International team poker is just a fad, right? Maybe so … but this defending Dream Team Poker-WSOP champion who loves to monitor WSOP prowess by country is looking forward to the television coverage of the Caesar’s Cup — a special event at WSOP-Europe that pits the Canadians Americans vs. the Euros in an 8-player-a-side format. As the teams take shape, it’s looking to be quite the competitive experience vs. youth match-up:

Team Americas: Daniel Negreanu (captain), Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth and John Juanda

Team Europe: Annette Obrestad (captain), Peter Eastgate, Dario Minieri, Bertrand Grospellier

I still don’t quite have a grasp on the format, or how the other four slots will be selected. But I do know Euros can qualify for a seat on their team via our good mates at Betfair Poker.

Play ended in the Main Event earlier today after 5 full levels of play, the first time that’s happened since Friday, leaving just 64 players remaining when play resumes at noon today. Here’s how the field will look (first by chip count, then by table):

As a note, the average chip stack is now about 3,044,000 with the blinds starting at 25,000/50,000 with a 5,000 ante. Leo Margets will earn the last woman standing title as Nichoel Peppe finished in 75th place, good for $68,979. Other notables eliminated after the dinner break: Peter Eastgate (78th), Kenny Tran (86th), Noah Boeken (96th).

Follow the live updates over at wsop.com and check out Pauly for his own version of the action.

To wrap up the Dream Team Poker event, Kenna James did take down the individual title.

Page 2 contains excerpts from Nolan Dalla’s tournament report:

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101 players remain as the players return from their dinner break shortly. The current chip leader is Darvin Moon of Oakland, Maryland with 5,700,000 in chips. Some notables returning with chips: Eugene Katchalov (3,600,000), Fabrice Soulier (3,550,000), Jeff Shulman (3,200,000), Phil Ivey (2,680,000), James Akenhead (2,500,000), Antonio Esfandiari (2,300,000), Dennis Phillips (2,200,000), Tom Schneider (1,571,000), Prahlad Friedman (1,280,000), Peter Eastgate (940,000), Noah Boeken (481,000), Joe Sebok (300,000) and Kenny Tran (262,000). There are still two women left as well: Nichoel Peppe (1,300,000) and Leo Margets (1,195,000).

Notable eliminations: Joe Hachem, David Benyamine, J.C. Tran, Theo Tran, Bertrand Grospellier, Blair Hinkle and Joe Serock.

The Dream Team Poker event is down to Kenna James versus Judy Tejwani for the individual title. Congrats again goes to the Tao of Pokerati team for clinching the team title a few hours ago. Live updates now available for the Main Event at www.wsop.com and more stuff from the rest of the writing team during the evening.

Edit: Here’s the official chip counts:

Sunday brought another three-level day to the WSOP, with just 185 players remaining when play resumes Monday afternoon at 12pm. The current unofficial leader is Warren Zackey, who’s listed from Honeydew, South Africa with 4,977,000 in chips. The most notable name at the top of the leaderboard is 2007 WSOP POY and member of Team Pokerati Tom Schneider at 3,168,000, good for 4th place. More notables, with their unofficial chip counts: Noah Boeken (2,4000,000), Eugene Katchalov (2,1000,000), Ludovic Lacay (1,685,000), Fabrice Soulier (1,450,000), Bertrand Grospellier (1,400,000), Blair Hinkle (1,100,000), Joe Sebok (1,100,000), Joe Hachem (1,000,000), Peter Eastgate (927,000), Blair Rodman (890,000), Joe Serock and Prahlad Friedman (760,000) and Kenny Tran (700,000).

Notable eliminations: Kevin O’Donnell, Mickey Mills, Cornel Cimpan, Kara Scott, Dan Shak, Nick Binger, Bobby Baldwin, Kevin Saul, William Robertie and Can Kim Hua.

Hopefully the official chip counts will be coming shortly, and Pokerati will be the 5th place to find them. Follow Pokerati also for Dream Team Poker updates, when they return from dinner break.

The first ever Caesars Cup is set to happen at the World Series of Poker Europe this year. The WSOPE (presented by Betfair) will offer four tournaments, and in the midst of it all will be the Caesars Cup, an invitation-only tournament to pit the Europeans against the Americans, on September 25.

Annette Obrestad is heading up the European team, and today at the Rio she made her first pick. Peter Eastgate will be joining her on the team, along with several other players to be announced, one of whom will win his/her way onto the team through a Betfair online poker leaderboard competition. Daniel Negreanu is the team leader for the Americas, and his first pick was announced by Jeffrey Pollack as Phil Ivey.

Annette Obrestad & Peter Eastgate v. Daniel Negreanu & Phil Ivey

Hard to place any bets at this point, considering many picks have yet to be made.

The WSOP is almost over. At least the first part is. It concludes with $50k HORSE, which starts Friday. From there, the main event is a whole different animal. And during that transition you have all sorts of other activities, such as PokerPalooza — the new-and-improved Gaming Life Expo, where, minus the off-shore online sites, you can expect pretty much the bulk of the for-profit and non-profit poker industry to be on display. Click below for a little extra info on what’s in store.

