Two more bracelet winners became known Sunday morning, and the rest of Saturday’s action:

Papola denies the Master bracelet #8

Jeffrey Papola defeated Men Nguyen in the $5,000 No-Limit Holdem 6-max event, earning $667,443 and his first career bracelet. Nguyen earned $412,746 for the second-place finish, moving into a three-way tie for first in the WSOP Player of the Year race with Michael Mizrachi and James Dempsey. Erick Lindgren finished sixth for $82,303. Full results and Nolan Dalla’s tournament report are available at wsop.com.

Velador slams the door on his second bracelet

Luis Velador took down the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha/Pot-Limit Holdem title as he defeated David Chiu heads-up, good for $260,517 and his second career WSOP bracelet. Chiu earned $160,902 for the second place finish, moving into a tie for 6th in the WSOP Player of the Year race. Full results and Dalla’s tournament report can be found at wsop.com.

10k NL Heads-Up down to an Elite 8

The final day of the $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Holdem Championship resumes at 3pm with these matchups:

Jason Somerville vs. Kido Pham
Faraz Jaka vs. Ayaz Mahmood
Alexander Kostritsyn vs. Ludovic Lacay
Ernst Schmejkal vs. Vanessa Rousso

The matches will be single-elimination until the finals, a best of three match. Follow the action at PokerNews.

Minetti leads Seniors’ event, Schneider among final 23

Day 3 of the $1,000 Seniors’ No-Limit Holdem Championship resumes at 2:30pm with Michael Minetti leading the final 23 players with 1,038,000 in chips. Other notables returning include Michael Woo (523,000), Jack Ward (519,000), and Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker pro Tom Schneider (284,000). The full list of chip counts is at PokerNews.

Montgomery leads day 1a of 1k NL

Original November Niner Scott Montgomery (75,200) led the day 1a survivors in the $1,000 No-Limit Holdem event as the field played halfway through level 9 to get down to 286 players. Other notables: Neil Channing (64,500), Michael Gracz (52,700), Fabrice Soulier (39,125), Liv Boeree (24,275) and Leo Margets (22,875). The full list of chip counts is available at wsop.com.

Siegel super at day 1 of 3k HORSE

Day two of the $3,000 HORSE resumes at 3pm with Jordan Siegel leading the 207 players who remain with 66,900 in chips. Other recognizable names include: Darus Suharto (55,100), Dan Heimiller (52,100), Howard Lederer (44,400), Chau Giang (36,400) and Eugene Katchalov (29,900). The full list of chip counts is available at wsop.com.

Sunday’s tournaments

12pm is day 1b of the $1,000 No-Limit Holdem event, with a field of at least 1,000 expected. The 5pm tournament is the $10,000 Pot-Limit Holdem Championship, won last year by John Kabbaj in a field of 275 for $633,335.

Time to recap the Saturday afternoon action:

Lindgren and Nguyen highlight 5k 6-max FT

Six players remain at the $5,000 No-Limit Holdem 6-max final table with Jeffrey Papola (2,340,000) leading when play resumed at 9pm. The rest of the final table is made up of Erick Lindgren (1,670,000), Men Nguyen (1,505,000), Orlando Delacruz (1,100,000), Bruno Launais (1,003,000) and Mark Radoja (480,000). Follow the action at PokerNews.

Velador vibrant at PLO/PLH FT

Eight players remain in the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha/Pot-Limit Holdem final table with Jose Luis Velador (985,000) holding the chip lead. Kevin MacPhee (631,000), David Chiu (437,000), Rob Hollink (323,000), and Victor Ramdin (200,000) are the notable names remaining, follow the action at PokerNews.

10k NL HU at Round 4

The $10,000 No-Limit Holdem Heads-Up Championship is currently at round 4 with players now in the money. Among the round 4 winners: Faraz Jaka, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Brian Rast, Kido Pham, Ludovic Lacay and Jason Somerville. One more round is scheduled for 11pm tonight, with the 8 survivors playing to a winner Sunday afternoon. See who else moves on at wsop.com.

Seniors’ sauntering along at day 2

Less than 150 players remain as play continues on day 2 of the $1,000 Seniors’ No-Limit Holdem Championship with Duane Gerleman (210,000) reported as the chip leader. Other notables in the hunt: Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker pro Tom Schneider (181,000), Berry Johnston (110,000), Susie Isaacs (60,000) and John Spadavecchia (55,000). Find more info over at wsop.com.

Day 1a of 1k NL underway

A field of 2,485 1,987 started day 1a of the $1,000 No-Limit Holdem with around 550 players remaining, scheduled to play 10 levels or down to about 360 players, whichever comes first. Notables who’ve grown their 3,000-chip stack: Scott Montgomery (25,000), Liv Boeree (24,700), Neil Channing (18,000) and Lee Childs (11,000). More updates and chip counts can be found at PokerNews.

3k HORSE field saddles up

The 5pm tournament today, $3,000 HORSE, drew a field of 478 entrants with the top 48 making the money, with the winner earning $329,840. The early leader is Robert Willamson III with 16,000 in chips, followed by Andre Akkari (13,000), Shaun Deeb (12,500), Matt Savage (11,700) and Scotty Nguyen (10,500). More updates as eight levels of play is scheduled at PokerNews.

Considering that Texas poker players helped build the third-largest friggin’ casino in the world (literally under a tent in Thackerville, OK) we can take some pleasure in knowing a bunch of Texans kicked butt in The River tourney this weekend and will be sending back home some riches made in El Norte.

WinStar reportedly threw in a $580,000 overlay to make their $3 million guarantee. Not sure about the buy-in details — I think they upped it to $2k? — nor overall results. The best “coverage” has come via 2+2 here, mixed in with some Facebook, Twitter, and direct txt msg buzz. (Thanks KevMath and Harris, as always, for the info!)

1,210 players overall.

The winner: Bobby Hempkins, aka “Shooter” in the Dallas poker boom days. (And now your source for residential real estate in the North Texas area.) $710k win. Nice!

5th place finisher Brian @ZBTHorton provided regular updates from the final table, such as:

8 left, these people suck (4pm)

Apparently tax issues may or may not have complicated chop discussions — though sounds to me that the Chickasaw nation is under similar corporate-legal restrictions as the WSOP.

7th place reportedly went to a guy named Lance. Paid $95k. Sounds like a nice prize distribution (at the final table, at least). Not too flat, not too steep.

Blind structure was supposedly relatively fast, however.

Pros who made the trek for this event included: Clonie Gowen, TJ Cloutier, Michael Mizrachi, Eric Mizrachi, Kido Pham, Terrence Chan, Michael Binger, Men the Master, Allen Kessler, and Dmitri Nobles. The real @EskimoClark was also supposedly milling around.

pic: @EWeE420

The two chip leaders on Day 2 in the World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson 5-Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio (the WPT DB5DWPC?) are Clonie and Kido Pham. I’d say congrats, but I have argued vehemently with many an ESPNer that being chip-leader early in a big tournament is more often a kiss of death than a path to victory. Hopefully I’m wrong — I’d love to see Clonie and/or Kido go extra-deep. Also looking forward to seeing a big-table pic of her without the Full Tilt uniform.

Donkey Bomber, btw, went into Day 2 with 8,000 chips (they started with 45k) … and is still hanging on, now with 20k.

200 players left. Average stack is about 110k. BTW, field size this year was 497, compared to 664 last year. But by no means does there seem to be a shortage of any periphery play at Bellagio.

Click here to follow the tournament action.

UPDATE: Tom is out.

Also, a WPT video update, where we learn it snowed in Las Vegas today (or at least in Summerlin), Daniel Negreanu doesn’t like to tip valet parkers, and apparently now he drinks again (didn’t he go straight-edge at some point?):

Interesting charity event going on in Dallas this weekend … a $1,500+ buy-in with $1k going to the prize pool. The rest going toward medical expenses for internationally renowned Russian/American/Dallas artist Vladimir Gorsky, who is suffering from brain cancer. TJ Cloutier writes a little about him and the event here. Some of the other Vlad-loving pros supposed to attend include: Amir Vahedi, Tom McEvoy, Young Phan, Kido Pham, Jennicide, and Warren Karp.

Though I don’t know Vlad, I’ve actually seen some of his art before, including his Tapestry of the Centuries (above), and I gotta say, it is some pretty impressive stuff. And apparently he’s quite the card-playin’ guy … no wonder he chronicled Las Vegas in mixed media and presented it to LV Mayor Oscar Goodman. (He also happens to be friends with the President Bush family — having painted the portrait of GHWB that hangs in his Houston office, and Babs with her beloved Millie.)

The event takes place at the Westin City Center. Glad to see it. If they successfully pull off this event, it will be good to see charity poker getting back to what it could/should/used to be in Texas — though it does seem a little strange for a charity event to be going on in Dallas that doesn’t have anything to do with Pokerati or Clonie.

Fortunately, I will be able to follow the action on HoldEmRadio.com.

One other really interesting thing about this event: the support it’s getting from the Choctaw Nation. They’re running single-table satellites to this event 24/7 between now and then. And as a show of appreciation for helping out their friend Vlad, the pros slated to be in Dallas on Saturday will be in Oklahoma for Choctaw’s Friday night tourney, reportedly playing with bounties on their heads.

Click below to see the flyer and get more details about signing up:

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He finished in 45th place, paying $154,400. It’s all probably Jen’s fault. I suspect the 10-4suited will now be wielded like The Hammer against Hellmuth only, and will become his kryptonite, impeding his effort to dodge bullets baby.

The people remaining that you may or may not care about:

Tiffany Michelle (Go MySpace friends!)
Mike Matusow (Go MySpace friends!)
Brandon Cantu (Go Jen’s MySpace friend!)
Gert Andersen
Kido Pham (Go Dallas Poker/MySpace friends!)

UPDATE: Kido rode a tournament roller coaster extremely deep, but in the end he got flung in 41st place, also for $154,400 — about the size of a big-ass pot in the 25/50 PLO game at the old Red Man’s in Dallas.

Play ended on an explosive note last night as Phil Hellmuth’s antics earned him a 1 orbit penalty for his prolonged verbal attack on Cristian Dragomir on the last hand of play. 79 players return at 12 today to play down to the final 27, however long that takes. There’s still two women in the field (Tiffany Michelle 5th with 3,438,000 and Lisa Parsons 73rd with 581,000). The leader is Mark Ketteringham, with 5.8m in chips,Andrew Brokos in 2nd with about 4.08m, and Nikolay Losev in 3rd with 4.06m. Notable names remaining include David Benefield, Brandon Cantu, Kido Pham, David “Chino” Rheem, Mike Matusow, Hellmuth, Victor Ramdin, Matt Matros, Keith
“The Camel” Hawkins, Alex Outhred, and Thomas Keller. To see everyone’s situation in terms of chips and where they sit, head to page 2:

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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…

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:

Mark Garner – chip leader Brandon Adams	194,900 176,450
Kido Pham	120,650
Mark Vos	113,200
Bob Slezak	91,600
Chau Giang	87,625
Nick Schulman Hasan Habib	69,000 68,300
Joe Beevers Harry Demetriou	60,475 59,150
Tex Barch	59,125
Toto Leonidas	59,100
Barry Schulman Blair Hinkle Paul Nobles Bill Baxter	58,350 58,275 58,000 56,025
Ted Lawson	56,000
Jason Lester	55,500
John Hennigan	51,875
Jeff Littlefield	49,625
Michael Craig	49,050
Perry Friedman	41,400
Tony Abesamis Noah Boeken	40,400 38,775
Anna Wroblewski	34,125
Ben Roberts	34,100
Paul Wasicka	26,950
Hieu Ma	26,700
Gabriel Thaler	26,375
Bill Gazes	24,975
James Fricke	24,650
Scotty Nguyen	23,600
Barry Greenstein	21,500
Susie Isaacs	19,475
Lee Markholt	19,425
Derek Tomko	14,475
Anthony Cousineau	12,000

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

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Play started about 12:20 this afternoon for day 1a of the $10,000 NL Holdem Main Event, with the UNLV Marching Band and Wayne Newton kicking things off. I’m sure those who’ve chosen days 1b-1d are thankful that they didn’t have to experience that for their start as it will probably be a bit more low-key for them when play starts. It appears that the day 1a numbers will be around 1,297, which is very slightly above the day 1a figure from last year. The mysterious figure so far appears to be in the 4500-4900 range for now, as there are 468 spots currently showing for the prize pool (of course no $ figures as of yet) if you take a look at the picture on Pauly’s site.

Among those that won’t have to worry about making the November Nine: Raymond Rahme, Tuan Lam, Roy Winston, Tom “Durrr” Dwan, Vanessa Selbst, Eli Elezra, Katja Thater, Phil Galfond, Bob and Maureen Feduniak, Chad Brown, Lyle Berman, Dan Harrington, Jason Alexander, and plenty of other names (known and unknown). The current chip leader going into the dinner break is David “Chino” Rheem, who is currently at 103,000 in chips. Other recognizable names: Blair Hinkle, Svetlana Gromenkova, Kido Pham, Noah Boeken, Anna Wroblewski, Mekhi Phifer, Maya Antonius and plenty of others. Follow the updates during the evening at the WSOP.com site here. Play starts again shortly, as they play two more 2-hour levels, then the survivors get to return on July 8 for day 2a.

More updates during the rest of the evening…

What’s been happening at the WSOP since last night, while Dan Michalski anxiously awaits his attempt to make good on his $300 All-In “investment”:

The $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha final table has been set, this group of 9 faces the hot lights of the ESPN cameras:

Seat 1: Kido Pham 1,080,000
Seat 2: Brandon Moran 1,286,000
Seat 3: Peter Jetten 492,000
Seat 4: Michael Mizrachi 1,767,000
Seat 5: Billy Argyros 729,000
Seat 6: Greg Hurst 637,000
Seat 7: Tom Hanlon 192,000
Seat 8: Marty Smyth 1,068,000
Seat 9: Richard Harroch 372,000

The other final table scheduled for today and the other tournament action on the next page:
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What’s happening tonight at the WSOP, while Wicked Chops Poker is celebrating the good news.

JC Tran takes his name off of the “Best player to never win a bracelet” list, taking down the $1,500 NL Holdem event against Danish pro Rasmus Nielsen. JC, at one point down 3-1 headsup, chipped away at Rasmus until he eventually took the chip lead, winning when his KQ nipped the Dane’s QJ on a Q-high flop. Tran takes home over $631,000 plus 100 WSOP POY points, moving him into 6th in the race with 1 event remaining. Nielsen will be consoled with almost $390,000 to take back to Denmark.

Other tournament happenings on the next page:
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THACKERVILLE, Okla.–North Texas player Abteen Vaziri just said now that I know his name I can delete it. He is out. He wins $2,500 for finishing in 55th place. Much of Abteen’s recent success has come from study of Joe Navarro’s book on tells. But he misread a pulsing neck vain for weakness when in reality it was pocket queens.

Sorry dude.

Looks like it’s up to Josh, Troy, and/or TJ to do the Dallas gamers (whose names Pokerati knows) proud.

UPDATE: Troy “Darling” Phillips is out. He got pocket jacks on the button and raised. The ever-aggressive big blind pushed all-in … Troy called … and would learn the sad news that he was up against aces. Ouch!

50th place. $3,000. Still, nice job by the Batfaces favorite sugar daddy curly haired representative. It’s only a matter of time before he runs out of money makes another final table.

UPDATE: Josh Evans also appears to be out. Turned away for a second and his table was gone … and he couldn’t be found elsewhere in the field.

Interestingly enough, while Kido Pham and Greg Raymer were brought out here (and presumably bought in) by WinStar … TJ Cloutier simply showed up on his own and plunked down $1,100. Definitely not a charity event for him. And to think, they don’t even have craps in Oklahoma. Can we say positive EV?

With 45 players left and blinds at 4k/8k+500, Cloutier has about 165,000 chips. Average stack is 111,000.

UPDATE: Just learned that Cloutier was bought into this event by a heretofore unnamed military-ish backer in Dallas … who has 50 percent of the poker hall-of-famer.

THACKERVILLE, Okla.–Woo-hoo, it works! Yep, it took some sore thumbs and a little extra money to Cingular to make things happen, but I am blogcasting semi-live from my laptop in the WinStar poker room. Still have a few kinks to deal with … for example, it’s hard to find a power outlet in this giant tent. (Quick aside … the WSOP might want to consult with the Chickasaws when it comes to building super-big, functional, well air-conditioned poker tents.) Anyhow, it’s a bit longer of a walk to the WinStar casino entrance on a Saturday evening. Our unscientific license-plate spot-check of the parking-lot action north of the Red River:

Texas – 124
Oklahoma – 3
Louisiana – 1
Ontario (Canada) – 1
Missouri – 1
Illinois – 1

They’re getting near the bubble in Day 3-Day 1 of the Red River Roundup. Forty-six players remain, and today they’re playing down to 34. Greg Raymer and Kido Pham both went out early. No other “big names” remain … but we’re about to take a walk on the other side of the ropes to see if we don’t recognize anyone.

UPDATE: Nope, hardly recognize a remaining soul. Across the way in the cash games, however, is another story, where dealers and players alike look familiar … almost like an old higher-stakes Rounder Club tourney at the old P-room! I’m sure there are some good players left in the field, it will just take us a bit to learn who they are. (And hey, one of these days, the Chickasaws may even let us take pictures!)

THACKERVILLE, Okla.–No internet north of the Red River, or at least not at WinStar, where the first of three Day 1s in the $1 million NLH tourney concluded shortly before midnight yesterday. We’ll try to keep you posted from now through the final table, but can only promise so much with two-thumb typing.

Red River Roundup, Day 1 report:

– Event is sold out. 1,000 players. Double last year’s field.
– 333 played yesterday, of which 33 remain and will convene on the other side of the bubble on Sunday.
– Josh Evans and TJ Cloutier both advanced.
– So did Troy “Darling” Phillips. (Go Batfaces!)
– Marco Palacios went out near thw bubble.
– Avg. stack is 50k. Chip leader has about 150k.
– Media coverage is kinda new to WinStar. They haven’t figured out yet whether or not to allow photos.
– New poker room here is very nice.

Day 2-Day 1 has gotten underway. Favorites include Kido Pham and Randy “The Big Randy” Brown. Greg Raymer supposedly plays tomorrow.