
3 Richard Lee 9.9M
4 Erik Friberg 8M
5 Paul Wasicka 7.9M

1:45am... Level over. Players are on a break. Smoke break for me.

Updated Chipcount:
1 Jamie Gold 27.97M
2 Allen Cunningham 17.09M
3 Erik Friberg 9.85M
4 Richard Lee 8.68M
5 Paul Wasicka 8.025M
6 Doug Kim 5.490M
7 Rhett Butler 5.135M
8 Michael Binger 3.13M
9 Dan Nassif 2.84M
10 Fred Goldberg 2.755M

2:00am... Bouncin Round the Media Room: Wil bought beers for me and Otis and he had so many with him that he needed Chris Bigler to help him carry them inside the media room. Nlolan Dalla walked in and looked at the big Milwaukee's Beast can and said, "What the fuck is this?"


Michalski and the Can

2:10am... We have reached Level 32. Blinds are $80K/160K with $20K antes.

1:20am... Recent Elimination: Fred Boldberg bubbles off the final table in 10th place when his Q-3 ran into Richard Lee's K-K.

The following players won $1,154,527:
10 Fred Goldberg
11 Leif Force
12 John Magill

The following player won $907,128:
13 William Thorsson
14 Luke Chung
15 Kevin Aaronson

The following players won $659,730:
16 Sirous Jamshidi
17 Jeff Lisandro
18 David Einhorn

The following players won $494,797:
19 Dustin Holmes
20 Parhlad Friedman
21 Kevin O'Donnell
22 Lee Kort
23 Rob Roseman
24 Eric "Rizen" Lynch
25 Mark Garner
26 Siddharth Jain
27 Richard Wyrick

Play will resume on Tuesday at 2pm.
posted by Pauly at 8/08/2006 01:10:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 6

Bright lights. Puerile city. I'm numb to it all by now. The buzzing slot machines. The cocktail waitresses jacked up on valium. The disgruntled dealers chainsmoking outside. I pass all of them on my way to work and don't even blink.

There are 45 players left in the WSOP championship. That's all I care about at this point. If you gave any of the remaining players a knife, they'd happily slit the throats of their tablemates. I would for $12 million. I'd do it for a lot less. Heck, Otis ate two Lupis-ridden Keno crayons for $400. I'm sure I could find someone at the Rio who would kill one of your co-workers for roughly the same price.

As Michalski succinctly said, "I know a Vietnamese guy who will take care of your problems for $1,500. They are more expensive that the Russians. But they do a much cleaner job."

People forget that underneath the flashing lights of fabricated Las Vegas, the underbelly of society operates in the shadows. The cops out here are trigger happy. They shoot first and ask questions later. Gangbangers running crystal meth roam freely in North Las Vegas and shoot each other every hour on the hour. The skinny crack whores blantanly stroll along Tropicana Ave. near the location of the Redneck Riviera. There are hundreds of immigrants for hire that will install a sprinkler system in your yard or brutally murder anyone on your shitlist.

And on top of all that depravity, the WSOP has exploded into a money making machine. The players are not seeing any of it. The prize pool was generated by themselves, minus a small fee of $5.2 million that Harrah's takes... for what I have no clue. All I know is that there's Milwaukee's Best and Party Poker and Corum Watches banners all over the place, which reminds me that poker is big business, and a bunch of suits are sitting on huge piles of money, while the dealers with two kids working 12-16 hours a day are getting stiffed. Everyday the cycle continues.

The hallways at the Rio are filled with sunburnt tourists snapping photos of leggy models hired by online poker sites. I wonder what BoDog's model budget is? They are blurring the lines of prostitution and flirting with the underage sex business. Ultimate Bet got in trouble because they hired 16 year old models to work their hospitality suite. Even degenerates like myself and Foiled Coup had to question their ethics on that one. This city is filled with tweakers and pedophiles, and most of them bought into the WSOP.

UB hired 16 year olds to wear skimpy clothing and yes, they are the same company that threw millions of dollars at Phil Hellmuth to be their pitch man, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they'd hire teenage prostitutes to pimp their shit.

The double digit IQ models roam the hallways using their sexuality (and hard as rock nipples due to the frigid AC int he Rio) so you will go home and whack off to their tight asses or oversized breasts, before you sign up for an account at the online site of the day and piss away your paycheck overvaluing TPTK against a chain-smoking donkey from Fresno who chased a gutshot to the river.

Sex sells. And sex and gambling is a lethal combination. I should know. I'm addicted to both.

The whoring goes on in the hallways while the poker goes on inside the Amazon ballroom. That's been overlooked. Some pros like Humberto Brenes or Allen Cunningham and random newbies are playing the best poker of their lives. But you won't hear about it. That's where you see the results of checkbook journalism. Sure the suits want you to come and cover the WSOP, but not too close so that you actually report what's going on. The Europeans players are wicked pissed. They are being ignored by the official media. The middle tiered pros are overlooked. And Asian poker players are ignored unless you happen to have tits.

We do our best under the circumstances. Check out PokerStars Blog. Otis put together a superteam of writers, journalists, and reporters for their blog. And we're kicking ass without the same access as exclusive media outlets. And we're 1/10 of the size of them.

Corporate America corrupted poker. The WSOP has been tainted like the slutty girl on your freshman hall dorm with a severe case of the clap. But we're horny losers with self-esteem issues and fuck her anyway. The thrill, the rush, and the high far outweighs the long term consequences.

Someday all of this insanity is going to end. But for now, I'm caught up in the maelstrom of the WSOP for a few more days.

Moving on...

Day 6 is schedule to last until 27 players remain. But Harrah's has a habit of changing things on the fly, without telling the players anything until the last minute.

Quick Links and Stats:
Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog

Remaining Players: 45
Chipleader: Jamie "Ari" Gold $7.33M
Avg. Stack: $1.9M
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Top 10 Chipcounts:
1 Jamie Gold (Malibu, CA) 7.33M
2 Erik Friberg (Stockholm, Sweden) 5.905M
3 William Thorsson (Sweden) 3.545M
4 Rhett Butler (Rockville, MD) 3.21M
5 Kevin Aaronson (Mission Viejo, CA) 3.19M
6 Ricki Nielsen (Coppenhagen, Denmark) 3.17M
7 Siddharth Jain (LA, CA) 3.09M
8 Michael Binger (atherton, CA) 3.045M
9 Jeffrey Lisandro (Salerno, Italy) 2.995M
10 James Routos (Seattle, WA) 2.775M

The Rest:
11 Richard Lee 2.35M
12 David Einhorn 2.34M
13 Robert Betts 2.235M
14 Andrew Schreibman 2.2M
15 Dan Schmiech 2.155M
16 Paul Wasicka 2.055M
17 Lee Kort 2.005M
18 John Magill 1.955M
19 Eric "Rizen" Lynch 1.94M
20 Rob Roseman 1.845M
21 Mark Garner 1.81M
22 Mitch Schock 1.785M
23 Kevin O'Donnell 1.6M
23 Prahlad Friedman 1.6M
25 Mikael Thuritz 1.5M
26 Paul Raeburn 1.385M
27 Eric Molina 1.36M
28 Doug Kim 1.335M
29 Marc Friedmann 1.315M
30 WeiKai Chang 1.295M
31 Allen Cunningham 1.29M
32 Brian Hansen 1.23M
33 Rob Berryman 1.15M
34 Cuong Do 1.115M
35 Dustin Holmes 1.1M
36 Fred Goldberg 1.08M
37 Kyle Bowker 885K
38 Sirious Jamshidi 845K
39 John Lee 805K
40 Richard Wyrick 800K
41 Humberto Brenes 565K
42 Luke Chung 560K
43 Leif Force 510K
44 Dan Nassif 495K
45 Lowell Kim 350K

Humberto Brenes and Allen Cunningham are the biggest pros still left and are near the bottom of the chipcount list. Flipchip picked Cunningham to go all the way before the main event began. His pick still has chips, but he needs to make a run if he wants to make it to Day 7. Online pro, Eric "Rizen" Lynch is 19th in chips. While a fuckin' Hollyweird agent (who represents Tony Soprano) is sitting with the chiplead for the second day in a row. Will one of the Scandis like Thorson or Friberg catch him? Or can Rizen make a run? Or will Humberto, the Costa Rican shark go on a feeding frenzy? Or will the mild-mannered Cunningham show the world why he's the most underrated player in poker?

Stay tuned for updates.

* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
11:05am... Thanks to everyone who has linked up the Tao of Poker over the last few weeks, directing readers to check out my half-baked WSOP coverage. Many many thanks to you cool folks. And special thanks to Maudie for making the cool banner that everyone put up ont heir blogs! Lastly, go check out my boys at Wicked Chops Poker. They make my day everyday.

11:10am... Bouncin Round the Media Room: The ESPN crew raided the food and drinks in the media room. One Swedish journalist shouted, "You can only be in here two at a time." He has a sense of humor. Those were the restrictions we had to endure over the last few days.

11:15am... Make sure you check out Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos. And Gavin Smith wants you to stop by For Peyton. There's new stuff up for auction.

11:30pm... The guys at Centrebet.com posted some odds. Here you go:

Jamie Gold 6/1
Erik Friberg 8/1
Jeff Lisandro 10/1
Allen Cunningham 15/1
Parhlad Friedman 15/1
William Thorsson 15/1

12:04pm... Cards are in the air.

12:08pm... Erik Friberg got a ten minute penalty for prematurely exposing his hand. He thought his opponent was all in, when in fact he just flat called Friberg's raise. Friberg flipped over J-J and played his hand up, the flop was A-A-J. And his opponent folded. The sad thing is that his opponent had and Ace and would have most liekly gone all in at some point. One of the floor guys gave Friberg a penalty. Allen Cunningham, who was at the table, thought that Friberg's penalty was uncalled for since it was an honest mistake. The floor guy disagreed. I think he wanted camera time. Friberg was a little irked and walked away talking to one of his Scandi buddies.

12:40pm... Recent Elimination: James Routos busts out in 45th place. His J-9 ran into A-7s.

12:50pm... Rob Berryman doubled up with Hilton against Ricki Nielson.

1:00pm... Recent Elimination: John Lee is out in 44th place. His A-8s ran into Andrew Schreibman's A-J.

1:15pm... Recent Elimination: Paul Raeburn took 43rd Place when Rizen busted him with trip 10s.

1:30pm... Recent Elimination: Brian Hansen headed to the rail when his 10s did not hold up against James "Ari" Gold's A-A.

1:50pm... Recent Elimination: Mikael Thuritz and his A-J finished in 41st when he got busted by Dan Nassif's A-K.

2:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Rob Betts, Marc Friedman, and WeiKai Chang. Gold's A-K bust Betts' A-J. Gold jumped over 13.5M and acted like a classes ass when he jumped around and danced for the cameras.

The following players get paid $247,399:
38 Rob Betts
39 Marc Friedman
40 WeiKai Chang
41 Mikael Thuritz
42 Brian Hansen
43 Paul Raeburn
44 John Lee
45 James Routos

2:05pm... 37 players are on a break. I apologize for the lack of updates. I had technical dificulties, plus my assignment today from Otis is to sweat a specific table with two PokerStars guys... Kyle Bowker (410K) and Michale Berryman (2.1M). That table also has William Thorson on it. I'm on the floor sweating those guys.

2:10pm... Here are the payouts that might get hit today.

19-27th place: $494,797
28-36th place: $329,865
37-45th place: $247,399

2:30pm... Recent Elimiantion: Kyle Bowker's 10-10 ran into Sirous Jamshidi's K-K. Bowker took 37th place. 36 players remain and there are 4 tables left.

2:40pm... Recent Elimiantion: Humberto Brenes is out in 36th place. Brenes made a move with 5-8s and a short stack and ran into Ricki Neilsen's K-K. 35 players left. Allen Cunningham is the biggest name pro left and he doubled up against Erik Friberg and has over $2M. Jamie "Ari" Gold is still on top with $13.2M.

3:00pm... Recent Elimiantion: The bustouts are coming quick. Ricki Nielsen was sent to the rail by Mike Binger in 35th place when he lost a race A-K to 6-6. Binger flopped a set too. Irishman John Magill's A-A held up to bust Andrew Schreibman in 34th place. 33 players remain. They are supposed to stop at 27, so we'll see.

3:15pm... Recent Elimiantion: Rob Berryman busted out in 33rd place.

3:30pm... Recent Elimiantion: Dan Schmeich finished in 32nd Place when his 10-10 ran into Fred Goldberg's K-K.

3:35pm... Rizen crippled after his A-A were craced by Erik Friberg's two pair.

3:45pm... Recent Elimiantion: Eric "Carebear" Molina is out in 31st place.

4:45pm... Recent Elimiantion: Cuong Do busted out in 30th place. Mitch Schock is out in 29th. Lowell Kim busted in 28th place. There are 27 left and play is suspended for the day.

The following players won $329,865:
28 Lowell Kim
29 Mitch Schock
30 Cuong Do
31 Eric Molina
32 Dan Schmeich
33 Rob Berryman
34 Andrew Schreibman
35 Mike Binger
36 Humberto Brenes
37 Kyle Bowker

4:55pm... Picture of the Day: Tom Murphy from Antes Up sent me this photo. Cick to see an enlarged view.


Oh the irony...
5:00pm... Play is over for the day. Action will resume at Noon on Tuesday. There are 27 players remaining. Jamie "Ari" Gold is the chipleader.

