An interesting situation came up the other day in a $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha that required floor intervention … (yes, even Harris screws up every once in a while occasionally calls for assistance.)

Blinds were 5k/10k … the big blind was all-in for his last 5k … meaning there was 5k in front of the small blind, 5k in front of the big blind … so the question is: How much can the first player to act bring it in for? Or perhaps more specifically, since we all probably know that the minimum to call is still 10k … How much would “pot” be in this situation?

Finishing up Saturday’s action from the WSOP…

Lisandro Pulls the Triple Double at the Rio

Jeff Lisandro became the third double bracelet winner of this year’s 2009 WSOP when he took down the $10,000 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better World Championship a couple hours ago defeated Farzad Rouhani at about 4am Vegas time. Lisandro pockets over $430,000 for his victory as well as several hours sleep before he comes back to the Rio Sunday to hear Italy’s national anthem this afternoon. When he won his first bracelet two weeks ago in the $1,500 7 Card Stud event, the Australian national anthem was played, making him the first to have two anthems played. This is also the first time more than two players have won multiple bracelets since when six players (Chan, Ferguson, Juanda, Hellmuth, Flack, and Men Nguyen) won bracelets in 2003. His second bracelet also moves him into a tie for first in the red-hot WSOP Player of the Year Race.

Texan Tops in NL Holdem

Jordan Smith from College Station, Texas took down the $2,000 NL Holdem event, pocketing $586,212 after defeating Ken Lennaard heads-up to take home a bracelet. From Nolan Dalla’s tournament report, Smith had this to add about legalizing poker in Texas:

“I think poker definitely needs to be legalized and regulated. Legalize it. Tax it. Regulate it. I don’t think it’s the government’s job to tell me what to do or how to spend my money – even though they sure want a cut of this (taxes) whenever I win it.”

This was event #36 of the WSOP, and after only one woman (Annie Duke) had made a previous final table, there were two at this one. Almira Skripchenko who is more well known for her successes in chess, being an FIDE Woman Grandmaster, finished in 7th place, good for $78,644. Laurence Grondin from Montreal, Quebec, Canada finished in 3rd for $237,537.

Obligatory Limit Holdem Final Table Mention

The final table of the $2,000 Limit Holdem consists of:

Seat 1: Jared O’Dell 189,000
Seat 2: Danny Qutami 323,000
Seat 3: Ian Johns 113,000
Seat 4: Marc Naalden 755,000
Seat 5: Tommy Hang 202,000
Seat 6: Steven Cowley 322,000
Seat 7: Rep Porter 287,000
Seat 8: Jameson Painter 205,000
Seat 9: Alex Keating 284,000

O’Dell, Johns, Hang and Porter list Washington state on their bio sheet, which may be the first time Washington state has represented so strongly at a WSOP final table.

Charania in Charge

Moshin Charania finished day 1 of the $1,500 NL Holdem event the leader with 144,100 in chips with 327 players remaining, of which 270 make the money. Brandon Cantu (86,600), Grant Hinkle (85,800), Jeff Williams (66,200), Eric Baldwin (63,400) and Shane Schleger (63,000) are some of the players who won’t be playing the Sunday tournaments online, as they’ll be returning to the Amazon room at 2pm.

Nate is Great in PLO

Nate Lindsay from San Francisco is the chip leader (482,200) at the end of day 1 in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship with 116 players remaining, only 27 getting paid. Noah Schwartz (292,600), Ilari “Ziigmund” Saharies (229,400), David Williams (223,000), and Josh Arieh (220,600) round out the top five. Steve Zolotow (220,200), Ben Grundy (191,000), Tom McEvoy (142,800), Erick Lindgren (120,900) and Jimmy “Gobbo” Fricke (108,000) are just some other notables back for more action at 2pm as they attempt to make the final table.

Sunday’s Tournaments

The 12pm tournament day is the $5,000 NL Holdem Shootout which was won by Phillip Tom in a field of 360 for over $475,000. The WSOP Staff Guide projects a field of 396 for this event, but if it’s slightly above that, it could cause a bit of a problem for tournament staff. The payout structure for the shootout event pays 40 spots if the field is between 378 and 420, which would create 11-player tables for the first round if the field size is in the 401-420 range. The 5pm tournament is the debut of the $2,500 8-Game event which consists of HORSE, NL holdem, PLO and 2-7 triple draw, with a projected field size of 250.

More updates during the day at Pokerati and follow the WSOP at WSOP.com

Recapping the first half of Saturday tournament action.

