January 2008 Archives

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days. For some the highs of looking ahead to a third day, whilst for others a night spent thinking of a hand misplayed or the hand the other guy shouldn’t have played, but did, and did well, awaits.

Two Team PokerStars players had made it this far. Katja Thater, who had battled through day 1a would make a run on the money, trailing Daniel Negreanu who was healthier chip wise but whose day two campaign received a minor set back when he forgot to wake up - for the second day. But it made for great footage as he skipped past tables to reach his seat.

Daniel Negreanu

Still, he had 60k, more than Katja, and the possibility of a Triple Crown winner of EPT, WPT and WSOP titles was distant yes, but still alive. But not for long. A jubilant Markus Tandler eliminated Daniel. Markus’ scream of joy and quick apology was audibly one of the high notes of the day.

Hope for Team PokerStars came from a different corner, with Flying Dutchman Marcel Luske ending the day in fine form, on a song and 123,000.

Typically a number of PokerStars qualifiers put in fine performances. Jan Heitman is top of the group on 200,400 whilst Christopher Rossiter is further behind on 129,500. Further back American Christian Harder is on 101,900 and Tyler Friederich is on 91,600.

The day was started in fine spirit, most notably by Passport winner Dustin Mele who had enough wish fulfillment on his face to keep everyone cheery. An early candidate for most optimist player of the tour Dustin knew he was up against it, returning today with just 4,600 but gave it his best regardless determined to enjoy himself and gaining priceless experience of EPT action in the process as he plans where he PokerStars passport will take him next.

We also caught up with PCA 8th place finisher Ricky Fohrenbach. The Connecticut man also had reason to enjoy himself even on a tough table that featured the likes of Annette Obrestad and Nicolas Levi (both of whom were eliminated as the day progressed). He had above average chips and a worthy plan B – this being his first trip to Europe, he and a few friends had Amsterdam in mind had the cards not gone his way. They did fior a while, but the Amsterdam plan was already in action by the close of play.

As day 2 in Dortmund finishes the final of the WPT Borgata Classic will soon begin on the East coast in Atlantic City. The significance? A certain Gavin Griffin; an EPT and WSOP bracelet winner who stands ready to add a WPT title becoming in the process the first player to win that Triple Crown of titles. It’s a tall order but we’ll find out tomorrow whether or not he becomes the first member of an exclusive club of one.

Marcel Luske

Finally, in amongst news of risers and fallers, we finished the day with Marcel Luske and a demonstration of chip accumulation as players and railbirds alike watched on in quiet awe. Stephen Wrengler was the bubble boy; Thor Hansen marking the finishing line of an action packed day of poker goingout in 33rd.

Chip leader at the start of the day Chabot Cyrille, finished 21st in chips with 74,700 whilst a new chip leader emerged front and centre in the form of Diego Perez Marco of Spain on 361,600, nearly 30k ahead of Canadian Mike McDonald.

We start again at 3pm tomorrow local time, with the addition of the EPT Live teams bringing coverage of day 3 in five languages. And for anyone wanting to catch up with the latest from today, including video blogs…

Day 2 and the business of poker begins

Thinking the impossible in level 9

The ballad of Ricky Fohrenbach

Poker’s most exclusive club

Around the tables

A song in his head, hands on a fortune

Closing stages of day 2

With 32 players left the chip counts and standing look like this…

Diego Perez Marco -- Spain -- 361,600
Michael McDonald -- Canada -- 335,700
Claudio Rinaldi -- Switzerland -- 278,700
Marco Liesy -- Germany -- 278,200
Johannes Strassmann -- Germany -- 276,400
Aniol Alcaraz -- Spain -- 216,200
Brandon Schaefer -- USA -- 202,300
Andreas Gülünay -- Germany -- 201,100
Jan Heitmann -- Germany -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 200,400
Manfred Hammer -- Germany -- 135,300
Christopher Rossiter -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 129,500
Thibaut Durand -- France -- 123,200
Marcel Luske -- Netherlands -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 123,000
Peyman Mohammadzadeh -- Germany -- 114,800
Manfred Bass -- Germany -- 114,400
Daniel Ryan -- USA -- 110,400
Daniel Carter -- UK -- 105,900
Christian Harder -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 101,900
Alexandar Milanov -- Bulgaria -- 96,300
Tyler Friederich -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 91,600
Chabot Cyrille -- France -- 74,700
Hugo Marialva Felix -- Portugal -- 63,000
Marcel Cesarz -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 59,300
Steve Jelinek -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 57,700
Jioí Kulhánek -- Czech Republic -- PokerStars qualifier -- 53,600
Bernhard Damnik -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 44,000
Andreas Sarling -- Finland -- 38,400
Torsten Haase -- Germany -- 36,800
Syikrai Istafan -- Hungary -- 32,100
Mario Kühl -- Germany -- 27,600
Raul Paez Corral -- Spain -- 25,400
Sebastian Till -- Germany -- 16,200

For a recap from the EPT Live team, Lee Jones has the detail...

The plan was for eight levels of a field down to 32. We wondered how long it would take and it turned out things moved fast just when it was expected to slow. The approach to the bubble was as expected, nothing like the hour long bubble play last year.

Mats Iremark -

The EPT Deauville champion of season two was an unexpected casualty before we reached the money. In a pot involving Mike McDonald and King-queen Mats showed Jacks, good at the start of the hand and with all your chips in the middle, bad when a queen hit the board twice and your chips won’t come back.

Mats Iremark

Stephen Wrenger -

Probably missed for most of the tournament Wrenger would have the ignoble job of being the bubble boy, and it was another EPT winner Brandon Schaeffer who would see him off, grateful for a little touch of good fortune – a dramatic one too. Q-T-5 on the flop which hit both players well. Q-T for Brandon and two pairs, T-T for Wrenger to move ahead. Until the turn, an explosive card with the noise of the crowd audible two flights up. Brandon takes the pot and Wrenger leaves with nothing.

Ramsi Jelassi

The pace showed no signs of slowing, most seemingly grateful for an early-ish night, thanks mainly to two hands that both saw two players gone in quick succession – between then and the 32 left now Ramsi Jelassi fell victim to a killer four, despite holding aces, against anothe rplayer with tens. As well as the four a ten hit the river, ending all hope for Ramsi who would have taken the side pot had the river not been so bad. And then crowd favourite and legendary gambler Thor Hansen marked the final elimination of the day, exiting in 33rd place the victim with A-T against an ugly run in with a K-Q found another king on the flop.

Thor Hansen - recording his first EPT cash

Seeing as though Marcel Luske is a sponsored player for PokerStars here in Dortmund I figured I’d spend a few minutes watching him play a few hands. If nothing else he’d probably provide a song and the quality of play when he’s around never seems to tarnish.

With him at the table is PokerStars qualifier Mika Turpeinen and two Manfred’s - Manfred Bass and Manfred Hammer, and Andreas Sarling.

Marcel’s career has been a long and profitable one. A casual glance through his results shows consistent wins going back years, a resume you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere, and one that has seen him in smart shoes for many years.

EPT London, season one, 2004. Marcel finishes seventh in one of the first EPTs out with K-Q against the pocket Jacks of Jon Falconer. His young protégé Noah Boeken finishes sixth.

The flop is A-J-A. Marcel bets, putting off anyone else from getting involved any further. It’s good for another 10k pot.

Done with stacking chips he readjusts his shades, a chunky looking combination of UV protection and built-in radio player with an earphone emerging from the frame like landing gear. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in an 1980s innovation catalogue along with a gold ballpoint pen featuring a digital clock at the end. But this is Marcel and he has the knack of making the ordinary look cool and entirely appropriate.

Music is important to him, only his headphones don't seem to work…

He makes another pre-flop bet but again finds no takers - good for the blinds. Soon there’s action at the other end of the table. The player in seat six bets 8k and immediately covers his face with his hand, like he doesn’t want someone on the rail to recognize him. Andreas Sarling sitting on his left and next to act neatly pushes his stack forward, a neat shove often replaced by a gesture these days.

Compared to seat six Sarling is in full control, unashamed of the move and presumably happy for anyone on the rail to see him. His opponent goes through the motions of asking how much. Marcel looks interested as well, leaning forward to watch what happens next. Predictably the raiser folds, opting not to call the 48k move.

Another table breaks and Thor Hansen arrives, unpacking his chips and coming over to Marcel to shake hands.

“Marcel, play good okay?” he says, “I know you can.”

With that Sarling makes another per-flop bet. Sarling has the well crafted look of determined youth about him. A young player hoping to seize this EPT bull by the horns and make a Sarling shaped mark. He’s well on his way.

EPT Copenhagnen, season one, 2004. Marcel narrowly misses out on his second final table of the season when he finishes in ninth place – this time protégé Noah Boeken wins the event.

Barely seconds after Sarling bets Marcel leans to the dealer, vaguely points with a finger and tells him he’s all-in. A few seconds ago, noticing me standing alongside he said he’d hardly played any hands. Sarling might have been annoyed but didn’t show it. He mucked - Marcel showing him two black kings.

“That’s the minimum hand I show” he says and whistles another quick tune and then says something to Sarling. Maybe it was coincidental, maybe a deliberate attempt to sooth a wounded ego but Sarling breaks his stern face for a second to smile. Sarling is no different from a lot of young players sat opposite Marcel of trying to block out the chat – no attempts to fraternize at all. Marcel usually breaks them. Sarling seems happier now.

EPT Grand Final season two, 2006 - Marc Karam moves all-in from button with J-7. Luske calls with pocket eights. A harmless flop leaves Marcel ahead but he and hundreds of others watch as one of the most painful moments in EPT history unfolds. Karam hits runner-runner sevens, eliminating the Dutchman.

Marcel limps on the button and the big blind taps the table. They check the flop 6-2-3 to see a king on the turn. The big blind checks, Marcel spins six blue chips over the line, good for another pot and time to order tea.

“Thor… tea?”

“As your buying…” replied Thor Hansen, the look of an irregular tea drinker across his face. Just a few hands until the break… PokerStars sponsored player Marcel Luske up to 172,000.

Play is progressing after the dinner break. Tournament director Thomas Kremser intends to see through eight levels of play but will stop if we reach 32 players left. It’s difficult to say in level 13 right now which will come first. Meanwhile there have been a few keys eliminations to report…

Annette Obrestad
The EPT Dublin runner-up is out. In her own words, which you can see below, she had an up and down day, bluffing off a few chips at the start of the day and being eliminated a short time ago…

Katja Thater
The last remaining Team PokerStars player is out. All in pre flop it was A-K for Katja against pocket fours. The ace hit the flop but a four on the turn wasn’t far behind. Katja joins fellow Team PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu on the rail.

Team PokerStars Pro Katja Thater earlier today

Markus Golser
The Austrian pro who made the final table in Prague is out. Details are vague but his seat has been taken by Ricky Frohenbach.

Markus Golser

Others gone
Pascal Perrault is out, so too Daniel Zink, Mazhar Nawab, Paul Testud, Redmond Lee, Patrick Bueno and Thomas Brolin.

Kara Scott has a round up of events so far...

Photos © Neil Stoddart

The money is a plus, but few things do your poker reputation as much good as some kind of record. A lot are dubious - first to do this, the first to win that, but others really separate the good from the incredible.

PokerStars blogs have always featured the possibility of a double EPT winner - just last year in Dublin Roland de Wolfe become the first player to win both a WPT and EPT event and Team PokerStars pro Joe Hachem recorded a WPT win to go with his WSOP bracelet last year.

Daniel Negreanu will have to wait for another shot at the Triple Crown

But there remains another even more exclusive record, a club whose membership numbers less than one – titles in EPT, WSOP and WPT event - the ‘Triple Crown’ of poker.

Last night Team PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu looked to be the best hope, coming into day 2 today with close to 60k. His wins in both the WPT and WSOP left just an EPT to bag. I say ‘just’ - it would never be an easy ask. And when he chased a flush with a stack one third of what he started with today his tournament and record breaking hopes rested on a diamond - a diamond which didn’t come.

Check below to see the hand and hear what Daniel had to say about EPT Dortmund...

But today could yet see the first ever Triple Crown winner. Whilst Daniel Negreanu’s hopes of getting membership card number one are gone, across the ocean in Atlantic City Gavin Griffin – the season three EPT Grand Final winner and a WSOP bracelet winner in the $3,000 pot-limit hold’em in 2004, stands on the brink of history at the WPT Borgata Classic. There he is second in chips at the final table to be played later today, with just David Tran narrowly ahead of him in chips.

It’s an incredible achievement for anyone but Gavin coming this close will please a lot of people who follow the game so closely. Recognisable for his pink hair, reminding everyone of the work he does for breast cancer awareness with his girlfriend Kristen, were he to win in Atlantic City it would be a triumph for one of poker’s nice guys.

The man from Orange County made enough of a headline winning in Monte Carlo. In a gripping heads-up battle with Marc Karam who came out tops on a memorable last hand – a moment that can be relived here…

Everyone at PokerStars would like to wish Gavin good luck for the final table and we’ll have news of the result on the PokerStars blog when we get it.

Tournament update -

For chip counts of all remaining players in the EPT Dortmund click here.

Ricky Fohrenbach - where have you heard that name before? Well Ricky finished 8th at the PCA a few weeks ago and was the chipper sounding 20-year-old who had a spell in the commentary box with the EPT Live team out in the Caribbean.

Richard Fohrenbach

“I’m on a pretty tough table with about 39k. My day one table was much easier!” He said. “I have Annette on my table and a pretty good player opposite. And Nicolas Levi in the white hat.”

Richard's eighth place finish came on his second attempt at the PCA and made him $150,000 in prize money. But at 20 years old Ricky has predictably played little live poker and doesn’t profess to being an expert just yet...

“I don’t pay attention to the way someone looks at their cards or watch if their eyebrows twitched or anything! I just play my cards. I haven’t played many big pots. I had queens against ace-nine and lost that. Then I got tens against 9-3 and they held up! But I’ve been up and down a bit."

So is it forward to poker or back to Boston College? Well, the Milford, Connecticut man seems unsure - but for now he'll settle for life as a young guy on the road playing a game for money and no reason to rush. And he has a plan B in place should things go wrong…

“I’ve never been to Europe before. In fact, if I bust out me and some friends are heading to Amsterdam!”

Somehow, they all end up in Amsterdam…

Tournament update -

Frenchman Nicolas Levi is out. Earlier today he'd been left with 4k in four neat stacks of black chips. "Chip and a chair" said someone from the rail. "Then bring me more chairs" shot back Nicolas. His tournament was ended soon after with a run in against Annette Obrestad.

Marcel Luske is faring better - he just doubled up to 47,000. Team PokerStars Pro Katja Thater on the other hand spent the break pacing back and forth keeping away from people and questions. In the zone she was looking to recover from a hand against Brandon Schaeffer that had just cost her a few thousand..

Half an hour in and 13 players are already on their way home. One of them is Passport winner Dustin Mele.

Dustin Mele

Fair’s fair Dustin had the work to do. He came ready to turn his 4,600 into a colossus, one that would guarantee the PokerStars passport winner a handsome payoff to take back to New York. But things don’t always go according to plan. He was out within minutes of the start, but his experience here is only the start of a year long adventure - not bad for someone who had never travelled outside of the United States before last weekend.

But, with his American and PokerStars passport well and truly in his back pocket it’s up to him where to play next. Copenhagen? San Remo? Monte Carlo? This is not the last we’ll see of Dustin.

The redraw has paired off some key players. Team PokerStars Pro Katja Thater has been drawn across from Brandon Schaeffer; two French players Pascal Perrault and Paul Testud sit side by side and Annette Obrestad shares a table with Nicolas Levi.

Katja Thater

Daniel Negreanu? He was late again. A quick dash to his chair and he’d be in business in no time. “This is me? No?” Wrong table. He’d find his place eventually, to polite applause... “No problem.”

Another key match up involves Marcel Luske and Mats Iremark. These two represents the complete opposite ends of the poker way. Mats, who won the EPT in Deauville back in season two, is something of the archetypical poker geek. Perhaps he leaves his computer screen sometimes, possibly to by designer clothes, but you suspect EPTs are Mat’s forced ventures into the outside world. Marcel on the other hand, well, I’m not convinced he owns a computer. Always in a suit, today with a salmon coloured tie, he talks freely with players, press and anyone who happens to walk by.

These are only superficial differences for their track records nail them down as world class players. So you’d expect them to keep out of each others way.

Not so. They both tangled, all be it with kid-gloves on in a pot. Mats had re-raised a bet which Marcel ultimately called before they both check-checked their way to a showdown, as if they'd accidentally found themselves in a hand together. Tangling with the wrong man can end in grief and long explanations. MArcel took the pot with a jack on the river pairing the one in his hand. Sixes for Mats but both seemed happy to let the hand go.

Tournament update –

Noah Boeken who began day1b with 10k started day 2 with exactly the same. But that made today a much taller order. He went out in the first level of play leaving just Katja Thater and Daniel Negreanu flying the Team PokerStars flag.

Photos © Neil Stoddart

We’re close to a just about honorable 100kmp on the autobahn out of Dortmund. The sun still refuses to shine and the wind chill seems to pierce our metal bus, but this is the way – the road to day 2 of the EPT Dortmund and 149 players are strapped in for the ride.

Past the mining pits, the TV tower and Westfalen Park it could be the ordinary commute to work millions face each morning. But at this stage of a tournament a poker players’ lifestyle isn’t far off - a day of hard slog awaits – for the successful at least. This poker lark may be considered a high-flying cocktails and burger lifestyle by some but things are only just starting. The obstacles are many – some will be overcome, others will make you feel stupid.

Nevertheless, pulling up to the Casino I decided to capitalize on on a newly discovered fondness for Germany by embarking on a part heroic, part insane venture outdoors in the cold, ignoring the advice of mothers everywhere to wear a hat. The countryside around the Casino Hohensyburg is among the best the EPT has to offer that doesn’t involve a beach. The views are something as well. Even as my eyes welled up from the breeze I could see the countryside racing for miles, towards the borders, between a mixture of chimneys, roads and railways hallmarking the industry this region is famous for.

Back on the casino grounds a few dirt paths run lead into dense woods and towards old looking buildings and presumably endless adventure. But I could feel the cold air closing off the fiddly bits in my lungs and the wind punishing me on each step, I headed back inside where I knew there was a waitress service and that someone somewhere would either turn the heating on or provide me with first aid. The paths tomorrow perhaps.

So right now we’re settled in for business. The newspapers today may write of politicians talking, of teams winning and business men quoting numbers I won’t fully understand. But today the center of the world is Hohensyburg and I know some other important numbers – 149, 40 and $933+k – starters today, paid tomorrow, winner’s cheque on Saturday.

If you missed the action yesterday get the round up of day 1b from Kara Scott...

How do things look at the start of level nine?

Chabot Cyrille -- France -- 111100
Claudio Rinaldi -- Switzerland -- 71300
Tyler Friederich -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 70900
Russell Carson -- Canada -- PokerStars qualifier -- 70400
Jioí Kulhánek -- Czech Republic -- PokerStars qualifier -- 66300
Michael Kwiek -- 62800
Peyman Mohammadzadeh -- Germany -- 60900
Daniel Negreanu -- Canada -- Team PokerStars Pro -- 59900
Ville Mattila -- Finland -- 57300
Andreas Sarling -- Finland -- 56500
Nicolas Levi -- France -- 56100
Markus Golser -- Austria -- 54600
Annette Obrestad -- Norway -- 50200
Mario Kühl -- Germany -- 49800
Christopher Rossiter -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 49200
Stefan Wrenger -- Germany -- 48600
Mats Erik Iremark -- Sweden -- 47700
Marcel Cesarz -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 47600
Diego Perez Marco -- Spain -- 47400
Manfred Bass -- Germany -- 46900
Daniel Zink -- Germany -- 45400
Andreas Manganelli -- Italy -- 44600
Edwin Tournier -- Netherlands -- PokerStars qualifier -- 43000
Jose Luis Valero -- Spain -- 42800
Henrik Brockmann -- Germany -- 42400
Christoffer Sonesson -- Sweden -- PokerStars qualifier -- 41800
Gianvalerio Bindi -- Italy -- PokerStars qualifier -- 41700
Dan Walley -- UK -- 41400
Mazhar Nawab -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 40800
Riccardo Mazzitelli -- Italy -- 40700
Maik Brandau -- Germany -- 40400
Jonas Soerensen -- Denmark -- PokerStars qualifier -- 40300
Björn Enberg -- Sweden -- PokerStars qualifier -- 40200
Carter Gill -- USA -- 39400
Marek Kolk -- Estonia -- 38900
Brandon Schaefer -- USA -- 37500
Benjamin Kang -- Germany -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 37300
Reijo Anttila -- Finland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 36700
Bernhard Damnik -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 36500
Phillip Marmorstein -- Germany -- 35500
Marciano Elie -- France -- PokerStars qualifier -- 35200
Richard Fohrenbach -- USA -- 34000
Thor Hansen -- Norway -- 34000
Daniel Carter -- UK -- 33900
Marcel Baran -- Germany -- 33800
Simone Gallitti -- Italy -- PokerStars qualifier -- 33800
Thibaut Durand -- France -- 33500
Daniel Ruiter -- Netherlands -- 33400
Tobias Reinkemeier -- Germany -- 31400
Marc Dötsch -- Germany -- 31100
Thomas Bihl -- Germany -- 30100
Marcus Tandler -- Germany -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 29100
Sevinc Neumann -- Germany -- 28800
Vikke Toumaala -- 28800
Pouya Pouya Majd -- Germany -- 28700
Sjoerd Bos -- Netherlands -- 28600
Carsten Joh -- Germany -- 28400
Torsten Haase -- Germany -- 28300
Marius Pospiech -- Germany -- 28300
Alexandar Milanov -- Russia -- 28200
Korosh Mollaie -- Germany -- 28200
Marcel Luske -- Netherlands -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 27600
Giorgio Salemi -- Italy -- 27500
Michael McDonald -- Canada -- 27200
André Santos -- Portugal -- 26900
Paul Testud -- France -- 25800
Ulrich Trautenberg -- Germany -- 25700
Jiri Vacek -- Czech Republic -- 25600
Pascal Perrault -- France -- 25300
Daruisz Paszkiewicz -- Poland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 25100
Eugen Frey -- Germany -- 25000
Andreas Gülünay -- Germany -- 24900
Mazlum Acar -- Turkey -- 24625
Daniel Bolton -- Ireland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 24600
Frank Werder -- Germany -- 24600
Jordane Beraldin -- France -- 24000
Daniel Ryan -- USA -- 23900
Steve Jelinek -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 23800
Redmond Lee -- UK -- 23400
Jan Heitmann -- Germany -- PokerStars sponsored player -- 23300
Stefan Rotach -- Switzerland -- 23200
Ralf Werner -- Germany -- 22900
Jameson Painter -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 22600
Szikrai Istvàn -- Hungary -- 22300
Sigi Stockinger -- Germany -- 22200
Christian Harder -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 21900
Jacques Zaicik -- France -- 21600
Aniol Alcaraz -- Spain -- 21000
Manfred Hammer -- Germany -- 20800
Mats Rahmn -- Sweden -- 20400
Nikolas Behling -- Germany -- 19900
Rolf Weißhaupt -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 19900
Kees Alblas -- Netherlands -- 1950
Jens Vörtmann -- Germany -- 19500
Katja Thater -- Germany -- Team PokerStars Pro -- 19000
Marco Liesy -- Germany -- 18900
Alexander Clauss -- Germany -- Freeroll -- 18500
Nazim Kicik -- Netherlands -- 18400
Hugo Marialva Felix -- Portugal -- 18400
Anders Henriksson -- Sweden -- 18300
Martin Hruby -- Czech Republic -- 18100
Thomas Petersen -- Sweden -- PokerStars qualifier -- 17500
Aram Sargsyan -- Armenia -- 17500
Yngne Anderberg -- Sweden -- 17300
Sebastian Freudenberg -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 17200
Patrick Bueno -- France -- 17100
Stefano Busino -- Italy -- 17000
Scott McLeod -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 16900
Ramzi Jelassi -- Sweden -- 16500
Malte Strothmann -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 16500
Daniele Mazzia -- Italy -- 16400
Vito Branciforte -- Italy -- 16200
Dario De Angelis -- Canada -- PokerStars qualifier -- 16100
Vincent Courtois -- France -- 15400
Matthias Guetermann -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14500
Jarkko Paasisalo -- Finland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14200
Leroy Soesman -- Netherlands -- 14200
Christopher Hancock -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14000
Rolf Slotboom -- Netherlands -- 13600
Hardy Behling -- Germany -- 13300
Ahmed Koc -- Germany -- 13300
Jose Maria Puertas Nieto -- Spain -- 13100
Sasa Biorac -- Germany -- 12300
Sebastian Till -- Germany -- 12300
Sandro Simon -- Germany -- 12200
Thomas Ermer -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 12000
Kenneth Ljungars -- Finland -- 11800
Cort Kibler-Melby -- Germany -- 11100
Ronald Falk -- USA -- PokerStars qualifier -- 10500
Mika Turpeinen -- Finland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 10400
Noah Boeken -- Netherlands -- Team PokerStars Pro -- 10000
Andreas Zwickel -- Germany -- 9900
Michael Klimt -- Germany -- 9800
Vincent Gosselink -- Netherlands -- 9700
Raul Paez -- Spain -- 9700
Roy von der Locht -- Germany -- 9700
Tilmann Ebeling -- Germany -- 9500
Dominik Kulicki -- Netherlands -- PokerStars qualifier -- 9400
Vladimir Poleshchuk -- Russia -- 9100
Guillaume de la Gorce -- France -- 8900
Georgios Gatselos -- Greece -- 8100
Tomas Brolin -- Sweden -- 7800
Lukasz Wasek -- Poland -- 7800
Kasper Nielsen -- Denmark -- PokerStars qualifier -- 7400
Eric Larcheveque -- France -- 7000
Benjamin Zamani -- USA -- 6600
Johannes Strassmann -- Germany -- 6100
Tommy Dender -- Denmark -- 5850
Dustin Mele -- USA -- PokerStars Passport winner -- 4300

Frenchman Chabot Cyrille leads everyone at the start but at the back, but not forgotten, is PokerStars passport winner Dustin Mele, here with his girlfriend Tracey who will no doubt lead the cheerleading for her man in the tail end Charlie position. His task is most monumental but with that comes the potential to be most historic. He has his work cut out but we’ll be with him all the way.

Thomas Kremser picks up the microphone, he tells the dealers to deal six more hands, and being the disciplined staff they are they do just that, wrapping up day 1b at the EPT Dortmund. The last act was the exit of last year’s winner Andreas Hoivold, out in a showpiece hand, kings against the ace-queen of Nicolas Levi – Levi flopped trips and turned quads.

217 began today, up 19 on yesterday’s total, choosing poker over a day outside in the rain. Right now the remaining 83 are having their chips counted and bagged before buses, cars and taxis take people to places they can sleep in preparation for day two tomorrow. But first day 1b had its story to tell.

Two of those players are Team PokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu and Noah Boeken. Of the two it’s Daniel in better shape, sat as he is with close to 60k, and all that after arriving late to the Hohensyburg Casino, wasting no time diving right in. Noah faces a struggle tomorrow but for now that is a few hours away.

The day started with the typically stronger field. As well as Team PokerStars the continents best professionals seemed to arrive in bulk – the likes of Marcel Luske, Ram Vaswani, Roland de Wolfe and Annette Obrestad sat dow to start their Dortmund campaigns, each with varying results.

We also saw EPT Prague winner Arnaud Mattern and last years winner here in Dortmund Andreas Hoivold. It had the hallmarks of a good day, and a volatile one too. The draw flung ElkY and Marcel Luske together; the two sparring well into the night with Marcel ultimately emerging best, doubling through ElkY on a hand that marked the begging of the end fo the PCA winner.

Ram Vaswani swung one way and then the next over the course of six levels. From the start he played with familiar fervor, doubling up inside the first hour, before ending it several hours later on a bluff gone wrong.

Whilst Ram joined the likes of Roland de Wolfe, Arnaud Mattern and Luca Pagano on the rail it was left ot Annette Obrestad, Daniel Negreanu and a few others to set the benchmark for the day. The same faces, the same story, one of dominance and expectation on the newer and older kids of poker.

It closes the first chapter of the EPT Dortmund. Chapter two promises even more and we’ll have chip counts of how things stand before the start of play tomorrow.

Until then, for anyone wanting to catch up on today’s posts, including video blogs of today’s action…

Same as it ever was on day 1b

ElkY and Marcel’s patch

Daniel Negreanu makes his entrance

Lots to see as we reach the first break

It can all turn so quickly

Highs and lows and that murky patch between

Falling short of the finishing line

Photos © Neil Stoddart

And so the mighty begin to fall. First it was Ram Vaswani, and now PCA Champion ElkY has lost his fight against terminal chip loss. With his stack on the ropes the money went in pre-flop on the back of ace-ten. A player in position called with pocket jacks for a flop that hit both player but giving ElkY the bruises – A-T-J-6-9

ElkY is out, taking with him the hopes of a back to back winner.

For more detail on current chip counts click here.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

***

But as mentioned earlier Marcel Luske is having a fine time, up to over 50k - the guaranteed life and soul of an event…

Whilst 132 German players made the trip to Dortmund for their home EPT one man’s journey here involved 16,000 miles across desert, ice capped mountains, oceans, more mountains and immigration control - albeit by plane. Kara Scott talked to Australian Kristoffer Myhre…

Into level seven and 117 players remain. The boys (and girl) most likely have continued at pace – Daniel Negreanu, Annette Obrestad and Arnaud Mattern are still here, as is Marcel Luske who not long ago doubled up through ElkY to give his stack some moral and physical support.

There are other notables - Brandon Schaeffer, the sometime forgotten tear-away of the EPTs first year, is putting in a typical bullish performance, minding his own business, nodding his head to the music in his headphones (the Proclaimers?), and using his 35k the way he does best.

Team PokerStars Pro Noah Boeken

Noah Boeken, another Team PokerStars Pro, has also had a quiet day – quiet compared to the high profile hands of Luske and Negreanu. Leaning back in his chair wearing a leopard skin print lined hoodie, Noah is on a slightly less wholesome 8k.

We started the day with the news that Ram Vaswani had doubled up almost immediately and later had found quads to add more muscle to his campaign. That was then. With the same hardcore madness he can slip that momentum in reverse just as fast. As he said in his interview earlier, you can never predict what will happen by then end of the day. So who would predict this – that Ram would lose his stack on a bluff and be on the rail in level 7?

Photos © Neil Stoddart

A split lunch and the field has joined together as one once more. Before the break though came a mammoth hand, a three way all in that left a trail of wreckage and two players on the rail.

PokerStars player George Danzer was one of them. The German pro is a stand out player. Sure, his ability stands out but it’s more his array of silk scarves that catch the eye. It’s not a standard item in the poker player’s uniform – no floral patterned hat and low slung jeans – George is a scarf and blazer man.

PokerStars player George Danzer

But its not the look he’s after, it’s the protection it offers from one of those difficult to hide tells, the throbbing neck vain that can be the end of a player in a make or break hand. Personally I like the original touch.

That said whether it helped him in this hand it’s hard to tell. –it began in earnest on a flop of 5-3-4 and a raise of 3k followed by an all-in from Marcus Tandler, followed by George calling the all-in. The original raiser, not to be outdone, also called.

It was time to see some cards. Marcus turned over pocket fours for a set, then George showed his hands, ahead with A-2 for the wheel. The original raiser, whose name was missed, was in with 5-6 – top pair and a straight draw. –it would all depend on the turn and river.

Make that the turn only…

Another three gave Marcus a full house and made the river card irrelevant. George Danzer was out, so too the man who had started it all in the first place.

Tournament update –

Daniel Negreanu has doubled up after a huge hand developed with Jens Lübbe. With betting and raising to the turn Daniel was unsure what course to take until his opponent happened to say something to him. Daniel asked him to repeat what he’d said but at the same time had made up his mind, moving all-in.

“You got me beat but I call anyway” said Lübbe. He was right. Queens for Daniel, K-J for –Lübbe and Daniel doubles up.

Ram Vaswani

Keeping his own kamikaze pace is Ram Vaswani. He just had the good fortune of finding quads. And not to be outdone Annette Obrestad has also doubled up against Anders Henriksson. Raising almost all-in save for a few green chips post-flop Anders called with a set of fours, only to be outdone by Annette’s set of nines.

For latest chip counts from day 1b click here.

Photos ©, Neil Stoddart

***

The intention is naturally to make the money, then the final, and then take down the title of the EPT Dortmund and only one person knows how that feels. Kara Scott talked to last year's winner Andreas Hoivold...

With a break just a few minutes away it’s not difficult to see where the two unofficial feature tables are – that is if the crowd on the rail is anything to go by, and they happen to be next to each other.

On the one side is Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu whilst the other features wunderkind Annette (15) Obrestad who may feel she is more than capable of going one better than her runner-up finish at EPT Dublin. Ironically it also has on it one Arnaud Mattern, widely regarded as a player with plenty of potential and winner of the EPT Prague in December. With his back to the rail and a less than goliath ego he’s easy. But perhaps, like in Prague, it’s better to let the attention focus elsewhere.

Annette Obrestad

I spoke to a few players at the break, notably Pavel Blatny who managed to double up three times since being reduced to a couple of hundred and now has 2k, and also Frederick Hostrup, back on the EPT trail after missing a few due to other commitments. The popular Dane recorded his first EPt cash here in Dortmund last year, a performance he went on to better a week later by making the final table of the EPT Warsaw.

Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano

One player not destined to win in Dortmund though is Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano. Luca took some hits early on and found himself all in with 8-3, making two pair from the board. His opponent however, had made a set, sending the Italian to the rail in much the same fashion as his countryman and friend Dario Minieri yesterday.

Still, these are the early stages and there’s plenty of poker still to go. But as Kara Scott reports you don’t need to be one of the big names to stand a chance of progressing in an EPT event like this...

Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu arrived slightly late to the tournament area, but he wasted no time in getting involved with a hand against a fellow Daniel – Daniel Pidun. On a rainbow flop of K-5-3, Daniel N bet with Daniel P calling. The turn was a deuce which Daniel P checked. “No, no, not that easy” said Negreanu, who had already mentioned the fact that he had nothing. He bet out 600 - called.

Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu

A ten on the river, no flush on the board. Daniel P made it 600 which seemed to surprise Negreanu a little. He’s one of the game’s best and skilled enough to make you wonder sometimes if he knows exactly how the hand will play out before the cards are even dealt.

“I think you have nothing” he says, “unless you have king-ten?”

Negreanu called and Daniel Pidun promptly showed king-ten. Negreanu down to around 7k.

Well, that's one version. You can see for yourself...

Popular for his singing, impeccable politeness and killer instinct at the tables, Flying Dutchman Marcel Luske lines up in level one a seat to the left of Team PokerStars Pro ElkY. Swapping Caribbean sun for European glum, ElkY's peroxide hair is fading slightly but you sense a man on top form. Marcel I’d imagine wouldn’t know what a bad patch looked like.

Talking of patches, (how’s this for a link?) Marcel sports an additional feature to his tailored suit, a Team PokerStars badge discreetly placed on his waistcoat. No, this is not first word of the newest member of Team PokerStars, more a friend, but it hasn’t escaped the notice of a few photographers and spectators.

Marcel Luske, complete with patch

Although the attention could have been caused by a hand - a slow hand typical of many I’ve seen featuring Marcel. A player acts first and Marcel keeps calling. It’s as if the original raiser is being pushed slightly, then a little more, until he has no choice - walking the plank with Luske giving the orders. It keeps on like this until the river – a bet, a call and Marcel takes the pot. The pattern continues and Marcel gets a nice early addition to his stack.

A few tables along sits Pavel Blatny. You might remember the Czech from our EPT coverage in Prague. Pavel is a former Chess Grand Master who has made the conversion to tournament poker with some success – success that served him well up to now, although it doesn’t look that way just this minute. I arrived at his table to see him all-in. He won the hand, that was good, but his stack was on the meagre side to begin with and the double up only boosted his hopes to the height of 300 chips. That was bad.

“Chip and chair” he says, and he’s right. It may only be a matter of time before he faces check-mate.

***

Meanwhile Kara Scott caught up with ElkY before play began to talk about his PCA win, his killer form and his hopes of a second win in a row...

Tournament update –

Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani has made his traditional EPT start by doubling up inside the first level. On a board of 9-A-9-8 the money went in – Ram showing Q-9, Pelzner A-K. A blank river and Vaswani up to 20k.

Welcome to day 1b of the PokerStars EPT Dortmund...

What can you say about day1b that’s different to day 1a? The same structure, the same optimism at the start, the true feeling that everyone can win. And the same look of defeat on their faces if things go belly-up. We had all this yesterday and we’ll have it today. But there is one difference though – a kind of poker phenomena.

Not your mainstream phenomena like the aurora lights, red rain or the pyramids of Segonzano. This is one of those deeper mysteries that ordinary people have trouble believing are true – like tax refunds, Chinese poker and oompa-loompas. It has no official name, just something like ‘the day1b effect’. This is where the field at major tournaments such as these gets a hearty jolt of big name players that seemed absent on day 1a. Today is no different.

Among those playing today...

Thor Hansen
Anthony Lellouche
Nicolas Levi
George Danzer
Ben Grundy
Michael Durrer
Christian Grundtvig
Paul Testud
Peter Gould
Woody Deck
Thomas Brolin
Mikael Norinder
Rolf Slotboom

There are also a few of those with EPT pedigrees...

Pascal Perrault (EPT Vienna winner season one)
Roland de Wolfe (EPT Dublin winner season three)
Brandon Schaeffer (EPT Deauville winner season one, and Grand Final runner-up the same year)
Marcel Luske (EPT Grand Final – final table)
Frederick Hostrup (EPT Warsaw final table)
Andreas Hoivold (defending champion at the EPT Dortmund)
Markus Golser (EPT Prague final table)
Ram Vaswani (EPT Dublin winner season one)
Annette Obrestad (EPT Dublin runner-up)
Arnaud Mattern (EPT Prague winner)
Patrick Bueno (EPT Dublin final table season three)

And then there are the Team PokerStars pros out in force today, including the likes of ‘Kid Poker’ Daniel Negreanu, Noah Boeken, Luca Pagano, and recent PCA Champion ElkY.

It’s not strictly true that anyone can win – it does take something. Patience, stamina, guile and a hefty amount of skill will serve well. And whilst everyone has that to some degree it’s often lumpy and doesn’t flow all at once.

So that’s today about to begin. Low hanging cloud, fine mist then rain and now snow. It’s a good day to stay indoors, and if you’re in you may as well be in a casino.

The aim is to outlast your fellow travellers and make it through to day 2 to join the 70 who made it through day 1a, and that means playing into the early hours of the morning.

Who were those 70?

Chabot Cyrille -- France -- 111,100
Claudio Rinaldi -- Switzerland -- 71,300
Peyman Mohammadzadeh -- Germany -- 60,900
Ville Mattila -- Finland -- 57,300
Andreas Sarling -- Finland -- 56,500
Christopher Rossiter -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 49,200
Stefan Wrenger -- 48,600
Mats Erik Iremark -- Sweden -- 47,700
Marcel Cesarz -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 47,600
Diego Perez Marco -- Spain -- 47,400
Andrea Manganelli -- Italy -- 44,600
Edwin Tournier -- Netherlands -- PokerStars qualifier -- 43,000
Jose Luis Valero -- Spain -- 42,800
Henrik Brockmann -- Germany -- 42,400
Dan Walley -- UK -- 41,400
Mazhar Nawab -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 40,800
Riccardo Mazzitelli -- Italy -- 40,700
Carter Gill -- US -- 39,400
Marek Kolk -- Estonia -- 38,900
Reijo Anttila -- Finland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 36,700
Phillip Marmorstein -- Germany -- 35,500
Richard Fohrenbach -- US -- 34,000
Marcel Baran -- Germany -- 33,800
Simone Gallitti -- Italy -- PokerStars qualifier -- 33,800
Thibaut Durand -- France -- 33,500
Daniel Ruiter -- Netherlands -- 33,400
Tobias Reinkemeier -- Germany -- 31,400
Sevinc Neumann -- Germany -- 28,800
Sjoerd Bos -- Netherlands -- 28,600
Marius Pospiech -- Germany -- 28,300
Alexandar Milanov -- Russia -- 28,200
Korosh Mollaie -- Germany -- 28,200
Giorgio Salemi -- Italy -- 27,500
Michael McDonald -- Canada -- 27,200
Daruisz Paszkiewicz -- Poland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 25,100
Mazlum Acar -- Turkey -- 24,625
Jordane Beraldin --France -- 24,000
Steve Jelinek -- UK -- PokerStars qualifier -- 23,800
Redmond Lee -- UK -- 23,400
Ralf Werner -- Germany -- 22,900
Mats Rahm -- Sweden -- 20,400
Kees Alblas -- Netherlands -- 19,500
Jens Vörtmann -- Germany -- 19,500
Katja Thater -- Germany -- Team PokerStars Pro -- 19,000
Thomas Petersen -- Sweden -- PokerStars qualifier -- 17,500
Yngne Anderberg -- Sweden -- 17,300
Scott McLeod -- US -- PokerStars qualifier -- 16,900
Ramzi Jelassi -- Sweden -- 16,500
Malte Strothmann -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 16,500
Daniele Mazzia -- Italy -- 16,400
Vito Branciforte -- Italy -- 16,200
Matthias Guetermann -- Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14,500
Jarkko Paasisalo -- Finland -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14,200
Leroy Soesman -- Netherlands -- 14,200
Christopher Hancock -- US -- PokerStars qualifier -- 14,000
Ahmed Koc -- Germany -- 13,300
Sebastian Till -- Germany -- 12,300
Sandro Simon – Germany -- 12,200
Thomas Ermer – Germany -- PokerStars qualifier -- 12,000
Kenneth Ljungars -- Finland -- 11,800
Cort Kibler-Melby -- Germany -- 11,100
Ronald Falk -- US -- PokerStars qualifier -- 10,500
Vincent Gosselink -- Netherlands -- 9,700
Dominik Kulicki -- Netherlands -- PokerStars qualifier -- 9,400
Vladimir Poleshchuk -- Russia -- 9,100
Lukasz Wasek -- Poland -- 7,800
Kasper Nielsen -- Denmark -- PokerStars qualifier -- 7,400
Johannes Strassmann -- Germany -- 6,100
Tommy Hansen -- Denmark -- 5,850
Dustin Mele -- US -- PokerStars Passport winner -- 4,300

At one end Frenchman Chabot Cyrille on over 110k. At the other our Passport winner Dustin Mele, down on chips but not low on spirit. Dustin returns tomorrow with 4,300.

***

Kara Scott speaks to the two former EPT winners - Ram Vaswani and Roland de Wolfe with some brutal truths, depending on who you believe....

Tournament update -

As impressive as today’s list of runner is one name is missing, that of Tennis legend Boris Becker. Illness has struck the former number one with incredibly bad timing, keeping Boris housebound on the instruction of doctors who refused to let him fly. Alas, Dortmund was not to be and those eagerly waiting for his arrival on the European poker scene will have to wait a little longer. But time flies and the Monte Carlo Grand Final will soon be upon us where Boris will be back; ready to convert his monster serve into something at the poker tables.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

There was something about the moat theme at the beginning of the day – good for making this an isolated poker world, bad for making you feel trapped when your time came to exit. It’s not a moat as such that surrounds the Casino Hohensyburg, it’s more that the terrain is the type to cut short any escape by foot - although today 128 players may have wanted to try.

The dealers stopped, Thomas Kremser called for five more hands and day 1a was over. Of the 198 players who arrived here ready for action 70 of them conquered. For the rest, the short walk to the rail was just the first stage of the mourning period.

As we discovered today good fortune can strike when you least expect it, and its evil twin can cut short any chances you had of glory and celebration. Some play with these facts in mind, whilst others play like it doesn’t matter at all.

PokerStars qualifier Malte Strothmann was somewhere in between. Determined to enjoy his EPT experience regardless the 19 year old played his best and came out well at the end of it. He will be back on Thursday for day 2.

Team PokerStars Pro Katja Thater

Katja Thater was one of just two Team PokerStars Pros lined up to play day 1a. She shared a table with fellow Pro Dario Minieri, but whilst Katja thrived Dario was hit hard early and was soon heading for the door.

We also heard of winning strategies music wise and of poker’s most inform player Julian Thew and whilst the early hours of Wednesday morning send players back to hotels for rest a new flight will arrive in just 12 hours time.

For anyone wanting to catch up on today’s events...

Ready to start in Germany

Shuffle up and deal

A winning formula between your ears

Sick, Sicker, Sickest

The view from the dinner break

Slow, steady folding

Finishing line in sight

Chips are being counted and bagged with a full list of how things stand available before the start of play tomorrow - day 1b.

83 players remain going into the eighth and last level of the day. One player quite happy to be here at the end of the day is Malte Strothmann, not least because earlier today the 19 year old from near Frankfurt was close to the door.

“I folded over pairs twice, which was heartbreaking even though they turned out to be good folds. But I’m really enjoying it here, playing with a lot of the German players I know. Even if I get knocked out I’d enjoy watching.

That was some time ago. Now, with an hour to go, his spirits are even higher.

“I had kings and the board came A-A-K-Q-Q. I folded my kings thinking he probably had an ace. But he had pocket aces so I was really pleased with the fold. It seems folding earlier today was a good thing! I’m up to 16-17k now. It would be nice to come back tomorrow.”

Tournament update -

One of those still playing today is Dustin Mele, also known as the PokerStars passport winner at his first event of his ten stop tour of the world...

The first five levels have thinned the field a little, from 198 to 123. The hour may have taken its toll as well as it gets late here in Dortmund and the effects of jetlag adds weight to heavy heads. The pace has definitely slowed on table five.

Here sit a few EPT regulars and a few PokerStars qualifiers to boot. Tommy Pavilicek, a PokerStars qualifier from Edmonton, Canada, has been nursing a short stack for some time now. The shaggy-haired Canadian is spending the winter skiing in France but breaks up his time on the slopes with EPT action, be it Prague or Dortmund.

Along from him is Marcel Baran. The German pro was buoyed by his third place finish at the EPT London this season and has been a feature on the EPT ever since. His stack is healthier than Tommy’s but not by much. Like Frenchman Thomas Fougeron next to him, Marcel has raised a few and settled for the blinds.

Thomas Fougeron

Fougeron will have fond memories of Dortmund. Last year the Parisian finished eighth - not a bad result in itself made even more spectacular by the fact that on the first day he had been half way to the door carrying a bag of expletives when he thought the miracle draw his opponent hit had sent him out. On closer inspection it turned out Thomas was left with one chip, enough for a never say die rally of chip-and-a-chair legend. First one double up, then another, all the way through until he was eliminated via the TV table.

That was then, this is now. Thomas rests his head on his hand as another hand is dealt. Next to him is Jason Hackett, the ninth place finisher in London, looking equally tired and along from him are PokerStars qualifiers Roberto Monte and Ville Mattila back in seat one. Two elderly gentlemen have pulled up chairs on the rail to watch in comfort, although there's not much to see. This is the table that people walk passed to get somewhere else.

Another hand, another tired slow closer to the end of day 1a. 113 players now left...

Tournament update -

I arrived on the tournament floor to first hear Lex Veldhuis going out, unhappy presumably at the guy who knocked him out, and then further up the room Alex Kravchenko exiting is near silence, except for the hoots and hollahs from Thomas Ermas who sounded quite pleased with himself.

The dinner break has arrived for some but not others. A split break so as not to strain facilities here see’s at least one player working on an empty stomach - England’s Julian Thew.

With 5k left, and a board of 2d-5s-Ts-6d it was on Julian to act. Only he hardly had chance to before a player opposite, not in the hand, called the clock on him.

“I’ve had ten seconds” protested Julian. Another player, still in the pot, leapt to Julian’s defence.

“More like five” and Thomas Kremser was called over. Perhaps eyeing the clock counting down towards his big blind the clock man was told no. Julian made his decision – a 5k bet that would take the pot.

Julian is not the sort of player to make too much fuss. Ever since breaking onto the European poker scen at the Master Classics in Amsterdam over two years ago he has gone on to great things. An EPT winner in Baden this year he followed it up with a UK Poker Tour win last week, good for a £89,950 ($176,000) payday, to go with the one he won back in September worth £59,500 ($119,984).

And had things not gone so well for Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier he might still be at the top of the EPT Tournament Leader Board. In effect he held that position for about 36 hours...

Julian finished 96th in the Caribbean, picking up $16,000 about a day and a half ahead of ElkY who won it all heading straight to the top of the EPT leader board. Had he busted a few places earlier things might have been a little different.

But with form like this Julian could well be back at number one by the end of the week.

Tournament update -

An update on the Team PokerStars situation is not looking so good. Dario Minieri, whose gutshot straight attempts cost him dearly earlier on is out. It’s the same fate for Sebastian Ruthenberg. The PokerStars sponsored player found A-K spades and raised with to callers. He shook one off with a raised on the flop which brought two more spades but his other opponent re-raised. Sebastian moved all in but he lost to a set which ultimately became a full house.

Photos © Neil Stoddart

Chip Counts after the dinner break -

Lex Veldhuis – PokerStars player – 12,000
Thomas Peterson – PokerStars qualifier – 5,525
Stefan Ebbing – PokerStars qualifier – 7,000
Sebastian Zink – PokerStars qualifier – 43,000
Malte Strothmann – PokerStars qualifier – 6,500
Steve Jelinek – PokerStars qualifier – 28,500
Redmond Lee – 42,000
Julian Thew – 3,200
Ulrica Skonnemark – 4,000
Simone Gallitti – 13,100
Dustin Mele – PokerStars Passport winner -- 17,000
Roland Falk – PokerStars qualifier – 12,000
Andreas Hachmeister – PokerStars qualifier – 3,500
Thomas Fougeron – 9,400
Marcel Baran – 16,000
Tommy Pavilicek – PokerStars qualifier – 6,100
Jason Hackett – 15,000
Lukasz Wasek – 18,000
Angelika Mannsfeld – 10,000
Mats Iremark – 41,000
Thomas Ermas – 11,000
Juha Helppi – 6,000
Alex Kravchenko – 9,500
Juha Lauttamus – 10,200
Katja Thater – Team PokerStars Pro – 8,000

Tournament update –

Thierry van der Berg – OUT
Gino Alacqua – OUT
Julian Thew – “I should have passed” -- OUT

Being described as aggressive in poker is non-negotiable if you’re to get anywhere. Better still you need some stronger words to help build your reputation on the rail. ‘Sick’ used to mean that but gets used so many times now that it’s lost its meaning. But when it comes to Finnish pro Illari Sahamies his dashing style of play goes beyond that to what one railbird labelled ‘Bubonic’. Fair enough.

Looking at Illari though as he twiddles a chip with his fingers, it’s hard to tell. In a clean white shirt and a clean shaved head and headphones there’s little to suggest this is the man tearing up pot-limit Omaha tables online. And his reputation goes beyond poker to world’s that can put even the most cast iron of bankrolls under threat – the world of coin flipping.

No, not the poker sum, I mean proper coin flips with a coin, the highest being $40k a go with Phil Ivey (if those people on the internet are to be believed). In Dortmund though he looks like a guest of the others just playing a few hands before his taxi arrives.

A champion of the school of pure gambling Illari cites his ability to not care about losing for his success. Sitting back in his chair his stack shows signs of this advanced laissez-faire technique - whilst I’d been coming up with words to describe his play a hand had taken him to the river and all-in. The board read 2-Q-3-T-5. He called all-in the raise from Thomas Ermer and showed A-4 of spades. Thomas showed the same hand in diamonds.

Polite early-level laughter from the rest of the table; Thomas smiled and the dealer split the pot. Only Illari remained straight-faced, slightly irritated perhaps, failing to see the funny side. He’s back to 3k, (which would soon become over 5k). He may well be waiting for a taxi, but not before around 2am tonight and by then we may have come up with some new words.

Most poker players arrive at tournaments with a standard armoury of trinkets and paraphernalia to see you through. Large and dark sunglasses are popular, hiding any weakness in the eyes; a baseball cap can disguise your face in the same way and headphones plugged into an MP3 player help break the monotony between moments of sheer terror. No doubt you could put together some sort of official study into precisely what kind of music best suits the tournament mood but for one player at least such time consuming research is unnecessary - he knows exactly what’s needed.

“The Proclaimers”.

Following a report in a British newspaper Graham Clarkson once revealed that the secret behind his EPT success (he came 8th at the EPT London in season two) was the singing duo from Fife, Scotland, who found fame with songs such as I'm gonna be (500 miles), I'm on my way,Letter from Americaand the rather appropriate cover of Hank Williams' Down to the River. These songs and more blocked out the table of top players ultimately helping Graham concentrate on his own performance - the result leaving him £14,000 better off.

Naturally I caught up with Graham here in Dortmund between hands, just to double check what he was playing on his Ipod...

“Madonna...”

Terrific. We’ve reached the first break in play at the end of level two.

Tournament update:

Team PokerStars Pro Dario Minieri lost 7k in one hand on a Gutshot straight draw. Dario bluffed on the river, called by an opponent with pocket jacks.

Players began taking their seats, signing TV waivers and examining their free card protectors, as a heavy guitar version of the song ‘Viva Las Vegas’ blasted over the sound system, the opening credits you might say. It was hard to place the version but it lacked the adrenaline of the Dead Kennedys and the panache of Elvis Presley, yet it did the trick. Then, to restore any latent fighting spirit, there quickly followed a few bars of Eye of the Tiger to complete the introduction along with the familiar tones of tournament director Thomas Kremser. Shuffle up and deal – 198 players on day 1a get the slightly delayed PokerStars EPT Dortmund underway.

Photo (c) Neil Stoddart

Some will tell you that Dortmund is the seventh largest city in Germany and that it’s one of the country’s most hi-tech. Others will tell you that Dortmund was for generations a centre for coal mining yet remains one of the greenest cities in Europe. Others will tell you of Dortmund’s three 13th century moated castles and of the Reinoldikirche, an eight century church with a gothic tower standing over 100 meters tall. But some, like me, will tell you that the Casino Hohensyburg, in the leafy outer suburbs of the Ruhr Valley will this week play host to a mighty battle of champions – from poker and beyond – as the European Poker Tour comes to town.

Here for the second year, the EPT Dortmund’s champagne-across-the-bow moment came last year when Norwegian Andreas Hoivold won the inaugural title ahead of a final table he ultimately dominated. His reward stood at over $880,000 – a figure that could well be topped this week. A seat here comes after the exchange of 8,000 crisp Euro notes and over 400 applicants for the position of champion have made their way here.

But to reach that mountain top position you must first start in the foothills, or day 1a as it’s also known. The moated Casino Hohensyburg stands amidst forest overlooking the Hengsteysee reservoir on the Ruhr river and alongside the quaint gingerbread village of Syburg. It’s the type of place you imagine is easy to get snowed into, where you’d need huskies to go fetch help, but with a 25 table poker room and adequate bar facilities you wouldn’t really mind.

Finding a route through day 1a will be Team PokerStars Pros Dario Minieri and Katja Thater who happen to be seated on the same table, as well as PokerStars sponsored players Sebastian Ruthenberg. EPT Baden winner Julian Thew is also here, fresh from his GUKPT win last week.

Table 7 stands out featuring as it does EPT winners and runners-up and WSOP bracelet winners and runners-up. Rob Hollink (EPT Grand Final winner season one), Juha Lauttamus (4th at EPT Prague), Juha Helppi (WPT winner and WSOP runner-up), Gino Alacqua (EPT Prague runner-up) and Alex Kravchenko (WSOP bracelet winner) will all spend a good part of the afternoon together. In between them are three PokerStars qualifiers getting an early test of mettel.

We start in the usual fashion – 25/50 blinds and an hour clock. Eight levels which should take us into the early hours - about to get underway.

Photo (c) Neil Stoddart

The bright neon discotheque setting of the Nightrooms nightclub PokerStars bade welcome to players on Monday night, arriving in town for the second EPT Dortmund. This was no ordinary welcome - up a flight of stairs from Street level guests were greeted by a woman in a close lace outfit swallowing fire as people shuffled in from the European cold. A few steps beyond fire woman was snake girl - a similarly clad young girl with a real snake looping around her arms and waist. the snake looked pale green under the burning lights of Nightrooms though admittedly few were brave enough to get close enough to double check.

With the night young and witness to such incredible sights, it was unfortunate there would be no pictures of the snake or the girl to prove it all. With club lights set to low it was too dark for conventional cameras and flash was forbidden in case it upset the serpent. None but the brave wanted to annoy it – not least the girl who for the time being had the beast under control.

Tomorrow Casino Hohensyburg, a few miles from here, plays host to its second EPT. Last year Norwegian Andreas Hoivold took honours in a slow but gripping final that saw him talk his way to a title and cheque for $880,572 This year a field equally considerable in number will be adorned by regular PokerStars qualifiers and Team PokerStars pros, among them a familiar face never before seen on the Poker circuit. A tennis legend of old now looking to smash his way onto the poker scene – Boris Becker makes his Team PokerStars debut.

But there would be plenty of time for the man nicknamed ‘Boom-Boom’ in his tennis heyday. First there was the party where the mildly weird circus theme continued after drinks and the buffet, the curtain coming up on Claudia, who arrived from stage left onto the dance floor... carrying five hula-hoops. Perhaps you managed to get a hula-hoop to stay around your waist a few times as a kid, but Claudia quickly demonstrated how she’d spent her spare time; swirling five hoops, then six, then ten, and finally 15 of the things wildly around her body, maintaining a professional smile as spectators clapped and cheered.

Then came the centrepiece act – a man, his head resting upside down on a glitter ball podium, first spinning, then juggling, balancing things on his legs, spinning them and then doing things most would think impossible. Marked clearly with the hallmarks of ‘Don’t try this at home’ players and PokerStars staff alike watched open mouthed as he went on, applauding the man as he added even more implausible elements to his act. It made any chocolate fountain look quite tame.

Among those moving their hips to the sound of loud music and with thoughts of hulas were local girl Katja Thater, PCA Champion Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Marcel Luske who looked ready to single-handedly lead everyone to the dance floor.

It was the midpoint of a night of cheer for some - a late night in Dortmund spent sampling the local ale. For others, well tomorrow there is work to do. That goes for close to 200 players who will get the EPT Dortmund underway at around 3pm local time tomorrow. Among them will be Dario Minieri and Katja and a cast of hundreds. That makes day 1a ‘Boris Eve’. Mr Becker plays on Wednesday, along with fellow Team PokerStars Pros ElkY, Noah Boeken, Daniel Negreanu and Luca Pagano.

All that is ahead of us. Will Boris Becker transform his powerful serve into its poker equivalent? Can Katja Thater win on home turf? Could ElkY pull off the incredible and make it two in a row? We’ll wait and see...

The final Sunday in January was a big one all around. Folks in Italy saw two of their countrymen take home big prizes as ponente71 won $20,000 in the Sunday Hundred Grand and Dario Minieri won the $5,200 Freeze Out for $100,000. The big winner of the day was the United States' SNo0oWMAN, who banked more than $278,000 in the $530 Sunday Million. Congratulations to all of this week's winners.

Here are the final table results form this week's Sunday events.

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and two-way deal

1. fridhem (Sweden) $85,943.04
2. Jackpot 7's (United Kingdom) $95000.00
3. TheBeat (United States) $43,917.54
4. gambelaro (United States) $34,690.00 75316997
5. JOEFFFFF (United States) $27,196.96
6. PAhakuutti (Finland) $20,120.20
7. skanky980 (United States) $14,569.80
8. apegod (Belgium) $9,158.16
9. girafou (Belgium) $5,411.64

PokerStars $5,200 Freeze-Out Results

1. Dario Minieri (Italy) $100,000

PokerStars Sunday High Stakes Showdown Results

1. supernova9 (Canada) $25,000.00
2. $tinger 88 (United States) $15,000.00

PokerStars Sunday Hundred Grand Final Table Results

1. ponente71 (Italy) $20,000.00
2. cwrector77 (United States) $10,000.00
3. Dudeyesyou (United States) $7,000.00
4. ticlinlinlin (Canada) $5,000.00
5. ashour111 (United States) $3,000.00
6. Javy28 (United States) $2,000.00
7. janikola (Norway) $1,600.00
8. nicosia35 (Israel) $1,300.00
9. blacdoggz (United States) $1,000.00

PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results

1. SNo0oWMAN (United States) $278,502.00
2. roosterbill (United States) $140,607.60
3. batoelrob (Netherlands) $101,026.80
4. Kenjh (United States) $79,800.00
5. Suck My Ace (United States) $62,563.20
6. oogee (United States) $46,284.00
7. jonop56 (United States) $33,516.00
8. mjh0318 (United States) $21,067.20
9. Demonrob (Australia) $12,448.80

How about this? Let's just say you have an extra $7.50 sitting in your PokerStars account. Or, better yet, let's say you have 500 Frequnt Player Points and nothing to do with them.

Okay, now, let's just imagine you find your way into an EPT Steps tournament. Now, sure, there's a lot of good things that have to happen for this story to get good. But, let's just say those good things come to pass. The next thing you know, we could be writing about you on the PokerStars Blog...live from Europe.

After the resounding success of the Steps tournaments during the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and Asia Pacific Poker Tour, PokerStars has just launched a new series of Steps tournaments. Winners of these events can work their way up the ladder and make a final decision. Play for EPT Warsaw and a $11,350 entry or play for the $19,250 package to Monte Carlo. Either way, it could turn out to be one huckava return on your investment.

To learn all about how you can make it to two of Europe's biggest poker events for next to nothing, visit the PokerStars EPT Steps tournament page.

Then, we'll see you in Europe.

At the end of the 2007, when PokerStars introduced the PokerStars Passport and opened it up to the top 100 players on the TLB, you just had to know big things were in store for 2008. Now, those big things are happening.

PokerStars has just made several updates to the TLB that make it more than a contest of pride and will. Now, every month, there's big money at stake. What's more, at the end of every year, there are prizes worth fighting for.

According to the updated Tournament Leader Board pages on PokerStars' website, the top 200 leaders of each monthly TLB contest will split up $30,000 in cash with $5,000 of that money going to the monthly winner. Then, then top 1000 players each month will have a shot at a $20,000 prize pool in the monthly TLB freeroll.

That's all pretty cool in itself. However, when you look at the yearly TLB contest, the prizes are something everybody will be looking to score. First off, the top 100 players on TLB out of the year will get a $100,000 freeroll. What's more, the top three TLB leaders will walk away with PokerStars Passports of their own. The first place player will get five trips and buy-ins to major events. Second place gets a three-trip passport. Third place will receive a two-trip passport.

Because the TLB is such a pretigious place to be, PokerStars has also created the Tournament Leader Board Hall of Fame. There, you will be able to find the players who have scored the highest points tallies on the Weekly, Monthly and Yearly TLBs. You will also find a breakdown of the PokerStars players who have won the Weekly TLB the most times since Jan ’05.

With Janaury still kicking and eleven months to go, there is still a lot of work to be done. However, by this time next year, we'll have a whole new group of PokerStars Passport holders to follow around.

Will one of them be you?

Tom, how was your PokerStars Caribbean Aventure?

by Tom McEvoy

I recently got back for the Bahamas where I participated in the 5th annual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. For the first time, this was part of the European PokerTour. Already we have broken all previous records for attendance and prize money for a European Poker Tour event. This is quite impressive all by itself, to say the least. As a member of Team PokerStars Pro, I get to have a great vacation at the fabulous Atlantis resort and casino while competing for millions of dollars in prize money. I know, I know, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. While there was some early speculation that the number of entrants would be slightly down from last year's record of 937, this was quickly proved incorrect. We beat last year's record by almost 200 players when 1136 players showed up to begin play. Opening day had to be spread over 2 days to accommodate the overflow, and some of the early added events had to be cancelled as a result.

When the smoke cleared a member of Team PokerStars Pro captured the main event and $2,000,000 in prize money. Bertrand Grospellier, better known as "Elky" on PokerStars, was the lucky winner and played tremendously down the stretch, especially at the last table. 2007 Player of the Year David Pham came to the final table with the chip lead, but eventually had his 2 pair knocked off by Elky's flush and had to settle for 4th. In addition to the main event there was 4 other events, with buy-ins ranging from $1,000 to $3,000. In the last event former marketing director of PokerStars Dan Goldman came in 2nd for over $30,000.

Tom McEvoy

My own result was somewhat disappointing. I finished the first day with about $49,000 in chips. This was above average. Everyone started with $20,000 in chips with a great structure and relatively small blind increases every 75 minutes. I thought I was on my way to at least a money finish when I inched my stack up to around $63,000 on the 2nd day of play, but it was not to be. I lost a series of small pots and with the blinds getting higher and higher, I made one mistake on one hand and that was the end of my tournament.

The blinds were now $1,000 & $2,000 with a $300 ante. I was on the button with pocket 7's. There was a very aggressive player at the table who had been raising with a lot of marginal hands. He had just raised the previous hand for about the 3rd time in the last 4 hands. A player on my right called the initial raise of $4,500. I decided that now was the time to make my move. I was sure the player on my right would fold, as I had a rather tight image and he had been playing with me all day. It was just a question of whether the initial raiser, Mr. Loose Goose I call him, would fold or not.

When I re-raised I had about another $37,000 so I had fold equity. Unfortunately, he called rather quickly and I knew I was in trouble. The player on my right folded quickly as I expected and we turned are cards over before the flop. AAARRRGGGHHH this time he had a real hand, pocket kings. They held up and I got up. I had to settle for 270th place. Since they paid 120 I fell well short of the money. I kept thinking about last year when they decided to pay 180 players and I finished 182nd. I had AK vs 77 on a flop of K, K, 7, and failed to improve. Therefore, both years 77's were my unlucky hand. Oh well, I can hardly wait until next year's tournament. Next to the World Series of Poker main event this is my favorite tournament of the year.

It seems like the Sunday Million is settling into a new norm. In the past, it was great to see more than 6,000 players every week. The past few weeks, the Sunday Million has been rocking and rolling with more 7,000 people. This week saw 7,520 people sit down for the big event, good for a $1.5 million prize pool.

Here are this week's final table results for all the big Sunday tournaments.

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up Final Table Results

1. Murmelpapst (Germany) $103,792.70
2. Anbessa9 (United States) $52,948.10
3. Pekka3 (Sweden) $38,043.30
4. jonasof87 (Norway) $30,050.00
5. brehmer (United States) $23,559.20
6. RichardPL (Poland) $17,429.00
7. gango17 (Israel) $12,621.00
8. ElMastermind (United States) $7,933.20
9 . DANA1337 (Sweden) $4,687.80

PokerStars $5200 Freeze-Out Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and two-way deal

1. moumouth (France) $75,000.00
2. THE__D__RY (United States) $25,000.00

PokerStars Sunday High Stakes Showndown Final Table Results

1. Dario Minieri (Italy) $20,000

PokerStars Sunday Hundred Grand Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and three-way deal

1. legulas (Germany) $14,633.35
2. metalspork (United Kingdom) $13,272.25
3. JAB11982 (United States) $9,094.40
4. PokerAgent80 (Austria) $5,000.00
5. JazzBassist (United States) $3,000.00
6. #1LEAFSFAN (Canada) $2,000.00
7. jalla79 (Sweden) $1,600.00
8. Marlee333 (United States) $1,300.00
9. Bc Acer (Canada) $1,000.00

PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and three-way deal

1. StudMaverick (United States) $171,445.22
2. macthemac67 (United Kingdom) $117,783.72
3. BluStarZ16 (United States $104,819.06
4. spank01 (United States) $60,160.00
5. Pier85 (Italy) $45,120.00
6. goonertone7 (United Kingdom) $33,088.00
7. MagicCoin (Hungary) $23,312.00
8. Tiwo (United States) $13,536.00
9. mariaras (United Kingdom) $8,873.60

Last weekend, we learned who will spend the next year traveling the world on PokerStars' dime as the holder of the one-of-a-kind PokerStars Passport. Dustin Mele has earned himself buy-ins and travel to ten high stakes poker tournaments all over the world. Now, as he gets ready to set off on his first adventure, it's time to introduce you Dustin Mele. Mele will be providing us with accounts of his travels over the next year. In the meantime, here's a brief introduction.

By Dustin Mele

I am 23 years old, and it has been a very long poker journey to get to this point. I will start where my poker journey started.

It was 2005 when I first discovered PokerStars. Honestly, PokerStars is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I started playing regularly, increasing my skill level and bankroll slowly but surely. Soon, I discovered satellites. It was amazing to be able to play in a $10,000 buy-in for as little as you want. Before I knew it, I had won three satellites and I was about to play in the WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic, WPT Mirage Poker Showdown, and the World Series Main Event, all $12,000 packages.

I had very high hopes for myself and WPT Foxwoods was my first stop. On the end of day one at Foxwoods, I had more than 100,000 in chips and was in the top ten chip stacks. I continued to play my best, cruised through Day 2, and entered Day 3 with about 200,000 chips. I realized that I could do this and was playing with the best. I took out Chris Biggler, winner of the Professional Poker Tour, and was beating players that I had watched play on TV. It was a surreal feeling. On Day 3, I got up to about 250,000 chips when it finally happened--my aces got cracked for about a 400,000 pot. It crippled me. This was with about 45 players left in the WPT event. It was crushing. I still managed to make it into the money and finished in 38th place, cashing for $12,650. Not bad at all, but obviously not what I was aiming for.

My next stop was WPT Mirage. This was a trip in which I had fun. It was my first trip to Vegas. The tournament, however, I would rather forget about all together. I took a bad beat to eliminate me on Day 1.

Next was the 2006 WSOP Main Event, a trip I will never forget for the rest of my life. I played safe on Days 1 and 2. When my table was changed, I sat down with a table full of known pros, such as Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Mark Vos. This is when one of the craziest things ever took place.

We were not far from the money at all. There were about 1,000 players left, so I was being as safe as possible. I was limiting my play to only great hands and was not stealing blinds or making moves until we reached the money. The dealers changed, and before I knew it I picked up kings once and queens twice. It seemed that there was an ace or sometimes two on every flop, and players were betting, raising and flipping over pockets aces. It seemed like aces were everywhere. Finally, I had the aces, a player raised under the gun, and I pushed all-in.

The player that raised was the only caller and the dealer said, "Turn your hands up." I turned over the ace of clubs and ace of spades. The other player turned over ace of spades and queen of hearts. What in the world?

We both had the ace of spades in our hands.

We were at the end of the blind period and we had been using this deck for a long time. I had lost one pot to Chris Ferguson worth more than 100,000 using this deck and guess what? He had aces full to my jacks full using a flawed deck. Now, the five aces in the deck were discovered when I finally picked up pocket aces and I was forced to split the pot with the other player in the hand. I was screwed out of all the chips I had lost using this bogus deck.

Crippled with the blinds going up, I went out right before the money. I complained to the tournament director to no avail. That about sums up that horrible experience.

Because of my two unsuccessful trips to Las Vegas, and because of how long I was there for the 2006 World Series, my bankroll had dwindled down much further then I liked. I had to start all over, getting a job as a cook and continuing to play on PokerStars. I started playing much smaller buy-ins than I was used to. So, I continued grinding it out because I knew I did not fit working as a cook in an environment where I was paid poorly and treated poorly. I was very determined, to say the least.

I continued to grind when I realized that you can be rewarded handsomely on PokerStars for being in the top 100 of the Tournament Leader Board, or TLB. At this point my bankroll was back to a comfortable size from playing on PokerStars. So, I quit my job as a cook and went to working full time on PokerStars. There was nothing that could stop me from being in the top 100 of the TLB.

I played with more commitment and determination than I ever have in my life. I knew playing poker is what I want to do and what I love to do. There are not too many good things in my life other than poker and playing on PokerStars, so this is what makes me happy. I set my sights on the TLB and managed to get in the top 100 and stay there. This was not an easy task by any means. There are many dedicated and skilled players on PokerStars, so I had to play a ton of MTTs and SNG, and do very well in them, which takes a lot of hours.

So, finally I was in the top 100 for November and December and had two great freerolls to play in. The first was for four packages to the PCA. I earned this freeroll for being in November's Top 100 TLB leaders in November. I had no luck in that one.

The next freeroll was for the PokerStars Passport and $25,000 in cash. This was one of the hardest tournament fields I have ever faced. At the end of the tournament I had all of the chips and, honestly, words cannot express how I feel or what this means to me. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life, by far. This next year is going to be amazing. I am going to be living the life that I have been striving for and dreaming about for years. I can't wait to travel the world and play in the greatest tournaments at the greatest destinations in the entire world.

I really cannot express how kind and generous PokerStars is to its players. Poker Stars provides the best site with the most freerolls and the best services from a support staff anywhere. This just proves that anyone can do it. If you want something bad enough and work hard for it, you can accomplish anything.

If you read this blog, you have probably been playing on PokerStars long enough to know what happens when you sign up for a Sit & Go. You register, the tourney lobby pops up, and it's up to you to close it from your screen.

No more.

Now, you have the option of never seeing the tourney lobby unless you want to. PokerStars just released a new feature that allows you to get right to the game without seeing the tournament lobby. Click on Options then Advanced Multi-Table Options. There you will see "Auto-open Sit & Go tournament lobby." If you un-check this option, your S&G lobbies will not pop up. When the tournament begins, your table will appear. Simple as that.

If you sign up for a lot of tournaments at once, this may take some getting used to. Since your tournament lobbies won't appear on your desktop, you will want to look under the "Requests" menu and check under "Registered in Tournaments" to make sure you aren't logging off while still registered for a game. The PokerStars software will also remind you as you log off, but it's always best to check for yourself before you go running off to dinner.

Have fun!

After our initial interview in a back hallway at Atlantis, we gave 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure winner Betrand "ElkY" Grospellier some time to breathe. Now, we've asked him to write a little bit about what his first major win meant to him and his poker career.

by Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier

The PCA is always a special tournament for poker players, especially because the location is so great and because there are so many online qualifiers and the atmosphere is very special. Players are usually much younger, too, and I know many more of them as we always play with each other on PokerStars.

The tournament was pretty much a very smooth ride for me, except the end of day 3 where I lost a huge pot with AQ to JT to put me in the bottom of the crowd. Fortunately, I managed to double up twice in a row on my big blind and small blind, the second time eliminating my fellow member of Team PokerStars Pro, Hevad Khan. I feel great about the way I played overall. With the exception of the AQ hand, everything really went my way this tournament.

ElkY

I was able reach the final table second in chips, and was surrounded by the two players I respected the most. Joe Elpayaa and David Pham were on my immediate left and right, and respectively third and first in chips. I knew we were going to be the three most fearless players at the table. I was was fortunate to have great timing and capture the chip lead early on by eliminating two other players.

Then I caught a big hand in a blind vs. blind battle against David Pham which really slowed him down against me. Joe got in some bad situations, too, and found himself short stacked pretty early. I was able to defeat his KJh with my AQo. I was more focused than ever before on this final table.

Pham was the next one out, after losing a bunch of small pots. His elimination was a huge relief for me Finally, I ended up heads up with the chip lead. I was being very aggressive from the very start and won a couple of nice pots against Hafiz Khan. I could feel he was ready to make a move on me. When I made my standard raise of 400,000 on the button and he shoved, I asked him how much it was. He was almost stuttering after realizing his mistake.

I insta-called and was relieved when he sheepishly turned over 93o. The board came 7524. When I saw the four of hearts rolling on the river, I was overwhelmed with joy and satisfaction. All my friends rushed towards me to congratulate me.

It will be engraved in my memory for ages to come.

It must be something in the high stakes waters. It's only been a couple of weeks since Dario Minieri won both the Sunday $5,200 freezeout and High Stakes showdown in the same day. This week, someone else did the same thing. Canada's Apathy123 must have had something to care about on Sunday. He cashed for $120,000 after taking first in the two biggest buy-in tournaments of the day.

Here are the rest of this Week's Sunday tournament results from January 13, 2008.

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up Final Table Results

1. TheFan83 (Germany) $104,621.66
2. WatchTheSea (United States) $53,370.98
3. fabsoul (France) $38,347.14
4. THUGer (Norway) $30,290.00
5. SusanFlush (Denmark) $23,747.36
6. Se7enTr3y (United Kingdom) $17,568.20
7. DougyJones (United States) $12,721.80
8. Ruud_80 (Norway) $7,996.56
9. toasthider (Netherlands) $4,725.24

PokerStars Sunday $5,200 Freezeout Results

1. Apathy123 (Canada) $100,000

PokerStars Sunday Hundred Grand Final Table Results

1. mwalle123 (Germany) $20,000.00
2. DETROIT.Reg (United States) $10,000.00
3. Liverail (United States) $7,000.00
4. RiverKingM (Germany) $5,000.00
5. bruco300 (Italy) $3,000.00
6. deadhorse2 (United Kingdom) $2,000.00
7. jungle jim (United States) $1,600.00
8. arestone (United Kingdom) $1,300.00
9. corsam1969 (United States) $1,000.00

PokerStars Sunday High Stakes Showdown Results

1. Apathy123 (Canada) $20,000

PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and four-way deal

1. Mr.Wrong (Sweden) $159,383.83
2. beanage (United States) $103,807.22
3. SminnowS (United States) $88,083.22
4. josse99 (Norway) $93,873.73
5. RACE TIME 12 (United States) $44,220.00
6. NDGrinder59 (United States) $32,428.00
7. InstinKt (Switzerland) $22,847.00
8.. Team Angle (United States) $13,266.00
9. CASHRUS (United States) $8,696.60

The tournament was straight forward enough; 100 runners, regular blinds, 3,000 starting chips and a 15 minute clock. But the field and prize were something altogether less ordinary. An exclusive list of the top 100 players on the PokerStars tournament leader board had been assembled, competing for a prize that was the ultimate one for any player itching not just to play live tournament poker but in some of the biggest tournaments on the planet.

The PokerStars Passport, the first of its kind, was won today by Dustin Mele, once known online as DoobMan420, and right now the man from New York should be leafing happily through brochures of Europe, the Pacific and of course Las Vegas. Ten big buy-in tournaments are his for choosing, in a multitude of destinations to satisfy anyone’s taste, a truly awesome prospect for anyone.

The question was no doubt on everyone’s minds prior to the start - which tournaments would you choose? The only obligation facing the winner would be a trip to the EPT Dortmund in just over two weeks and to the PCA next January to mark the end of an incredible year.

So would it be the Riviera? To the first EPT in San Remo before a short hop over the Italian border to the Monte Carlo Grand Final? Perhaps you’d take a more easterly route, with stops on the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour in Sydney, Seoul or Manilla? And of course, what poker player could miss a trip to Vegas in the spring for a shot at the World Series main event?

All that would be answered soon enough.

Starting chip counts:

Seat 1 -- Icallseat3 – 25,158
Seat 2 -- Cajundaddy1 – 29,876
Seat 3 -- Stammdogg – 43,225
Seat 4 -- VOLCANO360 – 45,237
Seat 5 -- Pokerfun4321 – 47,660
Seat 6 -- Aryamehr – 21,033
Seat 7 - Inheritance – 17,160
Seat 8 -- DoobMan420 – 26,649
Seat 9 -- prosimon – 41,603

After two and a half hours of play, seeing off 91 players, the it didn’t take long for the final table to spark into life.

Minutes in it was inheritance calling the raise of pokerfun4321 from teh small blind which also Mele called. Inheritance then led the betting on the flop, moving all-in on the turn, but seemed unable to shake off the others who went on without him as inheritance waited for his fate to be decided. His final table experience would be a short one. Mele would show a full house, sixes over tens after a perfect flop for him of T-6-T. Pokerfun4321 had taken a hit, mucking his hand, but inheritance suffered most, settling for ninth place.

At the short end of the stack counts now was Aryamehr. A minute after inheritance’s demise it looked like Aryamehr’s would join him on the rail when his remaining 15k went into the middle. But his fortune shone brightly. He pushed all-in pre-flop and found Stammdogg moving in behind him. 9d-Kc-4c-Qd -3s on the board; A-K for Aryamehr, bettering Stammdogg’s A-Q to keep him alive.

Not good for Stammdogg though. Or pokerfun4321 for that matter, both of whom felt the force of an erupting VOLCANO360 within minutes. They went to the rail in eighth and seventh position respectively in a hand that seemed to make VOLCANO360 the shoe-in for a passport to a year on the road.

With Stammdogg all-in for just over 13k, he was called by VOLCANO360 before pokerfun4321 moved all-in himself, a chip or two shy of 40k. Undeterred VOLCANO360 called, a move that would boost his stack to nearly 100k when he showed his pocket Kings. Jacks for Stammdogg and just tens for pokerfun4321. Two out in one hand and all of a sudden just six remained.

Three minutes later it was down to five.

With blinds still at 1,000/2,000 with a 200 ante, icallseat3, who had been quiet up to now, raised to 5,250 before cajundaddy1 re-raised all-in, a total of 23,875. That chased everyone else away except for icallseat3. When the board delivered Jc-6c-2c-7c-4d, icallseat3 showed the ace of clubs for the flush, too good for cajundaddy1’s pair of jacks.

The front two were beginning to pull away...

Volcano360 – 103,638
icallseat3 – 84,691
prosimon – 49,993
Mele – 37,612
Aryamehr – 17,866

Six minutes later Aryamehr found a hand to move in with. His last 13,600 rested on K-8. The only problem came from prosimon calling with aces, and Aryamehr's hopes of a year of high-stakes tournament poker faded away in fifth place.

VOLCANO 360 had lead the way for much of the afternoon but one of those seismic hands was about to take place, shifting the tournament onto an entirely different course.

icallseat3 – 82,991
VOLCANO360 – 104,538
DoobMan420 – 52,512
prosimon – 59,959

Icallseat3 raised pre-flop to 6,500 which VOLCANO360 called, as did prosimon, seeing a flop of Jh-Kh-7s. When prosimon checked icallseat3 made it 18,500 to play which VOLCANO360 called. It was just the two of them now and the turn card Th brought flush possibilities into play – as well as hands even more lethal. On tiptoes now icallseat3 checked, no doubt happy to see VOLCANO360 bet 60k – putting icallseat3 all in if he called. And, like a memory re-lived in slow motion, icallseat3 did just that, showing A-Q of hearts for the royal flush. Never had a river card been so unnecessary.

174,582 suddenly moved to a different end of the table, and the once dominant VOLCANO360 would now become the unsurprising fourth place finisher. From the heady heights of the chip lead to the rail in just minutes, and we thought royal flush’s only ever appeared in Hollywood movies. VOLCANO360 lasted just two minutes more, out to a more humane hand, A-4 against the A-J of Mele.

icallseat3 – 166,000
prosimon – 51,000
Mele – 77,000

Three-handed both prosimon and Mele were playing in the large shadow cast by chip leader icallseat3. And it was the shorter stack of prosimon who would succumb first.

A pre-flop Mele raise called by prosimon. A check from Mele on the 6-8-K diamond flop and this time prosimon moved all-in, with Mele calling. 3s and 9h completed the board, going well with the T-9 of diamonds in Mele’s hand. Just kings for prosimon and a trip to the rail in third.
Incredibly, after just half an hour the PokerStars Passport final was heads-up, and icallseaty3 had the advantage – 174,382 to 119,018

Whilst icallseat3 had found himself on the up-side of a massive pot earlier with the royal flush, hands often tend to even out in the long run. Icallseat3 might have wondered if this wasn’t a little too quick for things to balance out when he saw the chip lead surge away from him. A story of two kings on the board to match the one in Mele’s hand. Icallseat3 called the flop, turn and river but was always behind. A hand to take Mele to over 184k and a clear run to the finish.

Icallseat3 hung on as best he could but couldn’t compete with a newly aggressive Mele able to use the big stick well, forcing his opponents into making the decisions.

The reality was that both players would walk away with a prize to be envied – a package to the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo worth in excess of €10,000 would be in the hands of the runner-up; not bad for a freeroll. But this was all about the passport - too big a prize to give up on.

The fact that Mele now has that to his name came from an impressive performance that will bode well for when he gets his hands on the baize. He kept out of harm’s way at the right times to outlast a field laden with tournament masters. With no let up the last hand would be decided by a narrow margin – A-K for Mele, A-J for icallseat3. Not much between the two on a blank board, but it’s Mele about to embark on his own personal poker tour.

For icallseat3, well he’ll be on his way to the EPT Grand Final. But all eyes will now look to Mele who takes the best wishes of the other finalists with him on what should be one incredibly ride. It starts in Dortmund later this month. The rest is up to him.

PokerStars Passport - final result:

1st – Dustin Mele – PokerStars Passport
2nd – icallseat3 – EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final package
3rd – prosimon – $10,000
4th – VOLCANO360 – $5,000
5th – Aryamehr – $3,000
6th – cajundaddy1 -- $2,500
7th – pokerfun4321 – $2,000
8th – Stammdogg – $1,500
9th – inheritance – $1,000

by Brad Willis and Howard Swains
Photography by Neil Stoddart

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier was a pro-gaming star before he was a PokerStar, but celebrity is not what gets him out of bed in the morning. It's the competition. It's the winning. He was the first PokerStars player to achieve VIP Club Supernova status. He was the first PokerStars player to reach the Supernova Elite level. Second place, as far as ElkY is concerned, is barely worth the work.

"When you get second, people forget about you really quickly," he said.

And he knows how it feels. It's not been too long ago that ElkY got heads up at EPT Copenhagen with every confidence he would win. There were few people in the room that had any doubt. That night, it didn't happen.

"I was devastated," he confessed.

Despite being a feared tournament player and prized member of Team PokerStars Pro, ElkY was still in search of that elusive big tournament victory, a first place finish that would validate every bit of effort he put toward the game. When he came to the PCA, he wanted nothing but to win.

"If there was one tournament other than the World Series main event that was the most important," he said, "this was it."

Tonight, ElkY left the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure tournament stage and fell into a sea of celebrants and fans. Within seconds, flash bulbs strobed on his sunglasses and hugs covered every part of his body. A public relations executive grabbed him by the hand and dragged him through the room, where people called out congratulations in French and applauded loudly. Seconds later, ElkY was in a quiet hallway, like a rock star just coming off stage.

He looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath.

"I cannot believe it yet," he said.

Just moments before, he had won the $2 million first prize in the fifth annual PCA.

2008 PCA Champion, Betrand "ElkY" Grospellier

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is a story of maturation. It was cute in its infancy on a cruise ship at sea in the Caribbean. It was impressive in its adolescence in the World Poker Tour days. Now, as a top European Poker Tour event, the PCA has become one of the biggest high stakes tournaments in the world.

When the event began, 1136 players filled the Atlantis Grand Ballroom. It took two days to fit everyone in and five days to cull the field to the top eight players. And what a final eight they were. From online prodigies to seasoned live tournament veterans, the PCA final table was immediately recognized as a place where real poker would shine. With a $2 million first prize on the line, there was little doubt about how serious the day would be.

Half the field here qualified for the event on PokerStars. By the time the final table was set, the eight players were guaranteed no less than $150,000, and all but one of them, ElkY, had qualified via PokerStars satellite.

A measured start fit well into the sleepy quiet morning. By midday, though, the players had their caffeine and were ready to go to work.

Some people might describe Richard "Ricky" Fohrenbach as diminutive. At one point last night, the TV crew gave him a pillow so he would sit high enough in his chair for the cameras to see him. Though he is an adult, he seems to revel in his youthful looks and getting carded when he buys drinks. His elfish spirit seemed to guide him at the table. Always smiling, the guy everybody calls Ricky seemed to determine to go big or go home today. He started well, doubling up with jacks against Joe Elpayaa's tens. His only mistake was imploring, "One time!" during the hand. Sure enough, his next big hand was jacks again. This time, he was up against ElkY's AK. A king on the flop spelled the end of Ricky's day. He finished in eighth place, earning $150,000.

Richard Fohrenbach--Eighth Place--$150,000

That particular hand marked the beginning of ElkY's rise to the chip lead. Having just defeated pocket jacks, ElkY picked up a pair of his own and made them hold up. This time, he was up against Christian Harder's pocket sevens. Harder qualified for the PCA in a $650 satellite. He began the day on the shortest stack and missed his chance to double early. When he couldn't catch up to ElkY, he finished in seventh place and won $200,000, the biggest win of his young poker career.

Christian Harder--Seventh Place--$200,000

ElkY, it appeared, could not be stopped. Having sent two consecutive players to the rail, ElkY got settled into the chip lead. In a battle of the blinds with Elpayaa, ElkY raised with AQ and then called one million more, the amount of Elpayaa's all-in. Elpayaa held KJ. Neither hand improved and Elpayaa went out in sixth place, a $300,000 cash.

Joe Elpayaa--Sixth place--$300,000

At a rather aggressive table, Craig Hopkins was the exception. It will take a review of the EPT broadcast before we know for sure. Regardless, Hopkins barely played a hand today. Whether he was card dead or simply happy to climb the money ladder, Hopkins sat quietly until he was down to around 600,000 chips. He got them in once to steal the blinds and antes. The second time he tried it, he got all-in with Kd8d. He ran into David Pham's TT. Pham flopped a set and made the king on the turn irrelevant. Hopkins patience led him to a fifth place finish and $450,000 payday.

Craig Hopkins--Fifth place--$450,000

At the beginning of the day, David "The Dragon" Pham was the odds-on favorite to win. He had more live tourney experience. He had more final table experience. He also had a commanding chip lead. It would prove to not be commanding enough. Throughout the day, Pham's stack and good fortune went in the same direction. By late afternoon, Pham had become one of the shorter stacks at the table. It had been 24 hours since he had laid an exceptionally bad suckout on Paul Holup. Now, Pham was to be on the bad end of the stick. This time, he flopped two pair and played it slow. When the turn brough a second diamond, Pham check-raised all-in and ElkY called with Ad2d. The seven of diamonds on the river was enough to take the fire out of the Dragon. He finished in fourth place, earning $600,000.

David Pham--Fourth Place--$600,000

Kris Kuykendall celebrated his 25th birthday yesterday. He gave himself the gift of a final table. Today, he realized that gift was the gift that keeps on giving. The one-time business student didn't have an exceptionally active day. Regardless, he managed to fight his way all the way to third place. The denouement was his KQ not catching up to Hafiz Khan's Ah7h. For third place, Kuykendall earned $800,000.

Kris Kuykendall--Third Place--$800,000

After Kris finally succumbed, it was left to two of the tournament's undoubted heavyweights to slog it out. ElkY, the Team PokerStars Pro Member from France, had been here before but come up short. His second place in Copenhagen season three might have been an advantage but it may also have been an albatross. Who could tell, but with 13,000,000 in chips, he was in pole position.

Hafiz Khan, meanwhile, had come to the final table fourth in chips, but had prospered behind an aggressive approach, particularly where the short-stacks were involved. A pro for two years, Khan was not intimidated, but he'd never been this deep in a live tournament before. Khan had 9,000,000 and it was an intriguing match up.

There was also the real money to think of, of course. With two million on offer for first and a little more than half that for the runner up, there was plenty to play for. The players took a protracted break to gather their thoughts before returning to the stage and the stands now packed with supporters, ready to watch the crowning of the new champion.

They didn't have to wait long.

After the regulation jabbing, the first big pot went ElkY's way, when he slow-played an ace on an A-A-Q board, eventually prising about 1.5 million from Hafiz, the largest chunk with a 1.1 million bet on the river. Then there was that hand, the one that makes both champions and regrets.

ElkY raised, Hafiz jammed, from the big blind, handing the decision back to the leader. Any top player makes a lot of decisions like this, though, and they're right, more often than not. So it was in this case, as ElkY called with his pocket eights. Khan had made his play but had been caught: he could only muster a nine-three.

There was an anxious flop, turn and river, but the nine was nowhere to be seen.

A Gallic roar emanated from the bleachers as ElkY took it down. One for France, one for Team PokerStars Pro. And one in the win column for Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier.

Hafiz Khan--Second Place--$1,094,976

ElkY came to this tournament as a new man. He'd lost 60 pounds in a $75,000 weight loss bet. Low carbs, a good doctor, and what he described as "good discipline" netted him the win in that contest. Tonight, he leaves the PCA a new man. He is no longer only a pro-gaming champion. He is a poker champion.

Betrand "ElkY" Grospellier is the champion of the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

See also:

Final table player profiles
Level 24 news
Level 25 news
Level 26 news
Level 27
Level 28 news

PCA Winners list

Gone fishin' with the Supernovas
Dustin Woolf wins World Championship of Battleship Poker

All photos © Neil Stoddart

Many thanks to Howard Swains, Neil Stoddart, Michelle Willis, and the PokerStars support team, including Bryan, Jose, Gareth, and Andrew for their work on the PokerStars Blog this week. Additional thanks go to John Smith for his technical support and B.J. Nemeth for his cooperation and professionalism. --Brad

All Level 28 news will be updated here. The blinds and antes are 80,000/160,000/20,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. All Level 27 action can be found HERE.

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier wins the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and $2 million.

Hafiz Khan eliminated in second place, winning $1,094,976
End of the road--That's it. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is done. At the end, it was a bluff gone awry for Hafiz Khan in a brief heads-up joust. ElkY, with the chip lead, raised 500,000 pre-flop; Hafiz pushed all in from the big blind. ElkY dwelt for a moment, but not quite as long as you might think for a $2 million decision. Obviously he had some read of Hafiz and called, flipping 8-8. Khan was caught and meekly tabled 9-3. The board bricked and ElkY's eights were good. The Team PokerStars Pro member from France is the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion. Bien, bien ElkY!

Back in action, ElkY playing strong--After a long break, the players are back. In opening actiion, ElkY slow-played an ace on a JAA flop and pulled more than one million out of Khan's stack. [5:27]

You're missing nothing-- The final two are decided but they're taking a protracted break in preparation for the heads-up dual. We'll have all the action when it resumes.

Heads up-- Two players remain for the money, with Team PokerStars Pro's Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier taking the chip advantage over Hafiz Khan. The approximate counts are 13 million for ElkY, 9 million for Khan. The money is being deposited on the table, and we're shaping up for a big showdown.

Kris Kuykendall is eliminated in third place, winning $800,000

Kris krushed-- The spirited Caribbean adventure of Kris Kuydenhall is over. He was down to his last 1.5 million and was unfortunate not to double up moments before. But then Hafiz Khan raised his blind for the hundredth time and Kris had to make the all-in call with Kd-Qs. He wasn't totally out of it whe Hafiz showed Ah-7h, but the flop was unkind. It came 4d-4h-6h, removing a couple of Kris's outs. Neither the non-heart king nor queen came on the turn or river and ace-high was good for Khan.

Hopkins hopes--Craig Hopkins, the fifth placed finisher here in the Bahamas, has returned to the tournament room to root for one of his final table nemesis. It would be imprudent to say who at the moment, but it's good to see him, and his wife Lindsay, back around the table as they play down to a winner.
[4.45pm]

Double-up? No. Chop it--Kris Kuykendall finds a great spot for a potential double-up. He gets his last 1.5 million in with A-Kd and is called by Hafiz Khan with A-5. The board, however, thwarts Kuykendall when it comes Q-A-Q-A-10, giving both players aces full. They chop the blinds and antes, which is not exactly what Kris would have hoped for given his dominance of Khan's hand.
[4.35pm]

David Pham eliminated in fourth place for $600,000

Dragon slayed--It took five days before that headline was for real. Now it happens. ElkY raised to 400,000 preflop and Pham called in the big blind with Q5. The flop came KhQh5d. Both players checked. When the Jd came on the turn, Pham checked, ElkY bet 700,000, andand Pham raised all-in for 2,000,000 more. ElkY called with Ad2d and spiked his diamond on he river. Pham is out in fourth place, earning $600,000.

David Pham--Fourth Place--$600,000

If you need a break...--Check out what it's like to be a Supernova in the Bahamas at Gone fishin' with the Supernovas. [4:15pm]

Back in action--We're playing again. Counts have been updated at the PCA Chip Counts page. [4:08pm]

by Michelle Willis

Supernova Shane "fumbo420" Fumerton might remember this PokerStars Caribbean Adventure by the ones that got away: a tournament victory and one really big fish.

I met Shane early this morning, down at the ferry boat dock. He and fellow Supernova Clayton "slammedfire" Mozdzen, Clayton's girlfriend Keli Keyes, and one lucky friend of Supernova Ryan "southside1" Aiken boarded Chubasco III, a 46 foot fishing boat. Shane and Clayton may have been out of the tournament, but that doesn't mean PokerStars couldn't show them a good time. That's one of the reasons it pays to be a Supernova, or at least a friend of a Supernova.

Captain Mike and First Mate Charlton were our crew on this perfect morning. As we pulled away from the dock, there were very few clouds in the sky and the morning air was already warm. It seemed like a perfect day to go deep sea fishing.

Matt Dodd from Austin claimed a spot on the top deck with the captain. As we pulled away from land, I got to know Shane, Clayton, and Keli a bit. First Mate Charlton went about setting up four lines off the boat as we chatted and soaked in the sun.

Matt Dodd on deck

Shane just turned 28 years old on January 3rd. He left Canada for the his third PCA in the Bahamas on the 4th. It was -30 degrees Celcius when he left home. Fortunately, Shane says he doesn't mind the winter in Winnipeg. Chris Moneymaker's breakout victory in the World Series of Poker is what inspired Shane to get into the game. He's mostly an online player, who says he finds it hard to transition from multi-table play on the internet to slower live action. Shane enjoys fishing. He tries to go several times in the summer and ice fishing in the winter. He says if he ever wins the big one, he'll buy a cabin on the lake and fish more often.

Shane, Clayton and Keli went deep sea fishing in the Bahamas last year, but they didn't catch anything. Keli and Clayton got to break the streak first this morning. Our lines caught two fish nearly back-to-back. They reeled them in together. I wish I could tell you I got the money shot of the Supernova and his girlfriend reeling in their fish, but I was busy hanging my head over the side of the boat and emptying the contents of my stomach. Apparently, I'm more of a land person than a choppy seas person. Ace blogger, reporting for duty, sir.

Clayton and Keli each brought in wahoo, fish that can swim up to 75 miles an hour. Our untrained eyes estimated they were in the ten to fifteen pound range, but Matt Dodd says they were smaller. This is our fish tale, though, so we can make them as big as we want, right? All I know is those dudes put up a fight. It wasn't easy to get them in the boat, and once they were there, they didn't want to stay. Keli and Clayton were the victors in the end.

Clayton and Keli

Clayton is 24 years old, and he plays poker for a living. This is his and Keli's second trip to the PCA. They were also at EPT Barcelona. Clayton and Shane met a few years ago after they had both won seats into the World Series of Poker Main Event. They realized they were both going and they lived in the same area, so they became friends. Since then, they've played in many tournaments together. They say they almost always go out of the tournaments on the same day, and sometimes even with the same hand. Ace-King ended their run this time around.

Shane had hoped to catch a big one during his PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and he almost did. First Mate Charlton says it was huge, a 40 to 45 pounder, and Shane went to work. We all thought he had it when, suddenly, nothing! It got off the line. Shane thought it was something he did wrong, but First Mate Charlton says there was no way he could have gotten that fish in the boat. It was just not Shane's day.

Shane Fumerton

A while later, the brother of the fine woman who organized this trip and many other fantastic things for the Supernovas wrestled a barracuda and won. James Hadley has some experience in the water, and he made it look easy. He also saved me from jumping off the boat by supplying me with Dramamine, so, I owe this trip report to the barracuda-wrestling brother of Joan Hadley. Thank you, fine sir.

James Hadley

So, in the end, it seems fishing is a lot like poker. Sometimes you get the fish. Sometimes the fish get away. And sometimes you miss all the action because you're in the tank. No matter what, though, I bet these PokerStars Supernovas will come out winners in the future, both in the water and especially at the tables.

All Level 27 news will be updated here. The blinds and antes are 60,000/120,000/15,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. All Level 26 action can be found HERE.

Kris continues to climb--On the last hand before the end of the level, all four players go to the flop, calling Hafiz's 325,000 pre-flop bet. The flop comes Jh-5d-2h, checked all round, then the Qh comes on the turn. Again, checked all round, but David Pham bets 600,000 on the 2c river. ElkY and Hafiz fold but Kris calls and shows A-Q, which is good enough to beat Pham's Q-9. The ace plays. That's the end of the level, with chip counts to come.

Short-stack fightback--Kris Kuykendall is battling his way back into contention here. The latest sizeable hand earned him in excess of a million chips, when his ace-three diamonds picked up a flush draw on the turn and made top pair on the river, which turned out to be good enough against a disgruntled Hafiz Khan.

