WSOP and NDPT updates

Good Morning All! I've got some catching up to do on the events and happenings at the WSOP 2008 and here at home, so let's get to it shall we...

In Event 25 - $10,000 Heads Up No-Limit Hold'em World Championship Kenny Tran emerged as the victor after going heads up in 2 games with Alec Torelli, and takes home $539,056 and the WSOP bracelet. Congratulations on the win.

Event 26 - $1,500 Razz finally wound its way down to a winner, and when the dust settled we found Barry Greenstein to be the last man standing. He bested the 453 players and took home the bracelet and the $157,619 prize. Congratulations Barry!

Event 27 - $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em inched its way through Day 1 and 2,706 players to get to the final 20. This event will reconvene at 2:00pm PDT. Ultimately a top prize of $628,417 will be awarded. We'll just have to wait and see on this one.

Event 28 - $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha w/ Rebuys is still playing, as I'm writing this post up. They are down to 12 players of the initial starting 152. That's some grueling hours kids! A look at those who remain and it's no secret why. Among those still standing are Daniel Negreanu (the current chip leader) David Benyamine, John Juanda, Johnny Chan, Chris Ferguson, and Phil Hellmuth. Ultimately the top prize of $817,781 will be awarded.

Event 29 - $3,000 No Limit Hold'em has ended Day 1 with 81 of the initial 716 starting players remaining. Sadly, 9 of those who return tomorrow, will eventually bust out and get nothing as only 72 places payout in this event. However, there's still $434,789 and a bracelet being fought for.

Event 30 - $10,000 Limit Hold'em World Championship has ended for the day, just a couple of hours ago. 98 of the original 218 players remain to battle it out for the $496,931 top prize. Only the top 27 get paid in this event.

Event 31 - $2,500 No Limit Hold'em Six-handed gets underway today at Noon PDT.
For all the latest updates and the blow-by-blow head over and read all about it at http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/.

In other news here close to home...

When I arrived this morning I found in my Inbox an email from Vince and Teresa Post letting me know that they had returned from their most recent Las Vegas trip. They had a great time, as always, and posted up a few pictures that they snapped at the Rio, while taking in the WSOP action for themselves!

In other happenings, the NDPT Tournament #8 of the year was held Saturday night as I mentioned before. Let's recap this one. Turnout was relatively light with only 20 players seated at 3 tables. It's the time of year, when a lot of other conflicting obligations and vacations kick in, so the lower numbers are expected and no I won't begin to lament on the decline in popularity of poker in the Mountain State. We'll show 'em next time just how popular it remains. After a hard fought battle Teresa "Big Red" found herself seated behind a mountain of chips and the winning hand. For her efforts she pocketed $200 plus I don't know how many $5 bounties at this point. She and Eric S went heads-up for quite a bit before she finally took it down. Eric took the 2nd place payday, followed by newcomer Charles Roberts and then Mike Westbrook. Congratulations to the winners! The NDPT Points Standings have been updated out on my Google Docs at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=ptNl6_cpXDHlDaBaHIU7NVA&hl=en. Very quickly though, Teresa has moved into the points lead with her most recent victory. This race is still anyone's to be won though, since we're only 1/2 through the year at this point, and the fact that only your TOP 10 finishes will count toward the total of the year. Once we reach the 10th game, things will start to heat up. I imagine there will be some oddball strategy crop up as a result of it.

But the story of the night, doesn't end there. In keeping with the spirit of the WSOP and the late nights that are the norm, the NDPT crew played on into the night and even what some might term morning. It was around 4:00am when some of us crawled out of the poker room to call it a night. Among those degenerates were Steve, Eric S, Mike, and Big Red and I. Earlier in the evening Del was probably one of the top cash game winners, but I don't recall exactly what he cashed out for. As the night went on and the Jack Daniels took a firmer group on us at the table, the pots and the stacks continued to get larger. Steve cashed out for well in excess of $100. Big Red and I combined had over $140, each with our initial buy-in of $20.

One incident in particular has occupied a great deal of my thinking since Saturday night. There was a hand at the final table that in which two players were all in preflop and turned up their cards to show one had a pair of 6's and the other a pair of 9's. Before ANY board cards were dealt and turned up, the deck was inadvertently dropped, cards exposed, and the deck could not be legitimately re-assembled. At the time... a discussion ensued between a number of us and the ruling at the time was to declare the hands dead and redistribute the chips to the players and replay the hand. Having re-evaluating Robert's Rules of Poker and a discussion thread over at the Home Poker Tourney Forums http://forums.homepokertourney.com/index.php/topic,16171.0.html, I have determined that my ruling was actually incorrect. Granted I can't do anything about it now, the ruling stands and cannot be retracted from that situation, BUT moving forward, the ruling will be should the situation arise in the future to gather ALL the cards from the "fouled" stub (all the cards in the dealers hand at the time the deck was dropped re-assemble them, reshuffle them, and then continue as before, (i.e. with burn and flop, etc...) That answer was sought out from Bob Ciaffone himself, who wrote the rulebook himself. Difficult to argue that. For an extensive dialogue on this head on over to Home Poker Tourney yourself and read the thread which already had 54 replies to it.

As always I hope everyone had a great time getting together for some poker. At the next tournament consider the gauntlet already thrown. Big Red, you're goin' DOWN!!! Just after we'd consolidated to 2 tables, I was beginning to feel the pinch of a short stack. and the blinds were at 50/100. The flop came Jack high, giving me top pair with a King kicker. I proceeded to make a big bet there on the turn insta shoved. Unfortunately for me, my wife began shaking her head letting me know I was crushed. She shoved in and then flipped over her A-J!!! Where's the loser's lounge? So, it's like I said, I've got some serious payback to do.
If you have any questions or comments respond to this blog post and I'll get back to you.

Regards,

cheer_dad