Come play if you’re in town. Good times, good cause, all that stuff … open to the public and no funky, disputable, optional-donation prize pool — just charitable poker the way it’s supposed to be. Click the image to enlarge the flyer, and below for official details.

Randy “The Natural” Couture hosts 2nd annual charity poker tournament and auction at Golden Nugget Las Vegas

“Operation All In” to raise money for Xtreme Couture G.I. Foundation

LAS VEGAS – Mixed Martial Arts legend Randy “The Natural” Couture will host his Second Annual “Operation All In” poker tournament and charity auction benefiting the Xtreme Couture G.I. Foundation at the Golden Nugget Las Vegas, Aug. 22 starting at 2 p.m.

This event, held in The Grand events center, is open to the public and will feature a celebrity charity poker tournament, live and silent auctions, autographs sessions, and an amazing chance to win big, while giving back to injured troops who have selflessly put their lives on the line in the protection of America’s freedom.

“We’re thrilled to welcome everyone back for our second annual charity event,” said Couture. “It’s sure to be an amazing time, while raising awareness and a lot of money for an unbelievable cause.”

“Operation All In” will welcome professional celebrity poker players and stars from the MMA world and Hollywood to play alongside the public in its charity poker tournament, where the grand prize is a $10,000 seat in the Sports Legends Challenge poker tournament at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, donated by SportsLegendsChallenge.com.

The Sports Legends Challenge is sports fans’ ultimate fantasy featuring four days of casino gaming and golf cash prize tournaments with some of the biggest names in sports, including Troy Aikman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Richard Petty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Joe Namath, Reggie Jackson and many others. To up the ante, the event will also feature 25 of the world’s top poker pros such as Jamie Gold, Annie Duke, Johnny Chan and Mike Sexton, who will play with and coach event participants. The event will be held at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort & Casino in the Bahamas Sept. 14-17. The sports legends, poker pros and participants will compete in a variety of events including No Limit Texas Hold ‘em, blackjack, slots and golf tournaments to vie for up to $10 million in prize money.

Buy in for “Operation All In” at the Golden Nugget is $330 with $100 re-buys. MMA fighters confirmed to attend include Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Stephan Bonnar, Frank Trigg and Phil Baroni. Also attending are professional poker players Todd Brunson, Lee Watkinson, Chip Jett, David Williams, Adam Schoenfeld and Robert Williamson III. Many more fighters and poker pros are expected to confirm attendance as the event nears.
Ultimate Fighting Champion Couture, a veteran himself of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, started the Xtreme Couture G.I. Foundation to raise money and awareness for troops wounded in action and their families. After visiting with amputees at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Couture was brought to tears seeing the young men and women who had given their all for freedom, young heroes who now have to go through life’s challenges with devastating physical and emotional injuries. To date, more than 24,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war against terrorism, which does not include the many more suffering the mental effects. The Xtreme Couture G.I. Foundation goal is to help these brave men and women fulfill any of their unmet needs as they return back to civilian life.

“Having spent time in a uniform it became a personal goal of mine to find a way to give back to the brave men and women of our Armed Forces for the sacrifices they make defending our freedoms.  The Xtreme Couture G.I. Foundation was born out of that desire. We hope you’ll come join us for a great night and rub elbows with some of the best fighters and poker players on the planet all in the name of our troops!”

This Second Annual “Operation All In” was organized to do just that.
In addition to the tournament, this event will also feature a silent auction for the duration of the poker tournament, with an amazing array of MMA memorabilia up for grabs, all benefiting the worthwhile charity. A live auction will also be held during the evening with prizes including some donated personally by Couture, such as dinner with the fighter and a one-hour personal MMA lesson. In addition to Couture, other MMA fighters will be on hand throughout the evening for photos and autographs with tournament players and fans.

