I spent the first part of today chilling at my place for a few hours, getting in a light workout then writing a couple emails. Then I made my way to the VW dealership. I drive a 2010 Jetta that I’m a pretty big fan of and it was time for my free 10k mileage maintenance and car wash. Before this car, I drove the 2007 version. Two days before my lease was up on that car, it got totaled when a drunk driver blew a red light in West Hollywood where my girlfriend and I were for the weekend.  Neither of us were hurt, thankfully.  He took off after we smashed into him, but he couldn’t get very far with the condition his car was in. A good samaritan followed him and was able to let the police know where they could find him. I had my car towed to a VW dealership and was like, “My lease is up… here’s your car back!” Then I leased a brand new model that same day.

I picked up KK in the first orbit of NL in late position, raised and picked up the blinds …

While at the dealership today I read through 944 magazine a bit.  If you happen to live in a city that 944 covers, and you like going out, doing stuff and checking out new things in your city, I highly recommend picking up a copy. I also highly recommend they pay me for this advertising I’m giving them but that’s probably not going to happen. There are always so many things changing in the city of Las Vegas–new restaurants, DJ appearances/residencies, happy hours, special events–that it is nearly impossible to keep up.  It’s fun to try though, and it’s obviously tough to get bored here.

After VW, it was that time: 7pm on a Thursday, which means Pokerati 1/2 PLO/NLH at the Palms.  When I got there around 8 there was a full game up and running and Danielle was already on the waiting list.  It took about 15 minutes before we had enough people to start a second table.  Pretty impressive, I must say, but not entirely surprising.  The half-and-half nature of the game is just so much more interesting and entertaining in my opinion, that I think you’ll eventually see it spread elsewhere more regularly.  This coupled with the fact that the WSOP is in full swing means there’s no shortage of players around.

More…

The first major live poker tournament since Black Friday in the United States kicked off today with the World Poker Tour at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood Florida. One of the unknowns coming into the tournament was wether or not sponsored pros would show up wearing their patches.

With 406 players in the field today only 13 players were found wearing either a Full Tilt Poker or a Ultimate Bet patch. The one “big three” site that did not have a single patched up player was PokerStars, even though WPT regular and PokerStar Pro Jason Mercier was in the field.

Also in the field today not wearing their normal patch were Maria Ho (UB) and Antonio Esfandiari (Victory). The fact that these two are not wearing a patch for their respected site while Adam “roothlus” Levy (UB) and Jonathan Little (Victory) are patched up definitely creates more questions.

Here is a rundown of the players found in todays field that were wearing patches:

Since we are on the discussion of who is wearing what Tony Dunst, who is known for always being well dressed was not wearing his normal suit today due to a delay in dry cleaning. Instead he was wearing a V-Neck shirt and a pair of jeans. Dunst will be returning tomorrow, hopefully in his freshly cleaned suit, to grind out his short stack.

After 5 levels of play only 290 players remain with registration open until the start of play with Randy Dorfman at the top of the leaderboard with 160,000. Other players returning for day two are Vivek Rajkumar, Shannon Shorr, Annette Obstread, Mike Sexton, Kathy, Leibert, and Lauren Kling.

The players will return at 12 noon local time tomorrow for the start of day two of this six-day event to play another 5 levels.

The EPT Grand Final final table (in Monte Carlo) is under way. The contenders, their age, their countries, and their chip counts:

Dag Martin Mikkelsen (age 22, Norway) – 7,360,000
Matthew Woodward (age 26, United States) – 4,920,000
Peter Traply (age 21, Hungary) – 4,250,000
Mikhail Tulchinsky (age 43, Russia) – 3,605,000
Daniel Zink (age 24, Germany) – 2,570,000
Eric Qu (age 47, France) – 2,550,000
Alem Shah (age 51, Germany) – 1,520,000
Pieter de Korver (age 26, Netherlands) – 1,390,000

The 5-day, €10,000 main event drew 935 players (compared to 842 last year) and is paying €2.3 million to the winner. Click here to follow the action.

UPDATE: You can also watch live coverage at EPTLive.com, which I’m listening to in French to hear Benjo do the broadcast, who I gotta say is as funny in French (which I don’t speak) as he is in English.

Meanwhile, they’re concurrently playing the final table of the €25,000 “high rollers” event (a 3-day affair) — where the winner gets €720,000 … €434,000 to 2nd place. It’s apparently been quite the action game. They lost four players in the first level. Those remaining:

Randy Dorfman (age ??, United States) – 1,200,000 2,000,000
Tony G (age 35, Lithuania) – 900,000
Vanessa Rousso (age 26, United States) – 810,000 790,000 880,000
x- 4th place – Florian Langmann (age 26, Germany) – 1,180,000 220,000

Rousso actually started the day as the chip leader. I’m following her on Twitter, actually, where she has quite the hardbody avatar with a fake shark. Semi-interesting that both Americans remaining are both from Florida.

BTW, the current exchange rate:
€1 = $1.33
$1 = €.75

So that means the main event win pays: $3.05 million
The high rollers win pays: $956,000