Tom Schneider was seated at the ESPN feature table at the start of Day 6 and started in fourth chip position, though he seems to have slipped a bit. But he’s wearing PokerStars gear! (Go poker agent madness!) The table began with:

Seat 1: Clayton Newman – 244,000
Seat 2: Prahlad Friedman – 715,000
Seat 3: Tom Schneider – 3,168,000
Seat 4: Scott Eskenazi – 270,000
Seat 5: Paul Johnson – 1,606,000
Seat 6: Miika Puumalainen – 2,894,000
Seat 7: Scott Sitron – 778,000
Seat 8: Dwayne Stacey – 410,000
Seat 9: Michael Jansen – 852,000

Julie Schneider is in the front row supporting Tom, after having had a great series of her own with a third place finish in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball event about two weeks ago.

Go Team Pokerati/PokerStars/Schneider!

UPDATE: Tom now sitting in third place on leaderboard. From Karridy: @DonkeyBomber busts 2 players at the featured table and is now over 4 Million in chips in the WSOP Main Event. Appx 125 players left.

Wow, so much big action going on today. I really can’t think of a comprehensive way to follow it without tuning in to a lively collection of poker-player twitter feeds.

Obviously it’s Day 6 of the WSOP main event … and we’re all starting to wonder just how deep @DonkeyBomber and several others (Peter Eastgate, Dennis Phillips, Joe Sebok, Phil Ivey, Elky, David Benyamine) can go. Click here to follow the live updates on WSOP.com.

NOTE: Tom is playing at the ESPN featured table with Prahlad Friedman. I told him he didn’t have to wear his patch until Day 7. Oops? What I didn’t take into account (via Pauly):

Another huge table? Jordan Morgan drew Phil Ivey and David Benyamine’s table. All are top pros but very quiet players who rarely speak at the tables. I guess that’s why they’re not on the featured TV table.

And then down the hall in the Brasilia room, @taopauly and I are looking to take down the WSOP Dream Team Poker team title and then some.

Today is also the start of the Venetian Deep Stacks main event — a $5k that looks to have lots of WSOP main event bustouts in the field. And Team Pokerati will have its representative in @Tbonezz111. It’s the biggest event Troy’s ever played in; he got in on a $130 satellite to a mega-satellite … so should be fun to see if he can make a run for the bubble and then some.

Lastly, the $15k Bellagio Cup V main event starts today. Should be interesting to see who plays (and who doesn’t, opting instead for the Venetian action). You can follow those updates at WorldPokerTour.com.

Wheee! Great way to start the week … and bring the big poker summer to a close.

Day 6 of the Main Event resumes today at 12 noon today, with the plan to play down to 63 players, which may make today the longest day of the WSOP so far. Here’s a few tables to scroll through, consisting of Day 6 table draws, payouts so far, and the 2nd page consists of Nolan Dalla’s tournament report.

For those that don’t care to click ahead, follow the live updates over at www.wsop.com and I’m sure Pauly and Dan will be providing updates on their run to Dream Team Poker glory.

More…

Team Tao of Pokerati 2: Lana, Pauly, Dan.

It was a triumph for me individually — I’ve made the money with an about-average stack, and made my first Day 2 ever in any tournament. (Stop laughing.) But from a team perspective … that’s where the real money is, and Team Tao of Pokerati (Dan, Pauly, Lana) is the only team with more than one player remaining. (Pauly, Dan.)

We’re guaranteed a 5th place team finish, and would have to really screw up to not get at least 4th. We need a 15th and 14th place finish individually (or better) to win it outright.

Click below to see the full Nolan-esque official report.

DREAM TEAM POKER WSOP EVENT DAY 1 REPORT
2009 World Series of Poker
Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
Official Report
No-Limit Hold’em / Dream Team Poker Structure
Buy-in: $500 +60 per person / $1680 per team

Number of players: 366
Number of Teams: 122
Players Remaining: 27
Teams Remaining: 26

Total Net Prize Pool: $177,510
Top Payout Individual: $16,473
Top Payout Team: $33,017

Places Paid Individual: 36
Places Paid Team: 10

July 12-13, 2009

Tournament Highlights

Ø The Dream Team Poker Tournament started with 122 teams and 366 players. Play ended with 27 players remaining representing 26 teams.

