One of the great WSOP traditions is fast becoming the Bluff/Sapphire party (3rd year?) … where hundreds of Amazon-entrenched pokerers — from pros to media to dealers — who have lived for more than a month in a pen mostly void of conjugal relief gather to collectively release steam before hunkering down for the main event … and what a perfect night when the other big party is the “elitist” Ante-Up for Africa afterparty. There’s something delightfully egalitarian about being entertained by 98-percent naked aspiring starlets making money while having a grand-ole beglittered time … personal degeneracies be damned.

AlCantHang fills in for yours truly to record the first ever Tao of Pokerati episode mid-lapdance — an “event” joined by DrizzTDJ and (briefly) Calfornia Jen. Change100 gives the (awesome) play-by-play. Plus Kathy Liebert … and is that Tom McEvoy?

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.27: The Best Party of the Year (feat. AlCantHang)
1:27

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Episode 11.28: Grindcore Poker (feat. Change100)
2:51

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(Interlude …)
0:05

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Richardson, accused of taking a less-than-charitable payout option.

Kinda bummed I missed Ante-Up for Africa yesterday … Hollywood A-list celebrity-related traffic aside (and pictures of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Charles Barkley, Don Cheadle, Jason Alexander, Dean Cain, Brad Garret, Herschel Walker, and Sarah Silverman playing poker) … this is arguably the biggest charity poker tournament of the year (in the world) … and I was curious how the money worked. It was my understanding that originally, 50 percent of the prize pool went to Refugees International a charity* … and the big winners, being already-rich folks moved by the excitement of no-limit hold’em and thoughts of a tax-deductible feel-good gesture, often chose to give their cash prize over to the honorary good cause as well.

But this year people were telling me it was a mere request for generosity — that winners give at least 50 percent of their prize payout to AUFA, which would be shipping the money to the Sudanese cause via the Enough Project (and the IRC?). That seemed a little odd to me, because hey, if the wrong person wins, there could be a problem. Sure enough, an email just came in over the transom — skewering a player named Adam Richardson, who most recently finished in 143rd place in a $1,500 NLH at this year’s WSOP, and 624th in last year’s main event — with the subject line, “What a Prick!”:

Not sure if you got this news. But the prick who won second place in the World Series of Poker charity event which is Ante Up For Africa, completely stiffed the charity.

Players do not have to give any money, according to the rules. But all the players know this is an important event set up to help a very good cause.

Many witnesses said the player was approached afterward by some of the organizers. He was asked politely if he cared to leave a donation, and replied that no one could do anything to stop him and that he was leaving with all the prize money. He walked out the door with like over $100,000.

The player was rude during the tournament and obviously had his own agenda, which was not in the spirit of helping the Ante Up for Africa cause. He likely saw a softer than usual field and took advantage. He had every intention of enriching himself at the expense of the charity.

The player’s name is Adam Richardson, from Poway, California.

He is bad for poker and needs to be called out for taking an angle shot in this event. I hope you will agree this is despicable behavior. The guy is a total prick. Roast his fucking ass.

Hunter

Hmm, if this is true, indeed, arguably poor form. We have not confirmed any of this (and I wasn’t there for the actual event), but the above is the email that’s circulating, and it at least raises the question why a certain chunk of the prize pool isn’t automatically taken out for the charity itself (as it is with most charity poker events).

* Ante Up for Africa “designated charities” have included the Enough Project, Not on Our Watch, and the International Rescue Committee. Refugees International was the recipient of Annie Duke’s Celebrity Apprentice fundraisers.

NOTE: Adam Richardson (unconfirmed) responds to “Hunter’s” accusations in the comments below.

The final update before the Main Event for me, as it’s final table time in the $5,000 NL Holdem 6-max event. The final table is now four-handed consisting of Josh Brikis, Sean Keeton, Matt Hawrilenko, and Faraz Jaka. Jonas Wexler and Matthew Waxman finished 5th and 6th respectively. Live updates are available at www.wsop.com

Ante Up for Africa is being filmed now for ESPN, and it has plenty of Full Tilt Poker pros with Rafe Furst, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman and John Hennigan appearing at the final table. Hopefully Dan and/or Jen will have more updates when there’s a result.

Friday afternoon starts the Main Event, and all the fun and chaos that brings to the Rio. Pokerati will be there to catch the action, so come back, please.

Starting with today’s lone tournament starting, one with a very worthy cause:

Ante Up for Africa

The big charity event of the WSOP is this afternoon’s Ante Up for Africa, a star-studded affair with a $5,000 buy-in, with a request that those who make the money donate 50% of their proceeds to Refugees International and The Enough Project to attempt to end the crisis in Darfur. It’s also the shortest tournament of the WSOP, with it’s 20-minute blind levels in the first hour followed by increases every 15 minutes, the tournament is projected to finish in just five hours. ESPN’s cameras will be following the action as it’s scheduled to dedicate two hours of their WSOP coverage to this event.

