We’re still waiting for the magic number — as of press time registration is still open for another TK minutes — that will predictably show the WSOP on a continued growth path even without any non-Ironic Full Tilt gear in play, and PokerStars sending supposedly just eight qualifiers. I mean sure they have their pros and a big-time tennis guy, but eight is significantly down from previous Stars-WSOP numbers closer to 2,000. Must be because this year there Snoop Dogg was busy.
So yeah, the WSOP has a list of players advancing from their respective Day 1s onto a Day 2. If they’re on this list they made it. If they’re not, sorry. Bad beat.
The following people are friends of ours or just pros we like who advanced and are currently being vetted to see if they could become eligible for the brand-new Pokerati patch overlay should they have enough chips once we get near the money.
The Main Event resumes shortly with 293 players remaining as they play three more hours, two hours at 6/12k/2k and one hour at 8/16/2k . The current leader is Saguhyon Cheong with 2,870,000 in chips. Some other notables returning from dinner break include:
Jesper Hougaard – 2,700,000
Alexander Kostritsyn – 1,990,000
Jean-Robert Bellande – 1,520,000
Phil Galfond – 1,345,000
Johnny Chan – 1,115,000
Michael Mizrachi – 735,000
Robert Mizrachi – 675,000
Notables eliminated during the day:
Hoyt Corkins
Danny Mizrachi
Adam Schoenfeld
Jason Mercier
Dwyte Pilgrim
Evelyn Ng
Mori Eskandani
Eric Morris
Full results so far can be found here and follow the updates over at wsop.com.
Official WSOP info made more publicly available and easily sortable via @Kevmath and @ProfShadow, a self-described motorcycling, tattooed, beer drinking, poker playing, dice throwing, libertarian college professor:
Day 5 of the Main Event resumes at 12pm in the Amazon Room at the Rio with 574 players remaining as Tony “Bond18” Dunst leading the field with 1,546,000 in chips.
After the bubble burst with the elimination of Tim McDonald in 748th place, a flurry of eliminations happened in the last hour of play. Some of the notables who made the early payout levels include Humberto Brenes, Gavin Smith, Eric Mizrachi, Patrik Antonius, Paul Magriel, Mel Judah, Chris Bjorin and the now-official WSOP Player of the Year – Frank Kassela. The list of results is now available here.
For those looking for some sortable results of the day 5 survivors, check out:
BTW, just proof that Mathers can’t see everything Team Pokerati’s lone remaining player in the Main Event, The Big Randy, is alive at dinner break with 202k. He’s still trying to keep a low profile while chipping up quietly until money time.
UPDATE: LOL, maybe just semi-low … didn’t realize he had an active twitter account until reading it on WSOP.com. Go team!
Daniel Negreanu is the E.F. Hutton of poker. He relishes the role. He knows that if in the throes of passion he utters, “Do it. Do it. Do it just like that. Make sure there is a 150-300 level!†that — no matter whether he ends the night in warm, introspective afterglow –the tournament he plays the next day will have a 150-300 level. It’s the perk of being the most outspoken of the best poker players in the world. You’re allowed to open your mouth, makes billionaires dance, and change the world in which you live on a whim. It would be something you could respect about Kid Poker, if he only knew when to keep his mouth shut.
There was a time when world markets turned on whether Alan Greenspan had a good breakfast. The same is true of Negreanu. With a mere sneer, he can change the structure of a tournament. With a grumble in his tummy, he can get tofu served in the casino kitchen. With a wink and a smile, he can create a television show. His words—almost always—are game changers.
Make no mistake: most of the mainstream poker media exists because of and at the will of the online poker companies. If not for direct or indirect funding from the likes of Full Tilt and PokerStars, most poker magazines and websites you read regularly would go under in six months or less. It’s not a matter of news; it’s a matter of how they create revenue to stay afloat.
Ninety percent of time, the Negreanu-affected changes make the poker world better. There is no denying the man’s intelligence, skill, or innovative acumen. The problem is, Negreanu doesn’t respect his power. He wields it like a drunk with a gun. Most of the time he knows to keep it in his pants. Ten percent of the time, he waves it around the bar threatening to shoot whomever he’s imagined has upset his sense of order or eaten his veggie burger.
OK, gonna try again at this link-dump thing … no writing, no context, not even any particular order or story arc here … just a random assortment of Safari tabs and windows over-cluttering my computer while I try to do Pokerati’s WSOP thang-luu …
“We all agree that one political party is stupid and the other is evil; all we are debating is which is which.”Something for certain poker media types to think about when we go twitter-crazy trying to spread political insight on current events, but really may be just contributing to negative stereotypes of tourney journos being little more than (poorly paid?) chip counters. [Poker Shrink]
Crap, guess that’s technically writing right there … before you know it, brevity with a single href= spins out of control into its own multi-link set of tangents, as happened when I tried to note, simply, that Harry Reid won a primary. [Pokerati]
Ask Brian Nadell what happens when poker players step into potentially hostile political territory. He may be an accomplished poker pro with 13 cashes and eight final tables at the WSOP, but that doesn’t necessarily make this online player at PokerStars suited for Washington DC.
At least he recognized as much before June 1, and dropped out of the Nevada senate race. One look at his campaign video and you’ll see why sometimes, no matter how badly you wanna win, it just makes sense to chop. [Hendon Mob, Nevada Appeal]
Good move?