Last year, Peter Eastgate received a bit of an overlay for winning the main event … an EGM Green poker table — made from 100 percent environmentally righteous materials (valued at $5,000) by a company whose mission seems to be outfitting casinos with products that help it earn whatever bonus goes along with LEED certification. Eastgate got one of these tables last year as a gift, but he hasn’t opened it yet, and it’s being shipped back to the WSOP so the felt can be autographed (using non-toxic Sharpies?) and silent-auctioned off with proceeds going to a yet-to-be-determined Eastgate-favored charity.
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So wow, look at that California vs. Nevada battle … tight tight tight! And for real, where is the Poker Capitol of the World? So much taxable difference between Daniel Alaei and Daniel Negreanu.

California is the only region, btw, with someone to cash in every single event so far. Nevada players (mostly Las Vegans) have cashed in every tournament but one — the $1,500 7cs that Jeff Lisandro won (representing Italy).

“Europe” has cashed in every single event.

One of the biggest surprise shifts has taken place at the bottom of the table — could you theoretically have relegation in poker? — where the Latin Americans have come on strong to surpass the Asia-Pacifickers in bringing home the most skrilla. Most of this comes on the backs of Mexicans, specifically Angel Guillen’s $318k 2nd place score in $2,500 NLH, which a dozen Aussie ITM finishers and a Korean have not been able to match.

Click here to view the complete Pokerati’s complete 2009 WSOP World Standings.

Perhaps in the future the WSOP could take a note from Facebook, allowing players to enter both a current city and a hometown … so say a guy like Daniel Negreanu were to win, he would be tallied for both Canada and the USA, and would have a choice over what anthem he wants to play at his bracelet ceremony. Lots of potential “fun” controversy in that … and we’d finally get to see how good all those California-centric (but US-scattered) Vietnamese really are.

Some newcomers to the 2009 WSOP money:

Both Slovenia and Slovakia booked a cash.

Also … Rhode Island
Nebraska
Washington DC
Puerto Rico
Delaware

The UK is making a charge to challenge the Russians.

And where’s Denmark, who were certainly more than just Peter Eastgate last year? The Scandis would be doing little if it were not for a few Finns this year.

Texas is the top money-winner without a bracelet.

Mad props to the Hawaiians, who thanks to Lisa Hamilton’s bracelet in the Ladies event, silenced the Alaskans who briefly looked like they were gonna stake a claim to extra-continental American poker supremacy.

With just a few hundred dollars of separation, Maine and Spain are also in a kinda tight race money-wise. They rhyme.

As we now reach a point in the WSOP where tournaments will be finishing every day, Pokerati’s WSOP World Standings will be back … tracking which nation-states are kicking the most arse. While we can expect the USA to dominate simply because of sheer numbers and home-field advantage, it should be interesting to see which other countries are here to show that poker in their motherlands has fully arrived. The UK, for example — with 26 final tables, 248 cashes, and $6.5million in take-home pay in 2008 — clearly knows what they’re doing, but they couldn’t close anything out to bring home a bracelet for the Queen. It was the Russians and Germans who made the most noticeable claims to poker dominance … but not before the Danes, exclamated by Peter Eastgate’s main event victory, stepped over all of them to say, “Our small socialist utopia will leave you drawing dead on the fjord. Fůgck the G-8 powers in poker!”

On the stateside front, Pokerati declared California the unofficial capitol of the poker world … but Cali blanked at the main event final table and Nevada had a redraw with WSOP-E — and sure enough, John Juanda et al successfully wrestled away the claim.

The final 2008 WSOP World Standings:

For whatever reason, tonight’s High Stakes Poker got uploaded to GSN on Youtube in 3 parts. This is the last show with this lineup:

It took a while, but GSN finally got the episode on Youtube:

Just mere moments after it just aired, GSN puts up this week’s episode on Youtube right away for you to enjoy. Barry Greenstein drops a new phrase on the GSN viewers early in the show.

GSN dawdled quite a bit this week in putting up episode 3 of High Stakes Poker on Youtube, but better late than never I say.

Crap, one of my final four picks is already out. Erik Seidel. I so almost went the other way with that one, too.

Otherwise, all is well in my bracket. Got the 4 3 other matches right — Farha d. Cunningham, Eastgate d. Bloch, Lindgren d. Lederer, Elezra d. Chan. Alas, we will not be seeing Gowen vs. Lederer deep, which Ali Nejad reminded us yesterday woulda been great for poker, because it probably woulda been followed on Court TV.

CORRECTION: I guess I changed my pick on Chan vs. Elezra / didn’t go with my gut. Of course Eli was gonna win.

If you wanna follow a little more play-by-play, take your pick:
CardPlayer.com
PokerNews.com
PokerListings.com

Flipchip for really good photos.
Audio stuff TK at PokerRoad.

And it’s still not too late to get in on the bracket-picking action … though points scored on matches already started won’t count in the end. We’re doing this with our forum friends at PokerRoad. Show who’s boss.

UPDATE: Yang defeats Gowen! Boo Jerry Yang! Makin’ us rankers eat it!

Making this short, this was first made available on Itunes, where someone would eventually upload to Youtube. This clip features 2008 WSOP World Champion Peter Eastgate and Tom Dwan.

PokerStars won the battle of patch warfare by signing up 6 of the November Nine (and booking the win via Peter Eastgate, giving them four of the past six WSOP main event champs) … and now, apparently the fight grows, as word has it that PokerStars is forbidding its players from appearing on Poker After Dark — making the show that much closer to a full-on Full Tilt infomercial.

Personally, I’m having a hard time thinking of PokerStars players who’ve appeared on the show. But regardless, I think that means fewer special episodes — like there will definitely be no “Recent WSOP Main Event Champs Week”.