End of Day 6 Chipcounts (courtesy of PokerWire):
1 Jamie Gold 13M
2 Erik Friberg 7.735M
3 David Einhorn 6.905M
4 Rhett Butler 6.4M
5 Dan Nassif 5.43M
6 Richard Lee 5.275M
6 Michael Binger 5.275M
8 William Thorsson 3.765M
9 Jeffrey Lisandro 3.75M
10 Kevin Aaronson 3.67M
11 Doug Kim 3.595M
12 John Magill 3.275M
13 Allen Cunningham 2.65M
14 Leif Force 2.265M
15 Kevin O'Donnell 2.13M
16 Prahlad Friedman 1.85M
17 Eric Lynch 1.785M
18 Lee Kort 1.7M
19 Rob Roseman 1.685M
20 Fred Goldberg 1.611M
21 Dustin Holmes 1.21M
22 Sirious Jamshidi 1.19M
23 Luke Chung 1.1M
24 Paul Wasicka 700K
25 Siddharth Jain 675K
26 Mark Garner 635K
27 Richard Wyrick 570K

5:15pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Here's some pics that I took today. Click on them to see an enlarged view.


Unbagged


William Thorson


John Magill and Allen Cunningham


Sewdish chicks on the rail


The crush of the media


Brenes


Chipleader Jamie "Ari" Gold
posted by Pauly at 8/07/2006 01:13:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 5

With 135 players left at the WSOP Championship, we're only 134 more bustouts away to finding out who won $12 million and becomes the next superstar of poker. With only a handful of named pros left in the hunt, the winner will most likely be a grinder who never heard of before or some lucky amateur who won his seat through an online satellite.

Most Americans are getting up to go to church, or heading out on a Sunday drive, or getting sucked in taking the wife to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Not here in Las Vegas. Reporters and writers are shaking off their hangovers, poker players still left in the event are awaking after another sleepless night, and the disgruntled dealers are shuffling off to another down as they count the days they have left to work like a prisoner on the verge of parole.

The big story yesterday was seeing 2005 WSOP Champion Joe Hachem fight back tears after he suffered yet another wicked bad beat at this year's WSOP. In earlier events in this WSOP, Dutch Boyd caught a two outer when he won his bracelet sending Hachem to the rail in second place, and then Gentleman John Gale hit a five out to bust Hachem from his second final table at the WSOP. Regardless of the outcome, Joe Hachem played and acted like a champion over the past year. It was fun watching him play in the biggest cash games at the Rio along with Andy Black, Johnny Chan, and Greg Raymer.

In "what the fuck? news" Rick Solomon (Shannon Doherty's ex-husband and the guy with the pencil thin penis in the Paris Hilton sex video) eventually busted out late last night. In an ironic twist of fate, he lost a race when his A-K did not improve against... Q-Q. Yes, the Hilton Sisters busted him.

Ryan K. busted out yesterday after an amazing run. My buddy Stomry entered Day 4 as the lowest stack and had a short stack for 2.5 days and still managed to go deep.

I wrote two interesting articles over at PokerStars Blog. Take a peek:

Humberto Brenes: The Shark Smells Blood
Tom McEvoy: Exit Interview with a Champion Part II

Another big story that's been missed by the official media has been the final three women left in the event. I know that Annie Duke could care less if she's the last woman standing. She wants to win it all. And she's been playing excellent poker over the past week. She survived the bright and hot lights of the featured TV table and dodged the snickers over her choice in Fidel Castro inspired clothing. She's sitting in 19th place with 919K in chips. Sabyl Cohen and Deba Lalor are also still left in the mix.

The big names still left include Annie Duke, Humberto Brenes, Allen Cunningham, Casey Kastle, Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Prahlad Friedman, Bryan Mincon, and Jeff Lisandro. Irish pro Dave "Wildy Autistic Luckbox" Murray, who's considered one of the brightest people in the room, still has chips. There are 27 PokerStars qualifiers still left.

Here are the end of Day 4 chipcounts courtesy of Poker Wire. I consider them accurate because Jen from PokerWire did them and I trust her work.

2006 WSOP Quick Stats & Links
Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog

Remaining players: 135
Avg. Stack: $650K
Chipleader: Jamie Gold $3.7M
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Top 10 Chipcounts:
1 Jamie Gold 3,700,000
2 Max Reele 2,358,000
3 James Routos 2,279,000
4 Kyle Bowker 2,272,000
5 Michael Binger 1,889,000
6 Prahlad Friedman 1,558,000
7 Ricki Nielsen 1,388,000
8 Kevin Aaronson 1,354,000
9 WeiKai Chang 1,343,000
10 Noah Siegel 1,283,000

The Rest:
11 Brian Hansen 1,273,000
12 Luke Chung 1,271,000
13 Dmitri Nobles 1,252,000
14 John Ma 1,250,000
15 Jeffrey Lisandro 1,208,000
16 Dustin Holmes 1,176,000
17 Eric "Rizen" Lynch 1,085,000
18 Ricardo Velasco 1,050,000
19 Mark Garner 1,048,000
20 Chris Damick 1,039,000
21 Richard Gryko 994,000
22 Dan Abouaf 992,000
23 Dave Murray 991,000
24 Doug Kim 937,000
25 Lee Kort 936,000
26 Annie Duke 919,000
27 Cuong Do 914,000
28 Rick Mombourquette 911,000
29 Ken Jacobs 896,000
30 Thomas Wahlroos 884,000
31 Cheng Yu 876,000
32 Tyler Teague 860,000
32 Matt Wilson 860,000
34 Andrew Schreibman 835,000
34 Humberto Brenes 835,000
36 Tony Moretina 817,000
37 Brady Shepard 808,000
38 Fred Goldberg 791,000
39 Kevin O'Donnell 789,000
40 Lasse Ubostad 782,000
41 Clint Brotherton 760,000
42 Alan Resh 709,000
43 Chris Kealy 708,000
44 Dan Nassif 702,000
45 Alex Balandin 681,000
46 Mitch Schock 674,000
47 Erik Friberg 650,000
48 Paul Raeburn 646,000
49 Pat Dattilo 638,000
50 John Magill 636,000
51 Anthony Fagan 634,000
52 Jean Houle 629,000
53 Kevin Daly 622,000
54 Hossein Khodabanelou 620,000
55 Justin Diamond 608,000
56 Marcello Del Grosso 607,000
57 Richard Lee 606,000
58 Scott Malone 585,000
59 Rob Roseman 576,000
59 Samir Khoueis 576,000
61 Steven Goodemote 569,000
62 Siddharth Jain 567,000
63 Matthew Morgan 564,000
64 Paul Wasicka 552,000
65 Leif Force 537,000
66 Raphael Doromal 536,000
67 Brian Nadell 523,000
68 Lowell Kim 522,000
69 Dan Schmiech 515,000
70 Allen Cunningham 503,000
71 Scott O'Reilly 501,000
72 Sebastian Zavarsky 497,000
73 Daniel Kreitzman 496,000
74 John Lee 473,000
75 David Einhorn 462,000
76 Brian Kornfeld 459,000
77 Virgil Beddingfield 453,000
78 Vipul Kothari 435,000
78 Tyler Pendleton 435,000
80 Benjamin Logan 430,000
81 Chris Back 416,000
82 Rob Berryman 413,000
83 Mikael Thuritz 411,000
84 Sirious Jamshidi 408,000
84 Hakam Sahl 408,000
84 Robert Betts 408,000
87 Sabyl Cohen 398,000
88 Matt Woodward 392,000
89 Aaron Baltzell 386,000
90 Robert Taylor 375,000
91 Debra Lalor 372,000
91 Barry Goren 372,000
93 Sean Johnson 359,000
94 Theodore Park 358,000
95 Michael Bowen 353,000
96 Eric Molina 346,000
97 James Petrillo 345,000
98 Reuben Peters 344,000
99 Shyam Ravindran 336,000
100 Alan Schein 333,000
101 Anders Karlsen 329,000
102 Marc Friedmann 327,000
103 David Simon 324,000
104 Paul Greim 317,000
105 Nicolai Vivet 316,000
106 Iago Lopez 315,000
107 Rhett Butler 310,000
108 Mack Lee 287,000
109 Aki Ruuskanen 285,000
110 Per Loeff 284,000
111 Davis Huynh 280,000
112 Bryan Micon 275,000
113 Shannon Westbrook 273,000
114 Walt Shafer 266,000
115 Mark Shanta 245,000
116 Paul Coles 239,000
117 Richard Wyrick 234,000
118 Arturo Morales 222,000
119 Stefan Mattsson 219,000
120 Carlos Lopez Jr. 209,000
120 Derek Scallon 209,000
122 Paramjit Gill 203,000
123 Michael Simonsen 202,000
124 Steinan Karlsen 200,000
125 William Thorsson 168,000
126 Mark Petersen 166,000
127 Kevin Nathan 158,000
128 Cory Butler 150,000
129 Bert Gill 127,000
130 Casey Kastle 117,000
131 Eric Buchman 110,000
132 James Flick 92,000
133 Robby Robertson 75,000
134 John Kim 67,000
135 David Woo 44,000

Nazi-ish media restriction kicked in yesterday for the folks with red badges. I feel like I'm wandering around in a Warsaw ghetto circa 1940 with a gold star on my jacket. I don't expect to get any good photos or be able to follow the action close up like I did in the past week or like last year. Stop by and check out Flipchip's 2006 WSOP photos to get your picture fix.

Stay tuned for updates.

* * * * * Live Blogging Updates * * * *
12:01pm... Cards are in the air. We're on Level 21. Blinds are $6K/$12K with $2K antes.

12:15pm... Recent Eliminations: Iago Lopez Gonzalez busted two guys on the first hand. His Q-Q held up in a three-way pot against 6-6 and A-Q. 133 players remain. Bart Gilliom and Corey Butler were Iago's victims.

12:20pm... Recent Eliminations: David Woo lost a race when his 7-7 ran into Mikael Thuritz's A-Q. Ted Park is also out.

12:30pm... WSOP Photos: Due to restrictions, I had to use a zoom on some of these, as I took them from the rail. So they didn't come out like I wanted. Click on the images to see an enlarged view.


Our chipleader... Hollyweird Agent Jamie "Ari" Gold


Unbagging chips


Bryan Micon from NeverWin Poker


Allen Cunningham


Iago exhales after he busts two players
12:45pm... Recent Eliminations: 126 players are left. Arturo Morales, James Petrillo, Robert Taylor, Hakan Sahl, and Kevin Nathan all busted in the last 15 minutes. Robert Taylor's Jacks ran into Hiltons.

12:50pm... Bryan Micon won a race when his 6-6 held up against K-J. Micon is up to 500+ in chips.

12:55pm... Recent Elimiantions: Aki Ruuskanen flopped quad Queens cracking Glenn Karlsen's K-K. Also busted are Derek Scallion, Chris Back, Tyler Pendleton, Chris Back, Casey Kastle, and Brian Kornfeld. Korndfield's Kings ran into WeiKai Chang's pocket aces.

The following players won $51,129:
110 Justin Diamond
111 Tyler Teague
112 Matt Wilson
113 Mark Petersen
114 Eric Buchman
115 David Simon
116 Steinar Karlsen
117 Debra Lalor
118 Per Loeff
119 Casey Kastle
120 Kevin Daly
121 Robby Robertson
122 Derek Scallion
123 Chris Back
124 Tyler Pendleton
125 Glenn Karlsen
126 Brian Kornfeld

The following players won $47,006:
127 Arturo Morales
128 James Petrillo
129 Robert Taylor
130 Hakan Sahl
131 Kevin Nathan
132 David Woo
133 Theodore Park
134 Bart Gilliom
135 Corey Butler

1:25pm... Recent Elimination: Debra Lalor is out. Two females remain... Annie Duke and Saybl Cohen. Kevin Daly and Per Loeff busted too. Prahlad Friedman's J-J cracked Daly's Hiltons.

The following players won $51,129:
105 Brady Shepard
106 Mark Shanta
107 Mack Lee
108 Virgil Beddingfield
109 Steven Goodenmote

1:35pm... Annie Duke lost a huge chunk of her stack to Cheng Yu. On a flop of Ac-Jd-7d, Yu check-raised Duke 100K and she folded. She has around 250K.

1:38pm... Jeff Lisandro had a sraight flush draw with 5d-3d. He turned a straight which was good enough to crack Mark Shanta's aces and send him home in 106th place

1:45pm... Action is going very quick today as the short stacks make moves. Action will slow down eventually as the big stacks get bigger. For now, everyone is hoping that they can play down to 9 player by Tuesday night, giving everyone Wednesday off. ESPN would like to have the day free to do player interviews, while everyone else would welcome the day off to sleep. Me included. Jamie "Ari" Gold is around $4M.

2:00pm... Sabyl Cohen double dup with Aces against Big Slick. She almost has $1M and is the "chick" chipleader.

2:10pm... After gettng doubled through, Dimitri Nobles got his chips back when against Dave Murray. Nobles' Q-Q held up against A-10. He has almost $1M.

2:30pm... Players are back from a break. We're on Level 22. Blinds are $8K/$16K, with $2K antes.

2:55pm... Recent Eliminations: Iago is out. He had his Aces snapped off by a flush.

The following players won $51,129:
97 Davis Huynh
98 Sam Khoueis
99 Paul Coles
100 Alex Balandin
101 Iago Lopez Gonzales
102 Carlos Neira
103 Dan Abouaf
104 Walt Schafer
105 Brady Shepard
106 Mark Shanta
107 Mack Lee
108 Virgil Beddingfield
109 Steven Goodenmote

3:00pm... 96 players left according to Nolan Dalla. Lee Kort is the new chipleader with $3.3M.

3:05pm... Rizen's A-A held up against Hossein Khodabanelou's 6s-4s.

3:15pm... Recent Elimiantions: 93 players remain after Alan Schein, Matt Woodward, and Tony Moretina busted out. Woodward ran into K-K.

3:30pm... Recent Elimiantion: Annie Duke is out. Her A-3 lost to Jeff Lisandro's 8-8.

3:55pm... I had to take a quick break and cool Spaceman down. He's been having a tough work day. We went for a walk to the kitchen tent. He's a little better now, but his work tilt is about 70%. Otis is on 10% tilt. CJ is up to 95% tilt due to a migrane.

4:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Canada's Rick Mombourquette is out when his A-Q ran into A-K.

