Not sure what the 3N means. All I can figure is maybe he’s trying to say “Broadwayin’”?

Seen in the WSOP-valet lot at the Rio:

Today’s parking lot report comes from the Rio, by a mysterious player who apparently has a message of product disappointment for Dwight Schrute. Or maybe he’s just talking to his beloved New York Rangers?

We don’t have a make on this vehicle — “it was dark,” says our Lot C correspondent, who was filling in for Goldfarb — but we can be pretty sure it’s not a Bentley or a Hummer.

Today is the day. Here’s what it takes to play. The fact that 90 percent won’t get them back is part of what makes the body do things on the inside.

I can’t seem to convince anyone that this concept would make a great podcast, but still, I think there’s a lot to be learned from a person who decides to personalize their license plate with something pokery. And you know it’s only a matter of time before Poker News Daily assigns someone to start covering these stories.

Today’s plates were spotted in the valet lot at the Rio. This first one I think I’ve seen before:

UPDATE: We have.
.
And thought the license-plate frame suggests otherwise, if this one belongs to Seth Palansky, well, let’s just say he and I need to have a talk about those food comps …

Our Team Pokerati player-correspondents may not be giving us much to talk about at the tables, but they do have the parking lot beat at 3700 W. Flamingo covered. Check it out … a few new vanity spottings seen (Just) Outside the WSOP … can you guess which one might belong to Scotty Nguyen?

Also … think there’s any connection that ♥2BLUFF is driving the PT Cruiser, not a Bentley or a Jag?

Breaking down the Friday afternoon WSOP action:

Hellmuth falls short in quest 12th bracelet

The $1,500 NL Holdem event that started on Wednesday is down to the final table of ten, but Phil Hellmuth is not among them, finishing in 15th for $25,472. The final 10 when they return from their dinner break are:

Pascal LeFrancois – 4,000,000
Kevin Howe – 1,780,000
David Aue- 1,300,000
Max Steinberg – 900,000
Saar Wilf – 855,000
James Andersen – 665,000
Kurt Disessa – 651,000
Jose Gatmaitan – 640,000
Josh Brikis – 375,000
Daniel Wjuniski – 350,000

Follow all the final table action over at PokerNews.

Day 2 of 10k Stud W.C.

Less than 50 remain in the $10,000 Seven Card Stud World Championship with Ray Dehkharghani the current chip leader at 275,000. 2009 November Niner Eric Buchman holds down 2nd place with 270,000, while 50k Players’ Championship runner up Vladimir Schmelev is in 3rd with 230,000. Other notables: 50k Players’ Championship winner Michael Mizrachi (165,000), Men Nguyen (155,000), and Brandon Adams (120,000). Six more levels of play awaits the field or the final table of eight, whichever comes first. You can follow the progress of this event over at wsop.com.

Pot-Limit Bubble Pops

The $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem event burst its bubble early on day 2, with the field now down to just 25 players. James “Flushy” Dempsey is the current chip leader at 290,000. Other notables: Joe Serock (140,000), JJ Liu (100,000), Melissa Hayden (95,000), and Christian Harder (75,000). Play will end when the final table of nine is established or at the end of ten levels of play. Team Pokerati’s Tom Schneider earned $3,352 for his 52nd place finish, his second cash (in three tries) at the WSOP.

$1,500 NL Day 1

A field of 2,563 started at noon in the third $1,500 No-Limit Holdem bracelet event. Less than 800 remain in action at the moment, with Tom Dwan the unofficial chip leader with 56,000. Other notables with healthy stacks include Blair Hinkle (43,000), Shaun Deeb (36,000), Annette Obrestad (25,000), and Liv Boeree (23,000). Less than four levels of play remain for day 1, with the top 270 players cashing, with the winner taking down an impressive $614,248. For the Team Pokerati fanbase, Pat Poels was the lone entry for this event.

$1,500 Limit Holdem Day 1

A field of 625 took to the felt for the $1,500 Limit Holdem event, and around 550 remain as the field takes their dinner break shortly. The duo of Vanessa Rousso and Chad Brown are the unofficial top two with Rousso (10,800) holding a slight lead over brown (10,100). For the online poker community, Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke is third with 8,500 and other notables such as Jeff Madsen (6,250), Team Pokerati’s Tom Schneider (5,600), and Chris Ferguson (5,400). Team Pokerati also has Julie Schneider, Danny Noam, Robert Goldfarb entered in this event. The top 63 players make the money, with first place $189,870 along with a coveted bracelet, follow wsop.com for further updates and chip counts.

Robert Goldfarb isn’t just a Team Pokerati player, he’s a player-correspondent! And here’s what he found while on assignment today in the Rio parking lot. Said he’s willing to bet this belongs to someone playing in today’s $2,500 2-7 Triple-Draw … excellent … that’s the exact sorta analysis we’re looking for.

