Today’s the final day of the $3 million River tourney in the Winstar Territories. The $2,000+100 NLH event started six days ago with what would grow to more than 1,400 entries. A few less than 150 made it into the money and play today for the big money. Here are about 90 of the starters, and their starting chip counts:

(Thanks, Alicia, for sending this along!)

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…Actually, I’m just the opposite. I went out middle, at level 6. Four PP’s (55,77,99,QQ). I hit one flop, never saw a turn all day, much less a river. Never played a loser through… until about 10 minutes ago. Never been so card dead. *cry,bitch,moan,walk*

Shawn Rice is nursing a short stack of about 7k, as we enter $400/$800+$75. We are at that pivotal point where all you can hear is “Seat Open on X”.

As I noted in a comment to a prior post, one player actually advanced with a single chip. That drive will suck. Another player advanced with ZERO, after coming in 2nd in a 3-way all-in. No word on whether he has to drive in to collect.

I still can’t get my hands on yesterday’s survivors. I’m packing it up and going home. The media table is now officially empty. (Again)

A couple hot poker topics this week have been, of course, WinStar, and Scotty Nguyen’s less than stellar behavior and etiquette in the $50k WSOP HORSE event, as seen on ESPN. Pauly (who actually watched this final table live) assures me a lot of this persona came in the editing — yeah, he was drunk and rude for awhile, but then he sobered up and played like a winner — and indeed, I remember thinking similarly as the day progressed … was rooting for Nguyen … definitely didn’t want a newbie like Michael DeMichele to win $50k Friggin’ HORSE! But after watching the episode(s) this week, I gotta say … was totally rooting for DeMichele, even though I knew he probably didn’t stand a chance.

Anyhow, point being … just wondering if a (bad) performance like Scotty’s could jeopardize his relationship with the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, where he has hosted the biggest events in North-North Texas prior to the current River tourney at WinStar. “I am like a god in Oklahoma,” he has said. “They have my picture on billboard.”

Not saying one incident will — but wondering if it might. Because after all, there was a reason they chose him back in the day … because everyone loves Scotty Nguyen, baby! But now that’s clearly not the case.

Here’s the survivor data thus far. I’m pretty surprised that I don’t recognize more names than I do. One name that we’ll all know and didn’t make this leader list is that of Mr. Scott Clements, who enters the Saturday play-down with $68,000.

I’m not gonna be here long, but I’ll try to get a chipleader update and at least one interview. Like I’ve told the folks here, without more up-front coordination with online media, their coverage is going to be sparse, if anything. If I had brought my camera, I’d show you the lonely “press table”. But picture this: There’s one semi-handsome fellow seated there all by himself. …And I can shit in his pants. Cumon, Winstar!

 

Karridy knows how to represent.

Despite negative reports about a too-fast blind structure and terrible dealers — from players who may or may not have been juiced with some residual Day 1-bustout tilt and therefore focusing on isolated incidents inherent to putting on any event that’s bigger than any other you’ve put on before — I couldn’t stand it … I just had to get in on the action. Sounds like too much fun going on at The River, and who better to buy a small piece of than Karridy? I like his chances. After all the last tourney he played with notably bad blind structures and dealers — he won!

He also apparently got the last spot available for Thursday, and if I learned anything from running Lodge tourneys, it’s that late-late entrants seem to have a disproportionately high percentage of Top 3 finishes. Seriously. Not sure why that is, but it’s true. I’ve seen it. You know, math …

Anyone got any updates from WinStar? So far 60 people have moved on … presumably 60. Yesterday’s field didn’t sell out — like 265ish runners or thereabouts. Not sure if they stuck with 10 percent of the field moving on (26 or 27 players) or went with the full 30 to keep Friday’s Saturday’s action at a nice, round 150 players fighting for the final table.

Surely some names we know and care about have advanced, right, along with some others that we don’t yet know we care about? I’ve reached out to my hookups at WinStar, but let’s just say they’re no Nolan Dalla … so info is hard to come by.

One of the guys playing The River today yesterday is/was ItsOverJonny — not sure how he’s doing or how anyone’s doing … don’t think they have phones yet in Oklahoma … but regardless, if you’re not reading IOJ, well I’m not gonna say you should be, because, hey, we’re all busy people. But think Gary Carson, only more bitter and jaded. Good stuff, as you could imagine.

Though Jonny did play in the big $2k event yesterday, he wasn’t exactly happy with the WinStar crew after playing in a $500 event — and he spells it out, plain as day, what beefs he has with their dealers. Though I suspect the WinStar may poo-poo his free-of-charge poker room consultation because who cares when you’re making so much damn money these days, I can attest that he definitely knows a thing or two about how good games are supposed to run, and just about any poker room management should wanna use his post as a litmus test for what their dealer crew should and shouldn’t do. Some highlights from his blog:

Jonny played in Winstar’s $500+50 today. 61 players. Same shitty Winstar structure. Dealers were fucking horrible, and between dealers fucking everything up, maddening noise from all directions, and idiot clowndick players, I was tilting beyond belief, even though I hadn’t hardly played a hand for a while at the time. Seriously - where do they get these retard dealers that they stick in the tournaments? It’s not like it’s a $60 nightly tournament - it was $550 - get some dealers that can run a table without making repeated stupid mistakes, and then giving me attitude when I correct them until they finally figured out that they had indeed made a mistake. Your job consists of the most basic of math, making a little change, and distribution of cards. How do you manage to fuck that up?

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Defending Champ: Sure, I may have gotten lucky on the river, but hey, I had the best hand going in!

So what do you do after beating TJ Cloutier to win $230k? That’s not exactly lottery money, after all — especially after taxes — but it was enough to (kinda) change the life of Vik Vijay, the Oklahoma poker dealer who won the 2007 Red River Roundup (now called, more elegantly Oklahoma-y, The River) and then delivered on his post-victory promise to quit his job and move to Las Vegas with highly energized bankroll in hand. Since then:

hey dan -
yeah, im headed down to winstar next week to defend - ive got the last starting day - thursday the 21st. hopefully it will go well. the last year has been interesting - i moved to vegas and have mostly been playing. i worked at the venetian this summer, dealing poker for their summer tournament set, but they didnt keep any of us on for anything regular. the poker has been going well, but i really got to lay off the blackjack. other than that, life is pretty good.

-vik vijay.

I think cards are already in the air for the pseudo-shootout River Tournament at WinStar in Oklahoma. Alas, I am not there … am still in Vegas as the first of five groups of 300 players play down to 30.

Though this is not yet confirmed, we think with 1,500, a $2,000 buy-in, and a guaranteed $3 million prize pool that this might-well be the biggest non-WSOP event at $2,000 or more in the history of ever. At a minimum, it’s the biggest event of the year for Texas poker — and Oklahoma poker, too, of course. Was hoping I’d be able to make it back to glorious Thackerville to bring you some WSOP-style coverage of this biggity poker hoedown, but it just doesn’t seem likely.

Last year’s runner-up TJ Cloutier starts today. I’m sure lots of other players we know and love are also there — in fact, if anyone has any updates, be sure to let us know. (Send me an email if you want me Ed to set you up to CSR from the felt/rail.)

Also, last I heard, today is sold out, but 140 seats overall remain. I gotta imagine they’ll fill up if the WinStar is still running single-table satellites … and I know at least two Dallas poker rooms are running sats, so …

Paul in Dallas sends along some info about the upcoming River Touranment in Winstar, Oklahoma. (OK, technically it’s Thackerville, but Winstar is what puts this border town on the map, so …)

As for the River tourney, I’ve been up several times during the months of “qualifying,” and it has been fairly impressive. More impressive is the price you can get for your seats, nearly full price. I won a single table satellite and was able to sell the chip on Craig’s List for $1900 (buyin is $2100). The rake they’ve been able to steal on many satellites has been most impressive- they have been running big tournaments each month ($400+40) for seats, which isn’t too obscene at 10%, but they have been been running $55 single table sat’s to those tournaments, 10 to a table, with winner taking a seat ($440 value) and the house keeping the other $110. And yet people keep playing them.

Not sure if you’ve been kept abreast of the Winstar goings-on, but they did start serving liquor during the summer, and it has changed weekend play considerably. Many tables running 24 hours from Thursday to Monday morning each week. Squishy soft.

Wow. Damn. I did not know. Go WinStar! Should be interesting to see how this $3 million tourney plays out. Would expect to see a virtual who’s who of Texas poker contending.

(Last year, you may recall, this event was called the Red River Roundup and had a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million, in which Vikram Vijay of Oklahoma defeated TJ Cloutier heads-up, making it seem a little bit like an old-fashioned version of the WSOP main event for both of them.)

For the 36 40 percent of our readers who happen to be non-American, we probably don’t do enough to keep you up-to-date on the goings-on of our good mates at PartyPoker. Their stock seems fine (at least better than the WPT’s) though it’s a bit of a dumb-count — the price recently skyrocketed due to a reverse split. Anyhow, our favorite site based in Gibraltar is celebrating its 7th birthday this week. Congrats! Seriously, there were at least a couple weeks in there where I wasn’t so sure you were gonna make it to 6 … but glad you guys are still around, albeit a smaller version of yourself. Miss you lots!

The annual celebration isn’t quite what it used to be, of course. Back in the day they sent thousands on a sweet cruise. This year they are splashing cash-game pots (today, with $300 every 77,777 hands), giving away PartyPoints, and inviting folks into a $7,777 freeroll. Aww … so sad/cute. It is leading up to something big, however … on Sunday Party’s having a “big” $1 million tourney — that’s a full one-third the size of the big annual tournament at WinStar this year! (Wow, think about that. Seriously. Wow.)

Anyhow … PartyPoker turns The Big 7 this week. Let’s all take a moment to reminisce and rejoice:

Jen, I was just doing a little research on the upcoming Red River Roundup — recently retitled to the Winstar World Championship Series / The River — and I noticed that Annie Duke is one of the hosts (along with Greg Raymer and Norm Hitzges) … and in their promotional stuff, she’s not wearing any UB.

I’m sure she has almost nothing to do with this — most likely Greg told her it was a good tourney, she was happy to accept a check to show up, and the Winstar’s web people ganked an old PR image off the internet — but still, just found it interesting to see her out of UB uniform. Also interesting to see a Kahnawake squaw working with the Chickasaw. Historically these two nations never battled, but I don’t think you would ever see a Cherokee dude like Scotty Nguyen make the tribal crossover.

2008 HORSE Champion Scotty Nguyen is playing on the ESPN feature table … in a different uniform. The VietPrince of Poker was decked out in Full Tilt gear last week. This week it’s PokerStars …

He’s not an actual Team PokerStars member (yet) … but considering Star’s intense focus on the Asian market in the coming years, he’s gotta be on their short list for something, as we know Nguyen has already fully captured the Northern Oklahoma market.

Cuong in Texas writes in with some beefs about a casino poker room in Oklahoma:

I was hoping you could shed some light on the Terrible Competence of Choctaw Casino. First, they lie about the numbers at the Choctaw Open, then will not publish results in Card Player, Etc or Send any other results to Poker groups on there Large Tournaments. I have contacted Managers and was told they were busy???WTF..Winstar always takes care of this quickly. I need results listed so my Investor can verify numbers. I will never play other Tournament at Choctaw Casino again. Please write a story on Choctaw so I can get others stories. Thank you,

Thank you … Can you tell us a little more about the numbers they supposedly lied about?

I do indeed have a story about Choctaw that I sadly haven’t finished writing yet. The last time I was there, I ran into Black James and his crew, who were extra-friendly with the poker room management. They took their seats at a 1/2 table (unable to convince us to play 2/5) and proceeded to remove more than half the money from the table in 45 minutes by doing a hyper-bet-collusion hit-and-run. That was obvious to me, and I suspect but can’t prove there might have been a little more than collusion going on when James’ no-look bet got an all-in reraise from my pocket queens and he pretended to be shocked to discover he had pocket kings.

Not at all suggesting Choctaw was in on any unethical behavior, but poker room operators were watching the action, so if they weren’t part of it, then what does that say about their ability to notice/put a stop to cheating. (James McDaniel, of course, is now back in prison for a parole violation connected to the deaths of a police officer and SMU coed.)

Anyone else have any Choctaw stories?

In the meantime, Cuonger, below are the results for the 2008 Choctaw Open, held last month in Durant, sent in by a fellow Pokeratizen:
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Danielle in New York writes in with a little more info about the film project they’ve got working:

Another thing you can add if people are being hesitant to being interviewed or showing us their room, we have filmed in underground poker rooms in NYC. I don’t know how familiar you are with the scene in NY but a couple years ago a big bust broke up a lot of the more well known poker rooms in the city. About 6 months before these busts we were able to film in one of the clubs and interview the owner. Unfortunately since the big bust, its been hard to come by more games in the NYC Area.

One angle I’d love to take while in Dallas, it to interview someone who could talk about all the raids either as someone who was at one of the raids or someone who ran a room that got raided. Of course, if there is an issue of not given out the name of a room or the name of the person we are interviewing, we will abide in any way possible to make everyone comfortable.

I’m not sure how much I got into the extensiveness of our project but our goal is to make the most definitive and comprehensive film about poker in America. We’ve gone everywhere from Vegas to New Orleans to Saratoga Springs to Oklahoma. We’ve interviewed people within the poker community including Annie Duke, Jeffrey Pollack (Commissioner of the WSOP), Phil Hellmuth, Steve Lipscomb (CEO of WPT), Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, amateur poker players, tournament directors, and poker room mangers from casinos across the US.

So there you have it … I wonder if the poker-room people they end up talking to will be “good” or “bad” gamerunners representing the Dallas scene.

If you’ve heard my permanent Wolfman Jack impression while listening to Beyond The Table, you might not be surprised to learn that my voice is not naturally this sexy. I had a little help from my friends. Actually, I had a LOT of help. Before the age of 6, I had undergone over 30something surgeries on my throat and vocal chords. Some of those were emergency surgeries to open my airway, and some were simply maintenance to avoid more emergencies. The end result would be a voice that only a mother could love. Well, her and a disproportionately large number of black women. Apparently, I sound like this guy. But unfortunately, they usually look like this girl, and never like my new chocolate crush, this girl.

The bottom line is that the good people at Cook Children’s Hospital saved my life more than once, and I couldn’t be more pleased to tell you about the Jeremy’s Friends Poker Tournament, coming up on Saturday, May 31st @ 6pm.

How’s this for quality charity poker - 1’st place wins a Main Event entry w/airfare and hotel! Runner up gets a phat entry into the upcoming $3,000,000 tournament at Winstar, which I hear is being televised. There won’t be much fight for 3rd to 9th place, as EVERYBODY else at the final table will win $440 Super Satellite entries for the same Winstar mega tournament. Not bad, guys! Too bad we all know that charity poker is rigged!

If you are in the North Texas area and would like to battle it out against me and a few other do-gooders, contact Jeremy’s Friends by emailing: jeremysfriendspoker@gmail.com