Dan is AWOL and Pauly is still playing in the WSOP Media Event while Change100 and AlCantHang hijack the Tao of Pokerati for a special episode…

2011 WSOP – Episode 29: Media Mania and Golden Toilets with Change100 and AlCantHang (3:08) – Pauly is still in the media event, so Change100 takes the opportunity to chat with AlCantHang. They both busted rather early, especially AlCantHang, who won a dubious honor of being the first player to bust out. His reward? a Golden Toiler trophy for last place.

For more episodes, visit the Tao of Pokerati archives.

For those who like to railbird the high stakes action online, especially at Full Tilt Poker, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan’s open challenge seemed like a match made in heaven. 50,000 hands of 200/400 NL holdem or PLO action over at least 4 tables, with Dwan offering his opponent an additional $1,500,000 if they were ahead with the opponent paying Dwan $500,000 if he came out on top. The first player to accept the challenge was Patrik Antonius in February 2009. However, other cash game action slowed down the action creating gaps of several months where no hands were played. 18 months later, Dwan is up over $2,000,000 on Antonius with about 10,000 hands left in their challenge.

Enter Daniel “Jungleman12″ Cates, an instructor at CardRunners who went from .25/.50 NL HU to playing in the biggest cash games online in just two years. After Cates accepted the challenge on July 19th, the forums went wild, longing for the days when Isildur1 was crushing the cash game superstars. It took over a month, but after an interview with AlCantHang on FullTiltPoker’s Poker from the Rail blog, the challenge finally got underway early Friday morning. The first session had Dwan ahead by over $161,000 after nearly 1,600 hands were played. A second session started a few hours later, with Cates holding over Dwan over the next 3500 hands, finishing with a profit of over $500,000. The chart of the early action appears below, and you can follow the action on FTP’s Durrrr Challenge 2 page.

Day 3 of the Main Event gets underway at 12pm Monday, with over 2,500 players scheduled to play four levels as they get ever closer to the money bubble at 747 players. For those looking for the table draw, click here. Follow the action over at wsop.com. Also at wsop.com later today, expect the official announcement of the revamped WSOP Circuit, AP reporter Oskar Garcia has a preview of the changes.

The annual media tournament took place yesterday with Josh Zerkle of With Leather taking down the title. Other notables included Shamus at the Hard Boiled Poker blog in 3rd, defending champion of the WSOP Dream Team Poker event Lana from CardRunners finishing 6th, and Full Tilt Poker blogger AlCantHang in 9th.

Just a brief update for now, but in what could be Tom Dwan’s biggest winning day, he’s the current chip leader with 9 players left at the $1,500 No-Limit Holdem final table. First place would officially pay Dwan more than $600,000, but he has plenty of bracelet bets with pros, leading to this tweet from Benjo, along with a brand-new Tao of Pokerati episode bringing you to the floor where this major side-action is happening. :

Surreal. A congregation of Big Game players are currently having a sit-down, most likely discussing offering Dwan to buy out of their bets.

Here’s the final table when play resumed:

Seat 1: Jason Young – 1,304,000
Seat 2: Michael Smith – 622,000
Seat 3: Marvin Rettenmaier – 525,000
Seat 4: Tom “durrrr” Dwan – 2,412,000
Seat 5: Austin McCormick – 1,939,000
Seat 6: Kyle Winter – 502,000
Seat 7: Eric “AvrilSharapova” Ladny – 969,000
Seat 8: David “ghettofabulous” Randall – 1,803,000
Seat 9: Simon Watt – 1,466,000

Catch all the live updates over at PokerNews, along with tweets from Pauly, Matt Waldron and AlCantHang

For those who like to blog and play poker, AlCantHang and Full Tilt Poker are holding Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 5. BBT5 is a six week series of poker tournaments that will give away in total three $12,000 WSOP Main Event packages and three $2,000 Bracelet Race packages.

Tonight at 7pm ET is the first of six $2,000 freerolls featuring bloggers such as Change100, Short-Stacked Shamus, Smokkee and myself among dozens of other bloggers, poker celebrities and other dignitaries. The top two spots in each BBT5 Invitational will be entered into the BBT ToC.

There will also be ToC spots available to winners of two private tournaments over the next six weeks. Those events are the weekly $24+2 Poker From the Rail tournament Mondays at 10pm ET and the $10+1 Mookie at 10pm Wednesdays.

One final $2,000 Bracelet Race package and $2,000 freeroll will be available to participating bloggers in the Blogger Battle Royal on June 6th at 2pm ET. Further details on all of these events can be found at FTP’s Poker From the Rail blog.

Sure, the Bellagio 5-Diamond is a pretty big deal to the pros — it’s one of those tourneys that harkens back to pre-boom days of the WSOP, both in competition and relative size of the buy-ins. Every table is star-studded, and the no-names who make it to the Fontana Room have fought hard to get there, knowing mathematically maybe one or two of them stands a chance of doing something truly special.

photo: Flipchip/LasVegasVegas

Postcard from the Venetian: Wish you were here not really.

You wouldn’t know anything about it, though, from the 82 bloggers who were in town for the fourth or fifth (anyone know?) annual Unnamed Winter Blogger Holiday Gathering — this year honoring the netty nuptials of Pablo and Gracie (ceremony officiated by Rev. AlCantHang). While all that mattered to the professional world was going on at Bellagio, what attracted reps from the other 99.9 percent of poker players out there was shaking down and out at the MGM and Venetian … where friends, colleagues, and acquaintances gathered for boozing, boasting, bitching, and busting chops, all surrounding a big-but-affordable challenging tourney that would reward on-the-felt bad-assness with real American dollars while everyone else still enjoyed ever-festive poker-bloggery times.

A full moon was closer to Earth than usual, naturally enhancing the funk. Dr. Pauly busted out the portable satellite Tao of Pokerati studio, and before you knew it, our recorded commentary degenerated into lunar analysis of semi-annual drunkfests, slumped-over gambling addicts, donk-ass keno play, and, of course, hookers in a down economy on the late-night Vegas prowl. Recorded live from an extended weekend’s worth of bars, sportsbooks, bedrooms, bathrooms, and casino floors … with guest appearances by Derek, Human Head, Bobby Bracelet, Mean Gene, and PKPNF, before and after his unsuccessful relationship with Betty Underground.

Aural delights below:

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