Ø One team, Tao of Pokerati, has 2 players remaining and is the favorite to take the top team prize of $33,017 to split between the three team members

Ø There were 59 women entered into the tournament, comprising more than 16% of the entire field.

More…

Edit: Here’s the official chip counts:

Sunday brought another three-level day to the WSOP, with just 185 players remaining when play resumes Monday afternoon at 12pm. The current unofficial leader is Warren Zackey, who’s listed from Honeydew, South Africa with 4,977,000 in chips. The most notable name at the top of the leaderboard is 2007 WSOP POY and member of Team Pokerati Tom Schneider at 3,168,000, good for 4th place. More notables, with their unofficial chip counts: Noah Boeken (2,4000,000), Eugene Katchalov (2,1000,000), Ludovic Lacay (1,685,000), Fabrice Soulier (1,450,000), Bertrand Grospellier (1,400,000), Blair Hinkle (1,100,000), Joe Sebok (1,100,000), Joe Hachem (1,000,000), Peter Eastgate (927,000), Blair Rodman (890,000), Joe Serock and Prahlad Friedman (760,000) and Kenny Tran (700,000).

Notable eliminations: Kevin O’Donnell, Mickey Mills, Cornel Cimpan, Kara Scott, Dan Shak, Nick Binger, Bobby Baldwin, Kevin Saul, William Robertie and Can Kim Hua.

Hopefully the official chip counts will be coming shortly, and Pokerati will be the 5th place to find them. Follow Pokerati also for Dream Team Poker updates, when they return from dinner break.

The rail around the WSOP Main Event is substantial. Though the fans are quite a distance from most of the tables, many of them are there to support friends and family or catch a glimpse of some of the recognizable faces still in the game. The most popular? One Phil Ivey. And unfortunately for the somewhat-shy guy, his table today happened to be close to the rail AND an elevated platform where fans could attempt to smother him congregate.

For most of Day 5, Phil looked as if he wanted to run away. But with a Main Event championship title that he may envision with his name on it, he’ll stick around and put up with the ESPN camera crews and rows of fans (and media people with cameras).

In an effort to spread the Pokerati name as far across the interwebs as possible, Tom Schneider has soared into the chip lead or close enough for our unofficial chip counting tastes in Day 5 of the Main Event.

According to Aaron of PokerWorks, Tom opened the pot to find a raiser in Kevin Saul. Tom reraised, at which point Kevin shipped for just over 1 million. Tom called and was covered by about 50K, but he flipped over pocket aces. Kevin showed A-K, and the board blanked to knock cripple Kevin and catapult Tom to somewhere near the 2.1 million-chip range. That puts him in the chip lead and one of only three players to have made it above the 2-million mark.

At the first break: @DonkeyBomber 2.2 million. 315 left

Funny (or not) that Tom’s all-in wasn’t covered at all by the ESPN cameras, and the official media of the WSOP is stretched awfully thin today and missed it.

UPDATE: Tom ended the day with 3.16 million. According to @Karridy, that’s 5th out of the 185 remaining players.

The Brits, seen here assembling a house of cards (outside last week’s PokerPalooza) in the form of Parliament to promote the upcoming WSOP-Europe, clearly have a sense of humour:

Not to sound semi-terroristy, but so woulda loved to see the implosion of this structure, too!

Lou Diamond Phillips is the lone (non-poker) celebrity remaining in the main event, with a respectable 607,000 chips. (Avg. is 481k.) I’ve played with him once before … and it was a memorably odd night of poker, to say the least.

The recap of that eve has been lost in the old-old Pokerati archives, but I was able to dig up some pics from that eve:

(L to R) Lou D Phillips, Clonie, and The Big Randy in an intense hand of 50-cent-dollar no-limit hold’em at The Lodge.

LDP (as we called him before he became @LouDPhillips) was in town for the Deep Ellum Film Festival, so Robert Wilonsky invited him to a $.50/$1 Batface game at The Lodge. Clonie Gowen and Rick Fuller were there, as was David Williams I believe. Lou was actually running over the table … building his stack to about $700, which was very threatening in that game. Then Jerome Bettis showed up (out of nowhere and uninvited, btw) … The Bus was apparently at The Lodge on unrelated lap-lovin’ business, and couldn’t help but pull away when he heard there was a poker game going on in the champagne room.

Ahh, remember the good-ole-days of 2005, when poker was on its exponentially fast pop-cultural rise, and nights like these happened all the time?

But then things got kinda strange as Lou began playing shirtless and was flexing whenever he pushed all-in …

Bizarre, I know … but hey, it’s a small poker world.

(Table Blue 34)
Seat 1: Zhehao Zhang – 309000
Seat 2: Keith Burt – 237000
Seat 3: Alessandro Longobardi – 183000
Seat 4: Jose Rosenkrantz – 456000
Seat 5: @DonkeyBomber – 797000
Seat 6: Kevin ‘BeL0WaB0Ve’ Saul – 396000
Seat 7: Taher Alisheik – 745000
Seat 8: Josh Mancuso – 548000
Seat 9: Antonio ‘Bagels’ Cavezza – 824000

Let’s hope we’re not softballed the hedline: Rosenkrantz and DonkeyBomber Are Dead!

Arguably the best episode of PokerListings’ Rail Rewind ever … plenty of familiar faces (and bikini tops) … very pirate-y.

I said at the end of play yesterday: “Today was the fight for the money. Tomorrow is the fight for the real money,”

That’s not really correct. In fact, it’s pretty inaccurate … at least the second part, about Day 5.

The prize jumps that should be reached today are relatively small. Click here to see the prize payouts again.

404th place pays $27k.

If we lose more than half the remaining field today, we’ll be up to $37k. That’s a lot of fight necessary for just a single buy-in to next year’s main event.

The “big money” doesn’t kick in until about 72nd place … where the payouts jump from $69k to $90k, and then every few spots of survival from there translate into the kind of money jump of which the IRS is likely to take note.

The remaining 407 players return for Day 5 at noon today in the Main Event. The plan is to play 5 two-hour levels today. This is subject to change, depending on how many eliminations take place.

The charts below show the chip counts by table, and those who’ve made the money so far:

The other event going on today is the Dream Team Poker event also in the Amazon Room, starting at 2pm today.

Page 2 has the comprehensive Day 4 report from Nolan Dalla:

More…

Edit: Here’s the official chip counts:

In a surprising move, play ended Saturday after just three levels of play in the main event, as the field is now down to about 400 players after three levels of play, which included nearly two hours of hand-for-hand play. Chip counts are unofficial at the moment, but it appears that Frenchman Ludovic Lacay will be the chip leader with 1,608,000 chips. Tom Lutz is listed in 2nd place with 1,600,000 chips. Other notables returning tomorrow with unofficial chip counts: Jordan Morgan (1,489,000), Blair Hinkle (1,399,000), Bertrand Grospellier (1,250,000), Nichoel Peppe (880,000), Kenny Tran (850,000), Tom Schneider (790,000), Lou Diamond Phillips (755,000), Dennis Phillips (630,000), Kara Scott (580,000), Joe Hachem (570,000), Noah Boeken (515,000), Joe Sebok (412,000) and Joe Serock (400,000). The returning players resume at 12 noon tomorrow, guaranteed at least $27,469.

The bubble was reached after 13 hands during hand-for-hand play. Kia Hamadani had about 160,000 in chips when they were about 20 players for the money, unfortunately for him, he took several hits to his stack until he was all in for his 500-chip ante. His last hand was 4-3o, which was crushed by someone making a large bet on a Q-Q-6 board with 9-2o. A nine on the turn and river meant that Hamadani would finish in 649, consoled by the fact that Jack Link’s Beef Jerky gave him a free entry to the 2010 Main Event.

Notables who can sleep in tomorrow: Phil Hellmuth, Patrick Bruel, Kelly Kim, Surinder Sunar, Matt Brady, Mark Gregorich, and Jesper Hougaard.

Official chip counts will be available in the morning, so return to Pokerati to see what’s turns up next.

We are sad for those who didn’t make it … but happy our lone remaining Team Pokerati-er, Tom Schneider did … and with many chips no less! 797k, 404 players left. Today was the fight for the money. Tomorrow is the fight for the real money,

The back “patio” area, at this point, has some two dozen people on it — and it seems like all of them are speaking foreign … and different foreign at that! As the field whittles down, everyone’s attaching themselves to their remaining representatives.

Semi-interesting … The handicammed foreign media in action: