The two major tournament circuits not named The World Series of Poker are currently running at the same time, with vastly different results. First, the $25,000 World Poker Tour World Championship at the Bellagio drew a field of only 195 entrants as registration closed after the conclusion of level 8. This continues the downward trend in the field size of most WPT events the past few years. Two years ago, the field in the WPT W.C was 545 players (won by David Chiu) and 338 last year (won by Yevginey Timoshenko). Only 18 spots will be paid, with the winner earning around $1,500,000. WPT Player of the Year leader Faraz Jaka is the current chip leader with 500,000 in chips. Follow the WPT Live updates here.

Meanwhile, the PokerStars.it EPT San Remo event drew a field of 1,240 entrants paying €5,000, just 24 remain when play resumes Tuesday for day 5. The current chip leader is Allan Bække (3,483,000), winner of the most recent EPT event in Austria, looking to be the first to win a second EPT main event. The other recognizable name to the casual poker enthusiast is Liv Boeree (1,337,000) First prize is a cool €1,250,000, and you can watch live streaming coverage of the final two days (volcano permitting) will be available at www.pokerstars.tv starting at 6am ET or you can follow the live updates over at PokerNews.

While Jen was slaving away covering the WCOOP on the PokerStarsBlog this weekend, I was extremely busy playing in a $1,000 freeroll on PokerStars (12 players max). I’m sure it won’t make her extra-happy to know that I overslept for this special-invite tourney and logged in with an M < 1. But that's what it took to make the final table -- playing tighter than ever. My stats en route to finishing 9th:

During current Hold’em session you were dealt 122 hands and saw flop:
– 0 out of 21 times while in big blind (0%)
– 0 out of 22 times while in small blind (0%)
– 2 out of 79 times in other positions (2%)
– a total of 2 out of 122 (1%)
Pots won at showdown – 1 of 2 (50%)
Pots won without showdown – 0

The series of events is called The Run Good Challenge — mad props to our friends at PokerListings for putting it on. 10 independent typists and two professional bloggers from Listings … duking it out in a game of online hungry-hungry hippo for real American cash:

Event 1: NLHE, regular Stars Structure (Sept 6)
Event 2: NLHE, turbo structure (Sept 13)
Event 3: NLHE/PLO, regular structure (Sept 20)
Grand Final: NLHE Deep Stack structure (Sept 27)

For the three prelims the top three spots will pay: $600, $300, $100. Grand final will consist of top five performers from external bloggers plus best of Dan or myself and will pay all six spots: $1,000, $650, $400, $200, $150, $100.

Sweet, no? Be sure to click below for “live” chatlog coverage from the feature table — kinda interesting to see how entertaining poker can be when you eliminate the hands. (And gives you disturbing insight into the sick minds of bloggers competing in a tournament that couldn’t happen at the WSOP without the entire final table being sent to the penalty box.)

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Have done a little semi-investigative drinking digging, and here are a few more quasi-confirmed “facts” regarding a major potential schedule change mid-main event:

• No decision is final yet, but on the big pro-con list, the left side of the board has it all but locked up.
• Television ratings are the driving force behind this idea.
• It was essential, however, that the integrity of the game be protected and blind structures unaltered, no matter what ESPN says.
• “Plausibly live” is the buzzphrase for what they’re trying to create. (Pokerati applauds the linguistic choice, btw, and would like to suggest “presumably non-rigged” as well.)
• The final table will be played over two days — from the final 9 to 2, and then heads-up the next day. Very Sangy.
• Timing will be carefully coordinated so most people will be watching to see who will win, not how one wins (the Olympics broadcast model)
• All final tableists will be paid 9th place money in July and will have their return trips to Vegas comped.

Though I haven’t been writing much about anything it, I have been hitting the tables here in Vegas. Have sampled a handful of rooms and action … spreading the lore of the Hammer and the Sang all along the way, of course, as I seek to replace the competitive camaraderie of the Batface home game perhaps with something akin to Jackie’s back in the (Dallas underground hey)day.

That came easier than usual this week, when TBR-bro-in-law Patrick came to town. He was staying at the Luxor, so we met up at Cathouse for a drink. (Cathouse is basically like the Lodge without the nipples, and Celeb-chef Kerry Simon in place of Jose Luis.) A couple Lagavulins later, we walked over to Mandalay Bay, where we took two seats together at a $2/$4 no-limit table. This was bigger stakes than either of us had been playing, but hey, we were feelin’ half-drinky good, and it seemed a better option than waiting, as the room was totally full and festive on a Thursday night. A familiar face was seated with us – Ran Nelson, a very good Dallas player whom I hadn’t seen since the days of Jackie’s – what a delight. He had a new cardmarker, a square block of acrylic with his little Stuey guy inside of it, surrounded by chips from the various important poker rooms to Ran, including WinStar in Oklahoma and the old Sixth Street in Dallas.

I was playing great – more-than-doubled up in about an hour by trapping a well-stacked opponent in classic Dan-style … but then was back to square 1 a few hands later when I got unlucky on the turn … and back to square 0 when I don’t remember what I did but I am pretty sure it was stupid, starting with playing the likes of [cards]qs 4s[/cards].

Mandalay Bay
$2/$4 NLH
Buy-in: $300
Cash out: $0
Food: starved
Drinks: $28
Net: -$328

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This post is not for 99.997 percent of the readers out there.

But for the guys in the Batface home game … they might find it hardly surprising to know that on Sept. 12 — or right around that day — “sangy farha” started playing (for play money) on Full Tilt. That was the same day of the tournament on Absolute Poker that has since thrown the online poker world into a tizzy. The hand being played that sparked it all: Yep, you guessed it … 9-2 offsuit, aka The Sang, which we all know is kinda like the hammer, only a little bit more powerful.

Because of his connection to the scandal, Drinky Sang may or may not be making future appearances on Beyond the Table as our strategy and psychology correspondent. Click below to listen to Sang’s screen test, recorded on a drive home from The Lodge in a pouring rainstorm.

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You’ll hear him talk a little final table strategy, discount his monster play-money bankroll online, threaten to kill people, lose his online chat priveliges, question the presence of Tom Schneider’s genitalia, threaten to kill the guys at Ante Up, and fall in love with a wet puppy.

So be sure to tune in to current and future episodes.

Did anyone else catch High Stakes Poker 3 on Monday? It’s a great episode this week … with Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, et al. We see David Williams needled for his bling, and he retorts by skillfully wielding “the Sang” (9-2 … kinda like the Hammer, only a wee-bit stronger). And then Yukon Brad Booth shows up and buys in with a cool $1 million in cash, suddenly posing a new threat to Brian Townsend’s fortress of bills. Awesome, great poker.

But the real battle in this episode (which repeats tonight) seems to be taking place off the table — between the two announcers, Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza. If this is new shtick … well then good job, because it’s pretty entertaining. But even better, you get the sense they truly don’t like each other and are in the midst of a career catfight … especially when Kaplan calls out Benza for having his agent complain about Gabe to GSN.

Benza, is actually a pretty interesting sparring partner for Kaplan. For one, he’s a former blogger for the not-so-poker blog Oddjack. Before that, his broadcasting claims to fame included a studio brawl with Stuttering John (from Howard Stern) that eventually came to blows in the hallway.

Click below to see what Pokeratizens had to say about these two just last month:

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I’ve been much better about keeping track of my bankroll this year, thanks to Pokercharts.com — even though, thus far, it hasn’t been a winning year. Kinda interesting.

Just tonight/last night … I had a pretty good session (ended up +$485 in $.50/$1 NLH) … though half of that came from the last hand of the night, where Fawcett flopped a mini-monster … which he played a little weakly trying to trap me … which fueled my bluff-draw, and in the end let me hit the nuts with a gutshot. Cool. Even cooler was getting Fawcett to push all-in once I got there. Anyhow … have a looksie at my current bankroll graph:

Read into it whatever you want. And while these are important figures for me to keep track of, here’s what I think is the more telling graph:

Either you know something or you don’t — there is no in-between when it comes to knowing. And I think this map of my average earnings per session reveals something I hadn’t come to hard-and-provable grips with … and that is that I am pretty much just a break-even player. Semi-bitter pill to swallow, but hey, there’s no room in winning poker for delusions. Here is some other relevant computer-generated analysis of my 2007 play, as logged by Pokercharts. Kinda funny:

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