Finishing up the Wednesday night tournaments:

Veckey Victorius in $1,500 NL

Tony Veckey makes his first career cash a WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 NL Holdem, good for $673,276 defeating Jason Wheeler heads-up. Nolan Dalla’s tournament report notes that Veckey is a software engineer with Motorola and a graduate of the DeVry Institute. He was hoping to play in Saturday’s $1,500 NL Holdem event, but it was sold out, leaving him to make this his first WSOP tournament. He’s returning back to work and has decided not to parlay this success into this year’s Main Event, choosing to wait until 2010′s Main Event.

Abe’s Awesome in Triple Draw

As noted in the post below, Julie Schneider finished 3rd in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball with high stakes veteran Abe Mosseri picking up his first career WSOP bracelet, along with $165,513. Masayoshi Tanaka finished in second, denied Japan’s first WSOP bracelet, picking up $102,313.

Sweet Sixteen Survive in Six-Max

Sixteen players remain in the final preliminary event of the WSOP $5,000 NL Holdem 6-Handed . They resume this afternoon at 1pm to play down to a winner and this is how they will be seated when play resumes:

(Table 58)
Seat 1: Peter Feldman – 1328000
Seat 2: Aurelien Guiglini – 549000
Seat 3: Josh Brikis – 294000
Seat 4: Thorsten Schaefer – 1094000
Seat 5: Matthew Waxman – 1132000
Seat 6: Alex Venovski – 684000

(Table 59)
Seat 1: James St Hilaire – 876000
Seat 2: John Conkright – 749000
Seat 4: Rory Mathews – 1358000
Seat 5: Jonas Wexler – 848000
Seat 6: Eugene Katchalov – 356000

(Table 60)
Seat 1: Robert Kay – 1213000
Seat 3: Frank Calo – 569000
Seat 4: Sean Keeton – 641000
Seat 5: Matt Hawrilenko – 1327000
Seat 6: Faraz Jaka – 778000

Phil Hellmuth finished in 24th place, if he remained it probably would have given ESPN’s production team quite the difficulty in covering his run for bracelet number twelve and the Ante Up for Africa event.

Follow the updates of today’s activity at www.wsop.com and Pokerati will surely be there covering all the high-profile celebrities in action.

Big congrats for the deepest run of any Team Pokerati player in 2009, who just finished 3rd in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw. From WSOP.com:

Julie Schneider played a remarkably clean tournament right from the start of play on Day 1. She quickly proved to her male competitors that she was more than just a pretty face at the table, picking off one opponent after another with her well-timed bets (and a few favorable draws). Her deep run comes to an end in third place, good for $66,285 and a big hug from husband Tom

Though we still need to run the calculations and wait for the main event to finalize, as of now, it looks like Mrs. @DonkeyBomber will win the Team Pokerati Net Results Challenge — and though not quite enough for Tom to quit his job and become a stay-at-home dad, it should be enough to keep the Schneiders out of indentured servitude. (Phew!)

What? You didn’t know the Team Pokerati Net Results Challenge existed? Either did we, but hey we swear it might be disastrous cool … tallying up not just winnings, but winnings-minus-buy-ins to see who’s really tearing it up at the WSOP.

Unofficial standings in that department:

1. Julie Schneider
2. Pat Poels
3. Gregg Merkow
4. Cliff Fisher
5. John Harris
6. Robert Goldfarb
7. Shoegal
8. Karridy Askenasy
9. Whit Blanton
10. Tom Schneider

Recapping the other Wednesday night action:

Rui Ruling 5k NL Day Two

Rui Cao leads with ~60 players remaining in the $5,000 NL Holdem 6-max, as they play down to 6 players or 3am, whichever comes first. Others in contention include Shaun Deeb, Phil Hellmuth, Blair Hinkle, Darrell Dicken, Faraz Jaka, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Bill Edler, Raymond Davis and Shannon Shorr.

$1,500 NL Final Table

Nine players remain in the $1,500 NL Holdem event, Jason Wheeler is the chip leader, followed by Christopher Bonita, Christopher De Maci, Joseph Chaplin, Tony Veckey, Andrew Malott, David Jaoui, Miha Remic and Sergey Konkin.

Short update tonight, check out www.wsop.com for updates, and good luck to Julie Schneider, who just won a key double up in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.

Karridy had to leave the Julie final table to go play in his own tourney … just getting underway at Caesar’s is the WSOP Academy‘s Tournament of Champions, where K-man is competing for a main event seat.

Follow his self-twittering action here.

UPDATE: Never mind.

As you probably know by now, Team Pokerati-er “Angry Julie” Schneider is making a real stab at bringing home a bracelet in the $2,500 2-7 Triple-Draw.

A lot’s on the line with this, of course … not only is this the second-to-last non-main-event chance for a woman to win, but also it may make the difference on whether or not the Schneiders can save the family farm.

They’re on dinner break now … and she’s got some work to do.

