Yep. Standard raise:

We know this Bentley belongs to David Williams — am extra-smooth ride befitting a WPT World Champ for the long haul from Panorama Towers.

Guessing this Porsche might belong to Ansky? Spotted it in the WSOP valet lot, but only a couple times:

And am thinking this car, spotted early morning in the Rio employee lot, is more likely to belong to one of the Donkdown guys than Tony G. Though maybe not, because it is a turbo:

More WSOP license plates coming … whether you like them or not!

The status of PokerPages has been up in the air ever since they announced they’d be closing up shop effective Oct. 31. That day passed and they still kept publishing — and even sent two reporters to cover the November Nine. But no original content has been put up on the site since Dec. 3. Everyone was expecting some sort of sale, and now that has apparently gone through.

PokerPages, of course, is one of the oldest poker information sites on the internet – having reported on tournaments since 2000 … and having built a massive tourney/player/results database in the process.

What PokerStars plans to do with a site they haven’t yet told many people they’ve bought (or intend to buy) remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the transition from NeverwinPoker to Donkdown seems complete — with the old NWP forums successfully transfered over to their new home. Donkdown is now a Bryan Micon and Todd Witteles (aka “Dan Druff”) joint, with no more Tony G or Dustin Woolf, who is now the lone face for his namesake site.

Speaking of forums … 2+2 honcho Mason Malmuth has sued Dutch Boyd (and a guy named Anthony Scocozza) over domain squatting issues.

Oh, and our once-superbeloved PokerBlog.com … yeah, they’re apparently gone. For at least the past week, visiting the site gives you this message:

Fatal error: Table ‘./pokerblog/cache’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: SELECT data, created, headers FROM cache WHERE cid = ‘variables’ in /home/pokerblogcom/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66

R.I.P. Yeah, seems kinda appropriate. PokerBlog was/is a PartyPoker operation … but now they seem to be focussing blogging efforts on their more official company blog.

UPDATE: PokerBlog is back. Looks like we can expect some WPT coverage there.

Tony G and the semi-corporate interests at PokerNews, who bought a controlling interest in the “gossip site” two years ago, have turned off the infamously uncensored forum. It simply wasn’t “converting” supposedly.

But don’t expect thousands of black-cock refugees to suddenly flood 2+2. Neverwin pioneer Bryan Micon is launching a new site for his toxic flock of angry outcasts at www.donkdown.com.

Meanwhile, PokerPages is somehow staying afloat — producing semi-regular new poker articles — despite declarations that they’d be fully out of business by the end of October.

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.

de Wolfe wins de Triple Crown

Roland de Wolfe became the second player (after Gavin Griffin) to win poker’s Triple Crown (Winning a WSOP bracelet, WPT main event and EPT main event) with his triumph in the $5,000 PLO 8 or Better event, defeating Brett Richey in heads-up play. Dual Omaha bracelet winner Scott Clemens finished in 3rd.

Obligatory Limit Holdem Winner Mention

Sweden’sTomas Alenius defeated Jason Tam heads-up in the $1,500 Limit Holdem event. Day 3 chip leader Al “Sugar Bear” Barbieri finished 3rd. Fortunately for the WSOP staff, they have Sweden’s national anthem already downloaded.

Heads-Up Down to Sweet 16

Round 5 of the $10,000 NL Holdem Heads Up World Championship is down to its final 16 competitors, with one more round of play before the winners return on Monday. Among the survivors: Jason Mercier, Mike Caro, Leo Wolpert, Roberto Romanello, Bryan Pellegrino, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Dustin “Neverwin” Woolf, Johnny Chan and WSOP runner-up in 2008, Alec Torelli.

$2,500 PLO Debut a Success

A larger than expected field of 436 started the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha event, with 153 returning after the dinner break. The unofficial chip leader is Jesse Rios, with another four levels of play to finish the day.

Late Night HORSE

The $1,500 HORSE event started about three hours ago and a field of 770 left the starting gate. No established chip leaders at this time, but they have eight levels of play to leader going into the first turn. Check out www.wsop.com and give Pokerati a visit during the rest of your Sunday evening/early Monday morning.