This event, btw, is going on right now … Daniel Negreanu Steve Zolotow is the chip leader, and our own Crazy Julie is 16th 25th in chips with 270 198 out of 291 remaining … (this is the event she final-tabled last year). Don’t trust the chip counts though, until we get deeper. Right now, with 198 remaining, Crazy Julie’s husband Tom is supposedly alive and in 208th? That’s why we try not to pay attention to these things until at least Day 2. There’s generally more to report in the parking lot.

The first bracelet event, the $500 Casino Employees NL Holdem event drew a field of 721 entrants, with the final 72 hitting the pay window, the winner getting just over $70,000. Although Team Pokerati’s John Harris was unable to take part, Shaun Harris from Las Vegas is the current chip leader (105,200) with about 90 players remaining. At the time of posting, they’re currently at level 9 and play will conclude at the end of level 10 or the final table, whichever comes first.

The $50,000 Players’ Championship drew a smaller than expected field of 116 players. First place will get about $1,560,000. The early chip leader is Daniel “djk123″ Kelly (285,000) eliminated Dan Shak. You can follow the action in both events over at www.wsop.com, where the full entrant list should be online shortly.

I’ll be back in the morning with the preview of tomorrow’s first 1k NL event, with over 3,000 players registered already. And for those with Twitter, be sure to follow @pokerati, @taopauly, @wsop, and @pokernews_live for updates.

In just a few short hours, the 41st World Series of Poker will get underway at 12 noon at the Rio in Las Vegas with the first bracelet event, the $500 Casino Employees event. This will be followed at 5pm with the $50,000 Players’ Championship, consisting of HORSE, no-limit holdem, pot-limit Omaha, and 2-7 triple draw lowball with no-limit holdem being played at the final table.

Friday preview

Last year’s Casino Employee’s winner was Andrew Cohen, a bartender at the Palms, who won $83,833 in a field of 866 players. Hopefully Team Pokerati member John Harris can improve on his 25th place finish last year. This is the first year for the $50,000 Players’ Championship, a five-day event that is replacing the $50,000 HORSE event that was held the previous four years. David Bach won what appears to be the final $50,000 HORSE event last year, besting a field of 95 to earn $1,276,806. The Chip Reese trophy that was given to the HORSE winner will now go to the Players’ Championship winner.

Where to find information

For those looking for updates, the official WSOP site will have live updates powered by PokerNews. This year, the WSOP.com site will also be making various tournament information available to everyone, including entry lists, end of day chip counts, tournament reports from WSOP media director Nolan Dalla, as well as the media guide. CardPlayer, Bluff Magazine, PokerListings, PokerRoad, ESPN.com’s poker section and other poker media outlets (like Pauly) will provide updates, reports, gossip, video segments and other stuff for the poker enthusiast.

2010 WSOP storylines

With 56 bracelets up for grabs over the next seven weeks (with the final one decided in November), there’s plenty of interesting angles to find in this year’s WSOP:

Does the Year of the Woman continue? With the wins of Annie Duke at the NBC Heads-Up, Vanessa Selbst at NAPT Mohegan Sun and Liv Boeree at EPT San Remo, the poker media is anticipating a breakout WSOP for women. The last year more than one woman won an open bracelet event was in 2004 (Annie Duke, Kathy Liebert and Cyndy Violette).

How will Annette Obrestad perform? This is Annette’s first year she can actually play at the WSOP in Las Vegas instead of being a spectator limited to the hallway, a moment that has been eagerly anticipated by the poker community since she won the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event at 18. She’ll be the most followed, scrutinized, criticized, fawned over, etc. newcomer of this year’s group of WSOP newbies.

How will the UIGEA affect the WSOP? With the June 1 deadline rapidly approaching, online sites and players are wondering what will happen in the next few weeks. Does the US Department of Justice swoop down on the Rio and arrest Team Full Tilt? Will players not be able to get their funds in time for the Main Event? Will it be business as usual, with no noticeable drop in attendance at the Rio?

Betting on Bracelets Bracelet bets for big money is not reserved to Phil Ivey and his fellow pros. Justin Bonomo was laying 10 to 1 (1k minimum to Justin’s 10k) that at least one person from a list of people living at Panorama Towers will win a bracelet at the WSOP. Bonomo offered the same bet last year, laying 7 to 1, and Greg Mueller’s two bracelets had Bonomo winning his bet. The big Phil Ivey bet this year is with Howard Lederer: Ivey has the 2010-12 WSOPs to win two bracelets, WSOPE bracelets count only towards making the bet a push, for $5 million. Talk of other bets Ivey will surely hit the rumor mill over the coming weeks.

More updates to come during the next few weeks, and good luck to all the players.

Wuh-oh, Dr. Pauly seems to be in the middle of a flashback … hang in there, bud, it’s OK. Drink some water and just find your happy place … remember, that tree doesn’t really want to eat you … because it’s a good tree.

Over on Tao of Poker, Pauly’s posted the complete Tao of Pokerati archives from the 2009 WSOP. Worth a listen without a doubt. I’m always amazed when checking traffic stats to see how much these short, 2-4 minute episodes continue to suck bandwidth play in reruns.

I know that other show I’m on is “award winning” and was named the “Top Poker Podcast” of 2009 in the Bluff Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards … and I love The Poker Beat, for sure. But Tao of Pokerati is different — and it’s more than just my little Porno for Pyros kinda side project.

Can’t really explain … but it’s way less slick, way more unplugged and unfiltered, and imho brings a whole new perspective to the summertime festivities as two seasoned, hardened WSOP vets give their instantaneous perspectives on what they are witnessing at the moment. And considering all the unforeseeable possibilities the 2010 WSOP promises to bring … well I just can’t imagine a better way for the cube-dwellers out there to understand what is really going on at the Rio.

Again, click on over to the Tao side of the equation to get your pre-WSOP juices flowing.

UPDATE: Oh right, and Benjo, too.

The latest Poker Beat was a bit of a clusterfucky episode for us on the backend — computer breakdowns and internet snafus during a week where the only meaty topic we had for a full segment was David Williams’ stepping up to a new level of poker bad-assness by winning the WPT World Championship … and even that devolved into a Gary/Dan vs BJ spat about whether or not the mind coaching of Sam Chauhan has any tournament value or is just an Extenze-like sales success story for his brand of hypnotic snake oil.

But before we even get to that, we break down all sorts of poker buggerings … Daniel Tzvetkoff denied bail, poker recognized as a mind sport, Adam Junglen’s prosthetic leg, Cole South bowing out of CardRunners, PokerStars buying up abandoned poker blogs, Harrah’s selling the Rio, a new right-wing poker+politics show, and a study saying online gambling leads to jobs.

It was one of those episodes where so much was going wrong before we even got started that the crew just had to rely on shooting the shit about what we may or may not know … all while Huff attempted to keep the ship from running aground. I think it worked!

The Poker Beat
4/29/10

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photo: Flipchip/LasVegasVegas

Our beloved Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. is currently seeking buyers for the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, according to Bloomberg-BusinessWeek. Supposedly bids are in the $500 million range for the largest property currently in the Harrah’s portfolio, which has been the home to the World Series of Poker since 2005 … and is considered by many “a dump” on par with Circus-Circus or the Tropicana despite its super-long hallways that make for top-quality scooter races and ridiculous Phil Hellmuth main event entrances.

Seeking confirmation and insight on reports from a highly respected business publication that line up with previous rumors connected to Harrah’s recent acquisition of Planet Hollywood on the Strip, we asked (for real) a WSOP spokesman:

• If a sale goes through as desired, what would this mean for the WSOP?
• What would be the most likely candidates for a new venue?
• Would the WSOP ever consider hosting its summer event at a place that
  is not a Harrah’s property?

All he would say is, “The 2010 WSOP will be at the Rio. We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

Of course.

However, as a site that traffics in exactly that — and sees plausibly another sign of the impending implosion of poker — we know where to get the real scoop on private megabucks business decisions such as these.

More…

The rules for the 2010 World Series of Poker were released this afternoon, with the obligatory press release appearing on the next page. To alleviate the fears of Phil Hellmuth, there has NOT been a change to what logos a player can be sporting. There were some minor changes to reflect the latest rules published by the Poker TDA, as well as some changes for players who choose to register late (Rule #12) and clarification for those who registered but don’t show up (Rule #14). Also of note is there was a change to the rule regarding cell phones and electronic devices that “banned” the Iphone, Blackberry, Itouch, and similar devices has been removed for 2010 in light of the immense popularity of Twitter. One other new rule that someone pointed out on 2+2, part of rule 37 about player conduct (bolding is my emphasis):

B. All participants are entitled to expect civility and courtesy from one another at every Tournament table and throughout the Tournament area. Any individual who encounters behavior that is not civil or courteous — or is abusive in any way — is encouraged to immediately contact a Tournament official. This shall include, but is not limited to, any player whose personal hygiene has become disruptive to the other players seated at their table. The determination as to whether an individual’s personal hygiene is disruptive to other players shall be determined by the Tournament Staff which may, in its discretion, implement sanctions upon any such player who refuses to remedy the situation in a manner satisfactory to Rio.

More…

Here’s my favorite pic I’ve seen so far of the November Nine spectacle from this weekend. With all the great, mainstream media-oso’s in the house, it was none other than Flipchip from LasVegasVegas, the most experienced WSOP photog in the Rio, who found the one spot that really highlights the enormity of the event going down in the WSOP&T Theater:

Still looking for other great shots out there on the internet that maybe I’ve missed …

UPDATE: This is a pretty good one, too, from Wicked Chops … capturing the French fan contingent at an Antoine Saout double-up:

As you all have probably heard, Phil Ivey didn’t exactly want to do a bustout interview after his AK lost to Darvin Moon’s AQ. But as he tried to sneak out the back hallway — to the back lot at the Rio where his RV and Hummer were parked — a few people were able to block his exit and force him to talk, which you can see here:

Afterwards, according to The Maven, Ivey reportedly darted to his automobile with Howard Lederer trailing behind him, and Lederer said, “You wanna race?”

Ivey’s response: “I don’t like races.”