The million dollar One Drop event has attracted its fair share of professional poker players. But it has also attracted some notable professionals from the investment world. In our One Drop Investor Edition: Volume One, we profiled David Einhorn. In Volume Two, we profile two more investors — with strong poker credentials.

Dan Shak after winning the 2010 Aussie Millions High-Roller event (picture via PokerNews)

Dan Shak
Investment Style: Go Big or Go Home

Dan Shak’s hedge fund SHK Asset Management doesn’t play small ball. According to the Wall Street Journal, at one point Shak owned gold futures contracts valued at $850 million or the equivalent to South Africa’s entire gold production for a year.

But in January 2011, the market turned on a dime, and Shak was forced to liquidate his position for a $7 million loss. Although lately, Shak has made the news for reasons other than investing and poker.

As Dan noted recently, Shak is now suing his ex-wife Beth over her million dollar shoe collection. Since he had no trouble coughing up the $1 million buy-in for One Drop, I suspect Shak’s lawsuit has more to do with publicizing Beth’s new shoe venture than getting a piece of her Christian Louboutins.

Of all the investors taking the One Drop field, Shak clearly has the most WSOP experience. He’s cashed 15 times in WSOP events, five of them occurring in this year’s series. He also took out Phil Ivey heads-up to win the 2010 High Roller event at the Aussie Millions.

Bob Bright during the 2006 WSOP $2000 NLHE event

Bob Bright
Investment Style: Small Ball

Day traders are the grinders of the investment world. They don’t swing for the fences. Instead, they try to reduce day-to-day market risk with trading techniques that let them advance just one base at a time. Pushing this baseball metaphor, Bob Bright is a day trading coach and manager.

Bright Trading has more than 40 locations where day traders are coached and mentored in proprietary risk reducing techniques. In the solitary world of trading, Bright Trading offers them a supportive community as they navigate their game of inches.

Bright Trading and Bob Bright are based in Las Vegas. And Bob Bright has always loved poker. His earliest cashes date back to 1990, when he cashed in both low ball and razz at the Hall of Fame Poker Classic. His biggest score was a third place finish in the 2006 WSOP $2,000 no limit event.

More Bright poker trivia: In 2008, Bright allowed professional poker player Brandon Adams to trade at Bright in exchange for poker coaching.  As this 2+2 thread details, Adams dropped a hefty bankroll on some speculative trades. Hopefully Bright got more out of the poker lessons.

It’s PLO week on Poker after Dark, and thus the first new televised poker I’ve been excited to watch (on first run) in forever. Though I’m sure someone had to play a 4-card hand on ESPN in 2004, I can’t remember any PLO on TV since learning the definition of a “wrap” … and certainly not since the Pokerati game began introducing low-stakes players in Vegas to PLO (with run-it-twice!) a year-an-a-half ago.

(L to R) Adams, Antonius, Ivey, Dwan, Hastings, Galfond

Hard to believe televising a short-handed cash game session of the second most popular poker game in the world — the one that has produced the biggest online pots in history — would prove “revolutionary” … but really, it is kinda historic; and that says something about the limits of creative innovation in the online poker infomercial biz.

But kudos to PAD for at least taking a peak outside the ’06-’09 box to embrace variance. Though I wouldn’t contend pot-limit Omaha and four-color decks are what will reinvigorate poker on TV … for a semi-regular PLO player who doesn’t necessarily dream of playing the game for $100k buy-ins but just wants to beat my friends once a week at 1/2, hearing about a different sector of hand possibilities almost feels fresh … and it’s always good-fun to see extra cards on the table:

Poker After Dark is trying its hand at pot-limit Omaha, according to Brian Hastings’s blog on CardRunners (via PokerJunkie). From the sound of it, imho, could be another great step in the evolution of poker on TV …

We’ve previously contended that just because mixed games don’t play well on TV, there should be an exception for PLO. It’s easy-enough for any Texas Hold’em player to follow … same winning hands (essentially) … with enough crazy beats, dramatic suck-and resuck, and occasional nut-folding to make things exciting … while opening a new realm of poker thinking that should keep viewers coming back, especially if they play the game, too.

