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…

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What’s happening at the WSOP while GSN considers picking up a new show, High Stakes Dice.

Speaking of Ivey, he’s currently in the top 10 at the $5,000 NL 2-7 KC Lowball event. Tom Dwan currently is chip leader at 238,900 with about half of the field remaining. In third is Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider with 153,500. Play resumes at 3pm this afternoon as they’ll play down to their final table of 7.

Final tables and what starts today after the jump:

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Nolan Dalla’s recap and pic tell the story:

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Not super-related to poker … but as Houston poker-raid cases make their way through the notably harsh Harris County court system, I couldn’t help but think about how in Texas, playing underground poker is basically the same crime as decapitating a corpse and smoking pot out of the skull, which some kids not playing poker did there recently. [via Iggy]

Fourteen of the 15 people arrested in last week’s raid at The Palms in Houston have been charged with engaging in organized crime.

From KHOU:

The district attorneys office has now charged 14 of those arrested with engaging in organized crime, which is a felony offense. Those charged were allegedly dealers, game runners and waiters or waitresses at the club where the bust took place.

ALT HED: Murmur

Here’s the video:

The Houston Police Department has fired back at Pokerati’s assertion that the SWAT team was necessary for their raid on The Palms.

From KHOU:

HPD’s Vice Division was so concerned about being able to get inside what they said was an illegal poker room, SWAT was called in to make sure the raid went off without a hitch.

This wasn’t an easy place to get into. The door was secured with locks and you had to have a special card to get in.

And a security company had been hired to watch the place from the outside.

Police tell us this was a place to play high dollar poker. Texas Hold ‘Em poker to be exact.

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This is not a stock photo. It is recent KHOU footage of poker players being rounded up so they can plea down to a traffic ticket and receive deferred adjudication.

So I just took a look at the pictures from the Houston poker bust at The Palms, which really I think has to be called a “raid” any time machine guns are brought into play. Maybe I’m just getting sappy, but these photos — they look soooo familiar — actually offend me. If HPD is trying to put a scare into poker players and operations, congratulations on your short-term success.

Now if you don’t mind, could you provide the people of Houston a detailed accounting of how much Operation Drawing Dead cost?

I thought we were moving into a “sensible government” phase in this country … but apparently not. And if the HPD would allow me to call at least one of its bluffs:

HPD said SWAT was needed because the building was secure and guarded by a private security firm.

Not true. Just ask the Dallas police about this … it only causes you more trouble, and makes the prosecutors and citizenry less sympathetic to your cause. Hey, I’m just a blogger — not a law enforcement specialist — but I can tell you a better way to do your job. If you want to shut down a poker room, simply park a marked police car outside the front door. It’s that simple. Dealers won’t go to work, and players won’t go in. And it will cost you the citizens you are paid to protect a lot less money.

ALT HED: Strong Means Weak

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That’s about all we know right now. We’ll try to find out a little more … please feel free to share what you may know, particularly if you were there.

Turns out the Houston poker “bust” was hardly a raid in the Dallas SWAT sense of the word, but presumably reliable sources tell Pokerati that six uniformed police officers were poking around in the Houston underground last night … stopping play at one room (unceremoniously and without violence) to conduct some sort of investigation.

Either that or this police squadron just happened to include a bunch of poker players looking for a fun and fair place to play after they got off-duty.

Cops arrived around midnight to a game located in an industrial office park complex in (West?) Houston, where reportedly about 30 players had shown up for a $60 tourney with $20 rebuys — your typical white-collar assortment of lawyers, accountants, realtors and housewives with maybe a few random thugs in the mix. Police entered through doors on two different sides of the room without guns drawn … instructing players to put their money and IDs on the table. While running standard warrant checks they asked a few questions about what was being played, whether or not there was a rake, who was running the game, etc.

(Not sure what answers if any were given, nor how many players in the house had notoriously bad poker faces likely to give off tells.)

The un-armored squadron left after about two hours — no arrests or citations issued — at which point several players also departed. Supposedly a few of them got pulled over on their way out and were asked more questions. Inside the poker room, play resumed.

A Houston poker game was raided by the 5-0 last night … our H-town correspondent was off in Vegas yesterday (competing in an Ultimate Poker Challenge Ladies event), but she is now rushing back to the home office to get the real dirt have dinner with her kids.

Developing …

More info TK.