Now when they break a table, it stays broke
Photo: WSOP.com/Jay “WhoJedi” Newnum

It was Moving Day at the WSOP Main Event, where players are already in the money so they work to build a competitive stack or get out of Dodge. While this should have been the top story, a lot of time was spent discussing a player named Jarrett Nash. He had only $3k in tournament winnings on his résumé but was already in the money for the Main Event. He drew all the attention because he never returned to play his Day 5 stack and word quickly spread (thanks to a barely accurate forum post) he was not playing for religious reasons.

Turns out he left his stack around the dinner break on Day 4 after telling the WSOP staff he would not be returning until after 8pm on Day 5, even providing his Total Rewards cards for when he was blinded out. His stack never made it to 8pm so he officially finished in 171st for $44,655. Of course it just took the mere whiff of this for the forum trolls and Twitter jockeys to latch on like pitbulls. Because, according to those “smart folks”, any decision made without looking strictly at your Expected Value is clearly insane.

More information on Mr. Nash below in the Link Dump

The Day 5 stories that should have made the most splash included three former November Niners returning, five female players finishing the day with major chips, actor Kevin Pollak getting knocked out dirty with QQ vs QQ, and Joseph Cheong’s incredible Main Event streak.

Fun Fact: Joseph Cheong’s last 3 WSOP Main Event results are 3rd place in 2010 ($4,130,049), 114th place in 2011 ($54,851), and 116th place in 2012 ($52,718).

Some big names/big stacks in the list of 97 players returning to play on Day 6 include chipleader Kyle Keranen, Gaelle Baumann, Amnon Filippi, Elisabeth Hille, Yuvee Bronshtein, Eric Buchman, Amit Makhija, and Jason Somerville. Play on Day 6 will go five levels or 27 players, which ever takes longer.

Link Dump

Tweet of the Day

I’m also in awe of the hubris and myopia of players who are using Nash’s choice to laugh at religion and people who think it trumps poker.

— ebhizzle (@ebhizzle) July 15, 2012

Player Skips WSOP Main Event Day 5 – The gang at CardPlayer caught up with the mysteriously absent Jarrett Nash about his decision to not play Day 5.

Harry Reid and Jon Kyl Agree on Internet Poker Bill – Senators Harry Reid and Jon Kyle reportedly agreed on terms for an online poker bill. Of course that means absolutely nothing until they get off their tails and do something more than talk.

Year of the Woman Continues at the WSOP – BJ Nemeth takes a look at the Year of the Woman for 2012 and lists the Last Woman Standing in the Main Event during the Moneymaker era.

2012 WSOP: Brokedown Palace – I have been remiss in my linking up the great work Brad “Otis” Willis and Stephen Bartley have been doing over on the PokerStarsBlog. The latest gem takes a look at how the Rio Convention Center becomes a ghost town as the Main Event moves along.

Explain This: Amanda Leatherman – Everybody loves Amanda, and now Lynn Gilmartin of PokerNews gets the inside scoop on some of her interesting Twitter/Facebook pictures. Not remotely WSOP related.

Be sure to check out our new sponsors at Face Up Gaming. Legal, subscription-based online poker with plenty of great prizes including cash, WSOP seats, and poker trips. Sign up with Bonus Code pokerati.

It was officially announced today that Amanda Leatherman, formerly of PokerWire and currently of PokerRoad, has joined the World Poker Team of traveling reporters and will take on the role of live updates hostess. In a position formerly held by Kimberly Lansing, Amanda will be doing player interviews, video updates, etc.

As for Lansing, no word. Some speculate that she might be moved into the television hostess role, but if that was the case, wouldn’t it have been announced already? My inside sources say that auditions were open, and Lansing was not guaranteed that spot. And with the Bellagio Cup beginning tomorrow, WPT will be forced into a decision and announcement soon.

For now, congratulations to Amanda!

Teddy “The Iceman” Munroe: Watch out for this guy. Tough to play against.

Tom is was the chip leader in the $2k Omaha Hi-Lo. That’s pretty cool.

UPDATE: Tom is out. Not cool.

And that limit event he busted out of yesterday … Erick Lindgren just missed the final table, which is now set with some interesting players, including Teddy Munroe, Ali Eslami, and Vinny Vinh. (Teddy and I go way back — last year I’d be typing outside and “The Iceman” would fill me in on the $100-$200 cash action while taking a piss on the tournament tent air conditioners. “Makin’ money, baby!” he’d say before shaking himself dry and heading back to the table.)

Even the $10k 7-Stud World Championship is getting interesting … with Doyle still alive and both Bob and Maureen Feduniak with the potential to become the first ever husband-wife presumably non-collusive team at the final table. Never mind. Since typing this, all the above-mentioned have been eliminated.

I learned about this 7-Stud shape-up from the a WSOP-TV vid. And though I tend to detest any lack of imbeddability, I gotta say I like a lot of what this ESPN/WSOP/Bluff (?) crew has got going here. For example, Harmonie Krieger does a basic feature video interview set on the different jobs people come to the WSOP from. Nice enough, right? — but very real when one of the guys she talks with is Jay Columbo, who ran the legendary Mayfair and Playstation poker clubs in New York City, legally questionable status notwithstanding.

And then, perhaps most shocking to me, I enjoyed Jean-Robert Bellande’s “Surviving the WSOP” — where the young, aspiring Eskimo Clark chronicles his ups and downs at the World Series while his video-podcast editors comment Pop-up Video-style — follow along as he hustles high-rollers for buy-ins.

Even learned something from Phil Ivey’s less exciting V-log … and that is that he’s playing so many big-field, low-buy-in donkfests because he has a lot of side action pending on whether or not he’ll win a bracelet this year. We’ll see if we can’t find out more about this.

Speaking of donkfests, the Ladies Event has already lost 2/3 of its starting field, and of those still remaining, at least three of them are Pokerati MySpace friends: Lacey Jones, Kathy Liebert, and Mandy Baker are looking strong and pretty much representing the spectrum of all that is good about women. Go girls! I mean chicks … er babes .. uh bitches?

UPDATE: Lacey is nursing a short stack. Poker Roadie Amanda Leatherman has come on strong, however, and picked up the aggressive pace. Michele Lewis, Tiffany Michele, and PokerNews editrix Haley Hintze are all out.

In the meantime, primarily because it is awesomely embeddable, check out the debut episode of The Degenerate Report, from Neverwin Poker: