2011 WSOP – Episode 5: Norman Invasion – Dan and Pauly try to hang out at the final table of the $25,000 Heads-Up Championship between Jake Cody and Yevgeniy “JovialGent” Timoshenko. However, they got stuck around a gaggle of drunken Brits supporting Jake Cody and then find themselves getting in the way of ESPN’s camera crew while they taped a stand-up for Lon McEachern and Norman Chad.

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Tao of Pokerati
Episode 64: Big Head Randy and the Min-Cashers – Dan and Pauly hang out at the Bad Beat bar and wonder if they are coolers? Or if the Big Randy had busted out because he was not wearing a Pokerati patch. Yes, the Big Randy busted before the money bubble. The discussion shifts to the bubble strategy for PokerStars qualifiers who also have a PCA package riding on the line along with the min-cash.

Fortunately, team captain Tom didn’t disappoint (anyone but himself and his family). Schneider showed up on ESPN this week, playing the main event on the outermost feature table, and for a surprisingly funny bit with him and fellow Team Pokerati-er Julie Schneider, as Norman Chad tries to learn about cooking and/or what makes a poker marriage work:

Be sure to check out Pauly’s post about this episode — scroll down to Day in the Life of the DonkeyBomber and Pancakes with Angry Julie — for some decidedly Tao take on Tom and his Loudmouth living.

Incidentally, you’ll notice in the clip that both he and Julie were patched up with Full Tilt. Tilt was not the only one interested in that space … when ESPN shot it (during Week 1 of the WSOP), Loudmouth didn’t have their patches yet. But, you may be surprised to learn, in the 3-way bidding war for premium ESPN real estate on the Schneider family clavicles … Pokerati actually came in second, with an offer larger than the one from PokerStars.

Click here to see more of the Pokerati patch in action, er, I mean Tom on ESPN pimpin’ the short stack on the tertiary featured table … holy shit his hand holds up!

(Jeffrey Pollack bowed out with regrets, apparently claiming “tummy-ache”/swine flu.)

For a little preview of what’s in store — from the perspective of storylines, production, and a wee-bit of Darvin Moon sponsorship business …

ESPN 2009 WSOP Main Event Final Table Media Cattle Conference Call
Oct 29 2009
McNeilly, McEachern, Chad, White, et al.

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SPOILER ALERT: More heads-up coverage, table/stage a bit closer to the crowd, welcome to the show ESPN Inside Deal, and play along online at ESPN.com. Go Phil Ivey or Darvin Moon, and really any of the other guys, too! Akenhead is kinda a funny last name. Presented by Jack’s Links Beef Jerky, yum. Let’s dance.

Watch The Toke – Absolute Poker’s Mark Seif on RawVegas.tv

In response to some of Seif’s comments, Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles offered a response on RawVegas.tv a few days later.

Watch The Toke – Dan Druff on RawVegas.tv

I gotta say, like the way the 2009 season is starting … I could see a few people getting hooked during a weekend marathon. Go ESPN. I think my reluctance to give a shit about first airings might say more about an evolving desire to watch TV podcast-style, at one’s own convenience, than it does about non-excitement for what is clearly a great poker show. Well shot, well edited.

MORE: The cutover to the Champions Invitational … with Raymer coming over after busting out in third, to take a seat amongst a bunch of recognizable-to-grandma champions … nice! Seriously, semi-interested in that tourney now. (If only it had more money at stake.)

Lunkin Leads Six Pack of HORSE Finalists

Six players remain in the 50k HORSE, when they return from their dinner break at around 9pm PT, with the players returning to limits of 80k/160k:

Vitaly Lunkin 3,760,000
Erik Sagstrom 3,395,000
John Hanson 3,075,000
Huck Seed 1,730,000
David Bach 1,185,000
Ville Wahlbeck 955,000

The final table is available on ESPN360, www.bluffmagazine.com/live and wsop.pkr.com

Peisert Looking to Give Germany Bracelet #2

Jorg Peisert leads the final six players at the final table of the $3,000 Triple Chance NL Holdem. Michael Katz, Jason DeWitt, Benjamin Gilbert, Michael Noda and Jason Somerville make up the remaining field.

Kohler Looking to Sink Halpern in Stud 8

William Kohler and David Halpernare headsup for a bracelet in the $1,500 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better with Halpern currently holding the lead. Congrats go to Matt Savage, who finished in 5th, and a belated congrats to Norman Chad, for his 32nd place finish earlier today.

Boivin Buoyant in $1,500 NL

Day 2 of the $1,500 NL Holdem has about 130 players remaining, trying to whittle the field down as much as they can before the 3am deadline, which will certainly create a long day 3 tomorrow. Don Boivin (401,000) appears to be the chip leader at this time, with Vivek Rajkumar (115,000), Alex Bolotin (88,000), Richard Lee (64,000), Raymond Rahme (54,000), some of the notables remaining.

Libson Looking Live in Triple Draw

Brad Libson (164,000) leads the remaining 33 players in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball, of which 24 will make the money. Notables remaining include: Abe Mosseri, John Juanda, Jerrod Ankenman, Hasan Habib, Allen Kessler and Julie Schneider. They’ll be playing down to the final 7 players or the 3am deadline, whichever comes first.

