by C.J. Hoyt

It's begun. We've moved past the first-date-find-out-how-she-feels-about-me stage. The players are now looking for a serious relationship with a lot of chips, perhaps even marriage with a shiny bracelet if things go their way. Here's how some of our players are doing:

Table 161

The good news is that our five players are all still alive and none of them are near the felt. Things can change quickly, but Nate "Jimmytogni" Kelley tells me, "This is the slowest table you'll find. No one is playing any big pots."

Nate Kelley

Of course, as he tells me this, England's own Matt Tailby gets into a hand with a guy that, according to Nate, has only played two hands all day.

"He's got a monster," Nate whispers to me about Matt's opponent. The flop was T93 rainbow. Matt leads out at it and gets called. The turn is a J. This time Matt checks and calls a nice-sized bet on the turn. The river is another 3. Matt checks again and his opponent puts a T3000 bet out there.


Matt Tailby

"This is the biggest pot of the day," Nate whispers to me. Matt is clearly wondering if his hand is still good. In the end, he decides he's either winning a bit pot or paying off his opponent. When his opponent lets out a big sigh, I'm pretty sure Matt's hand is going to be good.

AK suited. It was a straight bluff from the tightest player at the table. Matt flips his Hilton Sisters (pocket Q's) and the pot is his. He's in great shape now.

Table 162

Gordon "Blotzilla" Cross has himself up to about 19,000. Unfortunately, Ron "Super Ron" Blount is having much less success and is down to just 3,000.

"The guy in the 10-seat busted because the only player he could take a pot from was me," Ron tells me.

Sumit "Pool_shark_1" Kumar is a little over his starting stack, but it had been ugly. He was knocked all the way down to 5500 before finding pocket Aces. He decided at this point he wanted to risk trying to win a big pot and he just limped. After the flop, he got all his chips in against a flush draw and doubled up.

Gus Echeverri is also around his starting stack. He's been in the middle of two set-over-set confrontations so far, winning one and losing the other.

Table 189

Nadejeda "Jenna Fan" Abelli has hit a bad stretch. Her 16,000 is now down to about 9000. She took a big hit when her two pair ran into a better two pair.

Shawn "cstu82" Stewart has gone the opposite way. He was down to just 4000 when his luck took a turn for the better. He hit a full house and is back up to 16,000.

The king of Table 189, however, is Wade "Wader" Graham. He also won a huge pot when he turned a boat and is up at about 20,000.

Table 146

Travis "Travdawgks" Garrod was in trouble, but he's feeling a lot better now. After finding himself bleeding chips, he managed to flop a straight and is back up to 11,5000.

It's a similar story for Edward "Xerxes757" Ihre, who was getting closer and closer to the felt. When he finally won his first pot in a long time, he got himself back up to 9,500. "I can finally start playing again," he told me.

The most interesting day goes to Brian "Showbizzzz" Gass. He's been in a lot of big pots, but for 10 minutes, he wasn't allowed to play.

"I got an F-bomb penalty. I was just kidding with the guy," he pointed to the guy to his right. "He pulled a four flush on the river and I just said 'You're f-in kidding me.'"

The 10-minutes didn't hurt, however, because Brian's got himself up to 28,000 after busting two players. Maybe the rest of the table is lucky he was gone for a short time.


Brian Gass