Recapping the Friday afternoon action…

Vallo Valuable in $50k HORSE

As the players return from the dinner break, Martin Vallo is the unofficial chip leader (245,000) in the $50k HORSE event with all 95 players who registered remaining. The players are now on level four, with three more levels of play scheduled before play ends for the day. Among the early leaders, Daniel Negreanu (200,000), Jeff Lisandro, (188,000), Patrik Antonius (175,000) and Todd Brunson (168,000).

Letting Ylon’s Be Bygones

Ylon Schwartz is the current chip leader (2,000,000) with three players remaining in the $2,500 Mixed Holdem event as they return from their dinner break. John McGuiness (1,200,000) and Bahador Ahmadi (750,000) round out the field. Barry Greenstein finished in 5th before heading off to join the $50k HORSE field.

Cantu Crushing PLO8

With 36 players remaining in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha 8 or Better event, Brandon Cantu (525,000) is the dominant chip leader, with Tommy Vedes (225,000) a distant second. Other notables remaining: Lee Watkinson (70,000), Noah Boeken (62,000), Phil Hellmuth (58,000), and Randy Holland (46,000).

Limited Field in Limit Holdem Shootout

The late afternoon tournament, $1,500 Limit Holdem Shootout drew a field of nearly 600, seated at 64 tables. The round one winners play at eight eight-handed tables, and those winners will return on Sunday to determine the winner. No table winners have been determined yet, but expect some notable winners included in the morning update.

Catch up with all the updates over at www.wsop.com and more stuff from Team Pokerati during the evening.

A great article appeared in the New York Times yesterday about poker’s relationship with Twitter at the WSOP. Complete with a Joe Sebok interview, the piece examines the impact of Twitter on poker players and reporters.

As a growing number of poker players are beginning to send out short messages to the world via Twitter, existing poker media is being disrupted and the news sites are scrambling to out-compete with each other in responding to the players’ direct and immediate communication with their fans. Players are reading each others’ Tweets, too, and that has consequences.

We talked about all this disruption with Joe Sebok, a poker player, the CEO of the Poker Road news site and a man with almost 330,000 people following him on Twitter. All the major poker news sites are racing to integrate Twitter and Sebok says his site isn’t one of the biggest – but as far as we can tell, Poker Road’s use of Twitter during the World Series of Poker may be defining the state of the art better than anyone else in the industry.

Nice job, Seebs! PokerRoad Nation deserves credit where it’s due. (And in our own shameless plug, Pokerati has its own Twitterverse. It’s no “nation,” just a universe-type thing – LOL.)

As the online gaming industry anxiously awaits the introduction of pro-gaming legislation, the mainstream media has picked up on the story – online gaming versus the NFL and Christian Coalition. And today’s newspapers are all over the story, looking at the possible revenue for the U.S. government and online gaming’s enemies. Could this mean that Rep. Barney Frank is ready to introduce the bill in the coming days?

Eric Pfanner of the New York Times writes about the chance for legal online gaming in the U.S. here.

Frederic Frommer pits poker players against the NFL in this Chicago Sun-Times article.

The pressure – and the press – is on.