Poker archaeologists recently unearthed this episode of Tao of Pokerati, an ancient recording that carbon-dates back to Day 3 of the main event of the 2008 WSOP. In it, Dr. Pauly and I survey the tournament remains after the slaughter of 6,111 players and speculate on what human life is like so close to the money bubble. Ah, yes, it was a fascinating era — one that witnessed the death of Eric Morris and the survival of Ignacious Rex; a time where players Pauly identifies as “Average Joes” heavily outnumbered “unknown” pros like Pat Poels who knew all too well that further bloodshed and eventual extinction was all but inevitable.

Episode 29: Almost in the Money

As action gets underway on day 2B, we’ve got a few players you may or may not know that we’ll be paying a little extra attention to. Be sure to check in with CSR for some chip reports from and about:

Whit Blanton — He’s a wannabe semi-pro from Dallas, who’s almost made enough money in poker to quit his job. He sat at the same table as Pokerati teammate (P-mates?) Tom Schneider on Day 1, and took a little extra pleasure in reclaiming the chips that Tom had given to Mark Newhouse … particularly doing so by cracking Newhizzle’s aces with a skillfully played 68s. Whit starts the day in strong chip position with 101,450. The question to him on Day 2 is how he will wield it, especially when fueled by the boost of confidence a near-double-up at the end of Day 1 provided.

Pat Poels — He’s a two-time bracelet-winner and host at Casino Arizona who’s had an “OK” WSOP. He’s made more money than most of his buddies this year, but hasn’t yet had the big score to make his 2008 WSOP highly profitable. He had some stretches of really good cards in Day 1, which forced him to make some really big/frustrating/difficult laydowns. He goes into Day 2 with 64,650 chips.

Jerry Randack — Jerry’s a well-rounded player who burst onto the scene with a strong 2nd-place finish in the 2007 Pokerati Invitational, and has since found much success at the small-tourney tables. He cashed in a NLH event at the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge III, took 2nd in Triple-Draw Lowball in the Oklahoma State Poker Championship, and final tabled earlier this summer in a Binion’s Poker Classic PLO event. We’ll find out how he handles the Day 2 pressure of a short-ish stack — 29,700 — with blinds beginning to rise.

The Big Randy – TBR played comfortably throughout Day 1, and though he starts with a below-average stack — 27,100 — the self-proclaimed top-ranked all-around Batface (cash-game and tournament results) really likes the structure and recognizes the deep-stack nature of this tourney is still in play. “Feels like ‘05,” he says, referring to his first main event where he nursed a much shorter stack for four day before cashing for $40k.

Robert Goldfarb – After “Goldfarbing” his way into the main event, he sits with 21,025 chips and has just been playing his game … though the cards haven’t yet come and he hasn’t yet gained any real traction. How the start of Day 2 goes for him, I think will be critical.

From the LVRJ (via HoldemRadio):

“Let me get back to you on it,” he said. “I haven’t thought about the issue.”

He did say he had concerns about Internet gaming originating in foreign countries. Of course, this happens because of U.S. policy and restrictions, but never mind.

McCain also spoke about oversight and making sure the kiddies don’t have access.

“I’ll call you back,” he added.

Mike Wattel just went out in 17th place in the $50k HORSE event, finishing one shy of the money. Can you imagine anything worse? Wattel was tiny-stacked with 20 players left, and managed to hang on with hardly an ante until Barry Greenstein raised in a 7-stud hand, and Wattel, looking at two queens, went with it … only to say Barry make a runner-runner-runner flush.

Unlike any other bubble boy, after 3+days of solid play, Wattel just missed out on a $124k payday and instead ended up the same -$50k that his fellow Arizona buddy Tom found after only a day-and-a-half. I’m sick to my stomach and I hardly know the guy. (You may recall his similarly unfortunate 6th place finish in the 2007 WPT Championship … my guess is he’s currently tilt-gorging on Corona’s, nickel slots, and old archived episodes of Beyond the Table.)