Following the tournament and auctions, an after party will be held at the Golden Nugget’s Gold Diggers nightclub at 4 p.m. All participants in the tournament or auctions are invited to the after party, as well.
“Operation All In” is sponsored by the contributions of its great supporters including Sports Legends Challenge, Full Tilt Poker, Polanti Watch Co., Hard Core Elegance Jewelry, World Poker Tour Boot Camp, Clinch Gear, On Demand Website and Golden Nugget.

Seats are limited, so reserve your spot today by stopping by or calling the Golden Nugget Poker Room at (800) 777-4658, ext. 8164 or locally (702) 386-8164, or emailing poker@goldennugget.com to pre-register. Players will also be able to register for the tournament at the event. For more information, visit www.goldennugget.com or www.xtremecouturegifoundation.org.

The chip leader appears to be Jeremy Joseph, currently atr 2.8m in chips, 1m more than Brandon Cantu in 2nd. Today’s been a moving day for many pros (live and online), as Allen Cunningham, David “raptor” Benefield, APT winner David Saab, and Alex Outhred have moved into the top 10, More notable names left include Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Mike Matusow, Hoyt Corkins, Raja Kattamuri, Chip Jett, and Adam “roothlus” Levy. There’s less than 10 female players left (Alana Morin leads the ladies with 1m in chips), but two of them are more known for their work in front of the microphone, as Tiffany Michelle (Pokernews reporter) and Kara Scott (EPT hostess) survived the dinner break as well.

More updates later, as the Amazon room gets more deserted by the elimination…

Once the players return from dinner break, there’s a couple more two-hour levels left for today, but the bubble will be looming in that first level, we’ll see if the tournament staff adds time back to that level and maybe stop play after it’s broken, depending on the time of course.

Day 2b of the Main Event started with almost 2,400 players looking to play again tomorrow for day 3. The dinner break started a few minutes ago, and about 1,400 players are still in action today as they finally got everyone into the Amazon Room at the Rio. The current leader appears to be Steve Lade, who has about 380,000 in chips. Notables near the top: Day 1c leader Hennig Granstad, Victor Ramdin, David Singer, a much slimmer Thomas “Thunder” Keller, Nenad Medic, Evelyn Ng and Chip Jett. You can follow all the action when they return around 8:45pm Vegas time at the WSOP website here.

More updates later…

The $1,500 Mixed Holdem event is down to its final 3 competitors with Jonathan Tamayo, Frank Gary and Nick Binger went on their dinner break. Binger, who at one point had over 1.6m in chips and had eliminated the first 6 players, lost his chip lead to Tamayo while Gray has been playing just enough to try and get into 2nd place. Follow their progress on the WSOP website here.

The $2,500 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball event is also on dinner break 3 handed. Shun Uchida, John Phan and Gioi Luong are remaining in what has been a very contentious final table. Luong and Phan had a verbal altercation after Luong attempted to change his discard, while Phan angrily accused him of angle shooting. Things have appeared to calm down, but in all the tension, Uchida has a commanding lead at this time. To see how that turns out, check the updates over at worldseriesofpoker.com here.

The other updates appear on the next page:

The $1,000 Seniors NL Holdem World Championship is down to about 70 with their chances of reaching the final table expected to take place early in the morning. Names that you’ve heard of remaining in the field: Tom McEvoy, Men Nguyen, Tom Franklin, and Avery Cardoza.

The $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Eight or Better started with about 720, of which about 150 are remaining at this time. Notable names at the top include Joe Hachem, Layne Flack, Kathy Liebert, Chris Ferguson, Chip Jett, and Jeff Bryan, who allegedly left with $3,000 more than he should have after a 6-way chop was negotiated in one of the nightly $340 tournaments at the Rio last week. It appears that the tournament staff won’t honor chops and that the players have to settle it amongst themselves. See this post for more details.

Update: The thread has been updated with Jeff Bryan’s side of the deal.

More tomorrow, as we get the $50,000 HORSE underway at 5pm…

Jerry will have his work cut out for him, as he has about 61k chips.

Josh, is still very strong with 306k. He’s got Chip Jett at his table. Previously, his toughest opponent at his table was Carlos Mortenson. “I was scared of him,” Josh says.

