After starting your day off right by reading Pauly\’s link dump, here\’s the recap of Sunday night at the WSOP:
Dilemma Diverted at Donkament
After all those Tweets, forum posts, and other whinging, Day 1b of the $1,000 NL Donkament were able to finish all ten levels of play with 205 players remaining. The day 1b chip leader is Braxton Dunaway, with 139,000 chips. The full list of survivors is now available over at PokerNews. They\’ll join the 276 who survived day 1a at 2:30pm, first bursting the money bubble at 441 players, on their way to a scheduled ten levels of play.
Grinder in Gear at the 50k Players\’
Michael \”The Grinder\” Mizrachi is the day 3 leader of the $50,000 Players\’ Championship with just 21 players remaining when play resumes at 3pm as they play down to the final table, which will consist solely of no-limit holdem for ESPN to broadcast later this summer. Mizrachi, in the news for his issues with the IRS and other financial difficulties, will start day 4 with 1,483,000 in chips. Vladimir Schemelev will start in 2nd with 1,432,000, with David Oppenheim 3rd (1,340,000). The chips for the other 18 names not mentioned are now up over at PokerNews.
Omaha 8
Day 1 of the $1,500 Omaha 8 or Better finished with under 300 players remaining. As noted in the comments of the day 3 post, Thang Luu wasn\’t able to attend after his incident with a dealer last year. Oleg Shamardin is the chip leader with 70,800 when play resumes at 2:30pm Monday. Top 10 notables: 2009 $50k HORSE winner David Bach (39,700), 2009 double bracelet winner Brock Parker (36,700), and Chau Giang (31,300). The entire list can be found at PokerNews here.
Can the $1,500 draw 1500?
Monday has one tournament starting today, the $1,500 No-Limit holdem at noon. With lower than expected numbers for the 1k over the weekend, will the trend continue? The first $1,500 event of the 2009 WSOP (held on a Tuesday) had a field of nearly 2800.
You can find updates during the day at PokerNews and www.wsop.com Make sure to check out Bluff Magazine, Wicked Chops Poker and PokerListings for more content from the WSOP.
Thang Luu is the two-defending champ of this event, and can’t play because of an “incident” with a dealer? Why so vague? if you are going to mention it, then tell us exactly what happened and how a guy can be precented from defending or playing. Thanks.
typo..meant “prevented”
Well, the story from last year was that he broke a dealer’s hand and was banned for life:
http://www.pokerjunkie.com/poker-blog/WSOP/thang-luu-is-a-jackass
That article came from a post on 2+2 last year. As the thread developed, it turns out the dealer may not have had their hand broken:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=11604617&postcount=68
When PokerNews did their little preview Sunday afternoon, they mention the “incident” and state that Luu was banned for a year.
I don’t have a link handy Brian G, but if I recall, Thang Luu (allegedly) physically assaulted a dealer in during last year’s WSOP. Don’t remember the deets … but I think it was slamming something down on a table in a mega-sat that resulted in a dealer’s broken hand.
>>With lower than expected numbers for the 1k over the weekend, will the trend continue?<< Not to bust your balls Kevmath, but I don't think that's necessarily fair. They never had the event before, so any "expectations" were coming arbitrarily from people who couldn't know. Just because the WSOP was prepared for 5,000 players, I don't think 4k+ can be considered a disappointment. It was still the seventh largest tournament in history. (or maybe WSOP history?)
They did have the 1k last year, and got 3,000 each day 1. What I should have noted is that having six of these events will mean players can pick and choose which weekend to come out and play.
An encouraging sign today is that almost 2,100 turned up for today’s $1,500 NL event so the doom and gloom is a bit overblown.
Thanks for that. Looking forward tog etting out there on Friday