The remaining players:

Table 32

Seat 1: Patrick Bueno 730,000
Seat 2: Huck Seed 900,000
Seat 3: Joseph Michael 575,000
Seat 4: Scotty Nguyen 1,050,000
Seat 5: Phil Ivey 635,000
Seat 6: Barry Greenstein 1,300,000
Seat 7: Doyle Brunson 60,000
Seat 8: David Bach 800,000

Table 39

Seat 1: Erick Lindgren 355,000
Seat 2: Raymond Davis 1,200,000
Seat 3: Michael DeMichele 1,010,000
Seat 4: Lyle Berman 1,100,000
Seat 5: Andy Bloch 120,000
Seat 6: Ralph Perry 1,635,000
Seat 7: Daniel Negreanu 1,480,000
Seat 8: Matt Glantz 1,460,000

Another guy you may see representin’ at the tables: Pat Poels. Pat, of course, is the only two-time bracelet winner on the team. (Tom is just a “Friend of Pokerati” for now, while we haggle over contractual obligations.)

Not sure what Pat’s playing’ in now … probably $1,500 HORSE. He tried to qualify for the $50k — got close in some super-sats a coupla times, engaging in three chops for about $15k — but spent about $12k to win said $15k … so in the end, his satellite success just wasn’t enough to justify making up the difference.

Pat is a casino host at Casino Arizona and thinks he will be able to sneakily kick major ass in the $500 Casino Employee’s event (Event #55, starting July 7).

UPDATE: Pat was playing $1k PLO at Binion’s. Busted out about 20 minutes ago (@ 8:30 pm).

That’s two cashes so far for Schneider. This one paid a net $1,743. Congratulations-ish, Tom.. Nice to book another win, and this one should cover two or three of the many dozens of blinds you’ve defended poorly in the cash games! Don’t call it a comeback!

I ran into Angry Julie in the poker kitchen late last night shortly after Tom had busted out, and she was unusually happy. Giddy, I’d even say. She was buying herself a Krispy Kreme donut and Tom an ice cream using the $15 food voucher you get for playing in a WSOP event. Informed that she wouldn’t get back any change, she looked at the guy behind her in line and said, “How much is what he’s having? ($8) Great, his too!”

The dude was super-thankful, but before he could walk away with a smile, she stood there and wouldn’t let him leave until he tipped the cashier. “Not until you put at least a dollar in there,” she said, pointing to the tip basket in front of the register. I know what Tom would think if he saw this: “Leak.”

Meanwhile, Tom thinks Pokerati should be all over the continuing saga of the Donkey Bomber POY Banner. “My picture the only one without a light - rodney dangerfield,” said a text he sent to me yesterday. I checked, and it’s true — everyone else has a big beam accenting their mugs. But considering that I have to sit right below his banner and I don’t want any additional glare, I think we’ll stick to keeping you posted about his feats busting out of a tournament with only nine tables to go.

There’s a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ going on in the Amazon room … The cash-game quadrant is absolutely packed, and the feature-table stadium is going arbusto about something … what I have no clue (kinda weird how the media is prohibited from going places where the general public can; story for later perhaps) … but apparently there’re three righteous internet kids poppin’ for a bracelet in the $1k NLH+R … so lots of excitement and buzz as we kick into the graveyard shift. Only downside: the ATM in the hallway is out of cash.

Meanwhile, on Court 2, I just watched an exciting Razz hand … Tom had supposedly been hemorrhaging chips, and he was in a hand with a total Ginger, who had a very strong 3-5 in the hole, against Tom’s 6 then 4 showing. Robert Goldfarb and another Schneider sweater were going pop-out-of-their-chair nuts when there was all sorts of raising and calling and Tom didn’t even have a made hand yet! By the time he got a 3 on 6th street Goldfarb practically Panteragraphed Tom’s hand to everyone in the small $10,000 World Championship of Crazy Mixed Games quadrant — “RrrrII know he’s GOT an 8 higggghhhh!!!”

Sure enough, Tom check-raised on the river, and the little Ginger called … Tom’s stack was suddenly close to healthy again, and the table broke, as they were now down to 16 players.

