Doyle Brunson is on the grid, that’s for sure. In his latest blog post, which I read via Facebook, he tells us he’s really getting into Twitter. Here’s his address if you want to follow him: twitter.com/texdolly

In doing so, you’ll learn why he’s not playing in the WPT Championship, and that Phil Ivey lost $1 million in Bobby’s Room last night.

And then, back to his blog, he explains to all the Teabaggers out there why he thinks they should STFU!

I headed over to my CPA to get my taxes done and ran into a traffic jam. Hundreds of people were blocking the streets having what they called a “tea party”. I think they were protesting the current financial crisis our nation is going through, but some of the signs were ridiculous. “Impeach Obama”, “What comes after trillions”, “Stop spending our money” and other statements blaming our president. For Pete’s sake, let’s give the guy a chance to straighten this mess up. I got a lot of heat for voting for McCain, but I knew when I cast a late vote, John didn’t have a chance to win. I was just being loyal to the Republican Party. But now that the nation has spoken that they wanted Obama, we should all support him.

Bellagio’s ultra high stakes action is spilling out of Bobby’s room into the main poker room. WPT $25k is bringing out all the high rollers.

The Bellagio is gearing up for the start of the 7th Annual Five Star World Poker Classic running March 31 thru April 25.  The Five Star is highlighted by the $25,000 buy-in WPT Championship beginning Saturday, April 18.

Complete schedule below:

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Just got back from Bellagio — not my usual stomping grounds — and noticed that starting tomorrow, March 10, they’re offering something different there on Tuesdays … a lower cost, above-average-stack 2 pm tourney. For a long time, this was a standard $500 weekday event … $500 for 10k in chips. But now it only costs $300, and you get 6k in chips.

They also have 1/2 NLH there now. Apparently they’ve had it for a few months … News to me, though. I still thought their smallest game was a raucous 2/5 populated with monster stacks. Silly me.

Courtesy of PokerListings

By all accounts, the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic final table was going to be a good one with a line-up that included Corkins, Sung, Rheem, and Filippi. But most eyes were on Rheem, who was one of the November Nine favorites but had to settle for a seventh place finish at the 2008 WSOP final table.

Rheem was determined going into the WPT final table, even knowing that two of his opponents – Steve Sung and Amnon Filippi – were close friends. But as players dropped out of sight, Rheem was able to go heads-up against Justin Young in what ended up being a five-hour epic heads-up match. The chip lead was exchanged numerous times, but it may have been sheer determination and fan support that led Rheem to finally capture the title at 2am. He won the World Poker Tour title and the $1,538,730 that came with it.

Here are the final results:

6th – Hoyt Corkins $216,175
5th – Amnon Filippi $288,235
4th – Steve Sung $396,206
3rd – Evan McNiff $540,440
2nd – Justin Young $936,760
1st – Chino Rheem $1,538,730

I would point you to the official WPT live updates, but it has been unavailable on the internets all morning. So, for updates as they happened throughout the final table, check out Martin’s reporting at PokerListings.

Meanwhile, our buddy Tom, the high-stakes pro who coulda made more money at Bellagio as a volunteer blogger than he did as a poker player during his 5-diamond extended weekend, is apparently all the rage in Bulgaria. Pic #1 of 100 … pretty impressive:

(Thanks, Shamus, for the link.)

Dutch is having a good December. Not only did he win one of the preliminary events at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio – the $2K NLHE event – but he found out this morning that he won his case against PokerHost.com.

The battle with PokerHost ensued in October when he received notice from an attorney that there was a UDRP complaint against him for holding the PokerHost.net domain. Dutch then turned the PokerHost.net site into one about the case and stood his ground on the issue, since he had tried to negotiate with them for quite some time before the complaint to no avail. But this morning, he received notice that the World Intellectual Property Organization decided the case for him, as he documented on his blog:

The Pokerhost.net WIPO decision came today. Not only did I win, but the WIPO panelist found in favor of my reverse domain name hijacking claim, which hardly ever happens. Unfortunately, the UDRP doesn’t actually give any punitive relief to respondents who win on this claim, but it’s nice to get anyway. It definitely put me in a better mood and was a nice thing to wake up to.

In other Dutch news, as it relates to his purchase of Steve Hall’s Pokerfolio domain, the misunderstanding has been settled. According to the text message from Dutch today:

“Just FYI, I did end up giving Steve Hall back Pokerfolio.com for free… Wish him the best.”

Ahhh, the holiday season!

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.

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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The two chip leaders on Day 2 in the World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson 5-Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio (the WPT DB5DWPC?) are Clonie and Kido Pham. I’d say congrats, but I have argued vehemently with many an ESPNer that being chip-leader early in a big tournament is more often a kiss of death than a path to victory. Hopefully I’m wrong — I’d love to see Clonie and/or Kido go extra-deep. Also looking forward to seeing a big-table pic of her without the Full Tilt uniform.

Donkey Bomber, btw, went into Day 2 with 8,000 chips (they started with 45k) … and is still hanging on, now with 20k.