The following players won $51,129:
86 Rick Mombourquette
87 Benjamin Logan
88 Annie Duke
89 Pat Datillo
90 Mikael Simonsen
91 Thomas Wahlroos
92 Barry Goren
93 Hossein Khodabanelou

4:10pm... Rizen doubled up with Aces again. He has 600K. Humberto is down to 375K. Dimitri Nobles slipped to 800K.

4:20pm... Smoke break.

4:30pm... Recent Eliminations: Paul Greim busted when his A-Q lost to K-Q. Suckout city.

The following players won $51,129:
82 Paul Greim
83 Matthew Morgan
84 Shyam Ravindran
85 Lasse Ubostad

4:50pm... Players are back from a break. We're on Level 23. Blinds are $10K/$20K with $3K antes.

5:10pm... Rizen strikes again. He's been catching good cards today. he had aces hold up twice and took down a pot with K-K. He floped a set then turned quads. He's now up to 1M after he busted Scott Malone.

5:15pm... Recent Eliminations: 77 layers left. Dimitri Nobles is out. His K-10s lost a race to a middle pair.

5:30pm... Bouncin Round the Room: There are nine tables left. Wil and I counted how many people were inside the rail. There were almost a dozen Harrah's suits, a couple of floor people, four CardPlayer guys, two people from BluffRadio, two official photographers, and fifteen ESPN folks.

5:40pm... Recent Eliminations: 73 players left.

The following players won $65,973:
74 Aaron Baltzell
75 Daniel Kreitzman
76 Dmitri Nobles
77 Anthony Fagan
78 Paramjit Gill
79 Scott Malone
80 Jean Houle
81 Sebastian Zavarsky

5:45pm... Allen Cunningham doubled up. he won a race with K-J versus Ricki Nielsen's 7-7. Sabyl Cohen doubled up with K-Js versus Erik Friberg's Hiltons.

5:50pm... According to Otis, we're playing 5 levels tonight or until we get down to 54 players.... whichever comes first.

6:00pm... WSOP Photo Dump: This is what's been going on today.


None shall pass
6:15pm... Recent Eliminations: John Kim and Allen Resh hits the rail. Resh had Queens and ran into Aces.

6:30pm... "Rizen just hit quads again! It was a huge huge hand," Otis said as he ran into the media room. Rizen was all in preflop with A-J against A-Q. He flopped a Jack, turned a Jack, then rivered the case Jack.

6:40pm...Bouncin Round the Room: Lacey Jones was doing an interview on Bluff Radio. I spotted John Bonetti and Joe Hachem lurking around the rails. Change100 had a funny conversation with two-time bracelet winner Bill Chen, "You see those black $10,000 chips? That represents a buy-in. A donkey. I'll raise you three donkeys. I'll re-raise you six donkeys."

6:45pm... Recent Eliminations: Brian Nadell is out when his A-10 lost to K-J. He was in tears as he busted and stormed out of the room before he could get his bust-out ticket.

The following players won $90,713:
66 Clint Brotherton
67 Brian Nadell
68 Vipul Kothari
69 Alan Resh
70 James Flick
71 Chris Kealy
72 Marcello Delgrosso

The following player won $65,973:
73 John Kim

6:50pm... We're on dinner break. Play will resume at 8:30pm.

Top 10 Chipcounts:
1 Erik Friberg 4.3M
2 Jamie Gold 4.2M
3 Jeffrey Lisandro 3.4M
4 Michael Binger 3.3M
5 Eric Molina 3.2M
6 James Routos 2.46M
7 Ricki Nielsen 2.2M
7 Lee Kort 2.2M
9 Dan Schmiech 2.16M
10 John Magill 1.9M

8:35pm... Back from dinner. We're going to play down until 45 players or 5 levels, not 54 as previously suggested. There's a chance we will be playing to 1am tonight. I hope that we bust 20 players between now and Midnight.

9:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Bryan Micon is out when his Jacks were cracked on the river by Q-8s. Ken Jacobs is gone too. I had an interesting incident involving a rail bird. There's a rail that's roped off and an inner walkway/perimeter for red badges which circles the tournament floor. That's where I stood, trying to angle myself in position during Micon's all in. I was in a good spot in between the ESPN camera crew. All of a sudden, I get pushed aside by someone behind me on the rail who reached out a couple of feet and shoved me.

Pauly: "What the fuck?"
Asshole: "I can't see."
Pauly: "You touch me again and I break your nose."

If he politely asked me to step aside I would have found a better spot for everyone to see. I'm good like that. But the second you touch me, that's when you cross the line. He's lucky I didn't drink at dinner break otherwise I would have done something stupid. Instead I took the high road, gave him a verbal warning, then turned my back on the guy. I stood in his view for the rest of the hand. I wrote down the important info and moved onto another table. "Even the railbirds are frustrated with the media," Michalski admitted.

9:15pm... Recent Eliminations:

The following players won $123,699:
58 Ari Ruuskanen
59 Max Reele
60 Shannon Westbrook
61 Chris Damich
62 Ken Jacobs
63 Bryan Micon

The following players won $90,713:
64 Noah Siegel
65 Rueben Peters

9:17pm... Otis Quote of the Day: "I'm thinking about paying a hooker to cuddle with me."

9:20pm... Irish Update: The Antes Up guys got smashed at Jesse May's party. They played Jenga with Devilfish. "Awful player," Tom Murphy said. They were played another game and gambled on it. Murphy said it was an intense game lasting an hour. Those Irish guys will gamble on anything.

9:25pm... Recent Eliminations: Sabyl Cohen is out. She moved all in with K-8 and lost to Erik Friberg's J-10 when a Jack flopped. She is the longest lasting female at the 2006 WSOP. Both her, Debra Lalor, and Annie Duke played remarkable poker for over a week. Cohen survived over 99% of the field. All three ladies were eliminated on Day 5.

The following players won $123,699:
55 John Ma
56 Sabyl Cohen
57 Stefan Mattsson

9:45pm... Bouncin Round the Room: Martn de Knijff got caught coaching one of the Swedish players. Not only is that against the rules, but he was using a media badge (not in his name) to get near his player by the inner media rail. TD Jack Effel made an annoucnemnt saying that "Media and spectators are prohibited from coaching the players."

9:50pm... Recent Elimination: CC scooped CardPlayer!! Scott O'Reilly busted out by Doug Kim. O'Reilly's 5-5 lost a coinflip to A-Q.

10:00pm... Go read Michael Craig's blog.

10:15pm... Ed Molina and Jamie "Ari" Gold were jawing back and forth during a hand. At one point, Molina re-raised all in. Gold took a long time to make the call, and was soaking up camera time. "You got caught. Stop wasting time and just fold," Molina said as he threw his all-in chip at Gold. An angry Gold picked it up and threw it back at Molina. Eventually Gold folded and as Molina raked in a pot, he muttered "fuck." The delaer called the floor over and Molina got a ten minute penalty for the F-bomb. I was talking to Feldman at ESPN and he thought that Molina should have gotten a twenty minute penalty.

10:16pm... Bouncin Round the Room: "Jamie Gold has no class," one British writer said. "And he's an awful player." Gold is buddies with Johnny Chan who's been coaching him.

10:20pm... Recent Elimination: Richard Velasco is out.

The following players won $164,932:
50 Richard Gryko 164,932
51 Nicolai Vivet $164,932
52 Michael Bower $164,932
53 Richard Velasco $164,932
54 Scott O'Reill $164,932

10:35pm... 49 players are left. There's a 30 minute break as they race off the $1K chips and color up. We'll play one more level or until we get down to 45 players.

10:45pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: The Irish guys are reading aloud some of the comments in their forum about CardPlayer's coverage. Howard read out an exceprt from the GutShot forums in England. And the Swedes are translating what their readers are saying about the lackluster coverage. The Europeans are not pleased that their top players have been snubbed.

10:50pm... European Players Update: The Irish are doing good. Tom McGill has $2M while Dave Murray has $800K. Erik Friberg from Sweden is close to the chiplead with Jamie "Ari" Gold. Mikael Thuritz from Stockholm, Sweden is about 30th in chips with $1.1M. He took 26th at the WPT Championship.

10:58pm... We're on Level 25. Blinds are $15K/$30K with $5K ante. Jamie GOld is the chipleader wit $7.2M.

11:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Cheng Yu busted. Irishman Dave Murray busted when his 2-2 lost to 10-10.

11:11pm... WSOP Pic Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Chips


Barry signs autographs


Johnny Chan on the rail with Tom Murphy(right)


William Thorsson's stack

11:25pm... Recent Eliminations: Raphael Doromal is out.

The following players won $164,932:
46 Sean Johnson
47 Raphael Doromal
48 Dave Murray
49 Cheng Yu

11:30pm... Play is over for the night and will resume at Noon on Monday. 45 players remain. Humberto Brenes and Allen Cunningham survived and will return for Day 6.
posted by Pauly at 8/06/2006 01:17:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 4

Quick Links and Stats:
Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog

Remaining Players: 483
Chipleader: Jon Lane $654K
Avg. Stack: $182K
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Top 10 Chipcounts:
1. Jon Lane $654,000
2. Dmitri Nobles $650,000
3. Albert Padilla $640,000
4. David Chiu $632,000
5. William Thorson $628,000
6. Alex Balandin $621,000
7. Lars Bonding $586,000
8. Thomas Wahlroos $558,500
9. Eric Molina $558,500
10. Debra Lawlor $555,000

Notables:
Eric "Rizen" Lynch $541,000
Jason Strasser $483,000
Aaron Bartley $441,000
Humberto Brenes $362,000
Allen Cunningham $278,000
Jeffrey Lisandro $236,000
Annie Duke $180,000
Hoyt Corkins $163,000
Joe Hachem $139,000
Ted Lawson $135,000
Tom McEvoy $130,000
Kathy Liebert $126,000
Ryan Kallberg $103,000
Mark Vos $96,500
Casey Kastle $95,500
Daniel Negreanu $93,500
Ted Forrest $78,000
Surinder Sunar $71,500
Cecilia Mortensen $48,500
Allen Rash $43,000
Cyndy Violette $42,000
Susie Isaacs $23,500
Melissa Hayden $16,000
Adam Stormwind $13,500

On Friday, 1,159 player started out with dreams of making the money. By the end of the day, 873 of them were the lucky ones when the money bubble burst just before dinner break.

Here's a list of random pros that were busted yesterday: Josh Arieh, The Quiet Lion Richard Brodie, Carlos Mortensen, Matt Maroon, Phil Ivey, Layne Flack, My main man Freddy Deeb, Nam Le, Stuart "Donator" Patterson, Peter "Nordberg" Feldman, Paul Wolfe, Darrell Dicken, Tony Ma, Bob Fednuiak, Dario Minieri, Tony Bloom, David "The Dragon" Pham and John Gale. Blogger Tuscaloosa Johnny Kampis also busted out, but made the money.

Day 3 ended way past midnight with 483 players remaining. Of course that's not a hard/real number. The stats and info here are so skewed that it's hard to trust anyone. Harrah's sends out one set of stats. CardPlayer and PokerWire have different ones. The all have different agendas. Who do you trust?

ESPN and Harrah's doesn't care about the accuracy of those sorts of data. If they did, they would do a better job of providing those numbers to the rest of the media and to the public. It's important to us in the media and to friends and family at home following their loved ones online. I look like an ass if I report to Fox Sports that 483 players are left when there are 481. Same goes for other outlets and writers under deadline. Heck, the AP reported that Jesus Ferguson was still playing, when in fact our buddy and fellow blogger Ryan K. busted him way before dinner break. The official stat keepers had Jesus on their chipcounts well into the night.

"I think these chipcounts are wrong," one of the Image Masters photographers said to me just moments ago. "This is weird."

The emails and comments from family members of people still in the tournament are increasing everyday. Their loved ones are being overlooked by the official stat keepers, which is sad. If you are not Allen Cunningham or went to college with someone at CardPlayer, then you most likely won't get covered.

Heck, it's normal for me by now. That's the real juicy story of the WSOP and is sadly overshadowing several players who are playing the best poker of their lives, like a young gun like Jason Strasser or even Annie Duke, who's shrugged off a horrible 2006 WSOP and is making a legit run for the $12M first place prize.

When I get two different numbers told to me, I just average the two and pray I'm somewhat close. Heck, if I was covering the Yankees game, I'd know at the end of the day that the Yanks beat the Blue Jays 5-4. MLB cooperates with the media. But at the WSOP those numbers are blurry. My theory is that they (the Harrah's/ESPN/CardPlayer Junta) don't want to relay all that info because then no one would watch the final table on TV. That's absurd. Otis calls that "checkbook journalism." Everyone is gonna know who wins anyway... and poker fans will want to watch it regardless if they already know the results before hand. So why be greedy with those stats?

OK, my mini-rant is over. I just want to do the best possible job and running around for several hours every day trying to confirm rumors and get real numbers is a waste of time and energy. I could better use that covering the main event instead of tracking down the TD or Nolan Dalla.

Players left today are trying to make it to Day 5. They're also trying to jump up in levels. Here's the payout numbers that might get hit today.

127-189 - $47,006
190-252 - $42,882
253-315 - $38,759
316-378 - $34,636
379-441 - $30,512
442-504 - $26,389

Today should be interesting as the last remaining pros try to outlast several hundred internet qualifiers. Stay tuned.

* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
12:01pm... Cards are in the air. Stormy is sitting next to Joe Hachem. Dimitri Nobles is at the featured TV table.

12:15pm... Recent eliminations: Dan Heimiller lost a race. His Ace-face lost to a small pair. Mellissa Hayden went out with A-J. Stormy is also out. I must say that Adam "Stormy" Stormwind held on to dear life yesterday. With 30K in chips he made it to the money and hung tough all night long. An impressive run for someone with no chips.

12:20pm... Cyndy Violette doubled up early with A-A.

