The $1,000 NL Hold’em Stimulus Special looks to be a huge success, as day 1a appears to be sold out with at least 2,800 entered. There’s still some room for tomorrow’s day 1b, but it looks like that field will also be maxed out before play gets underway at 12 noon today. The WSOP Staff Guide projected 5,305 entrants and that has already been exceeded, so I’ll take the cheap win and take the over with a field of 5700 who will eventually play this weekend as the WSOP staff finds a few additional tables to put on the floor to accommodate the field.

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Hold’em event returns for day 3 action today at 2pm with 23 players playing down to Sunday’s ESPN final table. Justin Bonomo will start action as the chip leader with 2,678,000 in chips, Ted Forrest in 2nd with 2,586,000, and David “WhoooKidd” Baker in 3rd with 2,367,000. Greg Raymer is the last remaining World Champion in the field, in 4th place with 2,287,000. Other notable names include Alec Torelli, Dani Stern, Matt Glantz, Isaac Haxton, David Chiu, Neil Channing, Andy Black, and Andrew Robl.

The $1,500 Omaha Eight or Better also comes back at 2pm today with 197 players remaining from their record field of 918. 2008 winner Thang Luu appears to have returned to his winning form, as he’ll start play today as the chip leader with 73,600 in chips. Other notable names remaining in the field include Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Todd Brunson, and Brandon Cantu. Their final table is also scheduled for Sunday, although with much less exposure than what will be a mix of live and online stars of the 40k event or the WSOP Champions Invitational event, which also starts on Sunday. More to come today, with an update soon (?) if the Stimulus Special has sold out.

8am Update: Under 80 seats left for Sunday.
10:30am Update: 5,839 registered from Da Commish’s Twitter

There’s a lot of interesting action going on tonight. The $40k NLH seems to have quite the storylines developing … Chris Moneymaker (@cmoneymaker) is still alive and strong, but the chip leader is now his new-poker-era successor, Greg Raymer. Justin Bonomo (@JustinBonomo) is still proving to be a big threat … all these boomtime champions, yet plenty of old dogs there, too — Steven Zolotow, David Chiu, Ted Forrest, e.g. — representin’ those pre-boom big-time days.

There are currently 38 players remaining, with 27 making the money. Click here to follow the official chip counts – and Dr. Pauly is all over this one, too.

UPDATE: Moneymaker just took a huge hit, losing 2/3 of his stack.

RE-UPDATE: Pauly is ahead of the official counters — Moneymaker is out. So is Zolotow.

There’s also some potential excitement brewing in the ESPN Fantasy Pool, with Matt Glantz (@MattGlantz, one of my guys) way up near the top of the chip counts; and Mathers has Neil Channing hanging on for his team of fantasy scabs.

Vanessa Rousso (@VanessaRousso) is also still alive, though barely. Wouldn’t it be something …

Last but definitely not least, Dallas/Shreveport baller Keith Lehr (pictured) is currently 5th in chips.

Today’s $1,500 Omaha 8 or Better tournament drew a record (for Omaha 8 ) 918 participants, with the eventual winner taking home over $263,000. No clear chip leader has emerged from the field, but some notable players who won’t take home a bracelet include : Barry Shulman, Mike Matusow, Jerry Buss, and Allen Cunningham. As the players near their 90-minute dinner break, nearly 600 will be enjoying their meal.

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Holdem tournament is now in their hour-long dinner break, with 44 players remaining. For those who were wondering if there’s injuries in poker, 2008 WPT Championship winner David Chiu was receiving treatment for an injured right wrist. How this injury came up is unknown, but an explanation may come out shortly. Justin Bonomo entered the break as chip leader with 1,350,000 in chips, with Lex “RaSZi” Veldhuis in 2nd with 1,335,000, and Greg Raymer 3rd at 1,326,000. Day 1 chip leader Bruno Fitoussi was eliminated shortly before the dinner break. When the players return, they have another four levels or 18 players remaining, whichever comes first.