Fast forward to earlier today, when Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler posted on 2+2 that Hall still has not gotten his domain name back from Boyd. So is Dutch Boyd playing hardball, or is he so wrapped up in his battle with Pokerhost that he’s forgotten all about the photographer and his humble web home? A poker community is watching…

Here’s the clip from the Neverwin guys talking with Dutch about the domain:

6,844 entrants in the 2008 WSOP main event.

I jut had a wonderful discussion with WPT honcho Steve Lipscomb. He didn’t laugh when I asked him if he was looking for a job with the WSOP.

Team Pokerati updates:

Tom Schneider is hurting. Like 7k in chips last we checked.

Donkey texts in (we’re still getting his CSR set up) — “Back down to 20k after 2nd level.. Thought Micon was playing AK. he had 77. I had 66. Cost 4k to see river”

Damn, that sucks. And oh yeah, Donkey is playing with Micon from Neverwin two or three seats to his left, and Beth Shak on the other end of the table. (Donkey doesn’t know who she is — but he is aware that she is all patched up.

Jerry Randack was doing fine last I checked. Saw him skillfully (albeit a bit cautiously) play Ace-rag with an ace on the flop, and build a nice pot to the point that he got a really nice call by the time he rivered the nut flush.

No report on Robert Goldfarb. Serves him right for not wearing his patch. But he is texting in his status on breaks.

The Big Randy looks to be playing very comfortably … with about 26k in chips.

More TK, of course. The big buzz of the day wasn’t about Phil Hellmuth‘s pro wrestling-esque army-tank entrance … it was about the presence of Ultimate Fighters, including Chuck Liddell and Forest Griffin, who won a big fight just last night.

Um, go poker!

UPDATE: There was a rumor about some smaller agents being shaken down by a bigger one. It didn’t check out, however, on first call … but there’s gotta be something to it — the agent battles are getting harsh as all compete for a piece of nine heretofore unknown needles in a a haystack of 6,844.

Jen and Dan are taking care of the HORSE event, so I don’t need to duplicate their work, but they’re about to return from dinner break 5-handed.

The $2,000 NL Holdem event was won by Brazilian Alexandre Gomes, the first for that country, moving them up big time in the World Standings. Gomes takes home just over $770,000 while Marco Johnson won’t be feeling super with his 2nd place earnings of just over $491,000.

The $1,500 NL Holdem event is down to 40 as they play down to their final table. Among the notables remaining: JC Tran, Men Nguyen, Andy Black, Joe Pelton, Hevad Kahn. Follow their action on the World Series of Poker website here.

Other tournament action, following the leap:

The $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha World Championship drew a field of 381, of which 162 remain. Among the notables on the leaderboard: Josh Arieh, Rob Hollink, Jonas Entin, David Williams, Clonie Gowen, Scott Clements and Jeffrey Lisandro. They can be followed here.

The $1,500 HORSE event drew a record field of 803, of which 784 remain. Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider is the current chip leader, but there’s a long way to go before anyone can think of bracelet glory. Other notables: Sam Simon, Bryan Micon, Phil Hellmuth, Can Kim Hua, Mike Matusow and Richard Brodie. See what happens with Tom or your other favorite players here.

Expect more updates from Dan/Jen, I’ll return in the AM with more exciting stuff…

The $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Eight or Better event is down to it’s last 3 with Casey Kastle, Martin Klaser, and Michael Fetter remaining. Kastle currently holds the chip lead, Erik Seidel was eliminated in 4th in his attempt at winning his 9th bracelet.

The $5,000 NL Holdem 6-handed event have returned from their dinner break with 280 out of a starting field of 805 to return. Notable names near the top include Alex Jacob, Mark Vos, Gavin Griffin, and Hevad Khan.

