• FTOPS IX: that’s right baby, FTOPS is back! 25 events, more than $15 million guaranteed – that pretty much says it all. If you can’t get excited about this then you really need to get your head checked. This truly is online donkament play at its finest. The action kicks off on August 6^th, please don’t miss out.
• Big Money Sundays: more awesome donkament action at Full Tilt Poker. There’s over $1 million in prize money up for grabs every Sunday with the Sunday Brawl, $750K Guarantee and Sunday Mulligan. This Sunday the $750K gets replaced with the monthly $1 Million Guarantee, so there’s even more prize money to be had.
• Happy Hour: earn twice the Full Tilt Points simply by playing in your favorite games. Whenever you see the smiley face in the game lobby that means Happy Hour is on. Come on people, who doesn’t love to get free stuff just for doing the same old thing? Use those extra points to get great gear from the Full Tilt Store. Doggy tank-top anyone?
• The Iron Man Challenge: my all time favorite promotion. It’s a bit on the complicated side, so let me summarize for you – the more you play, the more you get. Earn Iron Man Medals to use in the Iron Man Store, get entry to Freerolls and the chance to win up to $100K. This one is for players who really want to commit themselves to the game, and it’s really a great reward for showing that dedication.

We’ve also got a few great promos coming up that haven’t been officially announced as of yet, but let me give you a quick sneak peak. For all you SNG fiends out there, another round of Sit & Go Madness is coming up very soon, so stay tuned for all the details on that one. And for all the Patrik Antonius fans out there, we have a couple of great promos in the works involving Team Full Tilt’s newest member. Details on all of our new promotions will be coming soon.

That’s it for now folks. A hearty thanks goes out to all the Tilters out there who help make this the best place to play online poker. Have a great weekend pokerland…

So there you have it, Chiu takes a bite out of Boatman and wins the match by a score of 4-3. Check back next week for more fun, games, and idiotic stupidity from yours truly…

So now that we’ve reached the final table of the Main Event with a bunch of no-names, can we officially declare the decision to the delay the final table a complete disaster?

Not quite yet. I’m going to pull a complete 180 here and pretend that I’m an optimist for a moment. Let’s give the giant propaganda machine that is Harrah’s/ESPN a chance to do their thing and turn these nine nobodies into the next big thing. The power of persuasive media can be, um, quite powerful.

But yes, my initial reaction to seeing that nine stiffs had made the final table was that Harrah’s/ESPN were probably shitting their pants. Obviously they’re praying to the wrong god, because this really didn’t work out too well for them. Might I suggest the Church of Fonzie for their next stop?

Whatever happens, it will certainly be interesting to watch it play out. Either the powers that be will be able to turn water into wine or this is going to be the biggest disaster since Waterworld. My feeling is that if things don’t work out well the WSOP will switch back to its standard format next year and kill the delay. It should be a fun four months…

The Tiffany Michelle debacle was obviously the biggest storyline of this year’s Main Event, any thoughts on the matter?

Oh boy, do I have some thoughts. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, some of them will probably get me fired, and some of them are better suited for Penthouse. With that said, I’m going to tread lightly here and answer this question as carefully as possible.

I think that Tiffany’s deep run in the Main Event was great for poker. It would have been fantastic had she made the final table, but hey, that’s poker baby. The enormous amount of pressure on her going into that last day of play had to be a tremendous burden, it sucks that she wasn’t able to just focus on playing poker and forget about the rest of it.

As for the other part of the story (the part dubbed by Sir Dr. Pauly as the battle for Tiffany Michelle’s breasts), yeah, not so much. She made a rather stupid decision to pimp a not-to-be-named-here online poker room currently engulfed in a not-to-be-named-here scandal. Was it because she’s friendly with people who run the not-to-be-named-here site? Was it because they offered her the best deal? Was it just some bad advice from the wrong people? Or did she really just not know any better? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I do know this is bringing negative attention to online poker at a time when we really didn’t need it. And that’s all I have to say about that.

And, before I forget – giggity!

I’m not really into conspiracy theories, but the whole moving Hellmuth to Matusow’s table thing when they were the only two big names left in the Main Event reeks of backroom shenanigans.

From what I’ve heard (and trust me, I don’t hear very much these days), ESPN were really the people running the show this year at the Main Event. So am I surprised that both Hellmuth and Mikey wound up at the same table to put a show on for the crowd? Of course not, poker is entertainment and having those two sitting next to each other is about as good as it gets. Do I think this was some elaborate JFK style conspiracy? Umm, no.

Think about it: the best case scenario for ESPN was having both Phil and Mikey make the final table (along with Tiffany Michelle’s breasts). If they’re sitting at the same table, the chances of them both making the final nine decreases substantially. Instead of having their own pool of fishes to feed on, they were both swimming in the same pond. That means that pond just got a hell of a lot smaller, and there are less fishes to eat.

So save the conspiracies for your local crazy homeless guy – this is poker, not politics. Until next week…

The three guys I was tracking had mixed results. My Toronto pal Stephen Ladowsky nursed a short stack most of the day and finally went out around 480^th when he pushed with A-Q and ran into aces. Iggy managed to maintain and build his stack with some blind steals and re-steals and finished Day 3 with 177,000. Hoyt Corkins fared even better, using his aggressive style to build his stack up to nearly 480,000. It was funny watching him pace the aisles before play began this afternoon. Hoyt seemed more nervous today than he did before the final table of the World Poker Open in Tunica in January (he finished second there). I guess that shows you the importance of the World Series of Poker to people.

Iggy seemed very relaxed and drew fellow poker writer Jeremiah Smith two seats to his right. I talked with Jeremiah (who enters the day second in chip count with about $1.3 million) quite a bit last year, so it’s good to see the former PokerWire reporter doing so well in this event. Plus, Jeremiah was dressed in Full Tilt Poker gear so of course we love him here on Poker From The Rail.

Phil Hellmuth and Jean Robert-Bellande are at the ESPN featured table today. There’s a dynamic duo for you – that should make for good television.

I probably won’t stick around the Rio long here on Day 4 because if I want to make my fortune before I leave Vegas, I need to try to satellite into the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza Main Event on Sunday. If I can win a mint, it will give me a good bankroll for the upcoming FTOPS events.

The World Series of Poker is winding down to a conclusion. I always have mixed feelings on the event’s conclusion. Most of the tables no longer in use have been cleared from the Amazon room. No cash games are running here anymore. You can sense the excitement of the WSOP when it begins, when bankrolls are still fat and hope abounds. By the time the lights are turned off, most dreams have been dashed and a lucky few have earned a king’s ransom.

It’s nearly time to turn out the lights.

As I write this, we have reached double digits in main event participants. Long gone are Iggy, who busted in 403^rd on Day 4 to earn $28,950, and Hoyt Corkins, who was gone in 162^nd place for $41,816. That hiking trip may be on, after all, if he’s up for it. I know how disappointed poker players can be after busting in a major event; and after all, this is the biggest event in poker.

Play will continue here through Tuesday night, when the November Nine prepare for their place in history in, er, November. I can only imagine the feeling those nine players will have after receiving their checks for $900,000 and having the opportunity to return to Vegas four months later to play for more than $8 million more. I don’t believe we’ll see them on The Late Show with David Letterman reading a Top 10 list, but I think the move by Harrah’s to delay the final table until November will create a lot of additional interest and coverage for the WSOP among the mainstream media. Even though I think Harrah’s tries a little too hard to make a buck sometimes ($2.50 for a 12-ounce can of soda in the WSOP Poker Kitchen, really?), I do believe they have the best interest of poker at heart.

I have no grand illusions of personally making a mint during my last few days in Vegas. I have, however, reached the second round of a major blackjack tournament at the Golden Nugget where the winner will received $25,000. Hey, I never said I wasn’t a degenerate! I’ll be taking my remaining bankroll back home to Tuscaloosa with an eye on the upcoming FTOPS events. For now, I’m off to the Bellagio for some cash games. 

Nearly driven mad in the land of poker, I had the opportunity to get out of town on Sunday. Since Hoyt Corkins busted out of the main event on Saturday, he had time to go for a hike.

I went to his house and we hopped in his jeep, fully equipped with four-wheel drive, roll bars, and a five-ton winch that would surely get us out of any sticky situations. Starting too late to tackle Mt. Charleston, we headed to Red Rock Canyon to take the jeep trails into the Rainbow Wilderness area.

It wasn’t easy going up the rocky trails and I was surprised to see a few Grand Cherokee drivers try the climb. Although it was a relatively short distance, it took nearly an hour to reach the North Peak trail from the point where we exited the main scenic drive.

The hike was 1.3 miles from the jeep and I lugged a backpack full of bottled water and trail mix. As the young one of the duo, I got to be the mule. Although the trail was labeled as difficult on the guide sign, we found the going fairly easy at first. Still, those uphill trails can get an out of shape fellow winded pretty quickly, so we took frequent breaks.