Abe Mosseri – 1,012,000
Masayoshi Tanaka – 399,000
John Juanda – 366,000
Julie Schneider – 163,000

You can follow the event here, and Julie-centric coverage via @DonkeyBomber.

That’s what’s happening here … new faces showing up, old faces showing up, events coming to a close, PokerPalooza getting set up, parties every night … all in preparation for what the rest of the world calls “the World Series” … and what we call “the main event”.

Oh, my, and I almost forgot about Ante Up for Africa … plausibly the biggest charity event in all of poker for the entire year — with tons of Hollywood celebs and presumably real bona-fide non-poker paparazzi and an after-party that lots of people want to get into.

We’ll be sure to bring you coverage of something, in some way … but what, I’m not so sure. As you may or may not have heard, I’ve suffered an injury, which you can see below (watch the guy on the right):

Julie Schneider just made the final table of six in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.

Brad Libson – 432,000 6th place
Blair Rodman – 418,000 5th place
Abe Mosseri – 342,000
Masayoshi Tanaka – 325,000
John Juanda – 220,000
Julie Schneider – 207,000

Follow the updates at www.wsop.com here.

The final table of the $50,000 HORSE finally concluded at 10am PT with David Bach defeating John Hanson in a marathon final table that lasted over 475 hands, making it the longest final table in the history of the World Series of Poker in the United States. Heads-up play between Bach and Hanson lasted for nearly seven hours total.

The final hand was in razz, with Bach starting out with 7-6-4-A, as Hanson was far behind with J-9-8-5. But for those that have played razz, it’s an intensely frustrating game, and it was for Bach when he went A-Q while Hanson went 6-5 to take the lead with his jack-low. The final card gave Hanson a deuce for 9-8-5-6-2, but Bach caught a nine to just edge him out 9-7-6-4-A to take down the bracelet, the Chip Reese trophy, and win $1,276,802, doubling his career tournament winnings. Hanson takes down $789,199 for the second place finish.

Recapping the still ongoing action from Tuesday night:

$50k HORSE Final Table, It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going…

It’s 9:15am PT, but the final table of the $50,000 HORSE is still going with David Bach and John Hanson playing heads-up with Bach holding a slim chip lead. Erik Sagstrom finished in 3rd, Vitaly Lunkin was eliminated in 4th, Huck Seed finished in 5th and Ville Wahlbeck finished in 6th place. Unless Wahlbeck makes a deep run in the Main Event, Jeff Lisandro appears to have locked up the WSOP Player of the Year with Wahlbeck a close second. For those of you who have followed the nearly 17-hour final table from beginning to end, God bless you.

“Whackjob Surprise” Goes Deep in $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw

Nine players remain in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball when play resumes at 2pm. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated:

Seat 1: Hertzel Zalewski – 111000
Seat 2: Nam Le – 95000
Seat 3: Masayoshi Tanaka – 345000
Seat 5: Brad Libson – 146000

Seat 1: Kris Lord – 87000
Seat 2: Julie Schneider – 163000
Seat 3: John Juanda – 182000
Seat 4: Blair Rodman – 358000
Seat 6: Abe Mosseri – 447000

The reason for the title of this section is that it was a comment made regarding Julie Schneider by Daniel Negreanu on his Twitter. He would later add the following upon finding out she read his Twitter: “Apparently the lady reads my twitter. Oops lol. Oh well, when I sat down I swore she was a little off or slow. My bad!”. Negreanu eventually finished in 16th.

Halpern Lawyers Up in Stud 8

New Orleans attorney David Halpern defeated William Kohler heads-up to take down the $1,500 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better picking up his first WSOP bracelet along with $159,048.

Piesert Gets Bracelet for Dessert

The country of Germany gets its second WSOP bracelet winner with Jorg Piesert taking down the $3,000 Triple Chance NL Holdem title along with $506,800, defeating Jason DeWitt in heads-up play. After going 50 events without a win, Germany wins on consecutive days, following Carsten Joh’s win in the $1,500 NL event Monday night.

Final Day of Final $1,500 NL

Sergey Konkin, who may also be Sergey Pomerantsev as Konkin’s name didn’t appear on the Day 1 chip counts, is the chip leader (1,400,000) with 28 players remaining in the $1,500 NL Holdem Spectacular when play resumes at 1pm. The most notable name of the remaining 28 is Vivek Rajkumar at just 216,000.

$5,000 NL 6-max

Day 2 of the $5,000 NL Holdem 6-max event begins at 2pm with 160 players remaining, with 90 players making the money. Rory Mathews leads with 369,800 in chips. Others with chips: Faraz Jaka (294,500) , Davidi Kitai (166,300), Justin Bonomo (138,600), Raymond Davis (131,400), Shaun Deeb (114,800), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (107,100), Phil Hellmuth (101,200) and Kenna James (85,500).

More stuff from Pokerati during the day, and follow the live updates this morning for the HORSE event, as long as it’s still ongoing at www.wsop.com