$5k NL Six-Handed

The final prelim of this year’s WSOP, the $5,000 NL Holdem Six-Handed event drew a field of 928 entries, of which 384 return from the dinner break. The winner will take down just over $1,000,000, which is the third largest first place prize of this year’s WSOP, following only the 40k NL and $50k HORSE.

Unfortunately, there’s no established chip leader, but if you head to www.wsop.com one may be better established during the evening. Also check out Pokerati to see if Dan will have some exciting news, like the Jack Link’s Stacked Jacks promotion.

Perhaps Fox got the funds to outbid ESPN from all those Season 7 World Poker Tour/Full Tilt infomercials they’ve been running? And what do you think the odds are that this could mean raises for Norman Chad and Lon McEachern more poker on TV?

(By the way, Mr. President, let’s talk cards for a moment. The government’s got a deficit, no? Well, Internet poker is a cash cow that you should exploit: Legalize it, regulate it and levy it. Heck, you love playing poker — it’s your duty as the nation’s check-raiser-in-chief to open up this revenue stream and add big chips to the public’s coffers. Shuffle up and tax!)

(P.S. on poker: Besides the fact you shouldn’t play too much of it online — it’s dangerously addictive; just imagine Bill Clinton’s White House years if he had been playing no-limit Texas hold ‘em under the handle “slickwillie” — can you make sure it’s legit? With government regulation should come government safeguards to prevent software schemes and shenanigans that are inevitable with that much money on the virtual table.)

Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling like if we can’t get poker laws corrected in 2009, then we probably never can. I mean this both on a federal and state (Texas) level. We’ve got courts ruling in our favor left and right, we’ve got a strong desire for new and reliable revenue streams, public opinion is on our side, our opponents seem stuck in the 20th century … and in Washington DC, our leading torchbearer — Barney Frank — has his hands all over everything to do with banks. If you haven’t heard, this country’s dealing with some major banking issues these days … conditions couldn’t be riper, which has me thinking it really is just a matter of doing the nuts and bolts heavy lifting hard work hammering through procedural kinda stuff during a particularly crazy and hectic time, which could work both for or against us, depending on how we play it.

UPDATE: LOL, I’m an idiot. I just realized The Couch Slouch is Norman Chad. I knew that. But still.

(Actually, I suspect a few midwestern papers, at least, will be able to get something in at the last moment — or they’ll just use the internet … bummer that it didn’t go a bit longer?)

A few notes from the coronation:

The Poker Royalty agents exchanged little smiley fist bumps upon Eastgate’s victory. Not sure what that means — but I gotta think a young online Scandi pro has got to be relatively marketable.

Where’s Norman Chad? Nick Geber is taking on the role as post-game interviewer.

Eastgate doesn’t speak fantastic English, and though the Danes will likely be taking some hefty tax (an issue broached by Geber), he can still probably afford a lot of Rosetta Stone. The Danish early-career Dirk Nowitzki of Poker? OK, bad comparison … but it’s late, people are tired, and, frankly, there’s kinda an eerie calm in the Penn & Teller Theater, as the enormity of Eastgate’s achievement still seems to be setting in.

The $3,000 NL Holdem event is down to headsup play with John Phan and Johnny Neckar. There’s been some controversy over where the action has taken place. First, David Singer had an issue with the lighting in the area and requested to be moved to another location. The table they were moved to was in the center of the tournament floor, and the crowd of players in other tournaments, fans, and media were too much for the players. The floor staff would eventually rope off the area to give the combatants some breathing room. Singer eventually finished in 5th place, chip leader Matthew Vengrin would be eliminated in 3rd.

More after the leap:

The $10,000 Limit Holdem World Championship is down to the final 5 3 players. Team FTP Pro Andy Bloch would be out in 7th, while FTP Pro Rob Hollink is the current chip leader. Jerrod Ankenmann, JC Tran, Adam Katz and Tommy Hang are the others remaining.

The $2,500 NL 6-max event just went on the dinner break with 19 left. Alon Shahar appears to be the chip leader, but Dario Minieri, Scotty Nguyen, Bruno Fitoussi and Bill Chen are still among the remaining.

The $1,500 NL Holdem event started with a registration issue that caused an early first break, but eventually over 2,300 started play today. About 500 will come back from the dinner break with Eugene Todd, Beth Shak, David Plastik, Phil Hellmuth and Jean-Robert Bellande among the notable names near the top of the leaderboard.

The $5,000 Stud Hi/Lo World Championship drew a field of over 200, including Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider (in his “favorite” game) and ESPN’s own Norman Chad.

More from me tomorrow, thanks for reading along or for skipping to the good parts…

It’s actually the first time I’ve seen this episode — if that tells you anything about the immediacy or lack thereof attached to current WSOP broadcasts … and it prominently features/follows Jamie Gold. Pretty impressed with how ESPN handled his storyline, and Gold does a pretty good job explaining the Crispin Leyser lawsuit … well enough that I start empathize for just a moment until Norman Chad follows up with a reminder of why he may not have had many supporters regardless.

(About 2:00 in.)