Lou Diamond Phillips is the lone (non-poker) celebrity remaining in the main event, with a respectable 607,000 chips. (Avg. is 481k.) I’ve played with him once before … and it was a memorably odd night of poker, to say the least.

The recap of that eve has been lost in the old-old Pokerati archives, but I was able to dig up some pics from that eve:

(L to R) Lou D Phillips, Clonie, and The Big Randy in an intense hand of 50-cent-dollar no-limit hold’em at The Lodge.

LDP (as we called him before he became @LouDPhillips) was in town for the Deep Ellum Film Festival, so Robert Wilonsky invited him to a $.50/$1 Batface game at The Lodge. Clonie Gowen and Rick Fuller were there, as was David Williams I believe. Lou was actually running over the table … building his stack to about $700, which was very threatening in that game. Then Jerome Bettis showed up (out of nowhere and uninvited, btw) … The Bus was apparently at The Lodge on unrelated lap-lovin’ business, and couldn’t help but pull away when he heard there was a poker game going on in the champagne room.

Ahh, remember the good-ole-days of 2005, when poker was on its exponentially fast pop-cultural rise, and nights like these happened all the time?

But then things got kinda strange as Lou began playing shirtless and was flexing whenever he pushed all-in …

Bizarre, I know … but hey, it’s a small poker world.

Team Pokerati-er @TheBigRandy is doing well in the main event … he started the day in the top 9 percent in chips, and has been tracking his M moreso than his chip count.

TBR started the day with an M=73, dropped to M=55 after the first two levels, then down to M=46 after dinner break … but has since bounced back. With an hour-and-a-half left to play and blinds at 500/1000 + 100, his M is now back up to 63.

The goal, of course, is to get his M=∞.

@TheBigRandy:

Baggin chips for the night. 86,625. Avg around 45 or so.

@RobertGoldfarb not so much. 🙁

Usually, at least among bracelet holders and Batfaces at the WSOP, Team Pokerati members are not required to wear their patchwork until after electronic devices have to come off the tables. This was a compromise reached with the TPPU (Team Pokerati Players Union) because we see lots of people we know and like throughout the early stages of tournaments, and unless they’re some sort of ridiculous super-monster chip leader, we usually say the same thing when they say hi: Whatever, talk to us on Day 2.

Well, for the first time this Series, our mascot pal Tom actually has something to say … because for the first time this WSOP, @DonkeyBomber has “bagged chips” — and sure enough, he credits his early donning of The Patch, if not our friendly encouragement and mixed games coaching, for this baby step toward success. Tom is playing in the $10k 7CS-HL, and with 110 of 164 players remaining, he’ll begin Day 2 near the top of the leaderboard, 8th in chips.

Follow his progress throughout the day here … and maybe here. (Though don’t count on it, as superstition seems to be part of his new plan.)

Congrats, Schneider. Hopefully yesterday will not be remembered as your best day of the 2009 WSOP!

I’ve got a horse in the ladies event … Gabriela Hill, whom you can follow at @GabrielaHill. She’s not a Pokerati patch-wearer (yet) or anything, but I was the lone media representative to accept the very odd offer from her disgruntled former agent, @OliverTse.

Seriously, it was a strange prop bet offer … one deemed “unprofessional” by some, and made one other refer to Oliver as the Kim Jong Il of Poker. Though Oliver is Chinese, not Korean, the metaphor kinda sorta holds … because by all means he is sometimes an ostracized “player” in the industry, left to his own devices … and let’s face it: the guy would presumably love to get his hands on some nuclear weapons and wreak havoc on all who ever have tormented him since high school.

I’ll share with you more details of the wager itself as I learn to understand them. But basically – and these are the odds that just seemed too good to pass up on my end — if she’s still alive by the time I show up at the Rio, I’ll get my $10 back. If she makes it to the final table, I get $1,000. There are all sorts of other increased payment tiers along the way.

Though she probably doesn’t remember it, Gabriela Hill and I actually met last year — Oliver introduced us. At the time he told me (with extra emphasis on the rolled R’s) that she was a hot Latin American player. Good enough for me! This is her first ever WSOP bracelet event, apparently. Go Gabi Hill! You the girl!

(FYI, she has only like three followers on twitter, so click on over and become an “early adopter”.)

Meanwhile, as Gabriela’s working on building her stack in a way that makes Dan money! justifies her trip to another continent, we’ll also be following Gregg Merkow closely, as this longtime Pokerati fan — wielding a bankroll fueled at least in part by the high-roller contingent of Batfaces — has his best chance for a bracelet in as long as we can remember.

