The unceremonious close of Jamie Gold’s short-lived affiliation with the Tropicana poker room.

Less than one month after the “Official Grand Opening of the Jamie Gold Poker Room,” the relationship between the Tropicana and the 2006 WSOP main event champion has apparently ended — more quickly than it began. Though no word yet from either side about what prompted the abrupt change of course, posters of Jamie Gold, hands to the sky, and videos of him daring players to “catch me bluffing” are gone.

(But you can still see on YouTube what the plans were supposed to be.)

The Feb. 17-19 launch-party weekend included a Sunday afternoon “second chance” tourney that got canceled when only two players registered, and Gold himself showed up an hour after cards were supposed to have gone in the air. But the 2/5NL game (with David Williams and other pros) that sprung up in the Jamie Gold room looked to be growing successfully — running regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays — as it was fast becoming known as the biggest 2/5NL games in Las Vegas, with reports of pots as big as $20,000.

Now the Gold promotional posters have been replaced by signs for a March Mania Mega Stack Poker Tournament, which starts today, March 15, and runs through March 25.

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The second installment of the Islidur SuperStar Showdown took place yesterday evening on PokerStars. After getting beat by Isaac Haxton in the first match Islidur1 took on Tony G in the 2,500 hand heads-up match. By the time the 9 hour match was concluded Islidur1 came out victorious with a final winning margin of $44,820.

At different points of the match each player held a lead of at least $70,000 before the biggest hands of the match even happened. The largest hand of the match came on one of the PLO tables when both players were sitting with over 60k each. Tony G was the aggressor for the entire hand and was the one who got the players all-in after the river when the board read . Tony G held the lead throughout the hand with his but the river was enough for Islidur1 to steal the $124,300 pot with his .

As the matched closed Tony G went into desperation mode and tried to make a move with but ran into the of Islidur1. After this hand Islidur held a $45,000 lead and that was where the match ended.

Post match comments by Tony G can be found on his blog where has laid down the challenge for Islidur1 to come over to Party Poker.

Who is next in line for the SuperStar Showdown? Some think it will be Phil Galfond while others think that a Islidur/Haxton rematch is possible. PokerStars Pro David Williams hinted in the chat box last night that David “Viffer” Peat has sent in a proposal for a challenge between him and Islidur1 take place live at PCA this month. Keep an eye on the official SuperStar Showdown page for the announcement of the next opponent.

NAPT :: Day 1B saw another large field of 373 players get chopped down to 175 by the end of the day. This means out of the 701 total players that signed up for the event, we have 337 going into day two: a little more than half the field cut down after the two day ones. Kim Frederiksen not only came out on top of the day with 237,000 chips, but also is the overall chipleader, edging out Day 1A leader Nicholas Crippo by 2k. While players like Hafiz Khan, Michael Binger, and Joe Cada survived the day with relatively large stacks, many more pros fell on Day 1B, including Elky, Victor Ramdin, David Williams, and November Niner Jason Senti. Michael Binger’s stack in particular had an interesting trek to the top end of the chip count, winning a 4 way all in with the nut straight on the flop (Pokerstars Blog).

Here are the top 10 chip counts going into Day 2:

• Kim Frederiksen: 237,000
• Nicholas Grippo: 235,100
• Thomas Middleton: 229,100
• Scott Fischman: 224,600
• Hafiz Khan: 210,200
• Blake Kelso: 207,500
• Clint Coffee: 202,900
• David Sesso: 200,000
• Romulus Segal: 190,700
• Cary Katz: 184,000

(Chip Counts courtesy of NAPT.com)

Day 2 restarts at 1PM PT. You can check out updates on the Pokerstars Blog, as they will certainly be updating throughout the day.

The WCOOP has reached day three, but already some noise has been made outside the hundred of thousands of guarantees that Stars is running each day. No fewer than three pros are no longer signed with Pokerstars, and all without much fanfare or even explanation from Stars as to why they removed them from their rosters.

Hevad Khan, core reason behind the “Hevad Khan” WSOP tournament rule, out.

Gavin Griffin, first player ever to lock up an unofficial triple crown, consisting of a WSOP bracelet and WPT and EPT titles, gone.

Peter Eastgate, 2008 WSOP Main Event Champion, sayonara.

In the end, these three all seem to make some sense. Peter Eastagate has quit retired from poker, though its anybody’s guess how long this haitus retirement is going to last. And if Hevad’s and Gavin’s Hendon Mobs are any indication, neither player has done anything particularly spectacular in the last two years. This coupled with high profile signings of David Williams and Vanessa Selbst earlier this year may have prompted Stars to trim the fat with regards to its pro holdings. Whether they stop here or not is anyone’s guess, but it will be interesting to see if at least the non-retired pros get picked up by a new site in the near future.

The WSOP may be over and the vanity plates dispersed across Vegas and Southern Cali, but we still have lotsa leftover pics from the Rio’s summertime parking lots (and others around town) … providing a unique glimpse of the poker players populating America’s roadways.

Yep. Standard raise:

We know this Bentley belongs to David Williams — am extra-smooth ride befitting a WPT World Champ for the long haul from Panorama Towers.

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The final day of the Main Event gets underway shortly after 12pm today with 27 players remaining as they play down to the November Nine. Here’s how they’ll be seated, with about 1:20:00 remaining in level 30 (60,000/120,000/15,000):

Amazon 100:

Seat 1: Michael Mizrachi – 6,300,000
Seat 2: Scott Clements – 7,250,000
Seat 3: Michiel Sijpkens – 7,765,000
Seat 4: John Dolan – 2,175,000
Seat 5: John Racener – 10,470,000
Seat 6: Brandon Steven – 6,045,000
Seat 7: Redmond Lee – 3,315,000
Seat 8: William Thorson – 3,680,000
Seat 9: Mads Wissing – 3,070,000

Amazon 101:

Seat 1: Johnny Lodden – 1,560,000
Seat 2: Joseph Cheong – 24,490,000
Seat 3: Jason Senti – 13,550,000
Seat 4: Matt Affleck -12,515,000
Seat 5: Matthew Jarvis – 13,300,000
Seat 6: Matthew Bucaric – 2,270,000
Seat 7: David Baker – 6,825,000
Seat 8: Filippo Candio – 10,020,000
Seat 9: Ronnie Bardah – 2,525,000

Amazon 102:

Seat 1: Adam Levy – 4,745,000
Seat 2: Benjamin Statz – 9,885,000
Seat 3: Soi Nguyen – 23,100,000
Seat 4: Duy Le – 7,255,000
Seat 5: Jonathan Duhamel – 10,520,000
Seat 6: Robert Pisano – 8,060,000
Seat 7: Pascal LeFrancois – 15,780,000
Seat 8: Hasan Habib – 1,510,000
Seat 9: Patrick Eskandar – 1,655,000

See who makes the November Nine at WSOP.com.

Is this news only to me?
UPDATE: Question mark removed. Williams and Selbst signage confirmed by Williams’ agent and PokerStars marketing exec.

David Williams, 2010 WPT World Champion, apparently will be donning the Spade-and-Star of PokerStars during the WSOP main event. I’m pretty sure you can bet on it …

Maybe I just missed the announcement, or any telltale patchwork in the Amazon room … but I hadn’t yet heard whom he’d be allying with, and this morning got an email invite for a little media meet-and-greet with:

Joe Cada: 2009 Winner – World Series of Poker
Vanessa Selbst: 2010 Winner – North American Poker Tour at Mohegan Sun
David Williams: As of 2010, his total live tournament winnings exceed $7,893,000

A formal invite is below, please let me know if you would like to RSVP for this event!

Figured it had to be them or Full Tilt … maybe Victory, but probably not, as Williams, upon becoming a free agent this spring just after winning the $25k WPT Championship, seemed to be one of the very few pros with the right combination of image and cred to make him extra-marketable.

All makes perfect sense really. As powerful a duo Williams could make with Antonio Esfandiari, it seems much cooler to match him up with two other current and defending big-event champs.

Wrapping up the Friday tournament action, with another bracelet winner determined:

Québécois LeFrancois wins $1,500 NL

Pascal LeFrancois, a 23-year old student from Quebec, won the $1,500 NL Holdem event, winning $568,974 along with the coveted WSOP bracelet. LeFrancois defeated Max Steinberg in heads-up play, with Steinberg collecting $352,916 for his runner-up finish. The full list of results, Nolan Dalla’s tournament report, and a first for the official winner’s photo, can be found over at wsop.com.

Schmelev and Mizrachi at it Again in 10k Stud

Twelve players remain for day three of the $10,000 Seven Card Stud World Championship with Vladimir Schmelev and Michael Mizrachi looking to renew their rivalry from the $50,000 Players’ Championship won by Mizrachi earlier this week. Schmelev is the current chip leader (921,000), with Mizrachi in third (544,000). Other notables: Nikolay Evdakov (543,000), Steve Bilirakis (448,000) and Men Nguyen (302,000). The full list of chip counts is now available at PokerNews.