12:23pm... I was kicked out of the tournament area for having a red badge. I lost floor access unless I get an escort. "What good is it?" one media rep said. "I guess I'll just wipe my ass with it."

12:35pm... WSOP Photo Dump: This might be the last batch of photos I can take. Enjoy them. Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Stormy


Joe Hachem & Stormy


Hiemiller's bust out hand


B&W Photo of the day


NeverWin Poker's Bryan Micon


Ted's stare down


Cyndy from last night's action


Byron and Johnny Chan playing in the $1.5K NL
1:01pm... Recent Elimiantion: Susie Isaacs is out. Ryan K. is also out in 410th place. He lost to K-10 with As-8s. The board was A-J-x-Q with two diamonds. He said, "I went an entire WSOP without getting aces."

1:20pm... Pass the Sugah Update: Joe Hachem doubled up with A-Qs. He flopped trips and rivered a flush. He's up to $240K.

1:45pm... Recent Eliminations: Cyndy Violette, Mark Vos, Alex Todd, David Daneshgar, Ted Forrest, Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, Tom McEvoy, and Hoyt Corkins are all out. The field is going fast. 350 players remain.

The following players won $30,512:
379 - Steve Whitman
380 - Derek Payne
381 - Lynne Mitchnick
382 - Tim Lahey
383 - Jordan Rich
384 - Remco Van Den Berg
385 - Frank Kohutek
386 - Dodet Daniel
387 - David Kanesky
388 - Steven Younes
389 - Chau Vu
390 - Michael Katz
391 - Alan Sass
392 - Jose Velador
393 - Jon Duston
394 - Larry Fichter
395 - Michael Katz
396 - Allyn Jaffrey Shulman
397 - Thomas Koo
398 - Kevin Brown
399 - Andrew Palmer
400 - Cyndy Violette
401 - Mike Landers
402 - John Coito
403 - Jason Richards
404 - Aaron Gard
405 - Corey Marsh
406 - Farhang Ebadipour
407 - Joseph Lovelady
408 - Ted Forrest
409 - Peter Giordano
410 - Ryan Kallberg
411 - Gavin McKay
412 - David Daneshgar
413 - Terry Menezes
414 - Eugene Yanayt
415 - Tom Macey
416 - Hertzel Zaleski
417 - Michael Jensen
418 - Kelly Fitzsimmons
419 - Vinod Jaden
420 - David Greeley
421 - James Peera
422 - Daniel VanVerth
423 - Michael Hurley
424 - Susie Isaacs
425 - Michael Rawls
426 - Sean Carey
427 - Nathan Raskin
428 - Feming Chan
429 - Soren Jensen
430 - Ernie Shepherd
431 - Terris Preston
432 - Rolgues Rodriguez
433 - Steven Cathcart
434 - Chad Freid
435 - Spike Gallas
436 - Ernie Gormaz
437 - Walter Novelli
438 - Magnus Peterson
439 - Marc Machuga
440 - Josh Taylor
441 - Casey Peters

The following players won $26,389:
442 - Jay Jaffe
443 - Tony Ernd
444 - Lawrence Frye
445 - Paul Sokolof
446 - Alex Todd
447 - David Eller
448 - Darus Suharto
449 - Clay Manley
450 - Robert Osborne
451 - Jim Deitz
452 - Paul Seus
453 - Jan Su
454 - Rob Corruthers
455 - Adam Stormwind
456 - Jose Varela
457 - Mark Vos
458 - Genci Shehu
459 - Mike Sullivan
460 - Fred Shaffer
461 - Stephen Woolley
462 - Rob Zimmar
463 - John Jabbovr
464 - Charles Hurley
465 - Spencer Carrington
466 - Jonathan Tare
467 - Martin Wendt
468 - Paul Kitsos
469 - Andy Martinez
470 - Peter Antill
471 - Ryan Mckonian
472 - Stephen Birkett
473 - Michael Brody
474 - Michael Benedetto
475 - Nabaui Abdoliam
476 - Melissa Hayden
477 - Young Hahn
478 - Greg Varoz
479 - Daniel Heimiller
480 - David Filippi
481 - Dennis January

2:00pm... PokerStars guys are making a move. Rizen has over 500K. Humberto Brenes has $50K. Jason Strasser is up past $600K. Dimitri Nobles slipped to 226K at the feature table. Annie Duke has $340K. Daniel Negreanu has around $160K. Joe Hachem slipped to $180K going into the break.

2:20pm... Disgruntled Employees: I went to the kitchen tent to grab a $6 cheeseburger. Two Harrahs suits skipped me in line (because they can) and then ordered for like 7 or 8 people! I was pretty pissed off but as I waited for my burger, I eavesdropped on their conversation. They were trashing some of the floor people saying that some didn't have the temperment to work the WSOP. They also commented on how several floor guys make irrational decisions. Well, they should have booted these guys before the WSOP main event began. At least they are realize what's going on. I don't want everyone to get the impression that everyone working the WSOP is terrible. Most of them are very good and put up with a ton of shit. But the few that are subpar are the ones that the players are complaining about. That reflects poorly on the entire staff. I spoke to one dealer last night. He said, "I'm only giving out what I get back. Which is nothing."

2:30pm... Be right back. Wil and I scored an interview with Tom McEvoy.

3:00pm... Recent Eliminations: More bustouts coming fast. I can't keep up. Surrinder Sumar busted out when his K-K were snapped off by A-K. Chad Layne and Ceclia Reyes Mortensen are also out.

The following players won $34,636:
316 Chad Layne
317 Larry Etherington
318 Brendan Lynch
319 Matt Graham
320 Robert Newton
321 Derek Feldman
322 Frank Rasile
323 Steve Frasure
324 Surinder Sunar
325 Ed Blount
326 Danny Lenehan
327 Richard Lewis
328 Steve Conway
329 Lee Pierce
330 Dennis Richardson
331 Manuel Labandeira
332 Bo Sehlstedt
333 Robert Sanchez
334 Roy Goulet
335 Vince Fredrick
336 Chris Anderson
337 Daniel Pickle
338 Steve Williams
339 James Scherer
340 Mel Podaima
341 David Hong
342 Patrick Sullivan
343 Joseph Bachar
344 Daniel Pelletier
345 Aaron Clark
346 Robert Kozik
347 Mathiau Weissman
348 Sidney Hasson
349 Daniel O'Brien
350 William Hill
351 Jeremiah Reagan
352 Mario Rodriguez
353 Matt Novak
354 James Crowshaw
355 Bob Lavsen
356 Joseph Sanders
357 Marlis Sawicki
358 John Villanueva
359 Cal Namihira
360 Chris Eversole
361 Ramesh Hulgalle
362 Rob Dewildt
363 Johnny Sanchez
364 Hoyt Corkins
365 Jack Wooden
366 Oscar Grytdahl
367 David Cai
368 Randle Wit
369 Peter Falk
370 Cameron Jones
371 Tom McEvoy
372 Jon Oda
373 Ole Busborg
374 Cecelia Reyes
375 Mike Hamparsomian
376 Erin Hatcher
377 Wil Wilkinson
378 Corey Hudson

3:50pm... Kyle Bowker is the first Million Dollar Man at the WSOP. He has 1.1M. Joe Hachem is up to 260K.

4:10pm... Dimitri Nobles is back up to 860K. Bryan Micon doubled up and has 225K.

4:20pm... Smoke break.

4:45pm... Recent Eliminations: A few more bustouts.

The following players won $38,759:
289 Gunnar Fenes
290 Scott Ritchey
291 Brian Doyle
292 Martin Virgen
293 Jogi Karamshi
294 Brad Klieuer
295 James Cartee
296 Sanjiv Karnataki
297 Vlad Artamonon
298 Rene Mouritsen
299 Melandro Alina
300 Thomas Kingo
301 Mike Stephens
302 Ron Toledo
303 Vincent Ianuzzi
304 Robert Hreljac
305 George Danzer
306 Cesar Giralt
307 Steven Schulman
308 Rafael Comas
309 Vissilios Maniotis
310 Adam Waldron
311 Steve Boyle
312 Robert Romanello
313 Johan Koops
314 Igor Trafane
315 Hans "Tuna" Lund

5:05pm... Random chipcounts:

Kyle Bowker 1.14M
Dmitri Nobles 904.5K
Humberto Brenes 550K
Eric "Rizen" Lynch 450K
Dave Chui 420K
Annie Duke 408K
Allen Cunningham 310K
Joe Hachem 300K
Bryan Micon 280K
Jason Strasser 203K
Kathy Liebert 65K
Daniel Negreanu 60K

5:11pm... Players have returned from a break. We're on Level 18 and the blinds are $3K/$6K with $1K antes. The $500 chips were raced off at the break. Two more hours until I can drown my pain in liquor at the Hooker Bar.

5:15pm... Rick Solomon, the guy slamming Paris Hilton in her sex video, is up to 770K after he won a race with A-K.

5:30pm... Recent Elimination: Kathy Liebert is out. Sorry Daddy.

The following players earned $38,759:
265 Derek Jibb
266 Rob Acton
267 Andrew Fennewald
268 Josh Newborn
269 Josh Ewing
270 David Angel
271 Roy Thung
272 Michael Lynn
273 Lars Bonding
274 Kenny Robbins
275 Kathy Liebert
276 Clayton Mozdzen
277 Greg Giannokostas
278 Tom Theineman
279 Andrew Brokos
280 Bill Gustafik
281 Paul Radcliffe
282 Johan Wemmenhag
283 Jon Hoellein
284 Christopher Szucay
285 Jared Lissauer
286 Peter Rho
287 Gunnar Rabe
288 Sonny Lee

6:00pm... Jason Strasser is having a tough day. He had A-A cracked by A-Ks when his opponent caught a runner runner flush. he just had 10-10 snapped off by 9-9. He's down to 90K.

6:10pm... Irish Update: According to my source Luckyblind Lacey from Antes Up, Dave "Wildy Autistic Luckbox" Murray is 4th in chips overall. He's a ex-dealer from Dublin and has been playing for two years. He has the highest IQ as anyone else in the room. He's a genius and likes to gamble. "Kalooki" Don Fagan is still in the mix after he tripled up to 600K. He used to play with Amarillo Slim and Doyle Brunson back in the day (which is the 1980s). He took 3rd at the first WPT Bahamas event.

"If I lose $100 on an Irish prop bet, I'm gonna be so pisssed off. Sooooo pissed off," Otis said after he heard about the run of the Irish. The bet is a PokerStars qualifier will finish higher than any Irish player. If an Irish player qualified on Stars... it's a push.

6:18pm... Recent Elimination: Joe Hachem is out in 238th place. His A-A were cracked by J-J, when someone flopped a set. Joe looked devastated. He walked off the floor, almost in tears, as the room gave him a loud applause. "What kind of fuckin' world do we live in when Rick Solomon outlasts Joe Hachem?" Wil said when he heard the bad news.


2005 WSOP Champion Joe Hachem
6:35pm... Recent Eliminations: Paul Sexton is out. We're down to 230 players. Here's a list of bustouts.

The following players won $42,882:
238 Joe Hachem
239 Golser Markus
240 Arsenio Arbartig
241 Nathan Brooks
242 Brian Hallows
243 Tran Thanhdat
244 Dave Golder
245 Elie Said
246 Brendan Lewis
247 Harry Binck
248 Mike Hirsch
249 Darryl Dare
250 Joe Fuhrinan
251 Marcus Collins
252 Andras Karkus

The following players won $38,759:
253 Paul Vola
254 Francisco Fragoso
255 Leland Wolff
256 Paul Sexton
257 Michael Tait
258 Paul Nobles
259 David Zeitlin
260 Larry Levin
261 Akshay Kumar
262 Brian Mozzoni
263 Monte Hanson
264 Vaughn Sandman

6:45pm.... Strasser is back up to 250K. Humberto Brenes has 600K. Make sue you read my article on PokerStars Blog called... The Shark Smells Blood.

6:50pm... Recent Elimination: Daniel Negreanu is out.

The following players earned $42,882:
215 Adam Bragar
216 Chris Martin
217 William Robertie
218 John Hoang
219 Gary Nasaryan
220 Brett Mayers
221 Chris George
222 Sean Le
223 Dan Ostroff
224 Jeff Lambert
225 Ken Weiner
226 Rob Lederer
227 Nord Foster
228 Adam Jones
229 Daniel Negreanu
230 Travis Johnecheck
231 Michael Batherwich
232 Michael Martin
233 Robert Santos
234 Pat Madden
235 Tuan Nguyen
236 Jeff Parcher
237 Ryan Claar

7:05pm... I'm heading out for dinner break at the Tilted Kilt.

8:48pm... Back from break at the Tilted Kilt. One of my biggest fans Moose stopped by and bought us all drinks.


Hanging with Otis and the Tilted Kilt waitresses
Photo courtesy of CJ
8:50pm... We're on Level 19. Blinds are $4K/$8K and $1K antes.

9:20pm... Recent Eliminations: We have several more bustouts. Gary Jones, Rick Solomon, and Ted Lawson are out. Rick Solomon was busted by the Hilton Sisters. Fitting. He's the guy with the small penis in the Paris Hilton video.

The following players earned $47,006:
178 Richard Digiorgio
179 Tony Bodnar
180 Russell Barnes
181 Nancy Nguyen
182 Zachery Gregg
183 Sameer Fayad
184 Alex Azadpeyma
185 Rob Ireland
186 Chris Combs
187 Tobin Dreher
188 Bill Rector
189 Richard Barstow

The following players won $42,882:
190 Martin Feijo
191 Michael Arents
192 Alan Barnacle
193 Christine Wilson
194 Huy Nguyen
195 Mark Zajdner
196 Rick Solomon
197 Mats Batnes
198 George Dunst
199 Andres Korn
200 Jon Lane
201 Shane Fumerton
202 Jeff Lewis
203 Peter Hedlund
204 Devin Porter
205 Richard Clark
206 Gary Jones
207 Matthew Zimmerman
208 Samir Zoudo
209 Ted Lawson
210 Matthew Dipaoli
211 Keir Fitz-Gibbon
212 Michael Kingsbury
213 Al Stephenson
214 Christopher Budak

10:00pm... Jamie Gold is the first player over $2 million. He flopped a full house against Mike McClain. Now he jumped over $3 million. He's the first player to go over two and three million. Humberto Brenes has $740K.