He’s the chip leader with 18 players left in $2,500 NLH. The short stack going in there, btw, is Phil Ivey … who hasn’t even showed up yet, but has already outlasted three players who started the day.

Click here to follow that action.

UPDATE: Merkow went out 9th. 🙁 We swear his donning a Pokerati patch and the subsequent cooler effect was purely coincidental.

UPDATE: Supposedly Gabi is out, too. 🙁 I hope you’re happy, Oliver!

Adam Schacter (bald, right) negotiating a 1st-place chop.

Kinda fun … with action still grinding away at the big table, our boy Adam Schacter just won the nightly. Nice! (And making a final table is always a good way to become “our boy”, fyi.) Actually he chopped when they were down to three players … but as the chip leader in that situation, he gets credit for the win and takes home more than $3k. Second place got about $2,700 … with third getting about $2,000.

Schacter, of course, is an ancillary Batface (kinda like a “Friend of Full Tilt”) who made four final tables in Pokerati Invitationals and DSOP’s. He was in town for a wedding and hadn’t played poker since August when he bought into this $120 event on a whim.

Actually, I’m hearing unconfirmed buzz about a World Series of Poker – Latin America, and I’m sure at least a few folks have thought about a WSOP in Asia. But something actively worked on: the “Latin Series of Poker” and “LSOP”. Legally, what these entities intend to be, according to their recent filings with the US Feds:

Entertainment services, namely, organizing, conducting, producing and exhibiting poker events and tournaments rendered live and through the media of television and the Internet, and providing poker news and information via a global computer network

Now to be sure, just because someone applies for a trademark doesn’t mean the business is going to fly. I suspect “Poker Bowl” was registered back in the day before its collapse. The folks behind the forthcoming LSOP are Siete Dos Publications out of Carson City, NV. Hmm, I didn’t realize actual people even lived in Carson City. But I do like the idea of a media company with a namesake mission of gloriously spreading word of The Hammer to the non-English-speaking world.

I do, however, wonder what the folks at Harrah’s think of that. Not only is it interesting to see the ongoing and evolving convergence between digital poker media and actual tournament operations, but also … We ran into some similar trouble in Dallas back in the day … when two independent but eventually overlapping groups of rounders were both running an annual tournament called The DSOP. (In the end the Batfaces surrendered the name to the guys in McKinney, I was allowed to keep my 2003 co-champion title, and Desktop Solutions of Pennsylvania was allowed to keep the highly coveted DSOP.com web domain.)

UPDATE: The LSOP is apparently not that new of a venture, even though they just applied this month for trademark registration. Their website — www.lsop.com — is up and active, and has a $500k guaranteed main event scheduled for 110 days from now in Panama.

I didn’t even know my old crew still existed … kinda figured my absence all the denial of partnerships, “lay-offs”, and general bad play had splintered the group into obsolescence — not to mention losing the two best tables in the home game to eviction and/or marriage. But they’ve got a new show, where I unknowingly sat in for an interview to discuss Pokerati’s future:

The above is episode 2. If you liked it, here’s episode 1.

Earl Burton has an interesting post up wondering why the sponsorship dollars for the WSOP main event final tableists haven’t been rolling in. While he leaves room for the possibility that it’s just a matter of time — I agree, as the kinda deals we’re talking about here don’t take place over a matter of days or even weeks — he also highlights an example that has me simply shaking my head:

A recent blog [sic.] on CardPlayer by a former guest on my “The Tournament Trail” show at Hold ‘Em Radio (http://www.holdemradio.com/), WPT champion Roy Winston, indicated that no one has contacted him regarding his offer of coaching for the Main Event.

Sorry, Roy, but I’m laughing. Because no one has contacted me, either, about my offer to put a Pokerati patch on them in exchange for guaranteed internet coverage! No offense, but whothefugk are you? A WPT champion? Big deal! The final nine — whether by luck or skill or some combination thereof — have outlasted 6,400 players to get to where they are. Have you ever done that? I didn’t think so.* Why would someone want to potentially mess their game up by receiving “coaching” from someone other than Phil Hellmuth (who clearly knows how to win WSOP final tables with any starting chip ratio) or maybe Erik Seidel? If I were one of the Nueve de Noviembre, I gotta say, I’d be feeling pretty good about my poker skills in general … and would be having many talks with the poker friends who helped get me there (The Arizona Posse, Batfaces, et al.) and probably just about any other poker player I ran into between July and November. But hire an outside coach? That would be like an athlete qualifying for the Olympics and hiring someone in the interim who happened to win a similar event in the Pan-Am games.

The story here isn’t on whether or not the final table delay was a right idea for the sake of marketing … it’s about how the remaining WSOP main event players are somehow smart enough not to fall for sales pitches from interlopers trying to get in on their action.

