101 players remain as the players return from their dinner break shortly. The current chip leader is Darvin Moon of Oakland, Maryland with 5,700,000 in chips. Some notables returning with chips: Eugene Katchalov (3,600,000), Fabrice Soulier (3,550,000), Jeff Shulman (3,200,000), Phil Ivey (2,680,000), James Akenhead (2,500,000), Antonio Esfandiari (2,300,000), Dennis Phillips (2,200,000), Tom Schneider (1,571,000), Prahlad Friedman (1,280,000), Peter Eastgate (940,000), Noah Boeken (481,000), Joe Sebok (300,000) and Kenny Tran (262,000). There are still two women left as well: Nichoel Peppe (1,300,000) and Leo Margets (1,195,000).

Notable eliminations: Joe Hachem, David Benyamine, J.C. Tran, Theo Tran, Bertrand Grospellier, Blair Hinkle and Joe Serock.

The Dream Team Poker event is down to Kenna James versus Judy Tejwani for the individual title. Congrats again goes to the Tao of Pokerati team for clinching the team title a few hours ago. Live updates now available for the Main Event at www.wsop.com and more stuff from the rest of the writing team during the evening.

Edit: Here’s the official chip counts:

Sunday brought another three-level day to the WSOP, with just 185 players remaining when play resumes Monday afternoon at 12pm. The current unofficial leader is Warren Zackey, who’s listed from Honeydew, South Africa with 4,977,000 in chips. The most notable name at the top of the leaderboard is 2007 WSOP POY and member of Team Pokerati Tom Schneider at 3,168,000, good for 4th place. More notables, with their unofficial chip counts: Noah Boeken (2,4000,000), Eugene Katchalov (2,1000,000), Ludovic Lacay (1,685,000), Fabrice Soulier (1,450,000), Bertrand Grospellier (1,400,000), Blair Hinkle (1,100,000), Joe Sebok (1,100,000), Joe Hachem (1,000,000), Peter Eastgate (927,000), Blair Rodman (890,000), Joe Serock and Prahlad Friedman (760,000) and Kenny Tran (700,000).

Notable eliminations: Kevin O’Donnell, Mickey Mills, Cornel Cimpan, Kara Scott, Dan Shak, Nick Binger, Bobby Baldwin, Kevin Saul, William Robertie and Can Kim Hua.

Hopefully the official chip counts will be coming shortly, and Pokerati will be the 5th place to find them. Follow Pokerati also for Dream Team Poker updates, when they return from dinner break.

Recapping the Tuesday night activities as we begin week four of the WSOP…

Van Alstyne Back in the Saddle with HORSE Triumph

James Van Alstyne, who finished second in the $3,000 HORSE event last week after holding the chip lead, came back in the $1,500 HORSE event to take down his first WSOP bracelet along with the $247,003 winnings. Tad Jurgens was runnerup, Mitch Schock finished third, and Bryan Micon, named one of poker’s “true anarchists” in Nolan Dalla’s final table report, finished fourth.

Boyes Buoyed by Chip Lead

The $2,000 NL Holdem event starts day 3 with 19 players remaining as they play down to a bracelet winner with Jason Boyes the current chip leader at 976,000. Finland’s Mika Paasonen is in 2nd place to try to be the 2nd Finn with a WSOP bracelet this year. Angel Guillen (496,000) and Peter “Nordberg” Feldma (486,000), and Daniel Makowsky (177,000) appear to be the most notable players remaining.

Limit Holdem Left with a Not So Dirty Dozen

The $10,000 Limit Holdem World Championship has twelve players remaining as they resume at 1pm today to reach the final table for a scheduled 2pm broadcast on ESPN360 and wsop.pkr.com. Here’s how the remaining players are seated with plenty of familiar names for the poker viewer:

Seat 1: Maria Ho – 228000
Seat 3: Greg ‘FBT’ Mueller – 485000
Seat 4: Pat Pezzin – 300000
Seat 5: Kenny Hsiung – 831000
Seat 6: Soheil Shamseddin – 385000
Seat 9: Jennifer Harman – 126000

Seat 1: Matt Glantz – 483000
Seat 4: Chad Brown – 545000
Seat 5: Matt Hawrilenko – 601000
Seat 7: Michiel Brummelhuis – 687000
Seat 8: Mark Klecan – 603000
Seat 9: Daniel Alaei – 330000

Unfortunately, Ville Wahlbeck finished outside the money, but maintains his WSOP Player of the Year lead.

The Pros Strike Back Against the Donks

The $1,500 NL Holdem event returns at 2pm with 240 players remaining, only 216 get paid. James Taylor, unfortunately not this James Taylor has the chip lead with 174,400. More notable names are near the top of the leaderboard include: Eugene Katchalov (90,600), Roberto Romanello (89,400), Phil Hellmuth (88,100), Pat Poels (84,500), Quinn Do (80,600), Roland de Wolfe (61,300), and Allen Cunningham (60,200).

Wednesday’s Tournament

Only one event again on the calendar today, with the debut of the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event. This event usually is played with rebuys, but their elimination this year makes this a new event. As usual, players will start with 5,000 in chips followed by two “free rebuy” chips to add to their stacks at any time in the first three levels. The WSOP Staff Guide projects a field of 250, but expect closer to 400 when play starts at noon this afternoon. Follow along with the action at www.wsop.com and return to Pokerati during the day for other stuff.

The morning update for those that didn’t stay up all night to watch…

Zac Attac!

Zac Fellows took down the $3,000 HORSE event in a marathon final table just a couple hours ago, outlasting James Van Alstyne to take a bracelet home to Canada along with $311,899. With five players left, Van Alstyne had over half the chips in play, while Fellows was extremely short stacked. Eventually he worked his way to heads-up with Van Alstyne, the stacks nearly even. After nearly two hours of heads-up action, Fellows would finally finish off Van Alstyne, leaving him drawing dead in the holdem round to finish 2nd, good for nearly $200,000 and take him over the $3m mark in career tournament earnings.

Shootout at the Rio, Day 3

The final table is now set in the $1,500 NL Holdem Shootout with these 10 players left for a bracelet returning at 2pm to air on ESPN360 (wsop.pkr.com for those outside the US, and as always links courtesy of The Hendon Mob database:

Seat 1: Jason Somerville – 450000
Seat 2: Christopher Moore – 450000
Seat 3: Joseph Cutler – 450000
Seat 4: Jeffrey Carris – 450000
Seat 5: Michael McNeil – 450000
Seat 6: Joshua Tieman – 450000
Seat 7: Eugene Katchalov – 450000
Seat 8: Ralph Shannon – 450000
Seat 9: Andrew Margolis – 450000
Seat 10: Brandon Wong – 450000

2-7 NL Draw-ing to an End

The final table of the $10,000 NL 2-7 Single Draw World Championship finished with 10 players remaining when play ended earlier this morning. Here’s how these players are currently situated:

Seat 1: Justin ‘BoostedJ’ Smith – 122500
Seat 2: Steve Sung – 212500
Seat 3: Nick Schulman – 300000
Seat 5: Archie Karas – 264500
Seat 6: Vince Musso – 765500
Seat 7: David Benyamine – 139000

(Table 151)
Seat 2: Michael Binger – 108000
Seat 3: Ville Wahlbeck – 481000
Seat 5: Roland de Wolfe – 102000
Seat 6: John Juanda – 387000

Ville Wahlbeck continues his impressive run in World Championship events this WSOP, cashing in his fourth $10k buyin event. Steve Sung started play on Thursday 57th out of 57 players with just 6,100 in chips.

Donks Down!

The $1,500 NL Holdemevent finished exactly on the money as 270 players remain when play resumes at 2pm this afternoon. Glenn McCaffreywill start the day as chip leader at 187,800. Some of the notables who will also return on Friday: Dean Hamrick (134,700), Anthony Yeh (111,400), Kara Scott (81,700), Nam Le (57,000), and Thayer Rasmussen (50,200).