The view from the top was worth the hour hike. From the North Peak we could see all of Vegas below, as well as Lake Mead, which was 50 or 60 miles in the distance. I’ve done a lot of hiking in my day, from the Appalachians to the Rockies, but this was the best view from the top with the absence of trees blocking the panoramic view. We stayed for a while to enjoy the view, but departed when we saw rain clouds coming up on us.

“You don’t mess with those flash floods,” Hoyt said. “If it starts raining very hard, we’ll be stuck here for the night.”

I certainly perished that thought so we hustled back, although we had to take it easy in spots due to the loose shale along the trail. It started sprinkling on the way down, and with a cool breeze in our faces it sure beat the heat of walking down the Strip. By the time we made it back to the jeep, the rain had stopped and we headed back down.

Meanwhile, the WSOP Main Event had played on. They’re down to 34 as I write this and will play to 27 tonight. On Monday, they’ll play down to 9 and then everyone will go home for four months. I sense that Tiffany Michelle will be the star of ESPN’s coverage. As an attractive young woman who is currently in the top 10 in chips you can expect to see a lot of her during Main Event television coverage. If she plays here cards right, she could make a mint from the exposure. 

A bleary-eyed and yawning press still awaits the November Nine. As I write this, it’s 12:45 AM in Las Vegas and 10 players remain in the World Series of Poker Main Event.

They’ve finally condensed to one table, after playing on two tables for much of the evening. The bigger names have fallen – first, former World Poker Tour winner Brandon Cantu, then Tiffany Michelle, the last woman standing. Michelle’s 17^th place finish is the best in this event by a woman since Annie Duke went out in 10^th back in 2000.

I think most of us are ready to get the heck out of Sin City. Many have been here for at least six weeks covering the 54 events. After less than four, I’m done with this place. It’s been a frustrating trip for me as I could never get anything going at the tables. Hopefully, the trip will pay off for me in the form of the time I’ve spent networking for more writing opportunities.

Tenth place will get just under $600,000 while the other nine will come back to the Rio Tuesday afternoon for a few hours to get their checks for $900,670 and receive details on what exactly is going to happen over the next four months. ESPN will document how their lives change for a special to air before the plausibly live final table. It will be interesting to see what becomes of these nine.

My favorite at this point is Dennis Phillips, a 53-year-old from St. Louis who wears many hats (including his favorite Cardinals hat). He sells various vehicles and equipment, and is a commercial account manager for a trucking company. He’s played well toward the end, with aggressive raises and re-raises that have caused many opponents to lay down hands. At present, he’s the chip leader with almost 22 million. I had a chance to meet him during the break and he gave me his card so I can call him for a profile for Rounder magazine in the coming months.

Another potential winner is Scott Montgomery, a 26-year-old professional player from Canada, who has a WPT final table from this year on his poker resumé.

It’s now 2 AM and I have to get some sleep before my flights tomorr….er, later today. I’m off to my hotel.  

There’s a lot going on when you sit down to a cash game, and obviously you’ve got to be aware of all of it if you have any intention of being successful. 

When you’re going to play – before you even sit down – you’ve got to decide how much you’re going to buy in for. It might seem like it goes without saying, but you’ve got to be aware of everyone’s chip stack when you decide where to start. For me, I generally like to start out at least equal with – or buy in for more – than the biggest stack at the table.

Another part of this is recognizing who’s properly bankrolled at the table. If there’s somebody that’s playing on case money, then he’s generally a good opponent to pick on: they’re the one’s taking a shot at the game. If they don’t succeed, they’re going to drop down or they’re done for a while. Recognizing this lets you manipulate certain situations and take full advantage of them.

As far as recognizing opponents goes, one of the most important things that you have to do whenever you sit down is develop an accurate profile of each person at the table. Profiling is a matter of getting exactly who all of the other players at the table are and how they’re playing. This is critical and you need to learn to do it quickly.

For example, if you sit down with an older guy that’s retired and just there to have fun, you know that you can probably get away (with) a lot. Of course, you could be sitting with a guy who looks exactly the same, but has been around the block more than a few times and has been playing poker for years. You need to be able to figure out the difference between the two real fast. A lot of this is intuitive, but it’s all about recognizing experience in a player; figuring out who’s strong and who’s weak. Also keep in mind that just because someone is an unknown doesn’t mean that they aren’t good – you’ve always got to watch how they act, what they do at the table and listen to what they say.

This is a little different with players coming from an online background. If you’ve got an opponent with a reputation as a really strong online player, it’s probably a good idea to sit back and take a more passive approach until you figure out how they play live. I think that this is definitely a case where live players have an edge over online players. For myself, I’m accurate about 90% of the time when I put someone on being a particular type of player: solid, an amateur, a seasoned pro.

Of course, the flip-side of this is how they perceive you as a player. For me, if I’ve got any notoriety at a game, people recognize or greet me by name, maybe even comment on my play, I can use it to establish an image as an aggressive player that might check/raise with nothing. If I pick up on that, I can make moves like betting 4K into a 2K pot and get paid off with middle pair because this person thinks that I’m playing with nothing. On the other hand, if someone doesn’t think that about me or doesn’t know how I play, I have to adjust accordingly – it all depends on how I see their read on me.

Once you know how people view you, then it’s just a reverse psychology game. You can adapt to that in so many ways – this is one of the strongest parts of my game. It really lets me manipulate the table to my advantage.

If you can keep all of this in mind, you should be able to figure out what and who you’re dealing with right off the bat. Take full advantage of it, and you’ll be the one getting paid off.

Team Full Tilt’s Mike Matusow had the honor of being the last big name left in the 6,844 player field, and he bowed out in 30^th place after taking after his A-Q lost to a full house of Aces and 9s. We’re sure Mikey is hugely disappointed with his finish, especially since he’s been playing some insanely great poker over the past six weeks. Hopefully, the $193,000 he banked for his Main Event performance will help ease his pain.

Unlike most other tourneys at this year’s WSOP, the pros just didn’t perform as well as the amateurs in this year’s Main Event. Of course, with more than 6,800 players in a single tourney, even reaching the money in this kind of donk-fest is a pretty impressive feat. With that in mind, here are some of the other FTP pros who earned back their $10K entrance fee and a little bit more:

• The recently signed David Benefield - $77,200 for 73^rd place
• Mark Vos - $77,200 for 80^th place
• Jeff Madsen - $41,816 for 112^th place
• Allen Cunningham, Gus Hansen, and Chip Jett - $41,818 each for 117^th, 160, and 161^st place
• Ben Roberts - $38,600 for 178^th place

• Total amount won by the FTP pros during the 2008 WSOP: $12,213,376
• Number of bracelets won: 10
• Number of final tables reached: 46
• Number of pros who cashed: 80
• Number of pros who cashed for $1M or more: 1
• Number of pros who cashed for $500K or more: 8
• Number of other useless categories I can keep creating: 236

While the poker world was focusing on the action in the Rio’s Amazon Room over the past two weeks, there was another series of tourneys in Vegas that drew some big fields and big names; the Bellagio Cup.

Why do we care? Because one of the big names – and big winners – was Team Full Tilt’s Clonie Gowen. Yup, after cashing four times during the WSOP, Clonie found time in her busy schedule to take down the biggest event of her career, the $5K No-Limit event worth more nearly $438K.

With that win, Clonie has now officially earned more than $1.2 million in tournament winnings, a mere $1,199,995 more than yours truly.

Greetings from the World Series.

I’ve been here for more than two weeks now, but am just now officially posting as the Blogger on the Rail. (Doesn’t it sound like a title of such importance?) If any of you reading this have never been to the WSOP or even Las Vegas, you need to plan a trip. If you love poker you have to come experience it.

This is actually my fifth year at poker’s grandest event. The first time, in 2004, the tournament was still held at Binion’s Horseshoe. It’s really hard to think of the size of the WSOP then with the size of it now. Today, for Day 2B of the Main Event, they’ve got players spread all over the Rio, from the main play area of the Amazon ballroom to the Rio poker room, which is a good third of a mile away. I hear it’s in the neighborhood of 2,700 players playing today. Insane. I remember in 2004 when they were trying to find space for the nearly 2,600 players at Binion’s. Here in 2006, before the UIGEA was passed, there were nearly 9,000 runners. There were still nearly 7,000 this year. I think this poker fad has legs.

Let me share a quick history of my WSOP play. During that first trip in 2004, I took a shot at an event. It was the $1,000 with rebuys and I was attempting it on one buy in (Dumb move, I know. But as a novice what did I know?) At my table at various times were players with names like Vahedi, Tomko, Plastik, Longson, Rodman, Shoten and this guy they call Hellmuth. You may not be surprised to learn I didn’t fare so well.

I played one $1,500 NLHE event in 2005 with no luck and another in 2006 with similar fortunes. I won a Main Event seat in 2006 through another online poker site and was a card rack on Day 1, catching Aces five times and flopping quad deuces against Patrik Antonius. I managed to take half his stack in another hand in which I turned a set of nines. My good fortune continued until I ran Kings into Aces shortly after making the money in Day 3. The 770^th-place finish was good enough for $16,500.