10:30pm... Recent Elimination: Jason Strasser is out. The kid took two bad beats today, and still hung on past the dinner break.

The following players won $47,006:
169 Jason Strasser
170 Ed Fernandez
171 Mike McClain
172 Ryan Nathan
173 Galen Kester
174 Kilian Druml
175 Jim D'Ambrosio
176 James Kerr
177 Bucky McMillan

11:00pm... We're on Level 20. The blinds are $5K/$10K with $1K antes.

11:15pm... Recent Eliminations: Action slowed down a bit, but we have few more.

The following players won $47,006:
155 Russell Davies
156 David Penly
157 Whitney Blanton
158 Andy Donovan
159 Randy Gil
160 Robert Isakson
161 Justin Ghogomu
162 Drew Tranton
163 Michael Hogbom
164 Phi Nguyen
165 Charles Kuruzovich
166 Sergey Feklisov
167 Ian Kalman
168 Brenton Goulding

11:30pm... Allen Cunningham doubled up with Big Slick against A-8. He has $370K.

11:45pm... Recent Eliminations: A couple of more guys busted. Originally we were scheduled to play down to 300 tonight and 150 on Sunday night. We are way ahead of schedule. Nolan Dalla said that we'd play as many levels as we can and try to end early on Tuesday,, or if possible have a day off on Wednesday.

The following players won $47,006:
148 Mike Hwang
149 Albert Padilla
150 Katherine Hartree
151 Todd Hartgrove
152 Scott Lidji
153 Paul Shoquist
154 Hoang Nguyen

12:20am... Recent Eliminations: David Chiu is out.

The following players won $47,006:
140 Josef Macek
141 Jeremy Mitchell
142 Whitney Brayton
143 David Ventura
144 Peter Placey
145 Hrag Kapooshian
146 Reza Zand
147 David Chiu

1:00am... Action will be ending in less than 15 minutes. Allen Cunningham is up to $325K. Humberto Brenes is on the feature table.

1:20am... Recent Eliminations: Aaron Bartley is out.

136 Marius Hogtun
137 Aaron Bartley
138 Scott Byron
139 Moshe Jonish

1:30am... Play is over for tonight. There are 135 players remaining including Humberto Brenes and Allen Cunningham. Brenes has $835K. Rizen has $1.085M. Dimitri Nobles has $1.27M. Jamie Gold has a a little under $3.5M. Play will resume at Noon on Sunday.
posted by Pauly at 8/05/2006 01:27:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 3

Everyone involved with the WSOP main event had a rare day off. In the last 35 or so hours, I managed to get some well-needed sleep after I passed out at a Pai Gow table around 3am at the Gold Coast around from sheer exhaustion. The last time I played Pai Gow with Otis, he was betting $800 a hand and we ended up doing that awful prop bet where I lost $400 after he ate two Keno crayons. We did some prop betting before I passed out. The chips at the Gold Coast have pictures of famous rodeo stars. The have images of cowboys on most of them. I found a rare rodeo clown. I'd take two chips... one cowboy and one clown. I'd yell out, "Yo, Otis... Clown or Cowboy?"

I'd turn over the chips and it mix up. He'd point to one and yell... "Cowboy!"

I'd flip it over and it would be the clown. I won that series of prop bets, going 3 for 4.

"I lose so much at Clown or Cowboy. I'm not any good at it," a dejected Otis declared. "I'm horrible at coinflips."

"That's why you don't go deep in tournaments," Tom Murphy from Antes Up said.

I played some donkey poker last night with CC and Change100 and got my Kings brutally cracked by a random hot chick from Sweden who held the Jaxia (J-9). She flopped a Jack and rivered the 9.

Moving on...

Don't forget to check out Flipchip's 2006 WSOP Photos. I'm also posting over at PokerStars Blog today.

WSOP Quick Day 3 Stats:
Remaining Players; 1,159
Money Starts at: 873
Average Stack: $76K
Blinds: $800/$1600 with $200 antes
Number of Entries: 8,773
Total Prize Money: $82,512,162
Harrah's Cut: $5,217,838

Top 11 Overall Chips:
1 Dmitri Nobles $553,000
2 Jon Lane $405,000
3 Ken Jacobs $395,000
4 Daniel Pelletier $335,000
5 Jason Strasser $330,000
6 Daniel Negreanu $320,000
7 Terris Preston $310,000
8 Phillipe Boucher $305,000
9 Matt Woodward $290,000
9 Paul Wasicka $290,000
9 Michael Lynn $290,000

Notables:
Dan Heimiller $203,300
Jeff Lisandro $194,800
Eric "Rizen" Lynch $194,500
Allen Cunningham $172,900
David Chiu $154,700
Humberto Brenes $148,300
John Gale $146,500
Tuscaloosa Johnny Kampis $141,000
Ted Lawson $135,000
Ted Forrest $130,900
Joe Hachem $114,100
David "The Dragon" Pham $112,300
Tony Ma $98,500
Stuart "Donator" Paterson $92,600
Nam Le $91,000
Josh Arieh $85,600
Bob Feduniak $84,600
Tony Bloom $82,500
Mark Vos $81,100
Cyndy Violette $79,000
Carlos Mortensen $77,600
Surinder Sunar $77,300
Darrell "gigabet" Dicken $69,300
Hoyt Corkins $67,900
Annie Duke $67,000
Cecilia Mortensen $66,600
My Main Man Freddy Deeb $64,500
Tom McEvoy $60,500
Aaron Bartley $59,500
Paul Wolfe $59,500
Richard Brodie $57,800
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson $55,200
Kathy Liebert $48,500
David Grey $46,200
Melissa Hayden $44,900
Barny Boatman $43,000
Bill Baxter $42,600
Jose Rosenkrantz $42,400
Susie Isaacs $40,300
Adam Stormwind $30,000
Ryan Kahlberg $27,000
Phil Ivey $23,400
Bill Hoyt $22,700
Tex Barch $19,800
Layne Flack $19,500
Dan Goldman $17,800
Casey Kastle $16,300

Top 15 PokerStars Qualifiers:
Dmitri Nobles $549,200
Jon Lane $405,400
Daniel Pelletier $334,300
Jason Strasser $319,000
Phillipe Boucher $303,300
Dario Minieri $275,900
Cheng Yu $258,200
Akshay Kumar $249,600
aaron clark $242,000
Kyle Bowker $236,000
Chris Martin $231,300
Matt Maroon $208,900
Mark Gardner $196,500
Eric Lynch $194,500
Sean Johnson $191,000

For a complete list of Day 3 starting chipcounts and seat assignments head over to Las Vegas and Poker Blog.

Marv Albert would call today "crunch time." If the remaining players survive 286 more bust outs, they will be guaranteed at least 14K. For online qualifiers who bought in for a hundred bucks and under, that's a major score. For those who bought in directly, this is the breaking even point. The handful of pros left are looking for validation and enough media coverage to keep their sponsors happy. The broke degenerates in the field are seeking to boost their bankrolls or cover their sports betting, blackjack, or horse track loses.

People do funny things when money is on the line. We'll see who cracks under the pressure or who steps up and plays the best poker of their lives. We'll also see if the day off affected players negatively... because they had too much time to think about today. Or if the time away from the tables gave them a chance to regroup and focus.

Small stacks like Ryan K. are looking to double up early. Medium stacks are looking to hold on and wait the rush towards the money. And big stacks like Dimitri Nobles are looking to bully their tables and take advantage of the tentative and passive play as the bubble approaches.

"I love bubble time," is one of my favorite poker quotes from Otis. He's right, this is the most exciting time in a poker tournament. My least favorite is the TV bubble. That's when play slows to a snail's pace and I can read several hundred pages of Dostoevesky while waiting for one player to bust out.

I have no idea what to expect today. Play has been going much faster than even Harrah's anticipated. Some media reps are betting on the bubble breaking before dinner. I'm guessing just after dinner. But no one knows for sure.

I have 1% of Ryan K. so I'm rooting for him to double up. He's an excellent short stack player. With two final tables to go at one of the LAPC events, he entered as the shortstack and won the entire thing. He knows what he needs to do along with all the other short stacks. I guess fate/luck/destiny and the turn of the cards is out of the player's hands as the burden falls upon the shoulders of the dozens of disgruntled dealers on the floor.

Today is the first official day of "intense" media restrictions. I have a red badge and will only be allowed on the floor for twenty minutes at a time. It's hard to say how in depth my coverage will be, including photos. I'll do my best like I've been doing and I'll be slanting coverage towards the bloggers like Tusacloosa Johnny, Ryan K., Matt Maroon, and my buddy from NYC Stormy.

Stay tuned for more updates.

* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
11:59am... I posted a list of all Day 3 starting chipcounts and seat assignments over at the Poker Prof's blog.

12:05pm... Cards are in the air.

12:30pm... I ran out to the floor to snag some quick photos before things got tense between the red badges and tge yellow badges. Joe Hcahem joked with me while I was shootong him. "Pauly, Make sure you don't publish the one of me picking my nose!" he joked. I found Stormy, Ryan, and Johnny. Nothing to report.

12:45pm... Jesus was moved to Ryan's table.

1:00pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Tuscaloosa Johnny


Ryan K.


Maroon scoops a pot


Birds on the rail


Barny, CJ, and Melissa Hayden


Dimitri's stack


Dimitri Nobles - Chipleader
1:05pm... Players on a break. Johnny took a bad beat when he flopped two pair and got sucked ouyt on. He has 86.5K. Ryan has 33K. And Joe Hachem is up to $150K. Dimitri Nobles is playing every hand, because he can. He's got $560K.

1:15pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: Tim Lavalli walked upto me and said, "The new media room is now located in Pavillion 11... at the Wynn Casino." There's never a dull moment in the media room.

1:30pm... Ryan tripled up. He has 90K. I walked over just as he was stacking up his chips. He had 3.5 stacks of yellows (about 70K). "Don't ask," he said. He cracked A-A and Q-Q with K-10. Tom McEvoy moved all in preflop against a raiser. His opponent folded. McEvoy is up to 66K.

1:35pm... Irish Update: Joe "The Show" O'Neill raised Phil Ivey's big blind. Ivey called. Flop was A-Q-x. Both players checked the flop and turn when rags fell. Joe bet out on the river. Ivey folded. Joe showed 9-4o. Ivey slid off his headphones and Joe said, "I'm sharing a room with Andy Black. I know how to play you."

1:40pm... Recent Elimination: Casey Castle is out.

1:55pm... Thanks to Andrew Feldman at ESPN for pimping the Tao of Poker at SportsNation.

1:59pm... Ryan 1, Jesus 0. Ryan busted Jesus.


Jesus moments before he was busted by Ryan
2:10pm... 981 players left. Tables are nine handed now. Dimitri Nobles slipped to under 500K. Stormy has 31K. Tom McEvoy has over 70K. Matt Maroon has 150K.

2:15pm... Take a peek at an article I wrote over at PokerStars Blog about Tom McEvoy called Tom McEvoy 1983 Champion and 2006 Unsung Hero.

2:20pm... Recent Elimination: Josh Arieh has been eliminated. His 8-8 ran into the Hilton Sisters.

2:25pm... CJ scooped this blurb. Stormy was ticked off that a guy in an Ultimate Bet hockey jersey bothering players and walking around inside the ropes. He did not have a press badge and Stormy asked the floor to have the badge-less man removed. The floor agreed and asked the man in the UB jersey to leave. That guy was... Phil Hellmuth. Way to go Stormy! Stormy 1, Phil Hellmuth 0.


Adam "Stormy" Stormwind aka Hellmuth Hunter
2:30pm... Humberto Brenes won a pot with A-A and now has over $250K. He asked the ESPN crew, "Do you know how to say 'shark' in Spanish?" They shrugged their shoulder. He smiled and said, "Humerto!"

2:40pm... Recent Elimination: The Quiet Lion hit the rail when his Hiltons lost a race to Big Slick.

2:50pm... Recent Elimination: Carlos Mortensen and Phil Ivey are out. Ivey flopped a straight flush draw and missed. Joe Hachem and Tom McEvoy are the remaining former champs left in the field.

3:00pm... Chick Watch: Cyndy Violette leads the pack with 100K. Annie Duke (who is at the feature table) has 62K. Kathy Liebert has 57K. Susie Isaacs has 45K. Melissa Hayden has 57K

3:15pm... Players are about to go on break. One floor guy that I trust told me there are 915 platers remaining.

3:20pm... Bouncin Round the Room: Spectators are not allowed inside and they are lining up in the corridors in front of entrances waiting to get in. Some of them are asking me questions like, "Is Doyle Brunson still in? How about Dutch Boyd?" Marcel Luske is out in the hallway taking photos with fans. I walked up behind him twice and did the devil's horns behind his head. In the documentary Bittersweet Motel about the band Phish (shot just before digital cameras came out), there's a scene where the band talks about how they fucked with fans during an European tour when fans run up and ask to take photos with them. The tour manager grabs the camera and purposely cuts the heads off and angles the camera down. These days you can't do that with digital cameras.

3:30pm... Go read Michael Craig's blog.

3:33pm... Random Chipconts: Here you go.

Dimitri Nobles 524K
Jason Stasser 450K
Daniel Negreanu 310K
John Gale 309K
Humberto Brenes 256K
Dario "Roma" Minieri 250K
Allen Cunningham 247K
Rizen 205K
Joe Hachem 154K
Tuscaloosa Johnny 107K
Ryan 105K
Donator 105K
Dan Heimiller 95K
Cyndy Violette 91K
Tom McEvoy 70K
Layne Flack 51K
Matt Maroon 50K
Stormy 30K

3:45pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: Here are some quotes that were overheard in the last two minutes.