For anyone looking to play in this weekend’s $1,000 Stimulus Special and hasn’t registered, there are over 4,400 who have done so, with over 2,200 registered for day 1a Saturday already. The expected cap for each day 1 is 2,800 and it looks like it’ll be at least one day could be sold out shortly unless more tables get added. Stay tuned for more stuff during the evening.

Earlier this morning, Andrew Cohen became the first bracelet winner of the WSOP as he took down the $500 Casino Employees event. Cohen, a bartender at the N9ne Steakhouse at the Palms, took down $83,833 and will take part in the first bracelet ceremony of the Series at approximately 2:20pm in the Amazon room. Paul Peterson, a barback at the Mandalay Bay, finished 2nd.

At 2pm, the 40th Annual $40,000 NL Event will start their day 2 with 89 players remaining. Bruno Fitoussi will start play as chip leader with 812,500 in chips. Chris Moneymaker is close behind in 2nd with 805,000, with Justin Bonomo in 3rd with 738,000. With the final table scheduled for Sunday, it’s likely they’ll play down to the money today, which will be the final three tables.

The next bracelet event on the schedule will begin at 12 noon with Event #3, $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or Better. Last year, Thang Luu won $243,342 in a field of 832. This year, the WSOP Staff Guide projects a field of 916 for today’s event. Taking into account that tomorrow will be day 1a of the $1,000 NL Holdem “Stimulus Special”, taking the under on this projection looks like the logical play here. I’ll suggest that the field size will be closer to 850. You can check out the WSOP site for updates during the day to follow the action and to see how right or wrong I guessed. More stuff from the rest of the team during the day.

More from @JustinBonomo (who is one of 89 out of 201 players remaining in the $40k NLH):

Oh man. Same thing if you fold out of turn. Even if its an accident, automatic 1 hand penalty. Wsop always makes the craziest new rules.

Click here for the latest $40k chip counts.

The $40k NLH is movin’ along … 111 left out of 201. One of the guys near the top in chips, @JustinBonomo, says:

Just broke 500k, but can’t believe new rule. Any card ACCIDENTALLY exposed is a 1 hand penalty. Dealers are instructed to always enforce it.

I tend not to like the absoluteness in the hands of a dealer, but then again, it is just one hand.

Click below to see who’s still alive and who’s busted:

(Chris Moneymaker is winning.)

More…

In a case of subtraction by addition, the last two players to register for the 40th Annual $40k NL holdem event cost the eventual winner almost $135,000. Going by the WSOP’s payout structure, the winner would have taken 26.5% of the prize pool, or $2,025,000. However, the last two entrants pushed the payout into another bracket, as the winner takes down 24.5% of the prize pool–$1,891,000. The players are currently on their dinner break, to return at 8:30pm to play a few more levels tonight. 150 players remain when play resumes, some known names who don’t have to worry about returning: Daniel Negreanu, David Benyamine, Annie Duke, David Williams and John Juanda. The top three on the leaderboard: Antonio Esfandiari, Justin Bonomo and Chris Moneymaker, who have increased their 120,000 starting stack to over 400,000 so far.

The other tournament taking place, the $500 Casino Employees event, is also on a dinner break with 17 players remaining, with a winner to be crowned tonight. Andrew Cohen is the current chip leader with over 360,000 in chips. Team Pokerati member John Harris was knocked out in 26th place to take home $2,475.

Follow the players progress at www.worldseriesofpoker.com, and I’ll be back in the morning with more discussion on what day it really is at the WSOP. a recap of today’s events.

There’s quite a heads-up battle going on right now between Justin Bonomo and the Grinder, Michael Mizrachi. Blogger Jon Katkin is on the rail and sends along these iPhone pics of the action:

Most recently: Bonomo’s won a couple monster pots and it could be over soon.

We try not to engage in too much schadenfreude here at Pokerati, but the last post about Amarillo Slim’s efforts to restore his stature in the poker world has me contriving a poll in my head about who are/were the most undesirable people in/from poker.

Current Poker Sith Lords
Russ Hamilton — guilty til proven innocent, and with good cause.
Ernie Scherer III — he’s still innocent til proven guilty, but considering that he faces the death penalty for killing his parents to pay off poker debts — and the last 10 Google searches found on his computer were “countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.“, I think we can rest assured that he will not become a Full Tilt pro anytime soon.

Dishonorable Mentions
James McDaniel — this Dallas poker room operator was convicted of killing an ex-cop, engaged in collusion in Oklahoma (my personal observation and unproven accusation), and is currently on trial for supplying drugs to one of his railbirds who ended up OD’d-dead in a portable toilet.

Reformed Reputations
Jamie Gold
Justin Bonomo
Dutch Boyd

Jury Still Out
David Sklansky — technically crime-free, but young aspiring female players are hardly flocking to his tutelage.
Amarillo Slim — he says he’s not guilty, and his family and a lie detector now apparently agree, even though his criminal record implies otherwise.
Layne Flack — everybody seems to like Layne, but unless he’s working undercover a la Poker Brasco, hanging with Russ Hamilton surely won’t help him get sponsored by Ultimate Bet.

So who else? Really, I’m not looking for a bunch of potentially libelous name-calling … but I am looking to create a list of once and future poker bad-guys, and maybe a rating system for criminals and outcasts and offenses that may or may not attract the attention of law enforcement, but still result in scorn and contempt from fellow poker players.

Just because my poker telecasting career the PokerBowl seems to have fizzled under a cloud of overt mishandlement (like the video’s gone and everything), don’t think the concept of organized semi-collusion has been simply tried and dismissed. A different operation — Dream Team Poker — pulled off a successful invitational at the Hard Rock in November, and sure enough, as is always the case with these team poker events … everyone had a great funky-slightly-different-poker time. And the winners (Bluff publisher Eric Morris, editor Matt Parvis, and tournament ringer ZeeJustin) actually got paid — $39k divvied up accordingly.

Dream Team Poker 2 is ready to go — Mar 27-29 at Caesar’s — and this one will be an open event … so any threesome with $1,650 ($500+50 per person) can get in on the action. Because the buy-in is both big enough and low enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this be something of a good-ole-fashioned pro-am event … especially if some of the pros who have been buying into similarly priced Venetian Deep Stacks lately feel they have an edge because they’ve played in a couple of these team tournaments already.

Click here for tourney details and to preregister online.

What starts out as background talk between Eli Elezra and Patrik Antonius during the Poker After Dark cash game last week ends up getting Howard Lederer’s panties in a severe wad … not just when Antonius extols the greatness of being able to play online anonymously, but even more uncomfortably when Elezra (wearing a Full Tilt patch) confesses: “I have 17 accounts on Full Tilt.”

About 2:10 is where the relevant discourse starts:

Seriously, this is such an issue that online poker will eventually have to deal with in some way. Get the feeling if one of the online rooms launched a multi-accounting crackdown, they might lose half their players/avatars? It’s a rule the online sites have in place for the sake of security and game integrity, or at least as a component of legal disclaimer. And yet it’s counter-intuitive to one of the things that makes doing anything online, let alone poker — semi-anonymity — desirable.

The same issue is relevant at PokerStars … and for now, because both these operations, FTP and Stars, operate outside the (American) law*, the fates of players in violation of this unpopular rule — and the money in their accounts — is left to the discretion of an unregulated company, in an anything but an open forum.

* Not saying these are illegal businesses … just noting that they operate off-shore, and therefore fall outside American jurisdiction in most legal and business matters.

Will be curious to see if Elezra faces any sort of patch suspension for his “breakthrough” during poker therapy. Lederer has been super-diligent about protecting the integrity of “Play with the Pros” ever since Phil Hellmuth got called out for letting an amateur friend play as “Phil Hellmuth” on UB. But then again, perhaps Elezra has a solid defense: “just kidding … trying to put Howard on tilt in a cash game setting.”

Also curious if we’ll ever see the likes of Justin Bonomo consulting online sites the way reformed shoplifters get hired to advise retail corps on how to limit their losses from grift.

