Go Team / Friends of Pokerati!

With 1,308 players remaining and converging fields for Day 3 … let\’s have a look at the players we really care about en route to 666. In fact, go ahead and bookmark this page. We might try something new here, keeping track of each of them all together with regular, old-school, live-blogging style updates — no promises, just check back to see the latest we know about:

Team Pokerati

Whitney Blanton — The up-and-coming Dallas-Oklahoma minor leaguer had a roller coastery Day 2, bouncing between 50k-120k. Not bad … and he goes into action with a very average stack of 99k.

UPDATE: As self-reported on CSR, Whit is now up over 200k.

Another update, from PokerNews:

It was Vanecesarry

Vanessa Rousso seems to be having a day where she loses the little pots and then gets her money in good in an all-in situation. She was just all in again and found a customer in the very next seat.

Rousso tabled [cards]ah ad[/cards] to her opponent\’s [cards]ac jc[/cards].

The board came [cards]4d 2s 2c 9h ts[/cards] to help her back up to 78,000.

CORRECTION: That was the guy to her right, not Whit. Whit is doing fine with about 200k at dinner break.
Pat Poels — Representing the Arizona Posse because Tom Schneider can\’t be expected to do everything, Poels says he was card-dead all yesterday evening. Assuming that to be true, what was impressive to watch with him was how his stack-size hardly changed all night long. When it did, it grew by just a few hardly noticeable chips, as he did what he had to do to keep up with and just ahead of the blinds. 119,100 chips.

UPDATE: Pat, who is not yet tied in to the high-CSR technology available to Team Pokerati, keeps doing what he\’s doing and is now at 137k.

UPDATE: At dinner break, Pat\’s at more than 250k.


\”Friends of Pokerati\”
Players we know and like who have a Pokerati patch in their purse/pocket, but, for whatever reason, have yet to brandish it with pride

Raj Kattamuri — Raj apparently got a little lucky yesterday, but that didn\’t stop him from skillfully running over his table en route to finishing Day 2b near the top of the leaderboard. With 411,100 chips and loads of confidence, will be interesting to see if he can hang on and/or get stronger, putting him in serious contention to play for the real-big WSOP bucks.

Jeff Gibralter — another Dallas badass (from Rockwall, actually) holding his own. He said he got a really good table and seat selection yesterday, allowing him to play well even though no cards to write home about were coming. We\’ll see how he handles the results of his random Day 3 seat draw, stepping up with a below-average (but not uncomfortably slow) chipstack of 75,500.

UPDATE: Can\’t find Jeff, or his lovely wife on the rail. I think that means he might be out.
Danny Fuhs — Another Arizonan who knows how to play. He\’s down about $50k for this whole World Series, so he has every reason to make sure he cracks the top 500 at a minimum. Like his good buddy and Team Pokerati superior Pat Poels, he managed to tread lightly en route to maintaining a very average stack of 98,200.

Catherine Calhoun — She successfully nursed a very short stack all day yesterday in a beautiful display of mental fortitude, and moves on to Day 3 with 29,800.

Andy Griggs — Just like every quasi-poker team needs a smart-lookin\’ female, we also figured that in our quest to truly represent the fabric of poker society, we needed a country music star — and we found one in Andy, who is playing his first ever tournament. In fact, Griggs just learned to play poker 10 days ago (from Pam Brunson, I believe). He\’s playing super-duper tight — so much so that his manager pleaded with me to tell him to loosen up — and was being snickered at by Men the Master yesterday, for the consistency with which he looks at his cards, pauses for 10 seconds, and then acts, whether he\’s got AA or 27. Andy Griggs from Nashville starts the day with 69,800 chips.


Also-Rans:
Nothing resembling a patch-deal in place, but still putting forth noteworthy performances on the WSOP main event stage

Iggy — The poker blogfather moves forward. 86,700 links, I mean chips.

Tiffany Michelle — It was hard not to pay attention to this poker mediatrix yesterday, especially as she got seated at the same table as her on-off-who-knows exish-boyfriend, Hollywood Dave. Ooh, drama=fun … and it also kept tournament floor on their toes, as an unusual amount of cross-table texting raised the eyebrows of those charged with preventing collusion, or even the perception of it. 109,000. BTW, any totally uniformed speculation on what these two heavy texters might have been saying?

Hollywood Dave: Hey baby, u look hot! dude to my left smells bad
Tiff Mich: shutup already. cant txt now, i have aces
Hollywood Dave: shit! i have KK — thanks 4 da hedzup!
Tiff Mich: LOL, dumbass … i meant to say 58o. thx 4 folding, bitch.
Hollywood Dave: I am so hot4U right now. What are U doing 4 dinner break?