***
Oops, my numbers were off … I was texting with Tom on Saturday about his performance in Day 1A of the main event of the 5-Star World Poker Classic (aka the WPT Championship). He finished with 72k in chips, which I figured should be good enough to get him to Day 3. However, I forgot that the WPT was starting people with double stacks now … so instead of tripling up in this $25k event, he actually only increased his stacks by 50 percent. Still pretty good, albeit five times less good than it initially seemed. I just hope Tom doesn’t erroneously alter his game plan based on my wireless mobile coaching.

Cards go in the air for Day 2 at 2 pm central, with 485 of 639 remaining. I’ll be following the action here — you can do the same. Some of the others still alive I’ll be watching include (in descending chip order) Marc Goodwin, Shannon Shorr, Steve Wong, Lyle Berman, Phil Hellmuth, Jamie Gold, Kido Pham, Doyle Brunson, Gregg Merkow, Phil Ivey, JC Tran, Jim McManus, Tex Barch, Bob Stupak, Chau Giang, ZeeJustin, Robert Williamson III, and Rodeen Talebi.

(First prize is nearly $4 million … which is more than Chris Moneymaker won way back when … if that means anything.)

UPDATE: Will also be following Anna Wroblewski (the button-cute chip leader) and the others over here — love how PokerNews includes the online poker teams sites players are dressing for in their stats. Leave it to the site being updated by bloggers to clue in to semi-relevant minutae. However, they haven’t yet realized Tom from Team Pokerati is even playing.

Tom went to Vegas not sure he was going to buy in to the main event. He cashed in a $1,500 event — $5,555 for 24th place — but that was hardly enough to make this weekend’s super-big buy-in a no-brainer. In the end, he got in via single-table satellite … took him two gos … so to some extent, having only ponied up $5k for his seat, the Donkey Bomber is already a winner. Yeee!

I’m sure you’ll be able to hear Tom talk about it all — however things turn out — on an upcoming episode of Beyond the Table. But what you may not hear is his hustling for promos while at the 5-Star World Poker Classic … and (keep listening) his seeking backers for his main event buy-in:

Tom Schneider and Chau Giang
Bellagio, Las Vegas – 4/16/07
[display_podcast]