"They (Card Player) must have given Chris Ferguson extra chips, because they didn't want him to bust." - CJ

"I drank Sambuca with a Norwegian last night." - Otis

"Clown or Cowboy is my new favorite game." - Wil

"I think Humberto is the sombero of ass hats." - Tom Murphy

"I got a pic of Cyndy Violette's butt crack. I'll email it to you." - Change100

"Welcome to the World Series of Assholes." - Tom Murphy after getting yelled at by a floor guy for doing his job

4:00pm... We're on Level 13. Blinds are $1K/$2K with $300 antes.

4:05pm... I got this email from Harrah's: "While in the WSOP tournament area, please be advised that apparel containing logos for any dot com gaming sites must be covered with a dot net sticker. These stickers are located inside the media centers and inside the tournament room (podium located in middle of tournament room). If you require any assistance, please see a representative of the staff. We appreciate your cooperation."

4:15pm... Recent Elimination: Layne Flack is out when his 8-8 ran into Kings and Aces. He walked off as ESPN's crew filmed him, which got him more pissed off.

4:20pm... Smoke break.

4:40pm... Recent Elimination: My main man Freddy Deeb hits the rail.

4:45pm... The bubble appraoches and all the red badge media are banned from the floor until the bubble bursts. Instead of playing hand for hand, the table will play a full orbit then wait for all of the other tables to complete their orbit, then they'll continue this routine until the bubble breaks.

4:53pm... 878 players remain. We're five off the bubble.

5:00pm... 3 more players until the money.

5:15pm... Allen Cunningham is on a tear. Flipchip picked him to win before the WSOP began. "I have a feeling about the kid," Flipchip said. He's seen him develop over the last few years into one of the more consistent players on the circuit. He's jumped into the Top 5 in chips. Jason Strasser and Dimitri Nobles are still at the head of the pack.

5:30pm... The money bubble broke! All players will win at least $14,597. Ryan and Tuscaloosa Johnny all made the money. I have 1% of Ryan, which means I'm gonna get at least $145 of my $200 investment back. the next money jump is at 819 players. The next level of payout will go up to $15,504.

5:45pm... Recent Eliminations: Elpidio Castro, Haga Mikkel, Geoff Sanford, Brendan Shiller, Daryll Futch, Brian Gass, Joe O'Neill, Erik Lindbarg, Andrea Mosiej, Jeff Kanow, and Ryan Badil. Those players all split the money with a share of $10,616.

6:00pm... Recent Eliminations: The following players won $14,597... Nam Le, Steve Graham, Paul Fisher, David Barrie, Ryan Coppil, and Marc Wasserman.

6:05pm... Dimitri Nobles has 525K. Jason Strasser has 460K. Humberto Brenes has 400K. 5 of the top 6 chipleaders at this point are PokerStars guys.

6:15pm... Around 730 players remain. As soon as the bubble burst all the short stacks moved all in, which clogged up the cashout line.

6:30pm... Ryan has a little under 100K. Tom McEvoy has 91K. Stormy has 20K and holding on.

6:35pm... Bouncin' Round the Room: Once the money buble broke, players were told they could not listen to music on headphones. They had the same rule last year. I almost ran into Robert Varkonyi who was on his cellphone. I considered hip-checking him into the payout area. One kid on the rail told his friend, "This is the boringest fuckin' thing I've ever been to."

6:44pm... Recent Eliminations: Here's a formal list. The following players won $14,597:

The following players won $15,504:
775 - Layne Roush
776 - Graham Webster
777 - John Kincaid
778 - Justin Huxley
779 - Keith Mitalda
780 - Yung-Hsiang Fan
781 - Chance Walker
782 - Reginald Simmons
783 - Baud Dominik
784 - Jonathan Greenhalgh
785 - Alan Steffen
786 - Rogelio Martinez
787 - Jeff Cabanillas
788 - Brian Roberts
789 - Peter Kunc
790 - David Cristiano
791 - Christopher Viox
792 - Jeffrey Mermelstein
793 - Jonathan Rego
794 - Dan Boren
795 - Ara Melikian
796 - David Vozza
797 - John Waddell
798 - Johan Backfjard
799 - Kelvin Sumerville
800 - Brian Coomey
801 - Scott Sweesy
802 - Stephen O'Keeffe
803 - Colin Wickersheim
804 - Mike Durbin
805 - Paul Murrell
806 - Andrew Taylor
807 - Bradley Birarda
808 - Greg Spence
809 - Lior Segal
810 - Jared Hamby
811 - Colin Frisby
812 - John Eric Backman
813 - Jordan Handrich
814 - Nicholas Montouri
815 - Mark Popkin
816 - Pontus Jonasson
817 - Daniel Larsson
818 - Michael Zakarran
819 - Halim Lababdeh

The following players won $14,597:
820 - Paul Mannoni
821 - Fred Lavassani
822 - Mark Rasmussen
823 - Morten Lokken
824 - Joe Everett
825 - Bryan Sandrock
826 - ????
827 - Vitaly Lunkin
828 - George Watson
829 - Robert Enfield
830 - David Hamilton
831 - Bennard Thung
832 - Ashig Abdullah
833 - Roger Mason
834 - Dan Schlauch
835 - Brian Riley
836 - Michael Lee
837 - Joseph M. Cappello
838 - Steven Choi
839 - Ed Latif
840 - Rick Middleton
841 - Kyung Han
842 - Gary Margolis
843 - Scott Miller
844 - Ernesto Panno
845 - Kjetil Flatnes
846 - Morton Lerbrekk
847 - Chris Convery
848 - Doug Dearborn
849 - ???
850 - Nam Le
851 - Vince Deluco
852 - Steven Dubin
853 - Barny Boatman
854 - Paul McCaffrey
855 - Donna Wilson
856 - Jim Olson
857 - ???
858 - Paul F. Smith
859 - Thomas Adams
860 - Greg Myers
861 - Steve Graham
862 - Paul Fisher
863 - David Barrie
864 - Ryan Coppil
865 - Marc Wasserman

6:46pm... Recent ELimiantions: Daniel Larrson is out. Tuscaloosa Johnny and Matt Maroon went out on the same hand! Maroon had Q-Q and Tuscaloosa Johnny had K-K. They both ran into A-A, which held up. Great run guys. Congrats for cashing. Live poker is sooo rigged.

The following players won $16,493:
736 - Eric S. Sonstegard
737 - Jon Einarsvean
738 - Benett Nathanson
739 - Pierre Bounahara
740 - Christopher Barash
741 - Gerald Kane
742 - Jonathan Michaels
743 - Hoang Nguyen
744 - Gareth Edwards
745 - Orlando Romero
746 - Ira Gibbs
747 - Daron Estrada
748 - Josh Trygg
749 - Brian Hetzel
750 - Yuri Bokkel
751 - Christopher Ellison
752 - Steve Martenelli
753 - Richard Clary
754 - Cicurel Didier
755 - Marc Greenspan
756 - Mike May
757 - Magnus Carlen
758 - Rick Fratcher
759 - Brett Rickey
760 - Seth Cohen
761 - Richard Grijalva
762 - Arthur Katz
763 - Richard Shorten
764 - Suhura Suga
765 - John McDevitt
766 - John Short
767 - Matt Maroon
768 - Tuscaloosa Johnny Kampis
769 - Andres Larsson
770 - David Farber
771 - Mike Frederick
772 - Casey Baldwin
773 - Norman Tang
774 - Dan Birken

7:00pm... Players are on dinner break. Around 750 are left. I'm heading to the Tilted Kilt with Wil, Ryan, and Change100.

8:30pm... We're back from dinner break. We're on Level 14. Blinds are $1,200/$2,400 with $300 antes. We're playing two more levels (max) or until we get down to 550 players... whichever comes first.

9:15pm... Ryan was moved to Daniel Negreanu's table. He has 116K.

9:30pm... Recent Eliminations: Stuart "Donator" Patterson and Peter "Nordberg" Feldman are out. 667 players remain. Yes I know that there's a problem with the payout list. I'm just passing along the information that I get.

The following players won $16,493:
721 Steven Dunkelberg
722 Tyler Chabolla
723 Donna Skolnick
724 Phil Doucette
725 Johnny Price
726 Christina Jones
727 John Wilson
728 Nicolas Irving
729 Ivan Saul
730 Flaminio Malaguti
731 Stuart "Donator" Patterson
732 Ronnie Yarbrough
733 Bob Roth
734 Dan Brien
735 Johan Kretz
736 Justin Trusdell
737 Peter "Nordberg" Feldman

10:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Paul Wolfe is going home for the day.

The following players won $17,730:
679 Jianjun Li
680 Steve Lustig
681 Oystein Halland
682 Brian Lamanna
683 Gary Broaddus
684 Pat Ferraro
685 Alan Choi
686 Paul Lui
687 Neil Butterfield
688 Robert Lauria
689 Bret Budrick
690 Fred Marcell
691 Michael Frandsen
692 Frank Callucci
693 Rafael Encarnacion
694 William Harker
695 Robert Ohl
696 Olga Spirova
697 Danny Li
698 Kenneth Bennett
699 Jeffrey Abramovitz
700 Brad Higgins
701 David Margolis
702 Scott Williams
703 Danny DeJesus
704 James Mellor
705 Tom Drotleff
706 William Burdick
707 Bruck Frank
708 Samuel Hsiao
709 Robert Haderstroh
710 Ari Levy
711 Magdalena Halford
712 Chase Offield
713 Salvatore Erna
714 Tony Lay
715 Paul Wolfe
716 Dan Bokesch
717 Jeremy Roberts
718 David Horbury
719 Marcus Holm
720 Aram Zerounian

10:20pm... Recent Elimiantions: Darrell Dicken is out.

The following players won $19,050:
651 Ernesto Tohme
652 Marty Cortinas
653 Yuriy Kozinskiy
654 Nelson Dismukes
655 Shane Jandro
656 Mark Gilbert
657 Lin Lee
658 Mark Herron
659 Marc St. Germain
660 Joe Gualtieri
661 Gabriel Valente
662 Tom Richter
663 Scott Sherwood
664 Sam Bezant
665 Mark Wilds
666 Musa Mustafa

The following players won $17,730:
667 Bill Newman
668 Fred Conforti
669 William Strohme
670 Craig Bobbins
671 Tore Michelsen
672 Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken
673 Hank Sitton
674 Brian Brandon
675 Daniel Hart
676 John Kindley
677 Scott Shone
678 Chris Peitrarosso

10:30pm... Ryan has 95K. Stormy has 22K. Negreanu took a big hit and slipped to 25K. Joe Hachem went on a little bit of tilt when he mucked A-K to a guy who pushed all in with A-Q. He slipped to under 100K for the first time today. Tom McEvoy has 110K. The average stack is $142K.

10:45pm... Recent Eliminations: Players are busting out faster than I can keep up. When players bust out they are shuffled off to a waiting area near the cash game tables, where they have to sit until they are porcessed and all the paperwork is filled out.

The following players won $20,617:
596 Lance Smith
597 Ken Powell
598 M. Mitchener
599 Paul Parker
600 Larry Newman
601 Anders Henriksson
602 Josh Egan
603 Manish Patel
604 Tom Lieb
605 Jim McCrink
606 Mitch Maples
607 Cuong Le
608 Mark Bushardo
609 Jay Johnson
610 Matt Holtzclaw
611 John McLaughlin
612 Lou Russo
613 March Schwartz
614 Ted Doukas
615 Keith Chauvrin
616 Mark Bogen
617 John Eilermann
618 Jojo Cutri
619 Ramon Abis
620 Stephen Ladowski
621 Stan Goldstein

The following players won $19,050:
622 Jeffrey Edy
623 Ian McDonald
624 Frank Reach
625 William Williams
626 Brian Rakestow
627 Nahid Yafaoui
628 Nestar Ygborn
629 Stewart Gold
630 Barry Schnell
631 Edwin Miller
632 Mark Eldreth
633 Chris Hamman
634 William Hames
635 Mike Kozisek
636 Rickies Millis
637 Kyle Burnside
638 Deric Williams
639 Sargon Ruya
640 Rune Anderson
641 Douglas Watkoski
642 Scott Mayfield
643 Jonathan Diamond
644 Scott Fenton
645 Kevin Stanford
646 Dane Wheeler
647 Peter Kiem
648 Wayne Boyd
649 Michael Glick
650 Andrew Bishop

10:45pm... Players are on a break.

11:25pm... The Apocalypse is upon us. Dimitri Nobles has 666K in chips.

11:30pm... Recent Elimination: More bust outs including Tony Ma and Bob Fednuiak.

The following players won $20,617:
568 Jacob Juhl
569 Patrick Fortin
570 Igor Holdaiy
571 Lee Thomas
572 Jeremy Yankey
573 Marvin Raphael
574 Abraham Korotki
575 John Loftstrom
576 Mark Schumacher
577 Shannon Shore
578 Ray Walters
579 Steve Davis
580 Owen McKinney
581 Robert Price
582 Steven King
583 Brian Ernst
584 Ed Dupont
585 Brian Jacobs
586 Donald Smith
587 Noah Jefferson
588 Peter Harter
589 Tony Ma
590 Bob Feduniak
591 Phil Long
592 Chan Nguyen
593 Nate McCrary
594 Odd Lavik
595 Rick Seward

11:45pm... Recent Elimination: Dario Minieri is out. Dario pushed all in with A-K and Dimitri flopped a set with 3-3. Dario Minieri, the Magic player from Rome (who CardPlayer had listed as Roma Dario for three days) has been elimianted. Dimitri is in control with 770K. He's the first player to reach 3/4 million in chips.

