Actually, they’ve been in the air all day … but the hotly contested clubs bracket is now playing, and Pokerati managed to squeeze its way in to the last seat on a very tight but pleasantly elevated press row. So we’re gonna kick it old-school semilive-blog-style, at least for a little while:
5:28 — Mike Matusow is playing Joe Hachem, but talking trash to Gabe Kaplan, a table away … calling him a “washed-up old actor.”
5:30 — My view of Tom Schneider vs. Gavin Smith is blocked by the decorative Doric column cameras. Apparently the set designers aren’t aware that Caesar’s Palace harkens back to more of an Ionic era.
5:33 — Phil Hellmuth is all-in against arguably the weakest opponent in the field … he’s got aces, and the his opponent, Tom Dwan, aka online wunderkind “Durrr” has 10s.
5:36 — Ooh! Hellmuth on the turn! Hellmuth picks up a flush draw that doesn’t get there. Poker is fun!
5:39 — Hellmuth is talking about his brilliant show of weakness to get Durrr to push as they count up his chips … yep, they were even stacked and the greatest heads-up hold’em player in the world is out.
5:41 — They were on the feature table, which now is empty. The way the room is set up, there are four tables with whole cams, and four tables without. The players that will have to move on to get better TV coverage:
Tom Schneider / Gavin Smith
Hooman Nikzad / Greg Raymer
Erik Seidel / Johnathan Little
Kenny Tran / Scott Clements
5:50 — Tom and Gavin are still about even. Antonius has taken a lead on Kaplan. Matusow is all-in against Hachem, with both players on a draw. Phill Hellmuth would like people to know he is supposed to be hanging out with “Andretti” tomorrow. (It’s a Nascar weekend here in Vegas.)
5:53 — Mike is doing his best impression of that Full Tilt commercial where he’s bluffing … and just got sucked out on and crippled by Hachem. Mike is waving an Australian flag.
5:54 — Jamie Gold’s mom, btw, is playing 1/3 in the cash room. I can’t see her chip stacks however. She looks to neither be killing the game nor getting killed.
