Some may recognize me from Twitter, a few may have cracked my aces a time or two, and it’s possible that some of you were smart enough to jot down that number I left on the bathroom wall. If you don’t recognize me AT ALL, then you’re part of an exclusive group called “Almost Everyone”.

My name is Kim Shannon, and I’m all up in everyone’s bidness… which is why Pokerati invited me to share with you the poker gossip and celebrity “news”. My initial response was “I’d rather drink a thumbtack-and-jalapeno smoothie”, but then Dan reminded me that I still owe him a beej from a prop bet I lost… so here I am.

Let’s skip the gristle and get right to the bone, shall we, with what’s buzzing in poker … or wait, is that coming from my purse?

Clock Blocked

Word from the felt is that Daniel Negreanu and Andrew Robl have kissed and made up in the wake of a spat over last week’s episode of “The Big Game”, in which Negreanu & Tony G were poster children for fucked up poker etiquette. Poker bitching about implied collusion aside, I hadn’t seen so much high-fiving and snickering since I last got “Eiffel Towered” in a drunken MFM.

After the broadcast, Tony G redeemed himself by posting a quasi-apology, but Daniel kept the drama going with a post of his own expounding on Robl’s nittiness. I was in the middle of reading Robl’s rebuttal when I realized that I had been punching myself in the face the whole time over the pettiness of it all. However, I do feel the need to give Daniel a special award for managing to refrain from calling Robl a “cunt”.  Then, just as I was about to start placing bets on who would blow a gasket and sprain their vagina first, Negreanu ruined my fun by saying he has since called Robl and smoothed things over.

A-Rod’s Poker

Alex Rodriguez was in the Ivey Room at Aria with Jean-Robert Bellande last week — supposedly playing 50-100 NL with a couple non-pro Aria regulars. Tweeting from Haze Nightclub, @BrokeLivingJRB reported that A-Rod “won 3k” in the game, which sounds to me more like 5-10 without steroids — hardly enough for new pair of Yankee-caliber starter tits. Dealers say A-Rod tipped adequately, btw, tossing “like $36 in gravel” before leaving the game. Not one to hit-and-run, he was back at the tables a couple days later, playing 10-20 NL at Bellagio. John Kim snapped a pic. Orel Hersheiser (great first name, terrible last) also joined the action somewhere along the way.

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The Main Event got underway today with Jack Link’s mascot Sasquatch grunting his way through the “Shuffle Up and Deal” with a field of 1,116 (down from last year’s 1,297) starting day 1a. Jeffrey Pollack’s vlog with Wicked Chops Poker, shown below, hopes to get 5,000 entrants, which would be about 25 precent below last year’s 6,844. The lower than expected numbers could also explain the decision to play only 4 two-hour levels on days 1 and 2.

At the moment, there’s about 4,000 registrants already signed up, most of which are on days 1c and 1d, so don’t be surprised if you hear rumors about Monday’s day 1d being “closed” for registrations to add some entrants to days 1b and 1c. Notables who have already been eliminated today include: Jerry Yang, Freddy Deeb, Orel Hershiser, John Phan, Gabe Kaplan, Davidi Kitai and 2009 EPT Grand Final winner Pieter de Korver. The unofficial chip leader is Dragan Galac at 110,000 in chips, followed by by 2006 EPT Grand Final winner Jeff Williams at 106,000.

Other notables with chips: Jason Alexander (84,500), Eli Elezra (84,300), Tom Schneider (57,000), Phil Laak (46,000) and Jimmy Fricke (45,000). Follow the last level of play at the WSOP site here. Chip counts should be available in the early morning hours, but if you want to see who decided to pay their $10,000 today, a list of Day 1a entrants can be found here. More stuff this weekend, so come back to Pokerati often.

Watch Jeffrey Pollack Vlog on Day 1A of the 2009 WSOP Main Event on RawVegas.tv

Is he the Orel Hersheiser of 2009? Would be kinda funny since he was the bottom-ranked player by our little ESPN panel of “experts”.

We’ve got some 80 people competing in the PokerRoadRadio/Pokerati bracket game. With half of Round 1 complete, here are the leaders:

The 4th of July holiday certainly put a damper on the size of day 1b, as a disappointing 1,158 showed up to play at noon today. Pauly notes that some country music singer did the Star Spangled Banner and some sort of flag ceremony was attempted that didn’t go as planned. The players are currently on their dinner break, with about 850 remaining. Among those whose dream is over: Kenny Tran, Ram Vaswani, Orel Hershiser, Jamie Gold, Greg Raymer, Tuan Le, Ted Forrest, Daniel Negreanu, among many others. The early chip leader appears to be Patrik Antonius, with Robert Mizrachi, Erick Lindgren, Vanessa Rousso, and 2007 ME final tablist Philip Hilm near the top of the leaderboard. Follow the progress when they return on the WSOP.com website here.

More updates as they warrant…

I’m currently watching the Heads-Up Championship on NBC — round of 16. Mildly entertaining … it was fun to see Orel Hersheiser slightly outplay Freddy Deeb in a hand, and Full Tilt has some pretty cool new commercials. But still, the show as a whole isn’t as exciting as the commercials for the PGA Players Championship. Maybe someday … This would be much better, of course, were it being aired pseudo- or semi-live, when we still cared about our brackets.

The side profiles are pretty good — Doyle Brunson on the old guys, Orel on the similarities between poker and baseball … And I gotta say, Ali Nejad is proving he’s a top-notch color analyst — witty and well-informed.

Overall, the show is sucking me in. I give it a solid A-minus. 90 if you’re using numbers. I know Oliver (Tse, not Nejad) will have many thoughts on the ratings this show is getting, and what that means for the future of televised poker. I say more coverage of the outside tables — with or without hole-card cams — would make it better. (They only had two tables cammed up when they recorded it.)

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Chris Ferguson beat Phil Ivey when his pocket 8s held up against Ivey’s pocket 6s (who was drawing to a 6, 2, or 7 when they got it all in).

This makes it three-out-of-four years in the history of this event that Ferguson has made the finals, and puts him position to arguably claim to be the best heads-up player out there — though being Jesus-like he probably wouldn’t ever claim to be king of anything … as he tends to leave that sorta boasting to Hellmuth … who right now happens to be sitting between Ferguson and Orel Hersheiser, apparently relaying the story to Orel about how he crashed the race car into that pole that pole got in the way of his malfunctioning race car.

Andy Bloch and Huck Seed, meanwhile, are still engaged in a pretty sedate-but-heated battle that NBC may or may not realize is fascinating to the poker geeks out there even without the long hair, big mouths, and all-ins.

Orel Hersheiser and Minh Ly:

Hersheiser, of course, is proving to be the Gonzaga of the 2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The final 8 tomorrow:

Jonathan Little vs. Chris Ferguson
Gus Hansen vs. Phil Ivey
Andy Bloch vs. Orel Hershisher
Huck Seed vs. David Benyamine

All of the above are guaranteed $75k. The final four make $125k, 2nd place gets $250k, and first is still $500,000.

Just about everyone’s brackets have fallen apart — though Gavin Smith is still throwing around the $2,000 wagers on the outcome of each game, and considering that I have no one left alive in my bracket, I gotta pretty much surrender my $20:

Rank Predictor Score Predicted Final Winner Completed
1 Taylor Larkin – 42 Huck Seed 2/29/2008 2:20pm
2 don essinger – 41 Allen Cunningham 2/29/2008 1:05pm
3 Scott – 38 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 1:20pm
4 champsampson – 29 Ted Forrest 2/29/2008 1:39pm
5 Randy Brown – 24 Phil Hellmuth 2/29/2008 12:12pm
6 Kevin Mathers – 24 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 12:32pm
7 California Jen – 23 Scott Clements 2/29/2008 9:43am
8 dan michalski – 21 Howard Lederer 2/29/2008 3:41am

Taylor, Don, and Scott seem to have quite a battle brewing … though it appears they may have made their picks after it got started? Floor!?!

It’s that time of year again. The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is on the horizon, and many players have already confirmed that they’ll pay the $20k to get some camera time compete in the event. Sixty players have been announced, leaving four open seats for qualifiers yet to be announced.

Festivities will begin on February 28th at Pure Nightclub at Caesars in Vegas with the drawing party to determine the match-ups. The following day brings the first matches, and a winner will be determined and get his/her $500k on March 2.

Previous champs Paul Wasicka, Ted Forrest, and Phil Hellmuth will be playing, as well as numerous first-time players like David Singer, Bill Edler, Scott Clements, Jerry Yang, Brian Townsend, Tom Dwan, celebrities Jason Alexander and Brad Garrett, MLB player Orel Hershiser, and the 2007 CardPlayer favorite WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider.

Click below for the list of players:

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