The avg. stack is currently 154,000.

The biggest deal today is HOWARD AND SUZIE LEDERER’S barbecue (w/ STEPHEN Z) the final table of the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha World Championship … with DOYLE BRUNSON looking to put the screws to Phil Hellmuth:

Seat 1 – Doyle Brunson – 510,000
Seat 2 – Patrik Antonius – 650,000
Seat 3 – Marco Traniello – 420,000
Seat 4 – Rene Mouritsen – 775,000
Seat 5 – Tommy Ly – 1,895,000
Seat 6 – Jonas Flug-Entin – 445,000
Seat 7 – Steve Sung – 175,000
Seat 8 – Stephen Ladowski – 360,000
Seat 9 – Robert Mizrachi – 1,090,000

Click here to follow the Best of Omaha, semi-live.

If you want to follow it closer-to-live, it’s being video broadcast today. Mean Gene tells me word is that the event won’t be sequestered … instead it will be broadcast without the hour delay, but no hole cards visible.

Meanwhile, at the secondary final table of $1,000 SHOE, PAT POELS (above) looks to reclaim the ARIZONA POSSE bracelet lead as he is gunning for his third. He was chip leader for most of the day yesterday, but took a big hit right at the end.

The Final Table:

Seat 1: Vladimir Shchemelev – 168,000
Seat 2: Chip Jett – 40,000
Seat 3: Dao Bac – 266,000
Seat 4: Imre Leibold – 250,000
Seat 5: Patrick Poels – 53,000
Seat 6: Raymond Davis – 235,000
Seat 7: Adam Geyer – 293,000
Seat 8: Michael Craig – 161,000

Click here to follow today’s most important mixed-games action.

Mad props to fellow Andy Beal stalker blogger MICHAEL CRAIG (left), who has made his second final table of the WSOP (and also has some ARIZONA roots apparently). CHIP JETT (right), who I believe hails from Arizona originally, is fighting to hang.

Tomorrow he and his wife KARINA are hosting an party at a Las Vegas strip club, by the way:

Another player to watch … RAYMOND DAVIS (left — not from Arizona) has also been kicking butt this year, and seems due for big score. LUCKY LIU (right) just missed the final table. He is STEVE WONG’S poker mentor. Shout out … nice go, LL!

Both TOM SCHNEIDER and MICHELE LEWIS are competing in the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout today. Tom made the final table in this event last year, and Michele made a final table in Limit Hold’em, and cashed in a No-Limit shootout.

Since shootouts dictate that only one in 10 move on, Pokerati swears we don’t want to see them at the same table for the sake of PHOTOGRAPHIC CONVENIENCE.

DONKEY BOMBER wants to cash really bad in this — the deeper the better — to lock up Milwaukee’s Best Light Player of the Year. He’s trying to hold off JEFF LISANDRO, who is well-chipped going into Day 2 of the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em w/ Rebuys event. Interestingly enough, these two have a pending $5,000 bet — not on who will finish higher in the POY standings, but over the NUMBER OF ENTRANTS into the main event. Tom has the under on 5,850.

If you have an opinion about the rightness of Ladies events, JENNIFER NEWELL has an interesting article — and new perspective on tournaments lacking a Y chromosome.

Looks like something out of E.T., no?

This presumably has something to do with why a fourth Day 1 for the main event was added. Really would be unfair to any players who had to start in the “poker superstructure.”

As the WSOP rolls on, the cash games are getting bigger and bigger — but where are the pros? Follow coverage of the LIVE ACTION at PokerWorks.

Dallas Dealer BETH LAIRD, seen here with ALLEN CUNNINGHAM and STEVEN Z(olotow) in the $1,000 2-7 Triple Draw w/ Rebuys.

RAFI AMIT won that event in the early Monday a.m. As they tend to do in mixed games, the ARIZONA POSSE represented … with DANNY FUHS just missing the final table, but still scoring a POSITIVE EV cash.