Registration is finally over for the Main Event, and a record 2,461 took to the felt today in their quest to be part of the November Nine and take down the over $9.1m first place prize. Among those who’ve already been eliminated today: Phil Ivey, Jennifer Tilly, Andy Bloch, Jose Canseco, Annie Duke, Allen Kessler, David Williams and Noel Furlong. The leader at the dinner break appears to be Brad Tisdale with about 112,000 in chips. Notables towards the top of the leaderboard: Victor Ramdin, Thomas “Thunder” Keller, Aaron Kanter, Jean-Robert Bellande, Brandon Cantu, Mark Newhouse and Antonio Esfandiari. You can follow the players as they return from their dinner break at the WSOP.com site here.

More updates later this evening…

From the Lederer/Zolotow World Series of Barbecue at the Golden Nugget … after tearing it up on Guitar Hero, Jef Madsen challenged Phil Ivey’s cousin “Smokey” to a freestyle-rap “cuttin’ contest”. The words are hard to understand on this video — too bad RawVegas wasn’t there — but Madsen impressively held his own before succumbing to the three-toothed Old-Dirty-Bastard lookalike that had some of us white folks at the party saying, “Who is that? He’s a real rapper, right?” Evelyn Ng and Matt Savage looking on:

Also, who knew J-Mad had such dope skillz?

Lo and behold he’s been getting practice while videoblogging for PokerRoad. Click here to see/hear the 2006 WSOP Player of the Year giving tourney reports in rhyme.

The WSOP party season has begun… I’ve hit two of the parties this week and plan for more as the week progresses, but I can’t see myself getting crazy with it. I must say that it’s a nice break from the daily grind of tournaments, though.

On June 30th, I attended the All In party at the Palms pool. The place was packed with more people than I expected. On the other hand, the door was completely disorganized. Some people got right in, while others who were supposed to be on the list were held up for quite awhile. I was supposed to be on the media list, but no one ever checked or even seemed to have a list, so I finally just got in on my word. And when I attempted to get a VIP pass through a friend, they had run out of them and looked a little panicked about it.

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Since returning from dinner break, the players in the $50K HORSE have been in slow motion, barely trotting here. So much is on the line, so I don’t blame them… The railbirds aren’t getting tired, though. They’re still packed in there like wide-eyed sardines, snapping photos and hoping to get a wink or a nod from a pro. Entertaining to watch…for a few minutes at a time.

In the past three hours, only two players have busted.

13th place: Daniel Negreanu - $142,080
If Daniel had won this tournament, the prize money would have catapulted him into the position of top tournament money earner of all time, surpassing Jamie Gold. Well, that ain’t happenin’ in this tournament, sad to say.

12th place: Phil Ivey - $159,840
Not the most entertaining player at the table, but definitely a fan favorite and one of the best out there. Much to the dismay of the standing-room audience, he had to nod goodbye.

Erick Lindgren has jumped out to a dominating lead here, as it stands at 1am. He has 3.25 million, and the next closest stack belongs to Scotty Nguyen with 2.7 million. I smell a good final table. (And I smell a poker player who needs a shower, but that’s not relevant here.)

UPDATE:
11th place: David Bach - $159,840
10th place: Raymond Davis - $177,600
9th place: Ralph Perry - $177,600
Final table set! Seat assignments and accurate chip counts to be posted when announced…

Wrapping up yesterday’s action, with a preview of today’s tournament (with a moment of silence for John Bonetti):

The $5,000 NL Holdem 6-handed event finally reached their final table at around 5:30am, now they have to attempt to get some rest before returning in front of the watchful eye of the ESPN360 cameras at 2pm with this sextet:

Seat 4: Richard Lyndaker 2,345,000
Seat 3: Joe Commisso 1,961,000
Seat 5: Tom Lutz 1,493,000
Seat 1: Samuel Trickett 1,045,000
Seat 6: Edward Ochana 928,000
Seat 2: Davidi Kitai 298,000

The $1,500 Stud Eight or Better stopped play with 13 players remaining as they play down to a winner starting at 3pm. Here’s the approximate chip counts of the baker’s dozen (chip counts and seats to be rearranged later):