Supposedly this rare televised high-stakes PLO cash game, played a couple days ago in Ivey’s Room @AriaPoker and airing some time next year, was 300/600 with a $100k minimum buy-in. Pretty sexy line-up, too:

While at least five of those names have inherent high-stakes appeal, and one of them is Durrrr, I particularly wanna tune in to see Farha. We always hear how Omaha is his game … but I dunno that I’ve ever seen him play PLO before with hole-card cams — and should be interesting to watch his old-school style match-up with the online generation in a game that isn’t Texas Hold’em.

Could be wrong, but If this episode plays well — which I think it will, relatively — don’t be surprised to see a little more PLO factor into other poker franchises’ TV decisions.

Breaking down the Friday afternoon WSOP action:

Hellmuth falls short in quest 12th bracelet

The $1,500 NL Holdem event that started on Wednesday is down to the final table of ten, but Phil Hellmuth is not among them, finishing in 15th for $25,472. The final 10 when they return from their dinner break are:

Pascal LeFrancois – 4,000,000
Kevin Howe – 1,780,000
David Aue– 1,300,000
Max Steinberg – 900,000
Saar Wilf – 855,000
James Andersen – 665,000
Kurt Disessa – 651,000
Jose Gatmaitan – 640,000
Josh Brikis – 375,000
Daniel Wjuniski – 350,000

Follow all the final table action over at PokerNews.

Day 2 of 10k Stud W.C.

Less than 50 remain in the $10,000 Seven Card Stud World Championship with Ray Dehkharghani the current chip leader at 275,000. 2009 November Niner Eric Buchman holds down 2nd place with 270,000, while 50k Players’ Championship runner up Vladimir Schmelev is in 3rd with 230,000. Other notables: 50k Players’ Championship winner Michael Mizrachi (165,000), Men Nguyen (155,000), and Brandon Adams (120,000). Six more levels of play awaits the field or the final table of eight, whichever comes first. You can follow the progress of this event over at wsop.com.

Pot-Limit Bubble Pops

The $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem event burst its bubble early on day 2, with the field now down to just 25 players. James “Flushy” Dempsey is the current chip leader at 290,000. Other notables: Joe Serock (140,000), JJ Liu (100,000), Melissa Hayden (95,000), and Christian Harder (75,000). Play will end when the final table of nine is established or at the end of ten levels of play. Team Pokerati’s Tom Schneider earned $3,352 for his 52nd place finish, his second cash (in three tries) at the WSOP.

$1,500 NL Day 1

A field of 2,563 started at noon in the third $1,500 No-Limit Holdem bracelet event. Less than 800 remain in action at the moment, with Tom Dwan the unofficial chip leader with 56,000. Other notables with healthy stacks include Blair Hinkle (43,000), Shaun Deeb (36,000), Annette Obrestad (25,000), and Liv Boeree (23,000). Less than four levels of play remain for day 1, with the top 270 players cashing, with the winner taking down an impressive $614,248. For the Team Pokerati fanbase, Pat Poels was the lone entry for this event.

$1,500 Limit Holdem Day 1

A field of 625 took to the felt for the $1,500 Limit Holdem event, and around 550 remain as the field takes their dinner break shortly. The duo of Vanessa Rousso and Chad Brown are the unofficial top two with Rousso (10,800) holding a slight lead over brown (10,100). For the online poker community, Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke is third with 8,500 and other notables such as Jeff Madsen (6,250), Team Pokerati’s Tom Schneider (5,600), and Chris Ferguson (5,400). Team Pokerati also has Julie Schneider, Danny Noam, Robert Goldfarb entered in this event. The top 63 players make the money, with first place $189,870 along with a coveted bracelet, follow wsop.com for further updates and chip counts.

