Poker tournament coverage is often on the cutting edge with regular use of new media technologies — falling somewhere behind porn and still ahead of the mainstream — and today the Vine app seems to be all the rage … or at least will have been for about 6 seconds.

I’m not sure yet if these video snippets are the next Instagram, the next Draw Something, or video Pinterest … but whatever it is, there’s more and more #WSOP on Vine by the day (despite WSOP/ESPN no-video policies that are like sooo 2011-12). It seems early adopters are still trying to figure out what exactly makes for a good, um, vine, but view these moving squares all together (and turn on the volume for some) and you’ll get a sense of the WSOPatchwork — as seen in quick video loops of chip porn, hallway meet-n-greets, WSOP worker vids, tableside commentary from a world-class DJ, and even a marriage proposal that, well, er … see for yourself … over and over and over and over again, until you’re done forever …

1. WSOP wonderland

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2. Wow factor?

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It’s the kind of built-in customer appreciation and multimedia word of mouth a true evil empire could only dream of … or maybe it’s just free advertising Caesars officials have grown to expect:

My how far we’ve come since the days when Jeff Madsen held the mic for the WSOP.

Nothing too special about this one … nice car, nifty plate … again not certain of the locale, but thinking it mighta been at Red Rock? Very Summerliny in many ways.

UPDATE: Or Panorama Towers. Word is the ride belongs to Jeff Madsen.

I don’t know what they said, but I heard the entities from Wicked Chops talking with @JessWelman about something involving the Isle of Man. I was very curious, particularly because I eventually plan to reveal the answer to that trivia question that no one — not even Mathers — answered correctly. (The answer was Isle of Man.)

The end of the Series is a time when poker media types often throw out much of the good stuff they’ve heard but haven’t yet shared, or exchange different bits of info to figure out what all adds up and what doesn’t. So I headed their way …

As a longtime, multi-show podcaster, there’s little I dislike more than when someone encroaches on an episode in progress … whether that be a solicitor at the door (when on skype) or an ignorant walker-upper during mobile recordings. That’s what I did here. Oops. My bad, but hey, Jess is plenty familiar with the concept of me botching up a show, so …

Their conversation seemed intelligent and intense for several minutes. That’s all I know. Thus, I plan to skip over the part with Jeff Madsen (sorry dude) to get right to the Jess part to hear what sort of industry dirt, informed or otherwise, they were batting around.

http://wickedchopspoker.com/wicked-chops-podcast-ep-11-with-jeff-madsen-jessica-welman/

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.

Poker2Nite inked a deal for a second season of the poker-news-talk-variety show presented by UB.net, featuring Scott Huff, Joe Stapleton, and Joe Sebok. After a start-up run on FoxSports — and seen regularly on Pokerati — season 2 will run for 12 episodes on the Versus network … Versus was formerly the Outdoor Life Network before rebranding itself as a sports and lifestyle channel in late 2008. This seems to be in line with their development of slightly non-traditional sports programming.

We’ll see how any new embedding options work, and what else may or may not change with the new channel. But glad to see the industry still able to support two semi-independent poker television news shows … the other, of course, being ESPNs The Inside Deal presented by PokerStars.

The new season begins on Wednesday, March 3, supposedly at 11 pm … though I am thinking that must be Eastern Time since the Cox Las Vegas listings say it airs at 8 pm and re-airs on Fridays at 2:30 pm. Channel 38.

And a little bubbling-under semi-related to the show … Cohost Sebok says he tried to buy out of his face-tattoo prop bet with Gavin Smith and Jeff Madsen, but they wouldn’t accept … which you know how that works … makes him the odds-on favorite to win the permanent lasts-longer bet for the LAPC main event.

Perhaps inspired by Wicked Chops’ telling him to please stop, Jeff Madsen apparently has rented 8 Mile and/or got laid this weekend:

ALT HED: Poor Girl

Technically I think Madsen is the MC, and really, it all would work better (for my hedline at least) if he were to rhyme-partner with Scotty Nguyen … but oh well, this still made me LOL:

ALT HED: P.W.A. Straight Outta Bellagio

More douchebaggerous debaucherous good times leaking out from the UB’s big annual Aruba event … the kinda special gathering that even Full Tilt Red Pros attend. And here we see some guy I hadn’t heard of before, Poker Rapper, show Jeff Madsen that the one-time WSOP Player of the Year will never be the Eminem of Poker. (He almost sounds like he’s crying when he tries to comeback from the schooling by kicking it into Marshall Mathers gear.)

via PokerNews

Good episode of the Degen Report — bringing you more of the real WSOP, nearly a month in, as tempers flare, bankrolls fluctuate, and the general grind begins to wear. In this vid, we learn about rumors of who’s rolling whom (Jeff Madsen mugged at a Strip Club? Should help his rapper cred), near-broke folks making big scores, and @Dutch Boyd jumps in with an anti-Euro beef regarding the not-so-British way they do battle with Americans.

Watch Bryan Micon and Dutch Boyd Get Degenerate on RawVegas.tv

From here, it all gets really interesting — as the two discuss the enforcement of language and abuse penalties, the WSOP penalty “book”, and bring into question a potentially flawed rule that prohibits checking the river with the nuts … contending that indeed, there are situations where you might want to do that (particularly in split-pot games) without regard to soft-play perceptions.

I dunno … I wish Poker Road would learn to turn off their damn autoplay! I think it’s pretty good. I mean he’s no Atmosphere, but still …

And considering how confident Madsen is about his game headed (literally) into the WSOP, I think that might explain why a few pros who are also super sure they’re ready to take down some serious shizznit might be 0-fer so far. Everyone seems ready to play, and thinks they’re more ready than all the rest … and, well, that’s just old-school poker.

Jeff Madsen videos on Poker Road (via Wicked Chops on Facebook)

A few recaps while several tournaments are on their dinner breaks:

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Holdem final table has 4 players remaining. Greg Raymer, Vitaly Lunkin, Isaac Haxton and Dani Stern make up the final four to take home nearly $2m and the first open gold bracelet of the WSOP. Ted Forrest, Noah Schwartz, Lex Veldhius, Alec Torelli and Justin Bonomo were eliminated earlier today from the final table.

Speaking of Raymer, the WSOP Champions Invitational got underway earlier this afternoon. 20 of the 25 surviving champions accepted their RSVPs to be filmed under the bright lights of the ESPN cameras. Within the first orbit, 2006 winner Jamie Gold was the first player eliminated, while 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker watched his 10,000 chip stack dwindle erode before he finally busted. Raymer was able to get a couple of hands in before returning to the $40k final table. Six more one-hour levels or until the final table of nine return Monday afternoon.

More recaps on the next page:
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It’s that time of year again… Poker players descend upon SoCal for the L.A. Poker Classic, and the Commerce Casino buzzes with tournaments and cash games of all shapes and sizes. I finally made my first jaunt over there on Monday to check out the $10K HORSE event, the first of its kind at the LAPC, and was taken aback by the masses in the tournament room – 1,362 to be exact – for the $335 NLHE rebuy. Word was that the $100K guarantee was the draw, but the final prize pool was nearly $400K. The line of alternates wound through the hallways, and it took so long to thin the field that the $10K HORSE start-time was pushed back.

With Tournament Director Matt Savage running the LAPC show for the entirety of the series, all poker media was invited to cover it. Steve Hall has been there for the majority of it, providing some updates and gossip as only he can. (Personal fave: report of Nelly’s random appearance to play high-limit cash.) With the Monday HORSE event and subsequent $10K heads-up, PokerRoad settled in for their live shows, Life’s a Bluff came to pick up some interviews, and CardPlayer got comfortable for the duration to provide live updates of the major preliminaries and the main event. Word is that PokerNews will even be showing up for the main, as Savage welcomes the coverage, overruling (in most areas of coverage) the usual WPT media restrictions.

The pros have been all over the 2009 LAPC, starting with David Plastik winning Event 2, Fabrice Soulier taking Event 16, Jason Mercier Event 19, Frankie O’Dell Event 22, Jeff Madsen Event 24, and Scotty Nguyen grabbing another HORSE title in Event 29 (the aforementioned $10K event). The $10K heads-up will find its winner today, and the $10K WPT main event begins on Saturday.

Side note: Scotty Nguyen is evidently unable to win a HORSE event without controversy. CardPlayer reported that he taunted another player and began to show signs of his 2008 WSOP behavior, though he calmed down after a warning from Savage.

From CardPlayer updates:

As his chip stack has grown at this final table so has the level of Nguyen’s voice. He specifically taunted Matt Graham after he busted him in fifth place in a manner that definitely crossed the line.

Really? Damn.

After spending quite a bit of time as the small stack, Dallas’ own Allen Carter bested the most recent WPT Final table at the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi, MS, taking home $1,000,000, an entry into the WPT Championship, and his first major bracelet. This win also marked his first 6-figure drag.

Allen is a member of a very elite group of poker players. Not because of his new bracelet or his arguable transition to pro ranks. It actually has little to do with how he plays, but more to do with why he plays. In my opinion, there are about 5 different kinds of players. Let me also note that I recognize that the majority of players belong to more than one of each.

1) Those who play for fun (Think Guy Laliberte)

Even his txt msgs have the right attitude.

2) Those who play for profit (Tom Schneider)
3) Those who play for action (Dan Michalski)
4) Those who play because of addiction (Endless list)
5) Those who play for lack of better options (Think tomorrow’s Madsen and other young guns turn college drop-outs of today)
…and finally…
6) Those who play purely for competition (Allen Carter)

I first met Allen in ’06 in the DFW airport, waiting to board a flight to the WSOP. He had won an entry into the Main Event through and online tournament. Actually, I should be clear,… He won FOUR entries. Pretty awesome in its own right, but totally redonkulous if you consider that he did all of it in only 6 attempts! And I believe that I remember he also came in 2nd in another one of those events.

You can’t enjoy success like that if you can’t commit yourself completely and exclusively to a single player category. And in case it isn’t obvious, the only two categories capable of supporting such are 1) Profit and 2) Competition. Allen has expressed to me multiple times that competition is his only reason for playing. Without that, he simply won’t play.

I understand that this philosophy almost completely contradicts the principles of the only other successful player category, profit, where you try to find the juiciest and softest game available. But maybe what Allen has figured out is that as long as you have enough water in the sports bottle (bankroll), you should always opt to play against the young, tall, black team, and never against the short, white, computer nerd, poker enthusiasts. Because with poker, unlike any other sport, you can put yourself or find yourself in the ‘big game’ at any time. This time it was a white, 40-something, former CPA from Dallas who prepared for and conquered the biggest game of his life. While he was preparing, you were checking your fish lists and looking for the softest SnG’s you could find.

On dinner break until 9:30pm with 92 players left. Tiffany Michelle at 3,000,000 and Lisa Parsons at 1,200,000 are the last two women standing. Players will play one more level after dinner break, like Jen notes below.

Top 5 Chip leaders:

Nikolay Losev – 3,500,000
Mark Ketteringham – 3,450,000
Jamal Kunbuz – 3,250,000
Aaron Gordon 3,200,000
James McManus 3,200,000

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