Friday, June 27, 2008

WSOP Day 29 - Live Blog

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

Wow, we completed four weeks at the 2008 WSOP and today marks the 29th straight day of coverage on Tao live from the pressbox.

We're smack in the middle of 50K HORSE along with a couple of other events...
Event #44 $1,000 NL w/ Rebuys - Final Table
Event #45 $50,000 HORSE - Day 3
Event #46 $5,000 NL Short-handed - Day 2
Event #47 $1,500 Stud8 - Day 2
Event #48 $2,000 NL - Day 1
And here is today's final table which has two Danes...
Event #44 $1,000 NL w/ Rebuys - Final Table:
Seat 1: Scott Freeman (Los Angeles, CA) - 675,000
Seat 2: Max Greenwood (Toronto, Canada) - 728,000
Seat 3: Curtis Kohlberg (Weston, MA) - 209,000
Seat 4: Rene Mouritsen (Aarhus, Denmark) - 1,007,000
Seat 5: Alex Bolotin (Brooklyn, NY) - 308,000
Seat 6: Albert Iversen (Aarhus, Denmark) - 921,000
Seat 7: Aliaksandr Dzianisau (Vitebsk, Belarus) - 186,000
Seat 8: Phung Ngo (Commerce, MI) - 556,000
Seat 9: Jesse Chinni (Ellicott City, MD) - 2,160,000
Can another European win a bracelet?

* * * * *

2:07pm...

Event #45 50K HORSE: Day 3 is starting in less than an hour. 67 players left.

Benjo and I have a last longer. Here's the update...
Benjo
Barry Greenstein : 473,000
Doyle Brunson : 366,000
OUT: Mike Matusow, David Chiu, and David Singer

Pauly
Daniel Negreanu : 374,500
Andy Bloch : 362,500
Rob Hollink : 317,000
Marcel Luske : 99,000
OUT: Mike Sexton
I have four left to Benjo's two. He got a ton of hate mail over his picks. Alas, anything can happen today.

Seating assignments have been released. One of the toughest will be #6... Minh Ly, Miami John Cernuto, Barry Greenstein, Bill Chen, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Layne Flack, and Patrick Bueno.

* * * * *

3:30pm...

Event #45 50K HORSE: 64 players left.

Recent bustouts: Max Pescatori and Jeff Lisandro.

Big stacks: Lyle Berman, Patrick Bueno, Barry Greenstein, Minh Ly, and Chris Reslock.

On Life Support: Chainsaw Kessler is shortstacked.

Four feet? Phil Ivey and Layne Flack are sitting next to each other. Ivey is sitting still while Flacks feet can't stop moving. He's been shaking his legs and feet non-stop. Flack is always in constant motion. His mouth, his hands, his feet, his mind. Ivey? It seems like Ivey's life passes by in slow motion. You never see him walk fast (unless he's trying toe scape a barrage of fans), say much, or exert much energy.

Event #46 5K Short-handed: Gobboboy busted out shortly before the money bubble broke. Elky is the chipleader as action is hand-for-hand.

* * * * *

4:20pm...

Today's smoke break is sponsored by PokerStars!



* * * * *

4:32pm...

Event #44 NL Rebuys Final Table: Down to 4. Two Scandis left in the hunt for a bracelet. Rene Mouritsen = chipleader.

Event #45 50K HORSE: 61 players left.

Recent bustouts: Tad Jurgens, Douglas Ganger, Steve Sung, and Chainsaw Kessler.

Big stacks: Lyle Berman, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Bill Chen, and Huck Seed.

Isabelle Mercier showed up wearing an adorable green short. Very tight. Very delicious. She should be her very own Ben & Jerry's flavor called No Mercy. It comes with chunks of mints, bananas, cherries, and chocolate ice cream.

Players just went on a break and when they walked into the hallway, they were swarmed by fans trying to get autographs and pictures and hoping that the Big Game players would toss $100 chips their way, sort of like centuries ago in Europe when royalty left their castles and walked among the peasants handing out gold coins.

On the break Marcel Luske headed to the poker kitchen and bought... a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cup.

* * * * *

5:23pm...

Event #44 NL Rebuys Final Table: Although everyone is focused on HORSE, I checked out the only final table. It was down to three. One young American and two Scandis. Flicphip and I caught one hand where Scott Freeman doubled up to get back into contention. His cheering section is very loud, but there are plenty of rowdy Danish fans sweating their guy. They are standing up in the Milwaukee's Beast lounge wearing crowns and knocking back cups and cups of shitty bear. It's a festive atmosphere and even though the final table area is not filled to capacity, it's the loudest area in the Amazon Room. Every few minutes you hear a roar followed by a bunch of clapping and whistling. Both sets of railbirds are chanting and screaming like it's a soccer match instead of a poker tournament.

Event #45 50K HORSE: Down to 58.

Recent bustouts: OMGClayAiken, John Hanson, and Lee Markholt.

Big stacks: Lyle Berman, Barry Greenstein, Bill Chen, Huck Seed, and Joseph Michael.

Dario Minieri is on suicide watch. He's short stacked and might hang himself with his scraf if he doesn't win a pot anytime soon. Durrrrrrrrrrrrrr is aslo among the shorties.

Bad day for the bald guys. John Hanson and Lee Markholt were both eliminated.

* * * * *

6:30pm...

Just had a not-so fun trip to the sportsbook. Wanted to watch some of the Yankees-Mets game. Drunk guy wouldn't leave me alone so I left.

Event #44 NL Rebuys Final Table: Heads up. Scandi vs. Yank Cannuck. Rene Mouritsen vs. Max Greenwood. Rene's Danish friends are chanting non-stop. Fun final table.

Event #45 50K HORSE: 46 players remaining and we're only two levels in.

Recent bustouts: Robert Williamson III, Roy Thung, Rob Hollink, Isabelle Mercier, Joe Bunevith, Rafi Amit, Stephen Wolff, Dario Minieri, Pat Pezzin, Greg "FBT" Mueller, Durrrrrrrrrrr, and Thor Hansen

Big stacks: Joseph Michael, Barry Greenstein, Edwin Ting, Lyle Berman, and Chad Brown.

I saw RW3 walked past me in the hallway after his elimination. Just 3.5 hours earlier, he was running past me and rushed to get to his seat.

Poor Isabelle is out along with one of my picks... Dutch bracelet winner Rob Hollink.

* * * * *

7:37pm...

Event #44 NL Rebuys Final Table: We have a winner. Canada cockblocks Denmark when Max Greenwood wins bracelet as Denmark's Rene Mourtinsen took second.

Event #45 50K HORSE: Down to 42.

Recent eliminations: Kenny Tran, Layne Flack, George Lind, and Minh Ly.

Big stacks: Patrick Bueno, Huck Seed, Joseph Michael, Barry Greenstein, and Edwin Ting.

On life support: Brandon Adams and Raymond Dehkargani.

Lots of guys from last year's final table are out. But, Mr. Kotter is still alive and plenty of big names are still left like Ivey, Negreanu, Brunson, Berman, and Lindgren.

I'm up 3-2 in the last longer with Benjo. Negreanu, Luske, Bloch are holding up against Doyle Brunson and Barry Greenstein.

* * * * *

8:32pm...

Event #45 50K HORSE: Down to 41.

Recent eliminations: Raymond Dehkargani.

Big stacks: Barry Greenstein, Michael DeMichele, Patrick Bueno, Edwin Ting, and Joseph Michael.

Action has slowed down with only one bustout in the last hour.

Players are on a dinner break until 9:45pm.

* * * * *

9:35pm...

HORSE is still on dinner break. They will play three more levels or stop at 24 players... whichever comes first.

Event #46 5K Short-handed: 32 to go. Elky is third in chips.

Event #47 Stud8: 35 to go. Chris Bjorin is one of the chipleaders. Sklanasky and Men the Master are both still alive.

Event #48 2K NL: 440 remaining out of 2317. Big field for sure. Stig Top Rasmussen one of the chipleaders. William Thorson, Luca Pagano, Sweet Svetlana and Maria Ho are all out.

* * * * *

10:35pm...

Event #45 50K HORSE: Down to 37.

Recent eliminations: Keith Sexton, Chris Reslock, John Cernuto, and Joe Bunevith

Big stacks: Michael DeMichele, Barry Greenstein, Joseph Michael, Daniel Negreanu, Edwin Ting

On life support: Billy the Croc

Biggest mover was Daniel Negreanu. He hovered in the top ten in chips for most of the day before he made a run since everyone returned from the dinner break.

The are was reconfigured to allow more spectators who surrounded the final five tables. They are standing five and six deep since it's prime time on a Friday night. Lots of pictures are being taken with cell phones and mini digital cameras. Every few minutes a flash goes off and the floor guy gets on the mic to explain to them they can't do that. And as soon as he finishes his warning, another flash goes off.