UPDATE: They’re down to 14, and Tom’s pretty short-stacked … about 68,000 chips … avg. stack is 280k. He just put a brand-new black hoodie on — I suppose it’s time to get serious. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m feelin’ like 12th, maybe 11th place. Either that or 4th.

Robert Goldfarb — the Arizona Posse-ite who is, um, due? — is doing double-time as a player and a reporter (without a media credential, no less) … and after some technological snafus, his cell phone is linked up again with Pokerati … so be sure to check in with his P*ttering for some reports from the higher stakes tables.

He’s chronicling his own pursuits, his observations from the tables, and Pat Poels’ already being hard at work trying to win his way into the $50k HORSE event.

My poker pal Jim Killeen first parlayed his poker winnings into a successful chair massage business at the Commerce Casino and now has gone big time and made a movie. Always breaking the mold, Jim’s movie is available to watch for free on YouTube. Tom and I watched it recently on the drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas and both enjoyed it. Angry Julie, not so much. If you happen to watch it, let me know what you think.

In this episode:

Jon Kyl is Facing Reality!
It’s Lonely at the top of Morality Mountain…
There are still no regulations for UIGEA… Banks don’t want to police UIGEA… and others in Congress want to overturn UIGEA… I guess it’s time to face facts, Jon.

Chuck E Cheese is Facing Prison?
Pizza Selling Rat also promotes illegal gambling…
The great legal minds of South Carolina have concluded that the Skee ball and Whac-a-Mole games at Chuck E Cheese are a slippery slop to illegal gambling… and they must go!

News from both sides of the Atlantic
Lottery to Tennis… Texas to France…
In Texas, lottery officials are warning consumers about buying tickets online… and with good reason! And out of France, a judge has returned a ruling in the French Open vs Online Gambling case.

I wrote this post right after the 2007 WSOP, but I hadn’t pressed publish yet. With all the talk about structural changes and travel plans for the upcoming WSOP, now seem’s a good time for us to think about our (poker players’) behavior for the upcoming WSOP:

I have a request for all poker players. Anyone that wants to complain at the WSOP 2008, please STAY HOME! I don’t care how much dead money you bring to the tables, I don’t want to hear the yakking when I’m taking a leak.

At the 2007 WSOP, bitching was the theme. Here are just a few of the complaints that I heard.

• Harrah’s is making too much money. Have you seen how much juice they are taking out?
• The food is horrible
• The dealers are making too many mistakes
• It’s cold
• It’s hot
• The lines are too long
• The structures are too fast, too slow, too medium
• The walk is too long to the tournament area
• There are too many tournaments
• The cocktail service is bad.

Is that enough or should I keep going?

More…

Tommy-boy started the day as one of the shortest stacks in the WPT World Championship at Bellagio, and with 55 players left, he managed to squeak out an extra $13k for himself by finishing 50th. Nice job, Tom, way to represent.

Click here to follow the action as the remaining players fight for position in competing for the bigger money and real paydays.

UPDATE: I could be totally wrong … it’s possible Tom was the artificial bubble boy going out in 51st place. Will let you know …

They’re into the money in the $25k WPT World Championship Event. Every remaining player is guaranteed $39,570 (a $14.5k payday) while they compete for the $3.4 million first prize.

As of this moment, there are 85 players left — Anna Wroblewski just went out … she was looking strong all tourney long. Our best friend Tom Schneider is still alive with a slightly above average stack. (Notice he’s our best friend as opposed to just a friend or Pokerati contributor now that he’s secured the money. If he can make the final table, he’ll be our super-best-very-best friend … and I’m sure that’s what’s motivating him.)

Other names of note (to me) that are still live include Carlos Mortenson (defending champ), Rhynie Campbell (met him last night, he seems funny and cool), Mark Seif (who’s been keeping people posted about the condition of his wife’s cervix), Isabelle Mercier and Kristy Gazes (attractive women), Jared Hamby (Go Texas!), Tommy Le (one of my MySpace friends with a really cool name), Steve and Danny Wong (Go 2007 Fantasy Team!), and TJ Cloutier (Go same Dallas flight!)

Cards go in the air for the 2008 World Poker Tour World Championship at noon pacific … 188 out of 545 remain … Our boy (when he’s winning) Tom laid low with about 20k in chips pretty much all day yesterday, only to finish super-strong. (I liked his push with 3-4 suited, which “got there” on the turn.)

Click below to see the official chip counts going into Day 3, and click here to follow the action as the remaining players fight for the money — top 100 get paid.

More…

Ed. Note: This post woulda been much more relevant and timely had it gone up yesterday, when it was written.

Despite slightly lower numbers, the WPT World Championship will still likely end up being one of the five biggest tournaments in the Milky Way this year … and Day 2 has just gotten underway. Pokerati would love to beyotch about not having access to the makeshift WPT TV studio at Bellagio to do our brand of non-chip coverage, but we’ve been invited to a WPT Party tonight with free food and booze, so we’re obviously all good with the status quo.

421 of 545 starting players remain … A few names that I’ll be paying attention to for various reasons, and where they stand in relation to their starting 50k chipstack include Carlos Mortenson (defending champ - 172,075), Tom Schneider (25,400), Clonie Gowen (93,975), Gregg Merkow (40,075), Nenad Medic (12,425), Rodeen Talebi (18,000), Ray Henson (89,550), and David Sklansky (41,050).

Click below to see how the whole pro-studded field shaped up as of noon-Pacific today, and click here to follow the action throughout Day 2.

More…

I can only speculate on all the stuff that is going on at the WSOP regarding the discussion of changing the final table format, but here are my thoughts on what has already been discussed.

Given the same payout structure, would you rather make a final table last year or this year? If you say last year, STOP! PROCEED DIRECTLY TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST. Think about this. How many people outside of poker know Jerry Yang? Answer = 0. How many people outside of poker know the guy who finished 7th? 0! Did someone actually come in 7th? I don’t remember.

Can you imagine making the final table under this potential change? Many people outside of poker will recognize all the players that make the final table. Before the final table takes place, all players are the same. In essence, all of them are winners, and why shouldn’t they be? They beat 6,000 players. This is amazing. It really is too bad that we only have one winner out of 6,000. A final table at the main event is one of the most impressive accomplishments in poker.

More…

The BTT crew: Poker talk fused with gay jokes and fat commentary was all the rage in 2007.

Some of you have been wondering, why no new episodes of Beyond the Table? Tom, Karridy, and I have been wondering the same thing. It’s been a good run, and with drinks in the air, three guys who clearly love/hate the sounds of their own voices are calling it podcast quits.

Back when we started, our show about poker but not really about poker stood out as revolutionary in a sea of lame poker interviewcasts with questionable audio quality. Soon after iPod sales were booming as more and more of the world got hooked on downloading poker audio with funny intros and Angry Julie cameos. But Tom couldn’t handle the celebrity and Karridy developed a crack addiction lives got busy and producers for Beyond the Table fared about as well as drummers for Spinal Tap. The show hired Shamus at a fraction of a Cambodian farmer’s wage to pump up our numbers — did he ever get his T-shirt? — but with a new generation of poker podcasts getting better and stronger (Lou Kreiger, Gary Wise, 2+2, Pocket Fives, Ante Up, Poker Road, et al) old-school payola wasn’t enough to save us from going out on the podcast bubble.

Listen below to a heretofore unpublished episode (recorded on 2-27, my dream flop) as your favorite semi-amateur yammerers phone it in for the last and final-ish time:

Beyond the Table: Fin

Thanks for listening via RSS, iTunes, play-in-popup, and direct download … we already miss ourselves.

You can still prank call Karridy on the Beyond the Table listener line at 888-820-8091.

Hmm, we know a few poker players from Arizona here at Pokerati. I wonder if they will be attending “the first Arizona State Hold’em Championship ever played within the jurisdiction of the State” … not to be confused with the other Arizona State Championship. The tourney goes down at Judge Lee’s Arizona Card Room in Tombstone on May 10, and in fact it was Judge Lee himself letting us know about what should prove to be a very interesting event, no matter who does or doesn’t show. Yours truly, for one, respects the efforts to force the state to deal with the issues he raises. It’s generally good poker to create difficult decisions for your opponents.