Half and Half

Day 2 of the $2,500 Omaha 8/Stud 8 resumes at 2pm with 153 players returning, 40 of which make the money. Veteran pro Can Kim Hua starts the day chip leader at 51,800. Notables trying to surpass him include: Jon Turner (43,300), Shirley Rosario (36,200), Phil Ivey (33,600), Chad Brown (31,200), and Shawn Sheikhan (29,500).

Friday’s Tournaments/Projections

The 12pm tournament will be the $1,500 Limit Holdem event, which was won last year by Jimmy Schultz for over $250,000 in a field of 883. The 5pm event makes its debut, $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8 or Better. The WSOP Staff Guide projects the $1,500 Limit Holdem event field as 880 (taking the under, 804 is my guess), while the $5,000 PLO 8 event has a projected field of 150 (take the over, 168 being my estimate).

More news during the day here at Pokerati, so come back several times during the day.

Compared to some of the marathon WPT final tables, it probably seemed like it took only ten minutes to complete the final table of the WPT Borgata Poker Open. Vivek Rajkumar did, however, win the title in only 48 hands, beating the previous record of 53 hands set by Eugene Katchalov at the December 2007 Bellagio Five Diamond.

Vivek was surrounded by his group of internet young-gunnish friends like Gobboboy and Devo, and the support probably didn’t hurt as he came to the table as the chip leader and went into heads-up play with a massive 16.8 million to 3.9 million lead over Sang Kim. That HU part of the event took only one hand, and Vivek was the latest to win a WPT title. Oh, and he won $1,424,500 to get a good haircut go along with the bracelet and the victory.

The final table results were as follows:

6th place: Andrew Knee ($237,500)
5th place: Mark Seif ($287,500)
4th place: Jason Strochak ($337,500)
3rd place: Dan Heimiller ($387,500)
2nd place: Sang Kim ($750,000)
1st place: Vivek Rajkumar ($1,424,500)

Photo courtesy of World Poker Tour, where WPT Live Updates detailed all of the final table action.

Recapping last night’s action, with an eye on what’s going on today:

As noted below, Scotty Nguyen takes down the $50,000 HORSE event, taking down almost $2,000,000, his 5th bracelet, and the first to have won the WSOP Main Event and the $50k HORSE event. Erick Lindgren’s 3rd place moves him into first in the Milwaukee’s Best WSOP Player of the Year race with just 2 tournaments left.

The $1,500 NL Holdem final table has been set, scheduled to start at 3pm. The two most notable names are two WPT winners, JC Tran and Joe Pelton, here’s how the rest of the table will look like:

Seat 1: Christoph Kohnen 293,000
Seat 2: Joe Pelton 1,093,000
Seat 3: Jesper Hoog 320,000
Seat 4: John Conroy 501,000
Seat 5: Robert Kalb 456,000
Seat 6: J.C. Tran 1,438,000 (his 3rd final table of the Series)
Seat 7: Chad Siu 185,000
Seat 8: Peter Nguyen 870,000
Seat 9: Rasmus Nielsen 2,998,000

Other tournament stuff on the next page:
More…

Recapping last night with a preview of Sunday activities:

In the $1,500 NL holdem event, Jesper Hougaard returned from the dinner break seemingly in better spirits, as he was able to recover from giving up a 6.5-1 chip lead to Cody Slaubaugh to get back to having a very slight chip lead. A single $25,000 chip separated the two when the final hand was played out as Jesper’s QQ (with a 3rd Q on the flop) crushed Cody’s A-10. Hougaard takes home the bracelet and $610,000, while Cody has the consolation of winning $389,128 for finishing 2nd.

The $10,000 Omaha 8 or Better World Championship led to another name being removed from the list of best players to never win a bracelet as David Benyamine won $535,687 and the coveted WSOP bracelet. Greg Jamison finished in 2nd, Mike Matusow finished in 5th, Eugene Katchalov was 6th, while David Chiu ended up in 8th. Benyamine’s win places him only 2 points behind Jacobo Hernandez in the ESPN WSOP Player of the Year race. The announcement that the $50,000 HORSE event later this week will count towards the standings means that plenty of big names are still in the hunt to take down that title.