A couple of hot railbirds are standing behind Mike Wattel. Definitely a much better crop of high end ass here tonight... both for free and for sale.

Snake and I checked out all of the hot chicks and we also made fun of the guys with massive beer guts. There were to in particular and one guy's gut was slung over the rail. Talk about a massive surface area. It could replace the Hoover Dam if needed.

Katja Thater is the only player getting a massage, oh wait, I forgot about Danny Boy in the corner.

Phil Ivey is sitting calm and cool as ever. He doesn't seem to be jaded by Billy the Croc's hat... which is a green crocodile.

Jen Creason is on the rail sweating Andy Bloch, while Gerasimov is sweating fellow Russian, Alex Kostritsyn, who occasionally gets up in between hands and wanders up to the rail and they speak Sputnik.

* * * * *

11:49pm...

Event #45 50K HORSE: 34 players remaining. Two more levels of play left tonight, or until they get down to 24 players (final three tables).

Recent eliminations: ZeeJustin,Steve Z, and Abe Mosseri

Big stacks: Michael DeMichele, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Joseph Michael, and Andy Bloch

Change100 told me that Abe Mosseri was making throwing things prop bets... empty bottles of water for $20. Change100 also wrote up some random facts such as... Of those 16 players who cashed last year, only 3 remain in this year's field: Barry Greenstein, Gabe Kaplan, and Mark Gregorich. Yeah Mr. Kotter us going deep once again. Up your nose with a rubber hose.

Snake said he saw Boston Rob playing a cash game. When I wandered over there, I saw Cyndy Violette in some sort of 75/150 game and Barbara Enright playing NL.

Katja Thater still getting a massage.

* * * * *

12:31am...

Event #45 50K HORSE: Down to 27.

Recent eliminations: Jim Bechtel, Billy the Croc, Mark Gregorich, Gene Fisher, Marcel Luske, Greg Mascio, and Katja Thater.

Big stacks: Doyle Brunson, Michael DeMichele, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, David Bach

On life support: Mickey Appleman and Alex Kostritsyn

Holy cactus shit, Texas Dolly with the chiplead with 27 to go? No way! Action went rather fast over the previous level. 1.5 levels left for Day 3. Or if there are three more eliminations, action will stop for the day.

Hot chick from the latest cover of an Italian poker magazine has been showing off her goodies on the rail. Supposedly, her boyfriend "bought the cover" for her in hopes that she would get a poker sponsorship. She was posing for pics and rubbing her breasts for at least one poker agent. I mean, she had huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge tracks of land and could be spotted as far away as Barstow. Of course, the two biggest horndogs at the WSOP, Michalksi and Foiled Coup, were lurking around with cameras.

Benjo had not so nice words about her. "She's a sad and pathetic human being. Whoring herself for buyins or whatever fame she wants to achieve. Shes the embodiment of everything I despise about poker. People like this? She's like 'look at my boobies.' What kind of booshit is that? You should be judged on how you play at the tables, and not how big your boobs are."

Of course, Benjo is just a sexual frustrated chain-smoking malcontent journalist and he secretly wishes that he could have his way with her. But we definitely understand his point.

I'm tied with Benjo for our last longer...
Benjo
Barry Greenstein : 1.3M
Doyle Brunson : 1.04M
OUT: Mike Matusow, David Chiu, and David Singer

Pauly
Daniel Negreanu : 1.13M
Andy Bloch : 460K
OUT: Mike Sexton, Marcel Luske, Rob Hollink
Both Hellmuth and Matusow wandered into the HORSE section. They both looked like they wanted some attention but the remaining pros were too focused on laying than to shower them with love and their undivided attention. Of course, they both gravitated towards each other and talked some smack.

Eskimo Watch: Spotted him wandering around the cash game area looking for buy-ins.

* * * * *

1:50am...

Event #45 50K HORSE: 24 players remaining. Action has been suspended and Day 3 is complete.

Recent Eliminations: David Oppenheim, Mickey Appleman, and Alex Kostritsyn.

Plenty of big names left... such as Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Doyle Brunson, Michael DeMichele, Chad Brown, Phil Ivey, Huck Seed, Erick Lindgren, Andy Bloch, mig.com, Mr. Kotter, Brandon Adams, Mike Wattel, Farzad Bonyadi, The Grinder, Scotty Nguyen, Freddy Bonyadi, Ralph Perry, David Bach, and my main man Ray Davis.

Day 4 will start at 3pm on Saturday. Final table is on Sunday.


Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

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