Some people you may recognize not playing in the main event, much to their own surprise after showing up in some cases a good 15 minutes before cards went in the air! (mostly from Feldman at ESPN.com):

Tom Franklin (head of WPA)
TJ Cloutier (legendary+PAC member+craps)
Mickey Appleman (breaking 30-year streak of main events)
Minh Ly (Doyle pal)
Brandon Adams (Full Tilt Red Pro)
Melissa Hayden
Random Australian guy screaming about desire to sue

(Let me know if there are others to add to the list.)

Official number will be available soon … but we’re looking at close to 3,000 for today (including @TheBigRandy and @RobertGoldfarb).

Final numbers for the 2009 main event coming soon …

Via @taopauly:

Several big names shut out: Brandon Adams, TJ CLoutier, Patrik Antonius & Sully Erna

Chagrined non-players, via Otis:

Photo: Flipchip/LasVegasVegas

This seems as good a time as any to share with you another leftover bonus! episode of Tao of Pokerati … where Dr. Pauly chats with Change100 (his personal fashion yogini) about Tiffany Michelle’s attire before her Ultimate Bet patchwork became such a major wardrobe malfunction. It’s sickeningly cute as this pokerblogging duo draws the fine line between rocker-chick chic and Tijuana hooker — and further fashion analysis tries to differentiate between the new-money stylings of Alexander Kostritsin, typical “online douchebag” and Mean Gene, and the poker-prep ways of Shronk and Brandon Adams.

Tao of Pokerati
Episode 28.5: Fashion Report (feat. Change100)

[audio:TOP-FashionReport28-5.mp3]

Happenings at the WSOP while the 2008-08 WSOP Circuit schedule was announced:

As the Day 2a field is on their dinner break, about 700 remain to play a couple more 2 hour levels before the survivors get the day off and return on Thursday. The current chip leader appears to be Brian Schaedlich, with about 500,000 in chips. With such a large field, exact chip counts are hard to come by, but notable players towards the top include David “Chino” Rheem, Brandon Adams, Keith “The Camel” Hawkins, John Hennigan, Mark Vos, Hasan Habib and Kido Pham. Notables who don’t need to worry about coming back in November: Paul Wasicka, Robert Varkonyi, 2007 ME final tablist Philip Hilm, Greg Mueller and Scotty Nguyen.

More updates later…

With the slower structure at the 2008 WSOP main event, the number of players still in the field after all of the Day 1’s were completed is massive – 3,929 to be exact. Luckily, the second days are divided into two, with Day 1A and 1B finishers playing on Day 2A on Tuesday, and Day 1C and 1D finishers playing on Day 2B on Wednesday. Are ya with me?

There will be 1251 players on Day 2A, with the top ten as follows:

Mark Garner – 194,900
Ben Sarnoff – 177,500
Brandon Adams – 176,450
Brian Schaedlich – 160,725
Kellen Hunter – 155,200
Stefan Mattsson – 154,275
Patrick Fortin – 145,275
Robert Mizrachi – 142,400
Jeff Frerichs – 138,025
Soren Peterson – 135,475

And there will be a whopping 2678 players on Day 2B, with the ten chip leaders as follows:

Henning Granstad – 242,950
Curt Kohlberg – 173,050
David Baker – 163,450
Howard Berchowitz – 160,075
Arnaud Mattern – 157,650
Steve Austin – 149,000
Mohamad Kowssarie – 146,000
David Stucke – 140,525
Sami Rustom – 140,450
Dylan Linde – 138,425

We’ll be at the Rio tomorrow to bring you any interesting info and gossip as the field plays down over the coming days.

It’s still a little too early to say, obviously. But right now it’s a guy named Mark Garner. Brandon Adams is close behind. They get to play with the comfort of knowing that essentially, theoretically, they could not play another hand and make the money. I say that loosely because we all know how blinds and antes work … and neither of them have quite what will be an average stack when we do burst the money bubble. But in general, finishing Day 1 with nearly 10x your starting stack is a pretty good place to be.

Other players of note making it through to Day 2 include:

Click below to see the complete list (the same as the one in the previous post) sorted by stack size:

More…