Doyle Done in 10k Stud 8

The remaining players in the $10,000 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better World Championship rolls along with 6 players remaining, as Doyle Brunson’s attempt at an 11th bracelet ended when he finished in 7th place. Farzard Rouhani, Abe Mosseri, and Jeff Lisandro are the three players over the 1 million chip mark. Yan Chen, Mike Wattel and Frank Mariani are the short stacks battling to stay alive as the limits are at 30k/60k, leaving the short stacks with under 10 big bets.

Meanwhile, at the Other Featured Table…

The $2,000 NL Holdem final table is down to three players, with Jordan Smith the current chip leader at 4,890,000. Laurence Grondin, a Canadian woman, is second at 4,120,000 with Swedish pro Ken Lenaard in third with 1,240,000. Grondin replaces Lika Gerasimova (5th in 5k NL Holdem) as the highest placing female in an open event at this year’s WSOP.

Obligatory Limit Holdem Mention

The $2,000 Limit Holdem event is down to 35 players with Eric Rivkin the current chip leader at 165,000 in chips. Rep Porter is 2nd at 138,000, with David Baker (the one from Texas — 106,000), Phil Hellmuth (100,000), Rafe Furst (73,000), and Daniel Negreanu (45,000) among the notables remaining hoping to reach the 3am deadline with a final table. It was just announced during the Stud 8 event that if Hellmuth makes the final table, they will stream that final table over at Bluff magazine’s website.

Donkament, Chapter Five

The fifth version of the $1,500 NL Holdem event drew a field of 2,715, of which 873 returned from their dinner break a short while ago. Unfortunately, an unofficial chip leader is hard to come by, but expect a chip leader to be revealed in my Sunday morning update.

PLO-wing Through $10,000

The $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship drew a field of 296, down over 80 entrants from last year’s edition. Freddy Deeb is the unofficial chip leader as he’s reporting over 60,000 in chips. Barry Greenstein, Joe Serock and Michael Binger appear in the unofficial top 5, while Daniel Negreanu, Michael Mizrachi, John Duthie, Nam Le and Isaac Haxton are already gone.

Check out more updates this evening at www.wsop.com, and Pokerati for more stuff going around the poker community as Michalski’s may be trying to find out some more about Richard Austin.

The final table of the $10,000 Stud 8 or Better World Championship is now being streamed over the Internet at www.bluffmagazine.com/live and wsop.pkr.com The official final table has been reached, in the following chip order:

Abe Mosseri
Jeff Lisandro
Farzad Rouhani
Yan Chen
Frank Mariani
Doyle Brunson – 7th
Justin “Boosted J” Smith – 8th
Mike Wattel

Watching should be interesting, as most of the cards will be visible, but the Bluff coverage is more suitable to games that have a flop. Also unknown is if there will be “expert” commentary or they’ll just point some cameras at the table and broadcast what the tournament director on the mic says like they did in Phil Ivey’s win in the 2-7 NL Draw event. Tune in and find out what happens.

One cool adjustment to this year’s WSOP is that the media tourney will be played Dream Team Poker-style. I think it was a pretty brilliant move. Because even though way back in the day playing in the media event — with Cousin Sal at my table and Jim McManus in the same tourney — was the highlight of my 2004 … over time it’s gotten a little less important to me to spend a WSOP off-day playing in a turbo live event with only a feel-good charity donation on the line. In fact, I’ve missed the last two, because you know, whatever …

But this year, I’ll definitely be back, captaining the Pokerati Hotties:

DanM
California Jen
Kevin Mathers

Mathers apparently won’t be able to make it, so playing in his stead will be alternate Robert Goldfarb.

As anyone who has participated in a team poker event has discovered, these things are extra fun. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to accumulating jerseys. You already know about Team Tao of Pokerati — Pauly, Shaniac, and myself … and indeed, we’ll be playing in the real-money event on July 12 (and hopefully July 13). Not only do we want to redeem ourselves, but we figured since DTP took the boldly progressive move of sponsoring our little podcast, the least we could do is buy into their big event.

If you want to play in this $500+60 x3, Team Wicked Chops is hosting an online freeroll (June 25) for a seat on their squad. Tao of Pokerati woulda offered something similar, of course … but we don’t know you, so we couldn’t really take that chance.

photo: Flipchip / LasVegasVegas

That’s the word we’re hearing … Excalibur has apparently contacted their previously laid-off dealers and offered them their jobs back — with a return to live, non-electronic play on July 15. Not sure yet whether this a sign of a rebounding Vegas economy or players just not taking to the PokerTek PokerPro tables, despite their offering some of the lowest stakes in town and the ability to play Pot-Limit Omaha at the flip of a switch.

Thanks @Bundas1971 for the tip!

More details here.

A great article appeared in the New York Times yesterday about poker’s relationship with Twitter at the WSOP. Complete with a Joe Sebok interview, the piece examines the impact of Twitter on poker players and reporters.

As a growing number of poker players are beginning to send out short messages to the world via Twitter, existing poker media is being disrupted and the news sites are scrambling to out-compete with each other in responding to the players’ direct and immediate communication with their fans. Players are reading each others’ Tweets, too, and that has consequences.

We talked about all this disruption with Joe Sebok, a poker player, the CEO of the Poker Road news site and a man with almost 330,000 people following him on Twitter. All the major poker news sites are racing to integrate Twitter and Sebok says his site isn’t one of the biggest – but as far as we can tell, Poker Road’s use of Twitter during the World Series of Poker may be defining the state of the art better than anyone else in the industry.

Nice job, Seebs! PokerRoad Nation deserves credit where it’s due. (And in our own shameless plug, Pokerati has its own Twitterverse. It’s no “nation,” just a universe-type thing – LOL.)

Happy Saturday, ya’ll! This is Dan here, taking over for KevMath this morning so he can enjoy a well-deserved day off to show him who’s boss. So here we go, recapping last night’s action from the Amazon room and beyond … (brought to you by the internet):

Players to Watch

Brunson

Lisandro

Rouhani

Smith

Schneider

Vahedi

Brunson Bracelet Countdown

In the $10k 7CS-HL (or “Split” as @TexDolly calls it) Doyle Brunson is going for his Hellmuth-tying 11th bracelet, while Jeff Lisandro looks for his second of 2009 while making a surge up the Player of the Year leaderboard. Below’s who’s left. No plans yet (as far as we know) for Bluff or ESPN360 to be carrying this live — though we wouldn’t be surprised if that changed should Brunson and/or Scotty Nguyen make the final table.

Abe Mosseri 950,000
Jeff Lisandro 786,000
Doyle Brunson 525,000
Farzad Rouhani 494,000
Yan Chen 476,000
Perry Friedman 378,000
Lyle Berman 333,000
Scotty Nguyen 298,000
Frank Mariani 267,000
Justin ‘Boosted J’ Smith 237,000
Mike Wattel 96,000
Anthony Rivera 92,000

Rouhani, btw, is Iranian. In case you poker-only degens weren’t aware, there’s some big shit going down in his homeland right now — and to some extent (especially after Iran’s protesty soccer team got eliminated from World Cup contention this week) isn’t a 7-Stud Hi-Lo World Championship exactly what that country needs?

Advanced Beginners

In $2,000 NLH, 17 (out of 1,695) players remain — competing for prizes ranging from $21k to $586k. You may not recognize many of the remaining players in this one, but most have found success in smaller tourneys, circuit events, and, of course, online. Spread around the final two tables, there are zero bracelets in the mix, 49 WSOP cashes, and six WSOP Circuit money finishes. The favorite is probably Jordan Smith (from Texas!). Click here to follow throughout the day and see who’s really ready to step up on a bigger stage.

Oh Brother, Who Art Thou?

In the $2,000 Limit Hold’em event, 107 out of 446 players remain. David Baker is the chip leader, while some known names still alive in the field waiting to get eliminated include Scott Lazar, Rafe Furst, Diego Cordovez, Phil Hellmuth, Greg “FBT” Mueller, John Monnete, Marcel Luske, Maria Ho, Daniel Negreanu, Mike Schneider (part of some strange Minnesota Limit Posse), Shannon Shorr, and Abdol Vahedi — who for the moment we are presuming is Amir Vahedi’s brother or at least cousin, as both Iranians hail from Sherman Oaks, CA. Day 2 gets underway at 2 pm pacific — click here to see who else is left in the field and where they’re sitting.

So there you have it. Hopefully KevMath will be back next week, or otherwise you may never have it again.

Yours truly, meanwhile, got a call from some of his old homies and will be playing (poker, not basketball) in an NBA charity event later today.

Event 35 was won this evening by Dick Richard Austin. And evidently, that’s all he really wanted to be said about that. Therefore, there will be no bracelet ceremony or information released about him…or his bracelet…or his poker accomplishment. (Gotta twist the knife even more for 2nd place Sorel Mizzi and 3rd place Cliff Josephy, wouldn’t ya think?) The media release about the event read:

Following Austin’s victory, he declined to be interviewed. Furthermore, Austin refuses to participate in the traditional WSOP gold bracelet ceremony. This means there will be no gold bracelet ceremony held on Saturday, June 20th.

Austin is the first WSOP winner to decline participation in post-tournament activities. All other 34 gold bracelet winners this year have agreed to participate in interviews and festivities.

The WSOP Media and Pubic Relations makes every effort to provide as much background information about the winner as possible. However, coverage of this tournament (Event 35) is, by necessity, limited to facts and figures about the event, rather than the winner.

· Austin collected $409,484 for first place. He was also awarded his first WSOP gold bracelet.

· According to the official records, Austin now has 1 win, 1 final table appearance, and 1 in-the-money finishes at the WSOP. He has $409,484 in career WSOP winnings.

Recapping the early part of Friday’s WSOP action:

Austin Awesome in $5,000 PLO

Richard Austin took down the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event in stunning fashion, eliminating Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy and Sorel Mizzi on the final hand when he hit a flush on the river to take down the coveted WSOP bracelet as well as $409,484. Mizzi would take second place, good for $253,048, while Josephy finished in 3rd for $166,771.

Nguyen Winning $10k Stud 8

Day 2 of the $10,000 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better World Championship has Scotty Nguyen, still $4,000,000 short of his goal at this year’s WSOP or he retires from poker, is the current chip leader (342,500) with 33 players remaining. Lyle Berman (280,000), John Hennigan (230,000), Greg Raymer (196,000) and Jeff Lisandro (154,000) are some of the notables remaining. Unfortunately for Pokerati readers, Tom Schneider was one of the most recent eliminations.

Woodall Waxing Competition in $2,000 NL

Warren Woodall, who had a deep run in an earlier $2,000 NL holdem event, is the current chip leader (580,000) with 68 players remaining in another $2,000 NL Holdem event. Corwin Cole (465,000), Christian Harder (375,000) and Ken Lennaard (251,000) make up a few of the notables remaining as they play down to the final table or the 3am deadline, whichever comes first.

Sands Rises in the Desert

David Sands leads the remaining 239 players from a starting field of 446 in the $2,000 Limit Holdem event with two levels left in the day. Sands currently has about 36,000 in chips, followed by John Monette (30,000), Daniel Negreanu (23,500), Alex Kravchenko (20,000) and Mickey Seagle (19,000) as notables on the unofficial leaderboard.

Follow the updates over at www.wsop.com and more pictures of ass crack here at Pokerati.

Whether or not it’s a sign of a hurting economy when players can’t afford underwear is debatable. But clearly this should be a penalty on someone, right?

Well, either Tom is suddenly running good or he stopped playing like a dooshwad or he’s less worried about twitter or he’s simply playing with sheer determination for fear of losing his captain status on Team Pokerati … regardless, they’re down to 52 players in the $10k 7CS-HL, and he’s currently 5th in chips. 16 get paid.

Apparently @donkeybomber was down to fewer than 3k chips at one point (they started with 30k) but has since climbed out of the cellar.

Click here to follow along. Because I sure ain’t gonna go anywhere near him. Still a long way to go.

UPDATE: Tom Down (not to be confused with Tom Dwan) and out.

Scotty being Scotty — talking mostly poker while jinglin’ his bling — via Raw Chops:

Watch Scotty Nguyen Talks about the 2008 50K HORSE Event on RawVegas.tv

Hey, we know that guy! Met Eric Baldwin and his crew while he was taking down the $2,500 main event of last quarter’s Venetian Deep Stacks. Guys to watch out for, obv … serious “unknown” up-and-comers (save for Shannon Shorr, and maybe Justin Young) with the Hendon Mob resumes to do some real damage to good players who may not realize what they’re up against.

http://pokerati.com/2009/04/26/deep-stacks-heads-up-mini-marathon/
http://pokerati.com/2009/04/26/venetian-deep-stacks-report/:

– The (plenty drinky) crew sweating Baldwin includes Cody Slaubaugh (on a tear of late), Adam Geyer from Austin, Justin Young (who finished 8th in the WPT World Championship this weekend), and Shannon Shorr (who finished 5th in the WPT Championship today). Needless to say, these guys are all having a good weekend and month … with nearly $1 million in winnings amongst them … probably more if you include their online tournament results.

PokerNews has a pretty cool new(ish) feature on YouTube called “Hand of the Day” — where they get two players to break down a specific tournament situation in a relatively interesting way. In this episode, they talk to Bryan Devonshire and Noah Boeken about an unusual hand in $1,500 Limit Hold’em where the dealer dropped the stub and exposed three cards from the bottom of the deck: