After it was decided to play one more level after the dinner break, the tournament staff decided to suspend play with just over 38 minutes remaining in level 19. Two possibilities: Since play started an hour later on Friday, ending it at the same time as the other Main Event days would seem right. Also, there was 21 full tables of 9 players when play was suspended. so that there wasn’t a disadvantage to the other tables.

The leader at the end of day 4 is Jeremy Joseph with over 2.18m in chips, Nikolay Losev is 2nd with 2.11m in chips. 46 players start play today with over 1m in chips, among those players include Brandon Cantu, Shawn Sheikhan, Alex Outhred, Mark Vos, David Benefield, and Gus Hansen and Allen Cunningham. Phil Hellmuth is the final remaining Main Event winner with 581,000 in chips.

Tiffany Michelle, Kara Scott, Minna Ritakorpi, Karen Manfrede, and Lisa Parsons, make up the remaining female players. To see how everyone will be seated today, head to page 2:
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About 215 players head towards their 90 minute dinner break, knowing that they’re only playing one more level when they return around 9:45pm. At that point, they should be under the magical 175 figure tournament director Jack Effel had mentioned when play could possibly be stopped early. Saturday is scheduled for another 5 two-hour levels, while on Sunday they play down to the final 27.

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…

Finally the Main Event doesn’t need to have any letters in front of the day number as about 1,300 players return at noon today to play 5 more two-hour levels of play, with the hope of playing into the money today. The curious will want to know if they can make it down to the devilish 666 for the money today, and when the arduous task of hand-for-hand play starts. The Day 2b leader appears to be Peter Biebel, with just over 515,000 in chips. Other notables near the top: Alex Outhred, Raja Kattamuri, Victor Ramdin, favorite of Pauly Diogo Borges, Jean-Robert Bellande, Phil Hellmuth and Gus Hansen.

More updates later…

One site that didn’t even make it as a write-in contender, but I clearly have been enjoying since recently discovering it: Melted Felt.

Basically The Onion of Poker. Some recent hedlines:

Iran Introduces Hanging for Slowrollers
PPA Upbeat on Donations as HR 5767 Defeated
WSOP Chaos as Gus Hansen’s Ears Run Amok!

There’re certain truths to their fake poker news that makes the limeys behind Melted Felt, imho, worth the RSS-subscribe.

After much consideration and prospective gerrymandering, upon the next update of the WSOP World Standings, we’re gonna make some switches … regardless of what they put on their official WSOP registrations, David Benyamine is soon to become fully French and Shannon Shorr will be screamin’ “Roll Tide!”

With that said, is there anyone else we should be considering for statistical reclassification? For the most part, we’re gonna defer to the Hendon Mob db … but I can think of three that are close calls:

Gus Hansen — Denmark or Vegas?
Hoyt Corkins — Alabama or Vegas?
Patrik Antonius — Finland or Monaco?

Update: Event #9 ($1,500 NL 6-handed) sold out just after play started at noon at 1,236 entrants.

What’s going on at the WSOP while I try to get an invite to Low Stakes Poker.

First the important news, Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider is chip leader at the end of day 1 of the $10k Mixed Event World Championship with ~140,000 in chips. 94 89 of the starting field of 192 in this inaugural event remain to play down to the final table of 8. 2006 WSOP POY Jeff Madsen is in 4th, while Gus Hansen, Johnny Chan, and Phil Ivey are all in contention. Play for them begins at 3pm.

More results from yesterday after the jump:
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David Chiu - Courtesy of World Poker Tour

Gus Hansen went into the final table with the chip lead and momentum to take down his fourth WPT title - this one being the sweetest of all. A WPT World Championship title was on the line, along with nearly $3.4 million. The start of the final table looked like this:

Seat 1: John Roveto 2,720,000
Seat 2: Gus Hansen 8,570,000
Seat 3: David Chiu 6,050,000
Seat 4: Tommy Le 1,950,000
Seat 5: Cory Carroll 6,670,000
Seat 6: Jeff King 1,305,000

The Great Dane took out players with a quickness - Jeff King, Tommy Le, Cory Carroll, and John Roveto. Suddenly, the player who had only played two hands at the final table thus far - David Chiu - was in the position he hoped for. An epic battle ensued… and to the shock of everyone including Gus, David played an incredible heads-up match and took it down.

BJ Nemeth wrote a first-class, first-hand account of the final table. Can’t wait to see this one on GSN!

Well-played, David. Congratulations, sir.

Just for funsies, I thought I’d make predictions on the final 6 with 61 players left — hey, if they can change a rule mid-tourney, why can’t I change my theoretical horses? So that was last night, but I fell asleep before the official chip counts went up … hence no post until now, with 45 players remaining, and all “my guys” still in (sorry, Tom, I just didn’t “feel” a monster comeback). I did make one change, however, after seeing play develop a little bit today:

Gus Hansen
Jeff King Steve Billrakis
TJ Cloutier
Jonathan Kalmar
Robert Mizrachi
Tom Dwan/Durrr

Anyone got an over/under on how many of these I’ll get right? Or perhaps their own picks based on who’s well-chipped, favorably seated, and generally playing well of late?

We discussed a poorly received tourney idea on Beyond the Table a year ago — the concept being a “men’s minority event.” I loved the idea because we’ve all played dudes-only before and women have ladies tourneys … but while all women players have been the only representative of their gender at a table before, that’s a dynamic that guys simply don’t get to experience.

Psychology would be fun, results would be interesting …Logistics was the tough part — how to limit the field to 10 (or 15) percent men and still attract the necessary entries. But one thing we never considered was a simple invitational sit-n-go.

So much to my delight, the new episode of Poker after Dark just came on and lo and behold the players this week are Gus Hansen, Vanessa Rousso, J.J. Liu, Clonie Gowen, Beth Shak, and Erica Schoenberg. Very cool — well cast with Gus, who knows they know he knows they know he can be a tad horny influenced by his respect for the ladies.

“We should make all the guys play this format one time,” Clonie just said. Barack Obama presumably agrees, as he just sat down for a very similar 6-handed sit-n-go on The View:

(L to R) Vanessa Rousso, Clonie Gowen, Gus Hansen, J.J. Liu, Beth Shak, and Erica Schoenberg appear this week on Poker after Dark.

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.

LAS VEGAS–So I’m not sure what the Jew count is in the remaining field — theological-based bloodlines are such a hard thing to determine from the ropes — but there is one regional collective challenging the hoo-hawin’ Texans for No-Limit Hold’em supremacy. That would be the Scandinavians. They have long claimed they can play … and now they are proving that poker, to them, is like the next Winter Olympics.

Scandis that made it through to Day 5:

Dag Martin Mikkelsen — Norway — 5,700,000 (chip leader)
Stefan Mattsson – Sweden — 3,200,000
Mikkel Madsen — Denmark — 1,700,000
Philip Yeh — Sweden — 1,000,000
Christian Togsverd — Denmark — 900,000

Gus Hansen — Denmark — 61st — $154,194
Bjorn-Erik Glenne — Norway — 65th — $120,288

ALT HED: Fjord vs. Chevy

LAS VEGAS–I swear we’re following more people than just Josh from Dallas … but his chip stack has hardly changed. What has changed as he’s getting closer and closer to an average stack is the player to his right … now Gus Hansen, who has a similar stack size.

UPDATE: Table changes and a couple all-ins. Read the comments below for any necessary timeline. But overall, Josh is still fine, with the same chip stack he has had for about ever.

UPDATE: From PokerNews:

John Bird Doubles Through Josh Evans

Josh Evans, playing from middle position, opened the pot for a standard raise. Action folded around to John Bird in the small blind who moved all in. Evans called and the players showed…

Evans: {4-Spades}{4-Diamonds}
Bird: {A-Spades}{10-Hearts}

The board ran out {A-Hearts}{A-Diamonds}{5-Clubs}{Q-Clubs}{3-Clubs} and John Bird doubled up to 500,000. Don’t feel bad for Evans just yet, he is still a force with just under 2,000,000.

LAS VEGAS - Most media veterans would agree that the past few days have lacked the excitement of previous main events, but that changed today when players practically spent an entire level going hand for hand to “get in the money.” Some tables took so long to play a single hand one had to wonder if a player realized stalling was costing themselves money with the fast blind structure. Nevertheless, the tournament reached the 621 mark rewarding the remaining players a longer poker resume.

On the way to dinner John Duthie said he had about 160k. Duthie picked up pocket aces in the big blind with Gus Hansen on the button… but everyone folded. A fine example of not giving up is David Levi who is still working a short stack despite starting Day 2 with only 15k in chips.

Sexy (did I say that outloud?) Fabrice Soulier (….but not as sexy as my husband) is stacked at 325k. Fabrice took 7th against Hellmuth’s 11th bracelet win earlier this summer when the temperature was still in the 90’s.

Mimi Tran (long overdue to be on WPT Ladies Night) and Shirley Williams (sponsored by Bodog) are still in the tournament. Shirley’s table was filmed briefly by ESPN which should provide fun footage as Gavin Smith was on her left.

LAS VEGAS - There were 797 players ready to take their seats at noon today. Still able to go for the gold as of 3:30pm PT are JC Tran, John Duthie - Mr. EPT (see photo), Gus Hansen, Huck Seed, Gavin Smith, Sorel Mizzi, Mimi Tran, Fabrice Soulier, Shirley Williams (David’s mom) and Tobey “Spiderman” Maguire.