Blowing off the primary homestretch did leave Brian Nadell with extra time (and presumably cash) to play early events at the WSOP. And on Monday this week, he appeared on Poker Road Radio, live from the Rio. [Poker Road]
PokerNews normally does a really good job with everything they do, but what in the world is up with the chip count coverage at the WSOP this year? They have a page for it, but clicking on it would be a complete waste of your time because not only is it rarely updated, it’s also nowhere near accurate.
Yeow. Can you imagine if Negreanu and @AllenKessler had children?
Similarly, a generally fine poker granny pundit has strong feelings about the quality of this year’s WSOP reporting, saying, “the live coverage has reached a new low.” [Poker Hag]
Now let’s take a momentary break from linking for …
Pokerati Trivia: Which international flag hung proudly in the Brasilia Room last year, but is not on display in the Pavilion Room this year — despite it’s strong connection to poker?
Ooh, I know!
An email yesterday from a poker media-y colleague: “today officially started my World Cup fever!!” I agree. Lots of jerseys showing up at the Rio, and peeps starting to make plans for where they’ll be watching the first matches. Just two days left to fill in your Wicked Chops FC brackets. [Soccerati]
Man-U midfielder Darren Fletcher’s Scottish national team didn’t qualify for the Cup, so instead came to the WSOP; he lasted about 90 minutes in the $1,500 donkament that The Other Guy (not-Durrrr) won. [PokerStarsBlog via CalvinAyre]
Annie LePage, one of Pokerati’s favorite Las Vegas small-tourney rounders, comes to the 2010 WSOP looking to cross the 5-figure line in cashes. While she would make fine Team Pokerati material, she instead is representing for PETA (and the Maven). Check her out as she expounds on the evils of meat + good poker health via Vegan living. [Hendon Mob, PETA.org]
OK, cool, but that’s not counting barbecue, right? On that note …
Extra-big ups to The Fat Guy, who used to write about poker, but now just writes about “Food, Music, Books, and Tractors”. TFG recently overhauled Pokerati’s technological infrastructure to better accommodate Tao of Pokerati. With bigger online media ops facing early-WSOP heartache and unconstructive criticism due to “faulty hamster wheels”, I’m pretty thankful Scott (and his trusty sidekick Ed), have kept Pokerati’s machinery running relatively smoothly for five years — pretty much 24/7 actually, ever since the Great Crash of 2007 when we ran out of duct tape. [Tao, The Fat Guy]
OK, good enough for now … More-better random links TK. OK, maybe one more …
Funny: the Bad Beat on Cancer banners seen around the Rio show a hand that isn’t actually a bad beat — the pocket Aces got there on the river! [Poker Grump]
Robert Goldfarb isn’t just a Team Pokerati player, he’s a player-correspondent! And here’s what he found while on assignment today in the Rio parking lot. Said he’s willing to bet this belongs to someone playing in today’s $2,500 2-7 Triple-Draw … excellent … that’s the exact sorta analysis we’re looking for.
This event, btw, is going on right now … Daniel Negreanu Steve Zolotow is the chip leader, and our own Crazy Julie is 16th 25th in chips with 270 198 out of 291 remaining … (this is the event she final-tabled last year). Don’t trust the chip counts though, until we get deeper. Right now, with 198 remaining, Crazy Julie’s husband Tom is supposedly alive and in 208th? That’s why we try not to pay attention to these things until at least Day 2. There’s generally more to report in the parking lot.
Play ended in the Main Event earlier today after 5 full levels of play, the first time that’s happened since Friday, leaving just 64 players remaining when play resumes at noon today. Here’s how the field will look (first by chip count, then by table):
As a note, the average chip stack is now about 3,044,000 with the blinds starting at 25,000/50,000 with a 5,000 ante. Leo Margets will earn the last woman standing title as Nichoel Peppe finished in 75th place, good for $68,979. Other notables eliminated after the dinner break: Peter Eastgate (78th), Kenny Tran (86th), Noah Boeken (96th).
Follow the live updates over at wsop.com and check out Pauly for his own version of the action.
To wrap up the Dream Team Poker event, Kenna James did take down the individual title.
Page 2 contains excerpts from Nolan Dalla’s tournament report:
Day 1a of the Main Event is in the books, with 821 players remaining from the 1,116 who started the day. The reported chip leader is Eric Cloutier at 150,750. Other notable names with chips include: Jason Alexander (89,575), Pokerati’s Tom Schneider (79,600), John Hennigan (76,250), Vitaly Lunkin (68,300), Someone who didn’t report (69,500), Jimmy Fricke (63,425), and Andy Black (56,475). To see the entire list of chip counts, check it out here.
Day 1b gets underway at noon today, and will surely be the smallest field of the four day 1’s, with a chance the field will be under 1,000 when the registrations are calculated sometime after the dinner break after level 2 this afternoon. To see if that happens, follow the live updates over at www.wsop.com and more stuff from Pokerati during the day.
For some reason I found this email that just came in about the WPT Celebrity Invitational quite amusing:
From: Samuel Quinto
Date: March 1, 2009 5:19:33 PM PST
To: Matthew Savage
Cc: Lindsay at World Poker Tour
Subject: Re: WPT Invitational Day 1 Chip Counts
There was an error on the chip count list,
Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Eric Bana, and Abraham Lincoln did not play the Celebrity Invitational. We apologize for any inconvenience this might has caused.
If Abraham Lincoln were playing in this event, of course, I’m pretty sure that would be “good for poker”.