*********PRESS RELEASE********PRESS RELEASE************

For release Wednesday April 2, 2008 Tombstone, AZ

From: Arizona Card League “the voice of professional card players in Arizona”

This Press Release has become necessary since the Arizona Republic newspaper article on January 18, 2008 (Retired judge betting that his poker room is legal) has caused much confusion all over the country, and thrown a cloud over the legality of the ACL/ACR System. It should be removed with the announcement today of a Statewide Poker Championship to be conducted on May 10th in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

More…

Tom, at the WPT World Poker Challenge in Reno …

Photo: World Poker Tour

Shirt says:

Doh!
Nuts!
Mmm, Donuts …

… at the World Poker Challenge at the Grand Sierra in Reno, finishing 28th out of 261. Ouch. But not all is lost for the Arizona Posse … Tom may have gone out early on Day 2, but the crew’s other double-bracelet holder Pat Poels is still alive and well — with a slightly below average stack.

Click here to follow the Day 3 action – where because of legally questionable exclusive media deals, you have no choice but to read coverage from a guy who clearly would rather write in a way that reveals he can’t wait to go home (or to the tables, or the bar) as opposed to figuring out the names of fewer than 30 players left in a field?

(If it’s fair to expect NFL television announcers to know every name on two rosters, is it really too much to ask that any “reporters” know every name once a tourney gets below four tables? There are breaks, after all, where you theoretically could go find out what you don’t know by asking someone. But whatever … it’s not Pokerati’s job to bitch about crappy, uninspired coverage just because we happened to have a conversation with someone else about whether or not we have a right to post numbers and letters like the ones below and/or haven’t had our coffee yet this morning.)

And click below to see the starting stacks going in:

More…

And maybe Tom … and their nice friend from Phoenix whose name I forget:

Somewhere along the way to posting six losing sessions out of eight and after receiving a severe tongue-lashing from Robert G (with echoes of Tulsa in my head) I abandoned my soccer-shootout tally and quest for five wins in a row. Hadn’t given it a thought since then, really, until today, upon seeing the results of my past four sessions:

DATE — VENUE — HRS — GAME — BUYIN(s) — CASHOUT — EXTRA — NET
15-Mar – venetian — 5.5 — 2/5 nlh — 600 (2) — 776 — 2 — 174
21-Mar – paris — .25 — 1/2 nlh — 200 (1) — 249 — 2 — 47
22-Mar – golden nugget — 3 — 1/2 nlh — 200 (1) — 1709 — 0 — 1509
24-Mar – venetian – 2.25 – 1/2 nlh — 200 (1) — 1262 — 2 — 1060

I swear I won’t be thinking about it next time I play.

No, that’s not a typo. J8 is Arizona Posse member Hooman Nikzad’s favorite hand and is referred to at Casino Arizona as #1, the best hand in hold ‘em, or simply Hooman. Hooman (the player, not the poker hand), won a live satellite into the upcoming NBC heads up tournament later this month at Caesars. Tom and Hooman playing heads up on TV would make for some good stuff. Good luck boys.

Photo: Nick Oza / The Arizona Republic

Harold Lee may seem like a bit of a whack-job, but the retired Arizona judge is standing up for poker — beckoning authorities to take him to jail/court for running a legally questionable poker room. He’s convinced a jury won’t convict, and is ready to put to them the question of whether or not poker really is illegal in Arizona, the AZ Republic reports.

Now I know what you’re thinking … wait, don’t they have Indian casinos in AZ? And indeed they do … but he’s got a problem with that, too, claiming it to be an illegal state-granted monopoly. Interesting way to look at it. You can read more about Judge Lee’s Arizona Card Room in Sierra Vista and his poker manifesto here.

The commenters (and the raters of the commenters) overwhelmingly support the crazy-ole judge. And apparently the entire city of Tombstone is behind him and wants to follow suit. (Watch the news vid.) Despite what the state has to say … the city has looked through it’s law books and can’t find anything that says poker is illegal and they’re good with that.