If there is variance in poker, there might as well be in poker blogs as well.

Nearly every major event we've done on the PokerStars Blog has experienced one day of techincal difficulties that sends me into a technological tilt that pushes me to the edge of both unemployment and insanity. It's never been my fault, but I feel a huge responsibility to make everything work. In 2005, the traffic crashed the server. At the 2007 PCA, an issue with our publishing system put us down for eight hours in the middle of one of the most important parts of the tournament. The same thing happened at the EPT Grand Final and here again today.

I was on my way to the Stratophere tower to judge the likelihood of making it over the edge when we were able to recover our publishing ability and get back to work. All along, the members of Team Blog were working tirelessly to make sure we had comprehensive coverage. Nonetheless, as I'm sure regular readeres are aware, we were dark for about eight hours today. The archives have been published here, so you can still read back on what we covered. Nonetheless, I feel it a personal responsibility to aplogize for our absence. While there was nothing I could do about it, I feel bad about being gone.

So, where do we stand now?

With just a little more than 50 players remaining, PokerStars Hevad "RaiNKhaN" Khan still sits in the top five in chips. He's worked his way up above 4.3 million in chips and shows no signs of fading. Other big players still left in the field are Scott Freeman, Raymond Rahume, Jason Welch, Hoa Nguyen, Stig Tap Rasmussen, Roy Winston and Jeff "mrrain" Banghart.

The plan tonight is to play until just after midnight, unless we still have more than 36 players remaining, at which point we will play until we reach that point. With a bit of good luck and the creek don't rise, we'll be here to report it all.