More…

I leave Texas and the Batfaces (so 2007) are clearly going to pot … except for all the good stuff they have to say, of course. While catching up on some of the not-so–relevant blogs out there, I came across this post from one of my best friends whom I don’t even know. All I can say is I would’ve expected as much from Shane, but with far better links:

PokerNOTi
I don’t know about you guys, but has Dan’s lack of content on Pokerati been somewhat disappointing? I’m not talking about Pokerati’s content, just what Dan has posted. My roommate in college first told me about Pokerati about 5 years ago, when most posts were about yall’s home games and the Dallas poker scene in general, and I have been a loyal reader ever since. When Dan started adding contributors like Karridy, and that Michele Lewis chick, I was excited because it seemed like he was getting “more serious.” Then Tom Schnieder came along, Cali Jen started posting, and Dan moved to Vegas and I thought, Wow, pokerati is going to be competing with Pauley’s website, taopoker.com as THE place to follow the WSOP. Man, what a let down. If it wasn’t for Cali Jen (who maybe the best poker writer in the business), and some dude named Kevin Mathews, there wouldn’t be any content. Sure, Dan has the Country Leaderboard, and the occasional 2 minute podcast with Pauley but that’s about it. Where is the live blog, the behind the scene’s stories, the Dallas player profiles, the inside scoop as to what is REALLY going on at the Rio???? Instead, we get pictures of a dumpster fire and talk about All-In Energy drink. Oh well, maybe next year.

We’ve got a new poll up on the right — go ahead and start your ballot-stuffing as we try speculate wildly on who is most likely to win the WSOP main event. Should be fun, albeit different than our last one, which was actually useful.

For the past week we’ve been unscientifically asking Pokerati readers which site — other than Pokerati, of course — was most essential to their understanding of the summertime poker fun that gives them so much jolly. You can see the complete results here. Nearly 200 of you went through the effort of actually clicking an extra button, and to that extent, amongst the geekiest most intelligent of poker geeks, the sites that matter most, in order of their finish:

Tao of Poker
Pauly’s whole purpose in life is to make me look bad, and hey, it seems to be a worthy pursuit. He wins this poll by a landslide.

Hold’em Radio
I’m scratching my head, too, as I haven’t really seen the folks based at Binion’s paying much attention to the WSOP, but hey, they apparently know how to motivate a portion of the “pirate” web community to outvote PokerRoad, so we’ll give them the props.

PokerNews
They paid a hefty price for the privilege of hiring bloggers to slave away write up hands and keep official chip counts, and it’s clearly worth something to people who care about big-tourney action.

More…

Go Batface!

They are so near the bubble in the $2k NL event — 102 players left. Tulsa is sitting comfortably below average with about 32k in chips (avg. is 50something). He’s playing so tight it’s sick. Little veins quietly pulsating on his bald dome.

I just got chased out of the playing area for the first time — something about that 13-table rule. Though I question its validity, I chose not to make a stink of it at this time and retreated. Will leave the shooting-your-face-to-spite-your-nose to Gonz.

Meanwhile Troy (Darling) is playing $10/$25 PLO at the Rio with Eskimo Clark. Batface is currently up more than $10k. Latest text: “quads again.”

UPDATE: The bubble has burst, and Eric Celeste (Tulsa) has survived. So has Brasilian media sweetheart Miradu … who was down to 1.5 big blinds.

UPDATE: They’re on break. Tulsa’s got 33k in chips … makes him pretty close to a short stack, but not terribly desperately so. We’ll try to keep you posted via Citizen Stack Reporter (beta), but are running into some Blackberry proper

Meanwhile, Darling has very few chips left on the 10/25 PLO cash table … not because he is losing, but because he has pretty much only stacks of 100s in front of him. 30ish k, it seems.

UPDATE: Tulsa has pooed and feels much better. He’s guaranteed a net +$3,381. Final table would be about $45k, and the winner will bank half a mil.

Wait, Dan has friends?

I kid. Evidently, he knows the Batfaces, and a group of them are in Vegas to drink heavily play in the World Series. I daydreamed about Mekhi Phifer listened intently as Dan told me about his friends and how their tournaments are going.

Here’s what I caught: Tim, Troy, and Randy are out. Eric (one of them, not sure which) and Todd are still in.

Dan is at the Rio today and walking the tournament floor to text CSR updates about the guys. Go Batfaces!

Am her on the floor … Looking for batfaces.

Funny ironic — went to say hi to some drunken Dallas friends in line for satellites. The post I was working on when I let my guard down long enough to be brick-and-mortar hacked:

Batfaces Have Arrived
It’s all downhill from here