Other tournament action is available by clicking on the more thingy:

The $50,000 HORSE event is moving along on Day 2, with 109 remaining as the eliminations are happening a bit quicker today. Notable names near the top include Doyle Brunson, Lyle Berman, Isabelle Mercier, Erick Lindgren and Tom Dwan. Tom Schneider’s still in the middle of the pack at 131,000 in chips

The $1,500 Stud Eight or Better event drew a field of approximately 544, of which 460 are remaining. Notables at the top of the leaderboard: Bryan Micon, David Sklansky, Annie Duke, EPT winner Tim Vance and John Phan.

The $1,000 NL Holdem w/rebuys even is down to 26, as they make their way to a final table tomorrow. Scott Freeman is the current chip leader, other names you may have heard of still in the field: Mark Seif, Joe Tehan, JC Tran, Gioi Luong and Eric Froehlich.

More updates later in the evening…

Tom is was the chip leader in the $2k Omaha Hi-Lo. That’s pretty cool.

UPDATE: Tom is out. Not cool.

And that limit event he busted out of yesterday … Erick Lindgren just missed the final table, which is now set with some interesting players, including Teddy Munroe, Ali Eslami, and Vinny Vinh. (Teddy and I go way back — last year I’d be typing outside and “The Iceman” would fill me in on the $100-$200 cash action while taking a piss on the tournament tent air conditioners. “Makin’ money, baby!” he’d say before shaking himself dry and heading back to the table.)

Even the $10k 7-Stud World Championship is getting interesting … with Doyle still alive and both Bob and Maureen Feduniak with the potential to become the first ever husband-wife presumably non-collusive team at the final table. Never mind. Since typing this, all the above-mentioned have been eliminated.

I learned about this 7-Stud shape-up from the a WSOP-TV vid. And though I tend to detest any lack of imbeddability, I gotta say I like a lot of what this ESPN/WSOP/Bluff (?) crew has got going here. For example, Harmonie Krieger does a basic feature video interview set on the different jobs people come to the WSOP from. Nice enough, right? — but very real when one of the guys she talks with is Jay Columbo, who ran the legendary Mayfair and Playstation poker clubs in New York City, legally questionable status notwithstanding.

And then, perhaps most shocking to me, I enjoyed Jean-Robert Bellande’s “Surviving the WSOP” — where the young, aspiring Eskimo Clark chronicles his ups and downs at the World Series while his video-podcast editors comment Pop-up Video-style — follow along as he hustles high-rollers for buy-ins.

Even learned something from Phil Ivey’s less exciting V-log … and that is that he’s playing so many big-field, low-buy-in donkfests because he has a lot of side action pending on whether or not he’ll win a bracelet this year. We’ll see if we can’t find out more about this.

Speaking of donkfests, the Ladies Event has already lost 2/3 of its starting field, and of those still remaining, at least three of them are Pokerati MySpace friends: Lacey Jones, Kathy Liebert, and Mandy Baker are looking strong and pretty much representing the spectrum of all that is good about women. Go girls! I mean chicks … er babes .. uh bitches?

UPDATE: Lacey is nursing a short stack. Poker Roadie Amanda Leatherman has come on strong, however, and picked up the aggressive pace. Michele Lewis, Tiffany Michele, and PokerNews editrix Haley Hintze are all out.

In the meantime, primarily because it is awesomely embeddable, check out the debut episode of The Degenerate Report, from Neverwin Poker:

For the first time, I listened to the NWP Radio show last night because it was a tribute to Brandi Hawbaker. Her suicide has deeply affected me, and I hoped to hear some interesting perspective on her life and death. Almost two hours into the show, I did hear those things from Brandi’s ex-boyfriend Brandon and friend Jenn, though they were abruptly cut off in the midst of a very interesting discussion at the show’s end.

Dan Druff, who I know didn’t mean his comments in any sort of malicious way, exemplified many of the opinions I’ve heard since the news of Brandi’s suicide became public. People who have no personal, family, or friend history with mental illness have a rather narrow-minded and simplistic view of most types of mental difficulties. Brandon and Jenn did their best to dispel myths and shed some light on the complexities of people inflicted with such a disease, but it seems to be very difficult for outsiders like Druff to comprehend it.

Over the past week, I’ve had numerous conversations with people in the poker community about Brandi’s suicide. Most of their comments are rooted in pure shock at the thought of someone taking her own life. “It’s the most selfish thing someone can do,” someone said. “She must have done it to get back at the people who were mean to her,” another commented. “How does life get so bad that you want to die?”

Let me first say that I only knew Brandi through a handful of encounters. I met her during the 2006 Bellagio Five Diamond series when she tagged along for a meal with Dutch Boyd and me. It was a time that neither of them was in a good place, and it was a disturbing day to say the least. At the 2007 WSOP, I saw Brandi several times, and she made sure to mention to me that I was the only female in poker who was nice to her. While I’m sure that is not true, it made me sad to hear her say it. She also tried to get me to spend a day at the spa with her, but I was too busy with my work schedule at the time. In no way can I say that I knew her or had any personal insight into her thoughts or actions.

I’d like to also mention – in a roundabout way – that I have my own history with someone very close to me who suffered from depression throughout her life. Though I do not have any personal knowledge of personality disorders, such as the kind that Brandi reportedly suffered from, I feel that I know enough about suicide to make a few points.

It was stated on NWP Radio that Brandi’s mental illness was hereditary. She had been through counseling and taken medication, but neither helped enough to save her. Despite being highly intelligent and receiving the only type of help that people knew to give her, and while she hated hurting people and doing things that she couldn’t take back, it was part of the disease.

Again, while I can’t speak to the personality disorder, I can address suicide. And though I have absolutely no idea about what actually went through Brandi’s head prior to the suicide, I know what leads many people to go through with it.

Most people who contemplate suicide do so because they suffer from an incredible amount of pain – mainly a deep depressive psychological pain – that only gets worse over time without the proper treatment. The pain becomes so debilitating that there are few ways to ease it. Brandi was a cutter; she showed me the cuts on her legs. Sometimes, cutters feel that the release of blood will ease the pain. But when it doesn’t work, the cuts can get deeper and the yearning for relief becomes overwhelming. Not every person in this state of mind resorts to cutting, and those who don’t have no other way to stop the internal pain other than to end the life altogether.

Some who commit suicide do so in a lonely state of mind, believing that no one cares. Others have such a distorted view of themselves and those around them that they truly feel that they are a burden on others. By committing suicide, it is a way to end the suffering of those around them, who will no longer have to be hurt, embarrassed, sad, or angry.

Those who are left behind after a suicide of a friend or family member are devastated and riddled with guilt. It is inevitable and will only subside over time. Hopefully, Jenn and Brandon will consider counseling to help them through the rough time, but instructing them not to feel guilty is not the answer. They must go through a process of examining their own actions – not because they did anything wrong or inappropriate, but it is the natural progression of dealing with a tragedy such as this.

I can say with much confidence that most suicide victims do not intend to leave their loved ones with such guilt, but their thoughts are so distorted that it is nearly impossible to think of it as anything but a favor to those people. There is enough self-blame in the picture – on the part of the deceased and those left behind – to go around. But I will speculate just as Jenn and Brandon did tonight that no poker forum, poker player, or incident in the world of poker drove Brandi to end her life. Blame of any kind in this situation is counter-productive and a waste of time. The people involved have their own feelings to sort through, but most know that blame is not the answer.

My reason for posting this is that there are such misconceptions and ignorance about mental illness because it has traditionally been a private, secretive disease. It can be so terrifying that those who have never dealt with it simply cannot fathom the realities of it.

Look around. Chances are you know someone with a mental illness – whether it is being treated or not. Listen to those people – don’t judge or draw conclusions based on generalities. Whether you can help or not may be a moot point, but it is important to try to understand and be aware. More than 32,000 people commit suicide each year.

I hope that Brandi has found the peace she sought for so long.

Jenn and Brandon have created a tribute video to Brandi that can be found at RawVegas.tv.