Link props: Wicked Chops

One of the guys speaking last night in Denver (and so few seemed to be listening) was none other than Former Rep. Jim Leach (R-IO). We hate him! He’s pretty much the architect of the UIGEA, having written the defeated house bill that would be repackaged in the Senate and passed by Bill Frist.

But apparently, since being ousted, he’s had a change of political heart and is abandoning the Republican right wing in favor of the Obamawagon.

Here’s what the 2+2 kids have been saying about his transformation, and whether or not this makes him the Justin Bonomo of politics. And here’s what non-poker forums (do they really exist?) are saying.

I’m not so sure I trust this guy, but some of the things he said that caught my attention:

Yet what frustrates so many citizens is … the way today’s Republican Party has broken with its conservative heritage.

The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. … And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts.

Full transcript here.

Interestingly enough, Leach’s speech was followed by the commercial below, starring Matt Damon, the poker-friendly star of Rounders, for One.org:

Alas, no mention of poker on that site, either, as their special interest is apparently in ending global poverty. Hmmm … not sure how we can tailor the poker message to tie in with their worthy cause. But hey, we do know that Matt Damon is, um, “doing things” to Sarah Silverman, who will be playing in the PPA charity tourney tonight. So the connection between ending global poverty and allowing people all over the world to bet tens of thousands of dollars on a flush draw could be closer than we think!

I’m just askin’ … watchin’ a little WSOP, and after an hour-and-a-half of ZeeJustin, I see a dude who’s good — really good — and possibly due for an ass-kicking.

UPDATE: Erick Lindgren says Bonomo is “the future of poker.”

Today’s attendance at day 1c of the Main Event was a vast improvement over the past two days, as 1,928 laid their money down to participate in the Main Event. Rumors are circulating that Sunday will have a complete sellout of 2,700 which would take them near the 7,000 figure that seemed improbable on Thursday. Among those whose dream is already over, such notables as: Huck Seed, Larry Flynt, Sean Buchanan, Gavin Griffin, Mimi Tran, Justin Bonomo, David Chiu, Bart Hanson, and Marco Traniello.

The leader at the dinner break appears to be Michael Martin, who is just under 100,000 in chips. More familiar names near the top: Jeff Madsen, Chris Moneymaker, Mike Matusow, TJ Cloutier, and the lovely and talented Liz Lieu, Clonie Gowen, Evelyn Ng, Kara Scott, and Isabelle Mercier. More updates can be found at the WSOP update site here.

The returning horde of about 1,500 will return shortly to play two more two-hour levels, with those survivors returning to play on Wednesday, July 9.

More updates during the evening…

Even on Day 3, when the majority of the players in the $50K HORSE event have long been eliminated, the rail is two- and three-deep where the last few tables are being played. When fans see Brunson, Ivey, Negreanu, and the like, they want to see the TV personalities up close. In reality, the fans are being kept at a very safe distance from the tables, but that won’t stop them from trying to get closer. And as the picture below shows, they were already packed along the rail before most players returned from tonight’s dinner break.

At the very end of the rail, I ran into some interesting folks. First, Justin Bonomo’s mom, step-dad, and uncle were behind the rope but as close as they could get to Justin’s table. They knew that he was a short stack when he returned from dinner, but they were so hopeful and positive. “He’s going to get some good hands here,” said his step-dad. But alas, only a few hands later, Justin was eliminated, and his family was there for support. A player couldn’t ask for more…

I also ran into two gentlemen with European-ish accents. One of them asked me to identify a player in a hat and red shirt at the table furthest from them. He was getting a massage and had his head down, which made it difficult to see his face from our rail vantage point. “Daniel Negreanu,” I said. “That cannot be! He look like black guy from here.” I assured him, as did several others around us, that it was Daniel and he was, in fact, white. He finally accepted it, and his buddy told me why it was important. They had a $100 bet on it, and the racially-confused fan went ahead and paid up.

Just a little chunk of what goes on from the sidelines…