Chanthabousay Leads Pot-Limit Final Table

The final table of the $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem gets underway at 2:30 this afternoon. JJ Liu is the first woman to make a final table at this year’s, starting third in chips with 479,000. Here’s how the entire final table will look:

Armen Kara 220,000
Gregg Wilkerson 230,000
Mark Babekov 246,000
JJ Liu 479,000
Edward Brogdon 89,000
Scott Haraden 224,000
Steve Chanthabouasy 533,000
Joseph Williams 385,000
James Dempsey 528,000

Gupta Going Great in $1,500 NL

Day 2 of the third $1,500 No-Limit Holdem event resumes at 2:30 this afternoon with 291 players returning, 270 making the money. Venkatesch Gupta will be the leader with 199,100 in chips. Among the notables: Blair Hinkle (112,400), Shannon Shorr (64,300), Erick Lindgren (57,600), Jerry Yang (49,100), Tom Dwan (44,500) and Neil Channing (42,000). Team Pokerati’s Pat Poels finished the day in 288th place with 3300 chips. The full list can be found over at PokerNews.

Taking it to the Limit for Day 2

The $1,500 Limit Holdem event returns with 177 players returning at 3:00pm to attempt to play down to a final table. Jameson Painter, who finished 5th at the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw event earlier this week, starts play today as the chip leader with 47,600. David Williams is 3rd in chips (41,800) with Jason Potter (32,800), Jeff Madsen (28,700) and Matt Hawrilenko (23,900) among the notables near the top of the standings. The full list of players returning can be found at wsop.com.

Saturday Tournaments

Saturday brings Day 1a of the second $1,000 NL Donkament to the WSOP at 12pm today, with about 4,000 runners expected over the next two days. The plan is to play ten one-hour levels today per usual, but if the pace of eliminations is as rapid as it was last Saturday, there could be a change in plans. The 5pm tournament is the $1,500 NL 2-7 Lowball Single Draw event, won last year by Phil Ivey when it had a $2,500 buy-in with a field of 147.

A semi-ironic old photo (l to r) of Phil Hellmuth, Clonie Gowen, and David Williams.

I woke up this morning (really – WSOP media conference call) and noticed a few murmurs on twitter. But surely it was just a poorly worded joke … then ran into a power problem that prevented me from digging for more. But then late tonight, I heard details from a generally reliable source, definitely reliable on this …

And indeed, David Williams is no longer a Bodog pro. What, winning the WPT World Championship and wet-cementing himself as truly one of the top-top players in the game isn’t quite the “Bodog Life”? Maybe his minglings with hot chicks and celebs at Vegas nightclubs doesn’t count as much if he ain’t drinking hard?

Williams (go Dallas poker!), of course, was one of the longest-lasting Bodog pros. The site recently scrapped Jean-Robert Bellande and Justin Bonomo, but they kept Evelyn Ng. Who woulda thunk that second place in a 2004 six-player ladies sit-n-go could ever mean so much!

Oh, and the big news somehow related to it all … Bodog did sign Amanda Musumeci, a hottie-ish 25-year-old American who built her microstakes bankroll into nearly $200k online. (Click for her Betty Page-meets-online-grinder pics.) She goes by the name “Manderbutt“, btw. Kinda looks like a Manderbutt, no?

Anyhow, new chick aboard + Evybaby = Team Bodog. It’s hard to determine if this was a pre-arranged firing or maybe Williams, who proudly wore his Bodog patch during the WPT, initiated the break-up? Perhaps it was as simple as Bodog not being willing to pony up the price Williams, now a WPT World Champion, could get elsewhere and thus they split amicably? They almost always split amicably, right? (Save for Clonie …)

I’m pretty sure we’ll discuss this a little more on the next Poker Beat … but you gotta think whatever was behind this move — again, more crazy industry shifting — it makes @dwpoker one of he hottest commodities in the game.

Unless of course he decides to vigorously declare his online poker independence and run all Darvin Moon with his newfound free agency.

The latest Poker Beat was a bit of a clusterfucky episode for us on the backend — computer breakdowns and internet snafus during a week where the only meaty topic we had for a full segment was David Williams’ stepping up to a new level of poker bad-assness by winning the WPT World Championship … and even that devolved into a Gary/Dan vs BJ spat about whether or not the mind coaching of Sam Chauhan has any tournament value or is just an Extenze-like sales success story for his brand of hypnotic snake oil.

But before we even get to that, we break down all sorts of poker buggerings … Daniel Tzvetkoff denied bail, poker recognized as a mind sport, Adam Junglen’s prosthetic leg, Cole South bowing out of CardRunners, PokerStars buying up abandoned poker blogs, Harrah’s selling the Rio, a new right-wing poker+politics show, and a study saying online gambling leads to jobs.

It was one of those episodes where so much was going wrong before we even got started that the crew just had to rely on shooting the shit about what we may or may not know … all while Huff attempted to keep the ship from running aground. I think it worked!

The Poker Beat
4/29/10

[audio:http://www.pokerroad.com/download/the-poker-beat:61]

It really is getting almost eerie the success “mindset” guru Sam Chauhan’s clients are finding at the poker table … not to mention in the MMA octagons. If you haven’t noticed, Chauhan is the non-player who has been showing up all over various poker places of late. He’s currently the subject of the cover story in the April issue of Bluff Magazine (by Lance Bradley), which tells how a guy who hardly knows the difference between suited connectors and a busted flush draw has helped turn around results for Antonio Esfandiari, Paul Wasicka, Gavin Smith, and the ever-tiltable Phil Hellmuth.

But since that story went to press, Chauhan has put up even more impressive results — most recently standing by the side of newly crowned WPT World Champion David Williams. In fact, three of the Top 16 finishers were Chauhan clients, two of whom made it to the final table. (Hellmuth went out on the TV bubble.) Away from poker, he gets credit (at least a small percentage, based on coaching deals we’ve learned about) for helping rising MMA star Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal take the Strikeforce light heavyweight title from Gegard Mousasi, who was a 3-to-1 favorite in the match.

That all kinda blows my theory that the key to Williams’ re-found success had everything to do with his new hair. Check out the video snippet below of a bushy-fro’d Williams stepping outside the Fontana room for some mantra and affirmation exercises before taking his seat at the final table:

Wow, that’s all there is to it? Didn’t realize winning at anything, let alone life, was so easy. Seems like if you could turn that into an iPhone app Sammy might really be able to help people. Chauhan, however, is not without his haters (just ask Google). But poker players know you can only get super-lucky so many times.

ALT HED: Mind over Variance

Check out his site at MindsetVT.com.

Season 8 of the World Poker Tour concluded Saturday evening with David Williams winning the $25,000 WPT World Championship, defeating Eric Baldwin in heads-up play. Williams collects $1,530,537 for his win, moving him into the top 20 on the all-time tournament earnings list. Shawn Buchanan’s third place finish meant Faraz Jaka became WPT Player of the Year. The full results from the final table:

1 David Williams $1,530,537
2 Eric Baldwin $1,034,715
3 Shawn Buchanan $587,906
4 David Benyamine $329,228
5 Billy Baxter $246,921
6 John O’Shea $199,888

The poker tournament circuit never stops though, as season 6 of the European Poker Tour holds their final tournament the €10,000 Euro Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Live coverage is available over at PokerNews and on the PokerStars Blog.

The longest day of the $25,000 WPT World Championship at the Bellagio took place on Friday, as the remaining 10 players took their sweet time getting down to the televised final table of six. When play finally ended, it was Full Tilt Pro David Benyamine who was the chip leader by just 5,000 chips over David Williams, who eliminated an extremely short stacked Phil Hellmuth in 7th place. Video of that final hand appears below, thanks to a company called All360Poker, which has been filming select tables during the WPT World Championship, including yesterday’s table. It’s a 360-degree camera that shows the entire table, and allows the viewer to click within the image to select a different POV of the action around the table.

[ED NOTE: Video removed because of autoplay]

Here’s how the final six players will be situated when play resumes around 4:30pm PT:

Seat 1. John O’Shea – 1,200,000
Seat 2. Billy Baxter – 2,440,000
Seat 3. Eric Baldwin – 4,490,000
Seat 4. David Williams – 4,700,000
Seat 5. David Benyamine – 4,705,000
Seat 6. Shawn Buchanan – 1,965,000

Follow the live updates with BJ Nemeth, Jess Welman and the rest of the WPT Live Updates crew here.

MMA bad-asses Randy Couture, Frank Trigg, Phil Baroni, and others will be joining poker pros Todd Brunson, Lee Watkinson, Chip Jett, David Williams, and others to raise money for wounded vets this Sunday at the Golden Nugget. It’s a $330 buy-in (w/ $100 rebuys) … first prize is a $10k seat (+$2k travel) to the upcoming Sports Legends Challenge in the Bahamas. Karina Jett is the hostess — and if we’re lucky, we’ll get to hear Todd Brunson talk politics.

Come play if you’re in town. Good times, good cause, all that stuff … open to the public and no funky, disputable, optional-donation prize pool — just charitable poker the way it’s supposed to be. Click the image to enlarge the flyer, and below for official details.

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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.