The dinner break in today's $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em tournament saw a little more than 500 players remaining out of the 2,780 who began. The carnage throughout the day had left just about any player flying the PokerStars flag a tattered mess.

I was killing time while the players ate when Noah "Exclusive" Boeken wandered up.

"You hungry?" he asked.

I wasn't, but that didn't stop my curiosity.

"No, why?"

"David Williams isn't here," Noah explained.

It took a second for me to register the explanation. Then I remembered the Boeken is crashing at Williams high-dollar condo during the World Series.

"I have a chef," Noah said and held up a brown bag. "It's good."

After too many cheese steaks from the Poker Kitchen, I could only think, "Oh, to be a young poker phenom. To have a chef!"

I said none of this, however, and thanked Noah for the offer. I watched him walk into the masses with his brown bag. Now, as my stomach starts to grumble, I'm wondering what was in the bag. It has to be better than any stromboli-nacho-chicken-wing choice I may find in my present locale.

Rather than eat, though, I grumbled my way back onto the floor where cries of "Seat open!" continued to ring. People play fast in these lower buy-in events and it's little surprise how fast it's moving.

Although most stories that might interest the PokerStars crowd had long since found their way to a BBQ, game of Chinese, or a bed to rest for tomorrow's big HORSE event (more on that in a sec), Noah Boeken continued to roll. At the break, he had a double-average stack and a look in his eye that said, "Dinner was good. Chips are better."

There's still a long way to go in this thing--even before they hit the money--but Boeken is looking pretty strong. That said, based on the reliability of my predictions in recent days, I'm just going to say Noah has chips. What he does with them, we'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, I can't let this post or event go by without giving a mention and premature congratulations to my buddy and member of the 2006 World Series PokerStars Team Blog, Paul "Dr. Pauly" McGuire who is taking a break from his Poker News reporting duties to play today. He currently is running hot and is among the the players at the top of the leader board.

This event will run until 2am PDT. That will leave just a few short hours of sleep before the noon kickoff of tomorrow's $50,000 H.O.R.S.E world championship. This event is going to be both exciting and slow at the same time. While the biggest buy-in event in this year's Series and sure to draw the biggest pros in the world, it's an event that will start with a staggering 100,000 starting chips and is scheduled to run five days. Either way, I suspect it will be fodder for many a good story and several bad equine-related puns.

Of course, of course.