200 players left. Average stack is about 110k. BTW, field size this year was 497, compared to 664 last year. But by no means does there seem to be a shortage of any periphery play at Bellagio.

Click here to follow the tournament action.

UPDATE: Tom is out.

Also, a WPT video update, where we learn it snowed in Las Vegas today (or at least in Summerlin), Daniel Negreanu doesn’t like to tip valet parkers, and apparently now he drinks again (didn’t he go straight-edge at some point?):

The new episode is a pretty good one … Joe, Gavin, Shronk (via robot voice), a hot girl, and the other guy Ali Nejad haven’t even gotten to the Annie Duke interview that I clicked over to listen to yet … but they’ve kept me thoroughly infotained talking about the Bellagio 5-Diamond blind structure, November Nine TV appearances, and a few poker hands.

Good stuff. Goes well with FoxNews in the background: PokerRoad Radio, with Annie Duke

UPDATE: OK, I listened … and though I’m not sure I cared to know so many details about Annie Duke-Joe Reitman sex, she does answer some questions revealing why she didn’t participate with 60 Minutes (her claims of their falsehoods to lure her into the story seem totally believable to me — media people do say these things — though I do wonder could they have gone with a more regulation-oriented storyline had she or Paul Legget gone on camera), why she is indeed so confident about AP/UB/Cereus’ commitment to running an honorable business, why she remains a loyal face for the brand (it’s not the money), and how she wants to see Russ Hamilton burn in non-Atheist hell.

She also dances around questions about her rumored appearance on the upcoming season of The Apprentice in a way that semi-confirms she has intimate knowledge of a show beginning in March with a finale in May.

A lot of poker people are in town for a lot of reasons — the big blogger tourney at Venetian, and the $15k pro event at Bellagio, to name two. Apparently Donkey Bomber is hitting the meth again, as the self-proclaimed bankroll management and mixed games expert calls in after a long-ass high-stakes session binge and seems happy to report how he turned $800 into a $48,000 loss.

Unstuck? (feat. Tom Schneider)
1:21

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No word on whom he was playing against, but either way … Well done, Tom. I’m sure Julie is proud of your amazing comeback. Keep at it.

Early reports from the $15k main event of WPT Festa al Lago (at Bellagio) … Michael Phelps showed up to play … he’s out. And our favorite Donkey Bomber also just got bombed … he got it all-in with Aces only to have his opponent flop quad Queens.

Yikes, when I said “Feel My Pain,” I didn’t mean it so literally.

I’m following the so-so coverage not-so-closely via CardPlayer.com. A lotta pros … looks to be smaller than last year. Big-name pros playing mostly today (Hellmuth, Brunson, Negreanu, G.Smith, et al), probably because they’ve got the big premier of their poker musical (The Real Deal) at the Venetian tomorrow night.

There are 50 poker rooms in Las Vegas, so we thought you might appreciate the assistance of fellow degenerates in narrowing down the possibilities of where to play when you come to town. The votes have been tallied … and four places stood out above the rest … In what may or may not become a recurring tradition around these parts, Pokeratizens say the Best Poker Rooms in Vegas are:

Gold Medal
The Venetian

Great regular tourneys, Deep Stack Extravaganzas, plenty of all-but-the-highest-stakes action, bottled Fiji water, and maybe the escalator that dumps off drunkenly clad party girls coming out of Tao right in front of The V’s poker room make it far and away the favorite of this website’s readers/players/dealers.

official site / TPA

The separate tournament room really is cool, if not the best in town, and the comfortable multi-tiered cash game area never seems short of action appealing to the masses of big little-stakes players. Great freerolls for regular cash players, too.

official site / TPA

Still home to the biggest games in Vegas (in terms of buy-ins), thereby drawing the most pros and the players who want to challenge/sit near them. Everything Bellagio is always luxe, of course, and their regular $500 and $1k tourneys makes the chance to play for baller money an in-town constant.

official site / TPA

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Marcel Luske and Michelle Lau formally announced that their organization is up, running, and ready to introduce “The International Poker Rules” in the near future. According to the press release, the goal of FIDPA and the set of rules is to organize and promote tournament poker as a sport and “unite the industry on a global level.”

Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? Oh, never mind…

The IP Rules have been created in cooperation with the Tournament Directors Association, Bob Ciaffone’s Robert’s Rules of Poker, and Jack McClelland and Doug Dalton of Bellagio, among others. There are a total of 80 rules, procedures, and policies that will be announced at a later date.

Note to self: This sounds an awful lot like the World Poker Association (WPA)!

Click the “more” button to see the entire press release:

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Michael Binger said she was due … and sure enough, Clonie Gowen got it good — not at the WSOP, but across I-15 at the Bellagio Cup IV, in a $5,000 NLH event that drew 235 runners.

Kinda like a high-stakes second-chance tourney for early main-event busters and pros callously accused of being in a drug-addled downward spiral. Her payday for winning: $437,775

Awesome. Congrats, Clonie! I knew you had it in you, regardless of your status with Full Tilt … Seriously, we should be like best friends again and hang out all the time.