The final table for today, and other stuff on page 2…

More…

Happenings tonight at the WSOP.

The $1,500 NL Holdem final table is now heads-up between Jesper Hougaard and Cody Slaubaugh. Jesper had been dominating the final table and started heads-up with $6,500,000 in chips to about 800,000 for Slaubaugh. Just 6 hands later, Slaubaugh had a nearly 2-1 chip lead as Hougaard decided it was now an opportune time to take the dinner break. They’ll return at about 9:30 PT to finish, the way it’s going it won’t take long either way. Follow along on the World Series of Poker’s update site here.

The other final table on Page 2.

More…

Recapping the Friday action and a preview for today:

The $1,500 7 Card Stud winner turned out to be Mike Rocco, who endured the barbs of Al Barbieri to take down his first bracelet and about $135,000.

The $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or Better World Championship stopped play with 18 left, they get to return at 3pm to determine their winner. The final two tables have plenty of notable names remaining, which consist of:

Table 14

1 Danny Dang 257,000
2 Stuart Paterson 96,000
3 Eugene Katchalov 252,000
4 Chau Giang 384,000
5 Shun Uchida 134,000
6 Pat Pezzin 65,000
7 David Benyamine 378,000
8 Ram Vaswani 569,000
9 Toto Leonidas 269,000

Table 15

1 Brent Carter 114,000
2 Jason Gray 347,000
3 Berry Johnston 338,000
4 Mike Matusow 396,000
5 David Chiu 372,000
6 Greg Jamison 208,000
7 Hieu “Tony” Ma 319,000
8 Ray Dehkharghani 149,000
9 William McMahan 76,000

The ESPN360 final table for today on the next page…

More…

The Five Diamond World Poker Classic brings the best in the poker world to the Bellagio each year, and 2007 was no exception. The preliminary events began in late November, and here are some of the better-known winners:

• Event #3 – $2,500 NLHE – 247 entrants, Dutch Boyd won $237,685
• Event #6 – $1,500 NLHE – 508 entrants, Chris McCormack won $239,590
• Event #7 – $2,000 NLHE – 362 entrants, Roy Winston won $230,365
• Event #8 – $2,500 NLHE – 319 entrants, David Pham won $279,845
• Event #12 – $5,000 NLHE – 307 entrants, JC Tran won $523,075

It should be noted that Tom Schneider came in fourth place in Event #3, and Courtney Harrington of PocketFives and PokerRoad made two final tables. Sully Erna, lead singer of Godsmack, came in second to JC in Event #12. Other notables who made final tables included Theo Tran, Kevin Saul, Jared Hamby, Nick Binger, Amnon Filippi, Dan Alspach, Marco Johnson, Shannon Shorr, and David Williams.

David Pham also sealed his status as the CardPlayer Player of the Year.

Next up was the $15,000 WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event. The total number of players was 664, and the prize pool was $9,661,200 – the biggest prize pool ever outside of the WSOP main event and WPT World Championship.

Hopes were high that several big names would make the final table, but many of them just couldn’t get there. Phil Ivey was the Day 1 and Day 2 chip leader but imploded on Day 3 to be eliminated. Gus Hansen was doing well for days until he busted in 22nd place, and Daniel Negreanu took a chip lead into Day 5 but was sent home in 14th. Other bustouts included Erick Lindgren in 10th, Jimmy Tran in 8th, and Raymond Davis in 7th.

Five Diamond Final Table – Courtesy of the World Poker Tour

The best known player at the final table was David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Ryan Daut is a young player who won a WPT title in January, and Jordan Rich and Eugene Katchalov are young pro players. Ken Rosen is a virtual unknown, and Ted Kearly is a 75-year old former college football coach.

In the fastest WPT final table on record, Eugene Katchalov took his final table chip lead to victory for a $2,482,605 payday. All of the action was summed up here.