The following players won $22,266:
551 Nikhil Patel
552 Darrell Tipton
553 Chris Truong
554 Toby Mohler
555 Tomoyoki Otsawa
556 Jonathan Huang
557 Steve Binkert
558 Adrian Pitt
559 David Koffelt
560 Vik Kanwar
561 Alex Brigante
562 Sol Bergren
563 Patrick Bueno
564 Mike Suza
565 Khalid Dghaim
566 Dwayne Weum
567 Bluno Jais

11:50pm... Funny Quote: Tom Murphy heard this one while he was sweating one of his Irish players. One guy sucked out on another after the kid made a horrible call preflop and post flop. The pissed off player stormed off before he bared at the kid, "Where the fuck do you play? Party Poker?"

12:00am... Dimitri Young Nobles took a hit. He's got 540K. Rizen is on a run. he's second in chips.

12:03am... Recent Eliminations: A few more including Tony Bloom and John Gale.

The following players won $22,266:
505 James Jordan, Jr.
506 Huy Quach
507 Jeremy Scheeringa
508 Peter Sun
509 Michael Casella
510 Joe Goott
511 Jonas Hausson
512 Tony Bloom
513 Thomas Pullen
514 Victor Ramos
515 Howard Canowitz
516 Jeff Freedman
517 Gaetano Logrande
518 Steve Edwards
519 Russ Boutin
520 Bradford Davenport
521 Matt Giannetti
522 John Gale
523 Egil Vehusheia
524 Melanie Kaye
525 Henrik Waltersson
526 Joseph Cordi
527 Serey Heng
528 Freddy Vaghefi
529 Edward Atanasio
530 Steve Strouse
531 Joe Canouse
532 Derek Fujimoto
533 Gary DeBernardi
534 Mike White
535 David John
536 Corlan Chinn
537 Andy Johnson
538 Michael Leanos
539 Thomas Gates
540 Michael Esposito
541 Ramesh Bavireddy
542 Robin Lacey
543 Dario Minieri
544 Frank Allen
545 Scott Roberds
546 Andrew Leonard
547 Thomas Hammers
548 Jeffrey Weil
549 David Rusow
550 Chris Barncastle

12:22am... We're playing 34 more minutes tonight and that's it. Stormy is hold on with 31K. Tom McEvoy has 125K Ryan has a little over 100K. There's about 500 or so players left and everyone left is super tired. Despite the day off, this has been one of the most exhausting days so far at the WSOP.

12:30am... Joe Hachem has under 90K. He was moved to Ted Forrest's table.

12:50am... Recent Eliminations: The Dragon has been slayed. David Pham hits the rail as more big named pros are dropping like flies. Phil Hellmuth has been hanging around the Rio all day, like that loser college guy who comes by and hangs out at highschool during winter break.

The following players won $26,389:
484 Mark Morgan
485 Adam Geyer
486 Mark Lawlor
487 Gabriel Cook
488 Adam Harter
489 Jame Sipila
490 Rob Jaenicke
491 Eric Deguzman
492 Kevin McBride
493 Layne Black
494 Andrius Tapinas
495 Brandon Wong
496 James Matteucci
497 Brian Curry
498 David "The Dragon" Pham
499 Ashley Hayles
500 Patrick Selin
501 Mark Vecchio
502 Guy Longworth
503 Mark Wellen
504 Griffin Ludwig

1:01am... Play is over for the night. Ryan and Stormy made it to Day 4. There are less than 483 players remaining. Before the day was over, Ryan was moved to the feature table... with Annie Duke and Mark Vos. Ryan has 103K. Dimitri Nobles had $650K to end the day. He's among the chipleaders. David Chui had well over $600K. Joe Hachem has $140K. Action will resume at Noon on Saturday.
posted by Pauly at 8/04/2006 01:43:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Photo Essay: Main Event Jerseys

Today is a rare day off at the WSOP Championship. Day 3 will resume Friday at Noon. Here are some pics I took during the first four days of the Main Event. I collected these during my various photo runs out to the floor. I do about three or four a day. I have about 40 more of these jersey shots. I'll save that photo dump for after the WSOP.










































posted by Pauly at 8/03/2006 07:31:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 2B

Last night ended early with Jon Lane as the Day 2A chipleader with 405K.

WSOP Quick Links:
Flipchip's WSOP Photos
PokerStars Blog
Fox Sports
Wicked Chops Poker
My Sponsor: Paradise Poker

Notable pros who survived Day 2A included: Allen Cunningham, Jeff Lisandro, Jason Strasser, Matthew Maroon, Ted Lawson, David Chiu, Eric Sonstegard, Humberto Brenes, David "The Dragon" Pham, Carlos Mortensen, Mark Vos, Tony Ma, Annie Duke, Billy Baxter, Hoyt Corkins, David Grey, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Layne Flack, Casey Kastle, Phil Ivey, and Tex Barch.

Bloggers Tuscaloosa Johnny and Ryan K. made it to Day 3.

1,637 players started on Monday's Day 2A. 1,736 will play today. We'll play 4.5 levels. Payouts were released and first place will win $12 million.

2006 WSOP Payout List:
1 - $12,000,000
2 - $6,102,499
3 - $4,123,310
4 - $3,628,513
5 - $3,216,182
6 - $2,803,851
7 - $2,391,520
8 - $1,979,189
9 - $1,566,858

10-12 - $1,154,527
13-15 - $907,128
16-18 - $659,730
19-27 - $494,797
28-36 - $329,865
37-45 - $247,399
46-54 - $164,932
55-63 - $123,699
64-72 - $90,713
73-81 - $65,973

82-126 - $51,129
127-189 - $47,006
190-252 - $42,882
253-315 - $38,759
316-378 - $34,636
379-441 - $30,512
442-504 - $26,389
505-567 - $22,266
568-621 - $20,617
622-666 - $19,050
667-720 - $17,730
721-774 - $16,493
775-819 - $15,504
820-873 - $14,597

End of Day 2A Top 10 Chips (courtesy of PokerWire):
1 Jon Lane $405,000
2 Ken Jacobs $395,000
3 Jason Strasser $330,000
4 Michael Lynn $290,000
4 Paul Wasicka $290,000
4 Matt Woodward $290,000
7 Joe Fuhriman $280,000
8 Justin Holmes $235,000
8 James Crowshaw $235,000
10 Matthew Maroon $225,000

Starting 2B Top 10 in Chips:
1. Hung Tran $177,475
2. Stephen Grasostri $142,925
3. Richard Gryko $128,575
4. Adam Jones $125,525
5. Daryn Firicano $121,225
6. William Nairh $116,100
7. Pelletier Daniel $107,850
8. Jonathan Carlson $106,375
9. Charlie Sewell $106,175
10. Dario Minieri $103,625

Notable Day 2B Chipcounts:
Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken $95,025
Joe Hachem $86,950
Daniel Negreanu $85,800
Ted Forrest $57,325
Robert Varkonyi $55,275
My Main Man Freddy Deeb $54,750
Barny Boatman $51,700
Surinder Sunar $51,525
Greg Raymer $48,500
Joe Cassidy $47,300
Cyndy Violette $46,300
Nam Le $44,300
Bradley Berman $44,300
John Gale $39,100
Tom McEvoy $39,025
Russell "The Muscle" Salzer $36,625
Adam Schoenfeld $36,425
Robert Mizrachi $33,750
Josh Arieh $31,425
Huck Seed $30,450
Al Ardebili $29,500
Peter Costa $29,075
Adam "Stormy" Stormwind 28,700
Melissa Hayden $28,175
J.C. Tran $26,850
Bobby Baldwin $23,500
Alan Goehring $21,375
Kathy Liebert $20,000
Steve Z $18,625
Joanna Krupa $16,100
Paul Wolfe $15,550
Robert Williamson $14,925
Rene "I Put My Penis Inside Celine Dion" Angelil $14,200
Joseph Reitman $13,425
Susie Isaacs $13,350
Patty Gallagher $11,600
Denny Crum $10,850
Lacey Jones $6,650
Sarah Bilney $6,100

I'm going to be keeping an eye on Sraah Bilney, my buddy Stormy, Lacey Jones, and Joanna Krupa. As well as PokerStars guys Tom McEvoy, Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem, and Dario Minieri.

By the way, Harrah's picked up 6% in juice from the total prize pool which is around $5.2 million. For that price, you would have thought they would have paid their dealers better and provided better security.

Players were also wicked pissed at the way Harrah's changed the main event tournament schedule on the fly. The were supposed to stop at 900 players and kept going. Annie Duke had a valid point when she argued that players on Day 2B had an advantage (and could stall) to make the money over those who played on Day 2A. She wanted them to stop way before the money, which they did.

12:04pm.. The suit from Harrah's who appears on those comemrcials telling you not to gamble... well he did the "Shuffle up and deal!"

12:05pm... Cards are in the air.

12:13pm... Just walking through, I could hear dealers shouting, "Seat open! Table 131" as all the short stacks get busted quickly. Lacey Jones is a no-show so far.

12:30pm... Recent Eliminations: Sarah Bilney is out.

12:50pm... Joe K. Update: I just saw Joe K. scoop a pot. He's got over 30K.

1:00pm... Greg Raymer is 4th in chips in his table. He's had ESPN crews following him for most of the day. Three tables down is Joe Hachem's table. And another moble ESPN crew is watching their move. Lacey Jones is still a no show. The freaks at Wicked Chops are on the rail drooling over Joanna Kruppa. Daniel Negreanu is at the featured table.

1:11pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


The Champion


Stormy


Joanna


Al Ardebili (left) and Fossilman


Joe K.


Lynette Chan
1:30pm... Recent Elimination: Former WSOP champion Huck Seed hits the rail.

1:44pm... Greg Raymer slipped to 20.5K in chips. Joe K. has about 31K and Stormy is up to 32K. Lacey Jones is still a no-show and she's getting blinded off. Tom McEvoy is up to 49K.

1:50pm... Recent Elimination: Robert Mizrachi, the brother of the Grinder, is out. Joe Sacha hit the rail when his A-A were cracked by Daniel Negreanu on the feature table.

1:58pm... Bouncin Round the Room: The room is empty because the railbirds are not allowed inside. This makes things a lot more easier to navigate and I can walk through the center aisles instead of using shortcuts through the tournament area, which is slowly filling up with random media reps, most of which I've never seen before. I had a nice chat with PokerWire Amanda who's considering playing in tomroow's event on her only day off. I overheard an interesting conversation between the Milwaukee's Beast Girls.

Chick 1: "When did you graduate high school?"
Chick 2: "2004?"
Chick 1: "04? Oh my god. So did I! We could be like sisters!"

2:15pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Tao of Poker's Blonde of the Day: PokerWire Amanda


Tom McEvoy


Varkonyi stare down

2:30pm... I just posted something on PokerStars Blog called Greg Raymer: Large Field Guru.

2:45pm... Recent Elimination: Joe Cassidy is out after he lost a race to Frank Kassela.

3:00pm... Greg Raymer is down to 12.5K after taking a hit.

3:45pm... I've been sweating Raymer the last 40 minutes. He's got 12K. He looks frustrated and appears card dead. He's been picking up small pots. Tom McEvoy has 42.5K.

3:46pm... I lost Joe K. I say lost because he's not at his seat. I hope he got moved and is still in.

4:58pm... Recent Eliminations: Joe K., Bard Berman, Bobby Baldwin, Adam Schoenfeld, and Patty Gallagher.

5:00pm... I've been on an assigmnet for PokerStars and have been sweating Raymer for the last two hours. No time to write about hookers and other lame stuff. I have about two minutes to update before I have to run back out to the floor. Greg Raymer is tough as nails. He doubled his stack from 13K to over 27K by picking up small pots. Just before the break he had K-K and won a 7K pot. Raymer is sitting along the rail and he has fans five and six deep. Some are disrespectful enough to ask for autographs while he's playing. There's an ESPN crew (producer, camera guy, and sound guy) and about seven or eight other media reps sweating Raymer and cluttering the aisles.

6:45pm... Recent Elimination: Robert Varkonyi busted along with Haralabos Voulgaris and Monica Reeves.

6:50pm... Recent Elimination: With five minutes to go before the dinner break, Greg Raymer is out. His 8-8 ran into A-A. His opponent flopped an ace and Ryamer rivered an 8 but it was pointless. Raymer jokingly flipped the Ace on the flop over and then picked up the burn card too... which was the case ace.

7:00pm... Players are on a dinner break until 8:30pm

8:30pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Guess who's in town?


Cowgirls make Otis happy


Nice stack


Just when I'm ready to quit poker, this sucks me back in

9:00pm... Recent Elimination: Aaron "Luckbox" Kanter is out.

9:15pm... Dmitri Nobles, one of the PokerStars qualifiers is the chipleader with 360K. He wants CJ to be his personal chipcounter because whenever he's there, he gtes lucky. They nicknamed The Luckbox... "Lucky Guy."

9:22pm... Joe Hachem has 100K. He won three pots in a row. Tom McEvoy has 58K. Stormy had 42K.

9:45pm... Recent Elimination: Russ Salzer and Robert Williamson III.

10:00pm... Dimitri Nobles moved up to 470K and just took a hit. CJ got harrassed by the ESPN camera crew, who were a collective big dick to him. If you don't know CJ, he's one of the nicest guys in the world and even works in TV himself. Most of the crew is cool, but a few are a idiots. They also made Greg Raymer do his walk out shot after he got busted twice because the first one didn't come out. Raymer is a class act and obliged, even though he was out of the main event.

10:09pm... Bouncin Round the Media Room: A few members of the French film crew are commenting on how they'd like to fuck the Swedish girls here covering all of the Scandi players at the WSOP. Snoopy from Blonde Poker finally arrived. He got shit faced last night and was hungover all day. Otis is on 10% work tilt. I'm on about 43% work tilt and have two deadlines looming.