(Table 14)
Seat 1: Ryan Hughes 73,000
Seat 4: Margaret Macre 173,000
Seat 5: James Richburg 274,000
Seat 6: Ron Long 33,000
Seat 7: David Brooker 45,000
Seat 8: Daniel Nicewander 41,000

(Table 15)
Seat 1: Mike Hefer 71,000
Seat 2: Tim D’Alessandro 82,000
Seat 3: David Sklansky 110,000
Seat 4: Thomas Hunt III 101,000
Seat 6: Alessio Isaia 172,000
Seat 7: Joshua Feldman 121,000
Seat 8: Jonas Klausen 346,000

Other tournament action (plus the final 24 in the $50k HORSE) on page 2:
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photo: Aaron Hendrix / The Poker Mentor

It’s clear Phil Ivey is a problem gambler. The question is whether he’s a problem for casinos and his prop bet opponents or himself. One well-respected ambassadorial poker friend of Ivey’s has said he worries that Phil is too into gambling — to the extent that he doesn’t really have the time of day for anyone who isn’t up for a big-money wager. And this year one of his Full Tilt cronies has reportedly said that if he keeps up the prop bets at his current pace, he’ll be broke in two years.

Yeow, I don’t know Ivey’s real numbers, but his friend who said the latter certainly knows a thing or 12 about going broke. The dollar amounts circulating for Ivey’s off-table wagers are $2 million. On two separate wagers — one about whether or not he will win a bracelet, and the other on the outcome of the Laker-Celtics series. Supposedly Ivey has $2 million riding on the LA winning the NBA Championship. Not sure if I believe it of course — just seems a little coincidental that both his big bets would tally $2mm on the dot … but maybe … regardless, a lot of people saw Ivey auditioning to be the next Spike Lee courtside at Game 1, and yesterday, Game 3/Day 1 of a $2,000 Limit Hold’em event, it was very apparent that he had a lot of something riding on the outcome.

During the tournament, Ivey had no problem convincing the floor to replace the big-screen tournament clock with the basketball game, and his opponents at this table got a rare glimpse of Phil without his usual inscrutable poker face (as Daniel Negreanu occasionally popped by to laugh).

ALT HED: I Like Big Bets!

Phil Ivey’s Laker Tells
Photos by Benjo:

BREAKING NEWS: GSN does not exercise Season 7 option for GSN. Talks ongoing with GSN to possibly air “parts” of season 7. Press release from WPTE

Happenings from yesterday at the WSOP:

The other final table of yesterday concluded earlier this morning, as Jimmy Shultz took down Event #12 ($1,500 Limit Holdem), eventually beating Zac Flowers in a heads-up battle to win a bracelet along with just over $250,000. Upon his victory, he announced he was donating 25% of his win to the Charleston, SC Fire Department , who lost nine firefighters June 18, 2007. Vinny Vinh, along with his “associates” railing him, finished 3rd.

More info after the jump:
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Happenings this evening, while I make this part small so you can read all the good stuff below:

The $5k NL Shootout final table is down to headsup. The current chip leader winner is Phil “The Chairman” Tom. His son, Scott, was the founder of Absolute Poker, and we know how that turned out. (Readers may want to insert their own superuser jokes here). Greg “FBT” Mueller is in a close finished 2nd, while Leo Wolpert was recently eliminated in 3rd.

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Teddy “The Iceman” Munroe: Watch out for this guy. Tough to play against.

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:

The Aces Club is the VIP room set up across from the Amazon Room. Players who paid $2,500 as a donation to the Nevada Cancer Institute were granted access throughout the World Series. The ability to pay the fee and gain access is also not publicized, so only those “in the know” are offered the opportunity to buy in.

I’ve heard about it. I even tried to get in one night with WSOP media guru Nolan Dalla, but players were on their break and hovering about the VIP room, so security denied us access. Yep, there is a 24-hour security guard at the door to keep the riff-raff out.

Today, I was conducting an interview with an unnamed poker pro. He just busted out of the $10K stud championship and suggested the VIP room as a quiet area to chat. I didn’t want to like the Aces Club, but I have to admit it was a sweet set-up - very comfortable leather couches, an enormous food spread, and video games. One was a PokerTek-ish flat table heads-up poker game.

Aforementioned unnamed pro told me that he witnessed a game earlier in the day between Phil Ivey and David Williams on the heads-up machine. Evidently, Phil didn’t look at his cards once and smoked David. Smoked like a fine cigar. Smoked like a dinner salmon. Smoked like a…well, you get it. Quite embarrassing.

I’d like to think we’re not missing anything by not having access to the Aces Club, but I’m not so sure. Next mission: Get back into the VIP and beat David Williams at heads-up poker roll around on those couches naked nab some of that free VIP food.

Update: Event #9 ($1,500 NL 6-handed) sold out just after play started at noon at 1,236 entrants.

What’s going on at the WSOP while I try to get an invite to Low Stakes Poker.

First the important news, Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider is chip leader at the end of day 1 of the $10k Mixed Event World Championship with ~140,000 in chips. 94 89 of the starting field of 192 in this inaugural event remain to play down to the final table of 8. 2006 WSOP POY Jeff Madsen is in 4th, while Gus Hansen, Johnny Chan, and Phil Ivey are all in contention. Play for them begins at 3pm.

More results from yesterday after the jump:
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Happenings at the WSOP while Ultimate Bet has signed another known online player:

Update: Tom Schneider interview with Gary Wise at roundersradio.com sometime between 5 and 7pm PT

Things got underway at noon in event #7, $2,000 NL holdem, 1,593 put up the money in their chase for a bracelet. The $10k Mixed Event World Championship will get underway at 5pm. There’s been talk about how this will all turn out. Some have expressed their concerns about the structure. The WSOP structure sheet says that 8 hands of each game will be played. However, there’s no way they can get 64 hands dealt in an hour, so how will the rotation be dealt with the next increase in blind/ante level. With triple draw 2-7, will there be two players out of action in a hand while cards are dealt to the other 6? Imagine what David Singer would think of that!

Speaking of Singer, he’s currently at the $1,500 PL holdem final table, which is getting the cold shoulder from ESPN while they cover the more attractive to TV final table. The action at that table will start shortly.

The $1,000 NL/rebuys tournament is underway and in a shocking development, day 1 chip leader Phil Ivey is out before the money. Play is currently at hand-for hand, so expect a long 10-minute period of not-so agonizing bubble play. Also on their day 2 is the $1,500 Omaha 8 or better tournament, both tournaments should reach their respective final tables sometime early Thursday morning.

More later this evening…

6:25pm Edit: Unfortunately Tom’s out, he took AcKc against 3s3c and the board ran out 7 high.

9:20 Edit: Current chip leader is Tony LiCastro. He took down a huge pot with 10-10 v AA and KK to take his stack to over 310k. When he was last seen at the WPT Foxwoods in 2006, finishing 2nd to Nick Shulman, his standard play was to move all-in (which is more difficult in pot-limit) expect him either to keep building his stack or busting short of the money.

Here’s some links from around the WSOP, wishing I had a whiff of Tom’s POY banner:

Daniel Negreanu’s provided his own live updates, including news that Phil Ivey’s offering was offering 1.8-1 odds to anyone interested that he’ll win a bracelet this year.
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I’m currently watching the Heads-Up Championship on NBC — round of 16. Mildly entertaining … it was fun to see Orel Hersheiser slightly outplay Freddy Deeb in a hand, and Full Tilt has some pretty cool new commercials. But still, the show as a whole isn’t as exciting as the commercials for the PGA Players Championship. Maybe someday … This would be much better, of course, were it being aired pseudo- or semi-live, when we still cared about our brackets.

The side profiles are pretty good — Doyle Brunson on the old guys, Orel on the similarities between poker and baseball … And I gotta say, Ali Nejad is proving he’s a top-notch color analyst — witty and well-informed.

Overall, the show is sucking me in. I give it a solid A-minus. 90 if you’re using numbers. I know Oliver (Tse, not Nejad) will have many thoughts on the ratings this show is getting, and what that means for the future of televised poker. I say more coverage of the outside tables — with or without hole-card cams — would make it better. (They only had two tables cammed up when they recorded it.)

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Part of my master plan for covering the 2008 WSOP has already gone awry …

Last year, you could make a $1,000 charitable donation for access to a VIP Players lounge across the hall from the Amazon Room. Inside was a pool table, putting green (where Phil Ivey $5,000 putts became a semi-regular occurrence) and food catered by Del Frisco’s. Oh, and free booze, too, I think. Yum. So this year, Pauly and I were gonna pony up the G. After all, we spend nearly a thousand bucks on food being at the Rio for 6+ weeks anyhow, so why not do it in a feel-good, tax-deductible way that would provide extra-comfortable seating, superior meals, and super-premium access to top players shooting the poker and non-poker shizznit … off-the-cuff but plausibly on-the-record while the rest of the media is locked down in the media kennel being fed terrible $8 hamburgers and occasional free sandwiches that lose their flavor after about Day 2.

Alas …

Informed sources tell us plans for the 2008 “V-VIP lounge” are still being finalized, but based on feedback from last year’s VIPs (those who got in before lounge access was sold out) that it wasn’t as exclusive a getaway as they had hoped for, this year the price of admission will be a $7,500 contribution to the Nevada Cancer Institute. Supposedly the whole experience will be much more high-end. Not sure yet about what that entails, but the big-dollar pros can at least be confident that it won’t include a couple of bloggers sitting with them drunk and shirtless begging for autographs.

Chris Ferguson beat Phil Ivey when his pocket 8s held up against Ivey’s pocket 6s (who was drawing to a 6, 2, or 7 when they got it all in).

This makes it three-out-of-four years in the history of this event that Ferguson has made the finals, and puts him position to arguably claim to be the best heads-up player out there — though being Jesus-like he probably wouldn’t ever claim to be king of anything … as he tends to leave that sorta boasting to Hellmuth … who right now happens to be sitting between Ferguson and Orel Hersheiser, apparently relaying the story to Orel about how he crashed the race car into that pole that pole got in the way of his malfunctioning race car.

Andy Bloch and Huck Seed, meanwhile, are still engaged in a pretty sedate-but-heated battle that NBC may or may not realize is fascinating to the poker geeks out there even without the long hair, big mouths, and all-ins.

The Final Four is set … and PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Bodog have all been fully eliminated. The upcoming matches:

Phil Ivey vs. Chris Ferguson
Huck Seed vs. Andy Bloch

Holy crap, it looks like it will be some actual hardcore competition amongst four notably accomplished players. Who woulda thunk it?

Also totally shocking commendable is that CardPlayer’s coverage is kicking butt …

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Phil Ivey - Courtesy of the World Poker Tour

In the most exciting World Poker Tour final table in recent memory, Phil Ivey used everything in his power to win the 2008 L.A. Poker Classic.

Phil Hellmuth left in sixth place with only a minor indication of tilt, and it looked like the two relative newcomers - Scott Montgomery and Charles Moore - looked like they might be able to squash the pros. But Montgomery took a dive to get out in fifth place, then Nam Le in fourth, and Moore in third. Heads-up play only lasted two hands between Quinn Do and the overwhelming chip leader Phil Ivey.

Ivey won with a full house over Do. While it looked at the beginning of the final table that Ivey may lose it when he lost several big pots in the first round, he calmed down and used as much patience as he had to pick his spots more carefully throughout the remainder of the action. At his eight appearance at a WPT final table, he finally won and pocketed nearly $1.6 million to boot.

For all of the action as it happened, check out the WPT Live Updates summary.

Congrats to Phil!

Seriously, look at this line-up:

Seat 1 Quinn Do - 1,450,000
Seat 2 Nam Le - 1,180,000
Seat 3 Phil Hellmuth - 2,380,000
Seat 4 Phil Ivey - 4,100,000
Seat 5 Charles Moore - 1,510,000
Seat 6 Scott Montgomery - 2,680,000

Could the WPT have asked for a better final table?

Whether you love or hate Phil Hellmuth, he’s going to make for great poker and interesting television. Phil Ivey has been at multiple WPT final tables but never been able to take a title. Quinn Do and Nam Le are friends and both quite capable of pulling this off. The wild cards are Charles Moore and Scott Montgomery, but can they really compete under the lights and cameras against such experienced pros?

Enough with the questions. Check out WPT Live Updates for all of the action when it begins today at 5pm.

UPDATE: Phil Hellmuth was just eliminated in sixth place. Ouch. The upside is that he crossed the $10 million tournament earnings mark with this finish.

The final 18 players are set to begin play at 12:30 today to compete for the six seats at the WPT final table. Oh, and a little $1.6 mil is up for grabs, too.

Today’s action is going to be exciting. Seriously. Phil Ivey is the chip leader right now, though Blair Hinkle (who?) is a close second. Phil Hellmuth is third in chips, with Nam Le not far behind. On the lower end of the chip counts are Jennifer Tilly, Theo Tran, Quinn Do, and my personal fav David Singer. Any of these players have the capability of chipping up or doubling up quickly to get back into contention.

Note to the poker gods: Please, please make this a great final table! One unrecognizable guy is acceptable, but please give us some seasoned and well-deserving pros! *End of plea.*

Here are the official chip counts and seating assignments, courtesy of WPT Live Updates:

TABLE 1
1. Nam Le - 1,254,000
2. Theo Tran - 410,000
3. Mike “SirWatts” Watson - 987,000
4. Charles Moore - 921,000
5. Quinn Do - 285,000
6. Wei Kai Chang - 751,000
7. Jennifer Tilly - 417,000
8. Brian Taylor - 228,000
9. Yury Parad - 214,000

TABLE 2
1. Phil Ivey - 1,543,000
2. Mike Carson - 1,049,000
3. Pete de Best - 291,000
4. Matt Brady - 497,000
5. Jeff Schwimmer - 413,000
6. David Singer - 285,000
7. Scott Montgomery - 386,000
8. Phil Hellmuth - 1,399,000
9. Blair Hinkle - 1,541,000

UPDATE: Singer was eliminated in 18th place. Boo!

UPDATE: Tilly finished in 12th place for $61,610, courtesy of Phil Hellmuth. (Sorry, Ed!)

As the players on Day 3 of the L.A. Poker Classic approach the money bubble, there are still some very well-known players atop the leader board - Phil Ivey and David Singer. Jennifer Tilly doubled up through Humberto Brenes and is doing well. Alan Goehring, former LAPC champion, is hanging on to make a run at another title.

Sadly, however, Antonio Esfandiari seemed to be on a bad run this evening, then took a hit from Kyle Burnside, and just got eliminated. He’s had a great week with the announcement of his partnership with WPT, but a shot at a second WPT LAPC title would have been icing on the cake. It wasn’t meant to be, but there’s the NBC Heads-Up in a few days, along with the WPT Invitational next weekend. Momentum could take him far if he lets it.

Click below for some semi-gossip-y notes:

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The Five Diamond World Poker Classic brings the best in the poker world to the Bellagio each year, and 2007 was no exception. The preliminary events began in late November, and here are some of the better-known winners:

• Event #3 - $2,500 NLHE – 247 entrants, Dutch Boyd won $237,685
• Event #6 - $1,500 NLHE – 508 entrants, Chris McCormack won $239,590
• Event #7 - $2,000 NLHE – 362 entrants, Roy Winston won $230,365
• Event #8 - $2,500 NLHE – 319 entrants, David Pham won $279,845
• Event #12 - $5,000 NLHE – 307 entrants, JC Tran won $523,075

It should be noted that Tom Schneider came in fourth place in Event #3, and Courtney Harrington of PocketFives and PokerRoad made two final tables. Sully Erna, lead singer of Godsmack, came in second to JC in Event #12. Other notables who made final tables included Theo Tran, Kevin Saul, Jared Hamby, Nick Binger, Amnon Filippi, Dan Alspach, Marco Johnson, Shannon Shorr, and David Williams.

David Pham also sealed his status as the CardPlayer Player of the Year.

Next up was the $15,000 WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event. The total number of players was 664, and the prize pool was $9,661,200 – the biggest prize pool ever outside of the WSOP main event and WPT World Championship.

Hopes were high that several big names would make the final table, but many of them just couldn’t get there. Phil Ivey was the Day 1 and Day 2 chip leader but imploded on Day 3 to be eliminated. Gus Hansen was doing well for days until he busted in 22nd place, and Daniel Negreanu took a chip lead into Day 5 but was sent home in 14th. Other bustouts included Erick Lindgren in 10th, Jimmy Tran in 8th, and Raymond Davis in 7th.

Five Diamond Final Table - Courtesy of the World Poker Tour

The best known player at the final table was David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Ryan Daut is a young player who won a WPT title in January, and Jordan Rich and Eugene Katchalov are young pro players. Ken Rosen is a virtual unknown, and Ted Kearly is a 75-year old former college football coach.

In the fastest WPT final table on record, Eugene Katchalov took his final table chip lead to victory for a $2,482,605 payday. All of the action was summed up here.

LAS VEGAS–Pauly has a great breakdown of Erick Lindgren’s $340,000 prop bet against Phil Ivey and others on the golf course. Bold not only because of the amount, but because it was against Ivey, who has done a nice job earning a reputation as quite the golf-time hustler. And Pauly himself had $2,700 riding on the outcome:

LAS VEGAS–While cleaning out some computer files I came across a text document created on May 27, 2007:

Predictions for the World Series

2) Harrah’s will have done it right, oh yeah!

3) There will be some SNAFU

3) A lot of people will be going broke. (This could hurt attendance.)

Phil Hellmuth will win his 11th bracelet. Phil Ivey will win his 8th.

Year of the European.

Main Event over-under stands at 4001.

It will rain at least one day in Las Vegas this summer.

Hmm. Genius I know. Some right, some not, some nowhere to be found. No precipitation here yet — all in Texas apparently. But we did have a mini land hurricane.

ALT HED: The Nostradamus of Poker

LAS VEGAS–Here is the complete list of multi-bracelet years. This information comes from what might arguably be the best publication in poker — BJ’s Pocket Guide to the 2007 WSOP / Daily Schedule & Media Guide:

1973 - Puggy Pearson (3)
1974 - Jimmy Casella (2)
1976 - Doyle Brunson (2) Howard Andrew (2)
1977 - Doyle Brunson (2) Bobby Baldwin (2)
1978 - Gary Berland (2)
1979 - Gary Berland (2) Louie Lakewood (2)
1981 - Stu Ungar (2)
1982 - Billy Baxter (2) David Sklansky (2)
1983 - Tom McEvoy (2)
1984 - Jack Keller (2) Dewey Tomko (2)

1993 - Ted Forrest (3) Humberto Brenes (2) Phil Hellmuth (3)
1994 - TJ Cloutier (2)
1995 - Dan Harrington (2) Men “the Master” Nguyen (2) Hilbert Shirey (2)
1997 - Max Stern (2)
2000 - Chris Ferguson (2)
2001 - Nani Dollison (2) Scotty Nguyen (2)
2002 - Phil Ivey (3) Layne Flack (2)
2003 - Chris Ferguson (2) Men Nguyen (2) Johnny Chan (2) Layne Flack (2) John Juanda (2) Phil Hellmuth (2)
2004 - Scott Fischman (2) Ted Forrest (2)
2005 - Mark Seif (2)
2006 - Bill Chen (2) Jeff Madsen (2)

All that’s gotta make the 53.5 not all that surprising, right?

Textual conversation with Tom last night about Day 2 of the inaugural World Series of Golf:

Day 1 coverage here.

Dan: So how did it in today?
Tom: Got knocked out on the 19th hole
Dan: Did you cross the bubble and school phil Ivey?
Tom: Wil talk about it on sgow
Dan: Promise i an not smirking.
Tom: Thx

Not sure how to interpret this, really, but whether he’s got another tale of a pre-bubble bust-out or wants to moan about some obscure score-sheet snafu, it should make for good radio.

And speaking of … for those who aren’t subscribing, check out the Beyond the Table jukebox on the right, as there’s a new episode up — this one mostly about poker politics, palm trees, and pot. Duuude. Multi-faceted, to be sure.

UPDATE: You can also hear Tom explain why he drove to the WSOG on the current episode. Meanwhile, Phil Ivey arrived by helicopter. (Scroll down to very bottom.)

The World Series of Golf commences today at Primm Valley. Our very own Donkey Bomber has paid the $10,000 entry to participate in the inaugural event that is being billed as “Golf meets Texas Hold’em.” The unique structure of this tournament places an equal emphasis on Golf skills and general gambling prowess, giving a career gambler like Tom a distinct advantage over much of the field. But he won’t be the only professional poker player to hit the greens today. Reports are that Phil Ivey, Phil Gordon, and Steve Dannenmann are also representing.

The WSOG will be aired on NBC on June 23rd and 24th.

From a phone call to Tom, just before the first round:

It’s been like a whirlwind the last couple of days. Meetings, gambling, parties. It’s a tough life, I tell ya.

F-You, Tom.

Semi-related … Click here to read Hellmuth’s firsthand account of losing $500,000 to Ivey in Chinese poker.

Phil Ivey may be kicking poker-player butt on the golf course, but not so against everyone all the time. Just last week he was supposedly playing a rematch against NBA legend Michael Jordan (aka the Doyle Brunson of Basketball). Not sure where or who won how much this time, but just two weeks prior, the twosome were at it on a golf course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico — according to a presumably reliable secondhand source — and Ivey lost $250,000.

One possibility is that Ivey sees golf-gambling with Jordan as a win-win … even if he loses on the links, Ivey’s having a good time with MJ while bilking him for all the knowledge, wisdom, and marketing genius that “the greatest” in a far-bigger-than-poker game might have to offer. That could be worth millions.

The other possibility, of course, is that Ivey is simply running the classic hustle on even richer guys who are more likely to pay up. (Also potentially worth millions.)

Negreanu’s take on the golfing event.

– Phil Ivey Shakes Down the Hendon Mob 3/16/07

In golf … not poker. Anyone watching semi-live poker on TV is aware that the pros have been joshing [tag]Phil Ivey[/tag] about his emerging prowess on the links. The snickers usually attached to the props now make a little more sense …

Here’s a seemingly reliable thread (and well-written recount by Blair Rodman) about a recent outing he had in Las Vegas with Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani, phenom internet kid Eric Sagstrom (aka Eric 123), and Marc Goodwin, an accomplished poker Brit. Apparently Ivey ran a classic hustle on these guys, and as the story goes, Goodwin and Sagstrom stormed off the course, stuck $450k each … while Vaswani, a fellow Full Tilter, stuck out the beating for 18 holes, even though he knew way before then that he would end up owing Phil $900k.

Supposedly Ram didn’t have the cash readily available, so he worked out some sort of payment plan. No word on whether or not he’s being charged interest.

Now the debate on the forums is whether or not Ivey “cheated” by misreporting his golf abilities before the round started … or if gambling is simply gambling and Vaswani is the only guy who honorably handled his mistake of placing a big bet without doing proper research.

Here’s a story about Ivey running a similar golf-course hustle on Mike Sexton almost a year-and-a-half ago …

ALT HED: Ram Vaswani = Phil Ivey’s Beyotch?

Perhaps the best thing about the UIGEA will be the end to all those terrible PartyPoker ads (and that song!) on American TV … Check out these Full Tilt videos I just stumbled upon (via Bill Rini’s sitemeter), which tell you quite a bit about who online poker sites are marketing to these days.

click to view

Do you play so much poker that your wife is probably banging other dudes? Phil Ivey feels your pain.

Are you kinda socially awkward, a la John Juanda, but still fully entertained by great farting?

And gay or not, Erik Seidel speaks to probably half the Batfaces in some capacity or another.

LAS VEGAS–The craziness continues to build. We’re just two weeks away from when the real carnival begins. Whatever you do, please don’t take the brown acid:

There are MARKED CARDS all over the place at the WSOP. I’ve seen them in every cash game I played. ANDY BLOCH got a 10-minute penalty at the start of the HORSE event for raising a stink about the easily dented COPAGS. Even DOYLE BRUNSON voiced his disgust — no new decks for the biggest tourney buy-in in history? — as did ANNIE DUKE.

Click here to follow the action today, as they get to a final table, and maybe a winner. DOYLE is still alive, along with many other big names. ROBERT WILLIAMSON is the lone DALLAS guy.

In the big $50k HORSE event, RODEEN TALEBI learns that prayer is not always the best strategy.

TEXAS DOLLY seems to be a little on edge (with HARRAH’S?). He reportedly was also screaming (several days ago) at a diminutive bathroom-attendant lady who wouldn’t let him use the indoor men’s room — holding up his crutch while balking at her suggestion that he walk the 200 yards to the outdoor facilities.

A scene from the MILWAUKEE’S BEST LIGHT GARAGE (which is just before the bathrooms). You can see why I don’t mind the walk.

Here is another shot.

An intelligent poker-playing attorney with GAMING INDUSTRY insight pointed out to me yesterday that the AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT could be used to defeat the GOODLATTE BILL … denying online poker could be denying certain citizens their right to comfortably play the game.

ALLYN JAFFREY SHULMAN (Barry’s wife) offers a solid explanation of legally unenforceable problems the bill faces.

Last week’s issue of CardPlayer featured DOYLE BRUNSON on the cover wearing his 10 bracelets. Brilliant idea — presumably taken from FULL TILT’s ad campaign launched about a month earlier. Only problem … Doyle has given nine of his away. Look closely at the cover and you will see one of those bracelets belongs to JOHNNY CHAN. And seven other were borrowed from BILLY BAXTER for the photo shoot.

THUNDER KELLER has a forum post for people to mock CardPlayer’s live coverage.

But gotta say, as much as bloggers love to hate CardPlayer this year, they really are doing a nice job getting their site back in working order. Chip counts and prize payouts and individual players are easier to follow now (wait til they start getting into the money), and the CHIP-STACK HISTORY feature is actually pretty cool.

GREG MERKOW is kicking butt in the $2,500 6-max NLHE event. GLYNN BEEBE from AUSTIN is too — showing he’s an upwardly mobile Texan that shan’t be ignored. Visors are apparently back in poker style.

HARRY DEMETRIOU has a significant open-letter outlining his BEEFS with the WSOP — and specifically why he didn’t play in the HORSE event. A $2k juice does seem a bit extreme.

Even MIKE SEXTON is (diplomatically) pointing out the important issues poker faces in its immediate future.

POKERBLUE is addressing one potential problem head-on — publicly announcing the stake that each of its players will have in each other at the main event. Wonder if FULL TILT will do the same. Their private-company money breakdown — complete with $120k “buy-ins” seems a bit “mysterious.”

I haven’t watched TV — save for a little poker on in various bars — for two weeks. From what I understand, the world may or may not be blowing up. It kinda doesn’t make sense to me, because here at the WSOP, there are tons of Arabs, Jews, Degos, Polacks, Blackies, and Bumpkins — and everyone seems to get along. Where else can you find such a diversity of people sitting around playing a game?

To the driver of the elegantly pimped ROLLS ROYCE parked in PHIL IVEY’S spot … your alarm is going off. It may or may not have something to do with a certain BLOGGER trying to look inside.

My personal LAS VEGAS/WSOP roller coaster bankroll-impact log. (Current.)

JUSTIN WEST writes a great recap of day 1 of the HORSE event. He’s an out-of-nowhere aspiring ANDY GLAZER with a refreshingly real voice, and he’s got solid blogger chops whether he wants to admit it or not.

A little more than two years ago, ANDY GLAZER committed suicide. It took a while for the poker world to admit as much publicly. The game seems past the point where sugar-coating was the standard. (Andy would have wanted it that way, right?)

Frightening resemblance: JUSTIN and MIKE PAULLE.

JENNIFER TILLY has been good to poker — credit her for significantly improving the hotness of women in the ladies event (and, of course, the quality of all x-chromosome play).

Her belt buckle. The bottom reads “will kick your ass!” No wonder the UNABOMBER’s in love.

LORI the DEALER may not have gotten married in Vegas, but one couple did — in the Rio poker room at the WSOP.

THE FAT GUY has re-done his website. (It was my privelige being his GUINEA PIG.) On it he brings up a really good point about the ridiculousness — and legal questionability — of a SWAT TEAM being used to bust-up a poker game.

GRUBBY has gotten a sweet gig designing slot machines.

Don’t forget to check out the Vegas Vacation recap fun at THE BATFACES.

LAS VEGAS–Even before getting to the Rio, I learned that Phil Ivey is reportedly shopping for a few houses in Las Vegas. (In the $3 million range.) He reports his income as $120k a month. Not too shabby … but really, I suspect he’s low-balling.