Last year I played no WSOP events, but thanks to Full Tilt Poker and its Battle of the Bloggers tournaments, I was able to play the $1,500 HORSE event. I sat with Mike Matusow, himself a FTP pro. As seems to be usual in the $1,500 events I play here, I didn’t last long. In fact, Matusow and another player busted me in the third level during Stud/8 when I missed both my low and flush draws.

I’ve used my Vegas bankroll I earned through the blogger tournaments to play other tournaments around town, but haven’t had much luck. I finally cashed last night in a $340 Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza event, but only got $740 for the effort.

I’ll be bringing you more from the Rio in the coming days. Thanks for your patronage.

I have to admit I’ve watched the Main Event the last two years with great envy. After taking part in 2006 and experiencing the highs and lows of playing in poker’s biggest tournament, I am jealous every year I have to watch and not participate.

I felt a little thrill in railing Iggy, one of our most famous poker bloggers. He has been called the “Blogfather” because he was one of the first and best. This year, he won his first Main Event seat and I could sense the joy he had in getting to play the thing. It was like when a little kid opens his presents on Christmas. I remember that feeling. Well, then I asked him how it felt to play in it on Day 2 and he looked uninterested. “It beats work,” he said as he continued to fold his rag hands.

Players were eliminated briskly on Day 2. More than 63 percent of the field survived Day 1, but many hit the door quickly as the blinds and antes grew. At the end of the day, less than 1,300 survived and prop bets were made among poker writers on whether or not enough players will be eliminated on Day 3 to reach the money line of 666.

By the end of the day you could sense palpable excitement in Iggy as he held nearly 87,000 chips (close to the average) entering Thursday’s Day 3 play. As we walked from the Rio to the Palms in search of beer, he threatened to let out a primordial scream. Finally, as the afternoon had grown long he caught some hands.

Day 3 is the most treacherous day of the Series. It provides great disappointment for half the remaining field and great joy for most of the rest who survive into the cash. After all, $20,000+ is big money for most people, especially since many of them got into the Main Event for much less than $10,000.

I personally have a rooting interest in a few people today. There is Iggy, of course. There’s also Stephen L. from Toronto, a guy I met in Reno a couple of years ago and have been friends with since. And there’s Hoyt Corkins, my fellow Alabamian who I’ve gotten to know over the last few years, especially since I’ve been working with Rounder magazine where we feature a monthly Q & A segment with him. Hoyt and I are supposed to go hiking on Mt. Charleston when he busts out of the Main Event, but honestly I hope the trip can wait until next year. I’d be just as happy to see him make the final table.

So there you have it, Zolotow takes down Turner by a score of 5-2. This match feels like it should’ve had a closer final score, but hey, those are the breaks. Check back next week for more madness and mayhem as we continue the march from 64 players all the way down to one.

What’s the deal with the lack of big name pros with big stacks at the Main Event this year? I thought this was supposed to be the year of the pro?

If anyone’s been reading Wicked Chops recently, they know that the term “Year of the Pro” has been trademarked by those wacky bastards. So, to avoid the risk of getting into any legal troubles, let’s just refer to it as the Year the Pros Did Better Than the Previous Few Years (YPDBTPFY, for short).

With that little caveat aside, let me feebly attempt to answer this daunting question. The short answer would simply be variance. The pros have been running well in the Series thus far, but that can’t last forever. Plus, the epic size of this year’s field (the second largest in Main Event history), means that the sea of donkyfish (thank you for that one Pauly) is much harder to navigate. Every player is a landmine, and your ass risks getting blown up whenever you attempt to step on one of them. Then again, the $9 million first-place prize is certainly worth the risk of losing a few limbs.

We’re also still fairly early in the proceedings. I have no doubts that a few pros will build a big stack over the next few days and we will once again be discussing whether or not this truly is the year of the pro. Whoops, I meant the YPDBTPFY. Please don’t sue me Chops, I’m ever so insignificant…

Do you ever get the feeling that someone’s watching you? I’m not paranoid or anything, but I think they’re spying on me…

Let’s just file this one under “Why drugs are bad” and move on…

Hello, my name is Svetlana, your new mail order bride. Thank you for your purchase, I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Whoops, don’t know how that one got in there. I must’ve been looking at the wrong inbox…

I just saw that the FTOPS IX schedule has been released, why does it pretty much look the same as the last FTOPS?

Why mess with success. If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Yada, yada, yada. If you don’t like it, go play on somewhere else…

(Editor’s note: please disregard the preceding paragraph. One Angry Monkey is obviously high on whatever fumes he’s been huffing today. We would like you to know that we do our best to provide an FTOPS schedule that’s appealing to as many of our players as possible. Full Tilt Poker – we care a lot!)

Until next week…