10:20pm... According to my Irish sources at Antes Up, I heard a rumor that all of the Irish players left in the WSOP were not pleased with how they are treated by ESPN's crew and how CardPlayer ignores them. They made a pact that if any of them won or made a final table, they would boycott any interviews with ESPN and CardPlayer.

10:50pm... Media access go even more restricted. I don't think I can go on the floor anymore for the rest of the day.

11:15pm... Who the fuck is Roma Dario? I don't want to steal Wicked Chops Poker thunder and bust on Card Player, but I have to in this instance. I've been following Dario Minieri since Day 1. He's a PokerStars qualifier from Rome and we've been covering him on PokerStars Blog. He speaks only a little English. CardPlayer didn't even have him on their radar for most of Day 1, even when he had a ton of chips in front of him. On Day 2B, they had his name wrong and listed him as "Roma Dario" up until 10pm. At one point they had both Roma Dario and Dario Minieri on the Top 10 Chips Leaderboard.


Dario who?



11:45pm... Stormy has 38K. Joe Hachem has 140K. My boy Dario has $280K. Tom McEvoy has 59K and chipleader Dimitri Nobles has about 550K.

12:00am... Play is over for the day. Dimitri Nobles finsihed the day with 549,200, which makes him the overall chipleader. Action will resume on Friday at Noon.
posted by Pauly at 8/02/2006 02:22:00 PM | Permalink |

 
WSOP Main Event Day 2A... and Liz Lieu Tuesdays

"If one more hot chick says hello to you in the hallway, I'm gonna put my cigarette out in your eye." - Otis on mega-tilt

We were walking to the Tilted Kilt Pub on dinner break yesterday. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall and striking woman wearing a sleek black cocktail dress and high heels she walked towards our motley crew of myself, Wil, Otis, CJ, and Change100.

"Hi Pauly!" she said as we were about five feet from each other.

It was Erica Schoenberg and she put Otis on mega-tilt, so much so that he threatened ocular violence against me. I think the Khmer Rogue tortured Cambodian farmers using similar tactics. Four the last few weeks Otis had to hear about the double kisses from Isabelle, Lacey Jones smiling for me in pics, the posters that Liz Lieu gave me, Lynette Chan posing for photos, and then the Erica hallway incident set him over the edge.

"I need to have sex. For three weeks straight," he muttered fidgiting with his wedding ring with his thoughts drifting towards Mrs. Otis back home in G-Vegas.

"That's funny, because I want to have sex right now. If you want to..." answered Ryan.

* * * * *
Don't forget to stop by the PokerStars Blog to see updates on specific PokerStars qualifiers and on Greg Raymer. Also for the best WSOP photos, you have to go see what Flipchip snapped over the last few days.

The first two legs (Day 1A and 1B) are combining today for Day 2A. Wesley Willburn is the chipleader in today's action with over $122K. Irishman Paul McCaffrey is also in the mix with 110K. My Irish sources Tom Murphy and Lucky Blind Lacey will be following their progress on Antes Up.

Bloggers Ryan K and Tuscaloosa Johnny are both in the hunt. Aaron Katz, a friend of Seattle John, also has chips along with my buddy Brandon Schaefer. I also have to keep an eye on Matt Maroon, Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Jason Stasser, Barry Greenstein, Katja Thater, and Humberto Brenes for PokerStars Blog. My coverage will be slanted towards those guys today.

I glanced at the list this morning. Here's who else is playing on Day 2A: Andy Black, Mark Vos, Jeff Lisandro, Allen Cunningham, Julian Gardner, Pat Poels, David "The Dragon" Pham, Layne Flack, David Grey, Shirley Williams, Mickey Applebaum, Jim Betchel, John Drohan, David "Foot Jizz" Williams, E-Fro, Mike Sexton, CK Hua, Hoyt Crokins, Anna Benson, Allen Kessler, Annie Duke, Padraig Parkinson, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, David Sklansky, Danny Alaei, Phil Ivey, Noah Boeken, Scotty Nguyen, Thor Hansen, Mason Malmuth, Mandy Baker, John Juanada, Krsity Gazes, Danny Masterson, Richard Brodie, Wendeen Ellois, and Richard Sparks.

Top 10 Chips for 2A:
1. Wesley Wilburn $122K
2. Ken Jacobs $119K
3. Paul McCaffrey $110K
4. Johnny Kincaid $107K
5. Joe Fuhriman $98K
6. George Lopez $98K
7. Alex Minislow $94K
8. Mike Erstling $94K
9. Sean Le $94K
10.Paul Kifsos $92K

Notable Chipcounts:
Matt Maroon $83K
Allen Cunningham $77K
David "The Dragon" Pham $57K
Layne Flack $56K
Ryan K. $40K
Mike Sexton $34K
Humberto Brenes $29K
Barry Greenstein $28K
Katja Thater $24.5K
Eric "Rizen Lynch $22.8K
God aka David Sklansky $20.5K
Jesus $20K
Brandon Schaefer $18.8K
Phil Ivey $16.6K
Quiet Lion $13.7K

Liz & John Phan at her birthday party


Liz's new poster
Enjoy the pics of Liz Lieu!

By the way, thanks to the guys at Wicked Chops Poker for keeping me sane at the WSOP. I love their coverage and it's one of the best poker sites out there. And thanks to whoever linked up the Tao of Poker in the PocketFives.com forum. I heard you guys got your badges revoked which sucks camel balls.

And lastly, thanks to everyone who pimped my WSOP coverage on their blogs and put up the cool banner that Maudie made. I'm deeply indebted to your support. On days like this when I'm exhausted and going on 19 hours of sleep over the last 6 nights, I think about all of you guys and it fires me up and gives me a needed energy boost.

* * * * * Semi-Live Blogging Updates * * * * *
12:07pm... Cards are in the air. We're on Level 7. Blinds are $250/$500 with a $25 ante. 8,773 players bought in and around 6,000 have been eliminated. Top 873 playes get paid. $12 million will get paid for first place. The top 12 places will win at least $1 million.

12:10pm... 272 female players particapted in the 2006 WSOP according to Nolan Dalla who counted everyone in the field.

12:30pm... Bloggers Update: Johnny Kampis is up to $52K. His K-K held up against Big Slick. Brandon Schaefer is up to $22K after he scooped a pot when I walked by. Matt Maroon picked up a small pot and has about $84K.

1:00pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Here's a few. Feel free to click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Tuscaloosa Johnny


Matt Maroon


Katja


Brandon Schaefer
1:30pm... Bloggers & Team PokerStars Update: Here are some random chipcounts.

John Duthie $9K
Barry Greenstein $36K
Brandon Schaefer $9.9K
Tuscaloosa Johnny $54K
Ryan $32.6K
Matt Maroon $80.5K
Quiet Lion $23.4K

2:00pm... Recent Eliminations: Mike Caro, Tony Cousineau, David Williams, Pam Brunson, and Noah Boeken.

2:30pm... Recent Eliminations: Allen Kessler and Andy Black are both out.

2:40pm... Bloggers Update: Tuscaloosa Johnny has 71.5K. He got K-K again, which held up against A-Q. He also made a squeeze play wth A-7.

3:00pm... Recent Elimination: Bill Gazes is gone.

3:30pm... Recent Elimination: Barry Greenstein busted when his K-9 ran into A-10. Berry Johnston is also out. John Juanda is also gone. Most of the named pros are dropping out in the first two levels.

3:35pm... Bloggers Update: Matt Maroon was moved tables and I lost track of him. Brandom Schaefer has $7K. Tuscaloosa Johnny has $71.5K. Ryan has $47K and dropped the Hammer.

3:45pm... Recent Elimination: E-Fro is gone.

4:00pm... I just posted an article over at PokerStars Blog called Poker Ambassadors. Take a peek.

4:07pm... Recent Elimination: Men the Master hits the rail after he loses with TPTK to a set of threes. I think he's going downtown for All You Can Eat shrimp.

4:10pm... WSOP Photo Dump: Click on the photos to see an enlarged view.


Scotty's Bling


Tao of Poker's Pothead of the Day: Shaniac


Porn for poker players


Strasser's chips
4:20pm... Smoke break.

4:40pm... Recent Elimination: Mike Sexton has been busted out of the 2006 WSOP.

4:50pm... Recent Elimination: Fire up the bong, Shaniac is out.

4:55pm... Irish Update with Antes Up: "The Irish are storming at this moment," Tom Murphy from Antes Up recanted to me. "Andrew Leonard turned 20K stack into 100K. McCaffrey dropped to 75K. Niall O'Callahagn's Queens ran into Aces. Joe "The Show" O'Neil has been called 'American Idol' by his tablemates for singing at the tables. He got F-bombed seven times last year. He convinced one floor person that what he was saying was an Irish word and not 'fuck.' He sernades female dealers with his good singing voice. There was an objection to his card capper,w hich is a fake pile of dogshit. When one person had a problem with it, O'Neil said, 'My mum gave it to me. For luck.'"

5:00pm... Jay Greenspan made a rare appearance in the media room. We all applauded and then we got shushed by some rookies in the corner.

5:05pm... Bloggers Update: Tuscaloosa Johnny hit quads again at the WSOP. He flopped a set of 10s, then turned quads. He even got his opponent to push his stack all in on the river. Tuscaloosa Johnny has 114K.

5:24pm... Recent Elimination: David Sklansky is out.

5:35pm... Bloggers & Friends Update: I found Matt Maroon. He has 110K. Rizen has 78K. Quiet Lion has 54K. Ryan has 37.5K. Brandn Schaefer has 12K. Humberto Brenes has 66K. Jason Strasser is up to 225K after he scooped a 65K pot when he sniffed out a hammer bluff from his opponent. He had 9-9 with 3 overcards on the board.

6:00pm... Recent Elimination: The young gun and two-time 2006 bracelet winner finally ran out of gas. Jeff Madsen is out.

6:08pm... Payouts! Thanks to Howard at PokerStars Blog for getting the following information:

1 - $12,000,000
2 - $6,102,499
3 - $4,123,310
4 - $3,628,513
5 - $3,216,182
6 - $2,803,851
7 - $2,391,520
8 - $1,979,189
9 - $1,566,858

10-12 - $1,154,527
13-15 - $907,128
16-18 - $659,730
19-27 - $494,797
28-36 - $329,865
37-45 - $247,399
46-54 - $164,932
55-63 - $123,699
64-72 - $90,713
73-81 - $65,973

82-126 - $51,129
127-189 - $47,006
190-252 - $42,882
253-315 - $38,759
316-378 - $34,636
379-441 - $30,512
442-504 - $26,389
505-567 - $22,266
568-621 - $20,617
622-666 - $19,050
667-720 - $17,730
721-774 - $16,493
775-819 - $15,504
820-873 - $14,597

6:11pm... Mad reported, "Mike Matusow is here doing a royal tour in the tournament area." Last night, Phil Hellmuth was seen lurking around, trying to get face time. He walked up to the featured table and wished Joe Hachem luck in full view of ESPN's cameras.

6:15pm... I wandered over and caught a hand with Aaron Katz and Scotty Nguyen. ESPN cameras filmed it.


Aaron fakes the all-in


Aaron and Scotty
6:24pm... Recent Elimination: Devilfish and Danny Masterson have both been busted.

6:33pm... Thanks to Lou Krieger for the kind words in his post Competing agendas at the WSOP.

6:45pm... Recent Elimination: Brandon Schaefer is out. So is Anna "Gold Digger" Benson.

6:50pm... Dinner break. I'm on mega-tilt. Need liquor or valium. Please send them to the media room when you can.

8:20pm... I lost a propbet with Wil. I was convininced that our waitress at the Tilted Kilt was in a porn that I had on my laptop from the infamous Spunkmouth series. We rushed back to the media room to verify and I was wrong. It wasn't her.

8:30pm... Ryan has 27K. Tuscaloosa Johnny has 91K. Matt Maroon has 220K.

9:07pm... Annie Duke was concerned that the players were busting out too fast on Day 2A, so much so that she called her brother Howard Lederer who is one of the pros on the WSOP Players Advisory committee.

Originally, play on Day 2A was supposed to go six levels or until they had 900 players remaining. Over 1,800 started (the exact number is still unconfirmed) began the day and as of the dinner break, there were 86 tables remaining on the tournament floor or roughly 855 players, which is well under the 900 mark originally set forth. CC, CJ, and myself went onto the floor to physical count the remaining tabes.

Players going out faster than expected is a very good thing (from my standpoint) and the players who'd like a couple extra hours of rest or a chance to play cash games. However, Annie raised a valid point... if they played down to 400 or until level 6 ended and the top 873 players get paid, that would mean the players that play Day 2B had a better chance at making the money.

TD's decided that they would end play at 500 players or level 6 whichever came first. There's a small chance I'll get out of here early tonight, but you never know.

9:30pm... Recent Elimination: Daniel Alaei is out.

9:45pm... Recent Elimination: Say good-bye to Shirley Williams. The mother of David Williams, who's sponsored by Absolute Poker, just busted out by Hoyt Corkins.

10:00pm... Random Chipcounts: Ryan has 30K. Matt Maroon has 204K. Rixen has 119K. Humberto Brenes has 88K.

10:05pm... Approx. 700 players remain. 200 more get busted and I go home.

10:20pm... TD announced that we'll only go half-way into the next level. Which means I'll get out of here before Midnight for the first time in I don't know how long.

10:30pm... Ryan got move to Tusacloosa Johnny's table. Johnny has 121.4K and Ryan has 30K.

11:20pm... Jason Strasser was moved to Matt Maroon's table. Maroon has about $240K and Strasser has about $360K. There's so many chips on their end of the table, it was about to tip over. With over $600K in chips, those two represented 60 buy-ins. Tusacloosa Johnny is up to $132K while Ryan is hovering around $25K.

11:30pm... WSOP by the Numbers: 1,637 players started today. 1,736 will play tomorrow, which means that 5,300 players busted out during the first four days and that 3,473 players survived the first round.
posted by Pauly at 8/01/2006 01:15:00 PM | Permalink |