ElkY taking it easy--ElkY is the big stack here, with more than 10,000,000 and he's flexing his muscles whenever he gets the chance. Most recently, Hafiz Khan raised to 325,000 from under-the-gun, and both ElkY and Kris called. The flop was interesting: 9h-10h-4d and ElkY stabbed 450,000 at it. Khan called. The river was also had potential: Ah. ElkY tossed in 775,000 and Hafiz passed, very reluctantly.

Million dollar pot--There haven't been a lot of big hands since these four reconvened, and even a million dollar pot is not that impressive given the chip counts. One of those just went to Hafiz Khan, however, when his kings and queens beat David Pham's kings and sevens. The board was paired, which slowed the action, but Pham's river bet of 700,000 ensured a seven-figure pot.
[2.55]

Still here, still four--If you'd like to see a lot of pots being played out live, check out EPT Live. [2:50]

Back in action--We back in action at Level 27. The blinds are starting to get a tad expensive, so the final four are going to have to get to work. [2:36pm]

Final four--As we begin level 27, there are four players remaining. Their names and stacks:

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier -- 9,551,000
Hafiz Khan -- 5,720,000
David Pham -- 5,045,000
Kris Kuykendall -- 2,665,000

All Level 26 news will be updated here. The blinds and antes are 40,000/80,000/10,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. All Level 25 action can be found HERE.

On extended break--We're on an extended break while the TD and players talk a little about the tournament structure. Chip counts can be found at the PCA Chip Counts page. [2:05pm]

Craig Hopkins eliminated in fifth place, winning $450,000

Folding to big cash--It must've been an exceptionally card dead day for Craig Hopkins. He played next to know hands and those he did were all-ins. He finall put it all in from under the gun with Kd8d. David Pham called in the small blind with TT and flopped a set. Hopkins finished fifth for $450,000.

Craig Hopkins--Fifth place--$450,000

Joe Elpayaa eliminated in sixth place, winning $300,000

Down to five--ElkY's dominance of this final table continues as he ends Joe Elpayaa's tournament. ElkY, with the huge stack, raises pre-flop from the small blind. Joe, in the big, wakes up with Kh-Jh and thinks it's good enough to shove for just more than one million. ElkY calls with A-Q and is never caught by bigegypt, despite vociferous support from the rail. We're down to five, with the bleachers' favourite Elpayaa eliminated..

Joe Elpayaa--Sixth Place--$300,000

Ebb and flow-- Still slow here around the final table, where a pre-flop bet is usually enough to take down the blinds and antea. Sometimes it gets a little further, but not often. The short-stacked Craig Hopkins has been especially quiet, clearly waiting for his chance to double up, but not putting his tournament life on the line just yet. That has meant that his big blind has come under some significant attack from the more comfortably-stacked players, especially David Pham and Hafiz Khan. The other relative short stack is Joe Elpayaa, but he's in a lot more pots, shoving in for about a million more if he suspects he's being robbed. He just found A-K in the big blind and was able to squeeze out both Hafiz Khan and ElkY who had already entered the pot.

Bring the lull--It's only a matter of time before the action gets hot again. For now, it's a tad slow again.

In other news...--It's pretty good to be a PokerStars Supernova. They get treated pretty well here. One crew of them went out all morning on a deep sea fishing trip for free. We had a blogger on board. The story and pictures are coming. I'll leave it to the blogger to decide whether the tales of woe from the Good Ship Pukes-A-Lot get fully told. [12:40pm]

Play about to begin again--The players are on their way back to their seats. [12:39pm]

Chip counts updated--With seven players remaining, Team PokerStars Pro, ElkY, has jumped into the chip lead. For full counts, visit the PCA Chip Counts page.

All Level 25 news will be here. The blinds and antes are 30,000/60,000/5,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Yesterday's level 24 action can be found HERE.

Level ends--Level 25 is in the books. Chip counts coming soon. [12:25pm]

Christian Harder is eliminated in seventh place, winning $200,000

ElkY runs good--Just a few minutes after beating pocket jacks with AK, ElkY has made jacks hold. Christian Harder pushed all-in with 7s7d. ElkY made the quick call with JhJc. Harder never caught up and is out in seventh place, winning $200,000. That pot very well may have put the Team PokerStars Pro in the chip lead. [12:05pm]

Christian Harder--Seventh Place--$200,000

Richard Fohrenbach is eliminated in eighth place, winning $150,000

Yep, just the one time--Ricky Fohrenbach bellowed "One time!" when he had jacks in the previous hand against Joe Elpayaa's tens. But it was just one time, because two hands later, Fohrenbach found jacks again against ElkY's ace-king. They got it all in pre-flop but there was a king on the flop and Fohrenbach never caught up again. He's out, becoming the eighth placed finisher, and going home with $150,000. We're down to seven, with Pham still leading, but ElkY breathing down his neck, with an approximate $6.8 million.

Richard Fohrenbach--Eighth Place--$150,000

One time!--It's a raise to 160,000 from Joe Elpayaa and a snap all-in from Ricky Fohrenbach. Back to Elpayaa, he barely thinks before announcing a call for 950,000 more. Ricky had jacks, Elpayaa tens. By the river, the jacks had made a heart flush and Ricky is up to about 2.2 million. [11:54am]

Cagey--As predicted, it's been a tight start to the final table. No one is under any immediate pressure, and the all-in merchants have been weeded out of this field. The final eight are happy to make pot-sized bets and play real poker. If anyone has caught the eye it's been Hafiz Khan, who has been making a few moves. He picked up a pot of about 400,000 from Kris Kuykendall with a bet of the Kd turn, pairing the board. Then he picked off a probable squeeze play from Joe Elpayaa, moving all-in after "bigegypt" had reraised to 625,000 pre-flop.
[11.45am]

Faces of the final table--Here are the people fighting for the $2 million first prize.

Silent morning--After a week of constant screaming and noise, the Atlantis Grand Ballroom is a little different this morning. The live action hasn't started up yet and the final table is still waking up. Right now, it's possible to hear one's self think. That, of course,is bound to change. The players at the final table have some rowdy sweaters who are bound to shake off the cobwebs soon. [11:24am]

Watch it live--Of course we appreciate you being here. However, if you have access to a good internet signal (and your boss doesn't mind), you might as well watch this as it happens. Check out EPT Live for real-time coverage and commentary.

Dragon's den--This is David Pham's house right now. With a commanding chip lead, a wealth of final table experience, and a morning spent taking aggression pills, Pham is playing the role of the bully. As always, nobody wants to be the first out, or give up too many chips while some shorter stacks are still around. Still, it's only a matter of time before somebody starts looking Pham up.

There are still 11 minutes left of level 24, which we'll be updating in this post. The blinds and antes are 30,000/60,000/5,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Yesterday's level 24 action can be found HERE.

Done with 24--That level didn't have much time left. We're done and moving on.

Play underway--The final table, albeit a bit late, is underway. [10:58pm]

A reminder of the final table players and their chip stacks:

David Pham 7,390,000
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier 3,060,000
Joe Elpayaa 2,755,000
Haffiz Khan 2,560,000
Kris Kuykendall 2,150,000
Richard Fohrenbach 1,855,000
Craig Hopkins 1,770,000
Christian Harder 905,000

All the winners so far from the PCA can be found HERE.

The final table of the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is scheduled to begin soon. You can follow the action here or at EPT Live. In the meantime, here's a look at the people who will be fighing for the $2 million first prize.

Seat 1: Kris Kuykendall, 25 - PokerStars qualifier - 2,150,000 chips

Kris, who turned 25 yesterday (January 9), graduated with a business degree from the University of Cincinatti and coaches wrestling in his spare time. He has only been playing poker for two years and turned pro after six months. He specialises in online cash games – 2/4 and 5/10 No Limit – and when he won his seat to the PCA, it was the first satellite he had ever played. The PCA is also his first ever live tournament but he says he found the transition from online to live pretty easy. This is his biggest result to date. He added: “I’ve had an up and down tournament so far. “

Kris Kuykendall

Seat 2: Christian Harder, 20, USA – PokerStars qualifier - 905,000 chips

Christian Harder, a student from Annapolis, Maryland, is playing in his first live big buy-in event. After studying business last semester at Salisbury University, he decided to take this semester off to play poker. He’s getting off to a pretty good start after qualifying on PokerStars in a $650 multi-table satellite. Known as “charder30” online, Harder is no stranger to tournament poker. He spends most of his time playing the biggest buy-in tournaments online with $8ok in a $1k event his biggest win to date. Although the shortest stack at the table, Harder still feels confident going into final table play.

Christian Harder

Seat 3: David Pham, 41, USA - PokerStars qualifier - 7,390,000 chips

David 'The Dragon' Pham enjoyed having odds on his side at an early age, when the 17-year-old was one of only 46 (out of 145) people to survive a boat journey fleeing his native Vietnam for the United States. He joined the cleaning business of his cousin Men 'The Master' Nguyen, who had registered some success at the Las Vegas poker tables. He studied the game under his cousin and learned well from the master, as he was soon wiping the floor with his opponents at the table. His breakthrough year was 2000, when his consistent performances saw him named Cardplayer's Player of the Year. The following year saw him claim his first WSOP bracelet on the $2,000 SHOE event, and he would add his second in a NL Hold'Em shootout event in 2006. He’s had five WPT final tables in all and two WSOP bracelets. Pham is considered one of the most aggressive pros in the game and lies 23rd on the all-time money list - with $5.4 million in career earnings.

David Pham

Seat 4: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, 26, France- Team PokerStars Pro - 3,060,000 chips

ElkY was a famous professional gamer until a friend suggested he try his luck at poker seven years ago. He quickly proved his skills by qualifying for the WSOP two years running. He joined Team PokerStars in 2006. Rarely without his trademark sunglasses, poker has proved a profitable career switch for the young Frenchman. In EPT Season 3, he cashed three times including his second-place finish in Copenhagen for €309,000. ElkY is a prolific online player and said: "With gaming, I could practice 12 hours a day, but if I lost the game, the value would be zero. However, in poker every hour has some benefit”.

ElkY

Seat 5: Joseph Elpayaa, 19, USA – PokerStars qualifier - 2,755,000 chips

Joespeh “bigegypt” Elpayaa, 19, from Chicago, has played a few big live events in Europe - including last year’s EPT Grand Final and the Irish Open - but this is his first big cash. Online, he has had a lot of success and says he has won “several “ $100k prizes in various events. Joseph was in the top 1% of those who took the ACT college exams last year but he only attended for a week before deciding to focus on poker. He learned poker in home games with his brother Adam and friends. His preference is cash games but he says “being deep in a tournament beats anything else.”

Joe Elpayaa

Seat 6: Craig Hopkins, 33, UK – PokerStars qualifier - 1,770,000 chips

Craig, a professional sports bettor from Chesterfield in the UK, has been playing poker for years with friends but only four years online. He played in last season’s EPT Grand Final but didn’t cash. He also qualified with PokerStars for last summer’s WSOP but couldn’t go because it clashed with his honeymoon. He said: “My wife Lindsey is here supporting me. She’s been brilliant. I got made redundant from work two years ago and decided to take up sports betting full-time. A lot of girlfriends wouldn’t be happy about that but she has been really supportive.” Craig has also had tons of support from friends and family back home – some friends even had champagne delivered to him at the Atlantis. His friends now call him “The Apple” after a picture of him eating fruit appeared on blondepoker on the first day of the PCA.

Craig Hopkins

Seat 7: Richard Fohrenbach, 20, USA – PokerStars qualifier - 1,855,000 chips

College student Richard, from Milford, Connecticut, says he played around 20 Double Shoot Out satellites for the PCA before finally winning a seat in October. “I came second in one, and then won one later the same day.” He said he doesn’t consider himself a pro but is taking some time off from studying at Boston College to focus on the game. “This is by far my biggest win to date. I’ve only ever cashed once in a live tournament before this, and that was for £2,000.” Richard has already bought in to EPT Dortmund at the end of January, as well as the Season 4 EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.

Richard Fohrenbach

Seat 8: Hafiz Khan, 33, USA – PokerStars qualifier - 2,560,000 chips

Former software analyst Hafiz Khan, from Stockton, Northern California, has been playing poker for four years and turned pro two years ago. Hafiz normally plays online. He said: “I’ve been enjoying the PCA. It’s been long and gruelling, but fun. I expected to do well. This is my best result so far.”

Hafiz Khan

All photos © Neil Stoddart

It started with a hula and it finished with a cheer. Forty players entered the Grand Ballroom at noon to find it transformed into a tiki lounge: the colors of the poker chips were matched in the feathers of parrots, the contents of cocktail glasses and the patterns on shirts.

It looked like the set for a party, but there was poker to be played first -- and the serious matter of a prize pool of about $8.6 million to contest.

The tiki bar at the final table of the 2008 PCA

When the final player, William Thorson, busted out at 10.30, leaving eight with a shot for the biggest money, relief was mixed with grenadine and ginger ale and shaken and then stirred. Still remaining in the mix, and those who will comprise our final table tomorrow, are:

David Pham 7,390,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier 3,060,000 (Team PokerStars Pro)
Joe Elpayaa 2,755,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Haffiz Khan 2,560,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Kris Kuykendall 2,150,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Richard Fohrenbach 1,855,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Craig Hopkins 1,770,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Christian Harder 905,000 (PokerStars qualifier)

Seasoned EPT watchers will notice a familiar pattern. There are a handful of well-known pros, and some internet whizz-kids. Some players fall into both categories.

David "Dragon" Pham, our chipleader, scarcely needs any introduction. He is already a serious force in the major league and has two World Series bracelets and five WPT final table appearances. There's not a lot he doesn't know about the game. He was the chip leader overnight, and even though it slipped during the day, he hauled it back and has done enough to take his place around the EPT final table felt for the first time.

Pham was also responsible for ending proceedings today. It was his pocket aces that bested William Thorson's fours to set our final table.

David Pham

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, of Team PokerStars Pro, is definitely a player with a foot in both online and offline each camp. He's graduated from the online tables, where he flew to Supernova status in the blink of an eye, and is now a bone fide superstar in the bricks and mortar world. He'll be looking to go one better on his second place in Copenhagen in season two, and seal his place as one of the brightest players on the circuit.

ElkY

As for the others, they all seem to know one another even if the world at large doesn't know them yet.

Joe Elpayaa, or "BigEgypt" on PokerStars, was chewing the fat all day long with Richard Fohrenbach, another big-time online player. Each of them will renew their acquaintance tomorrow. Haffiz Khan has some previous, and has his supporters in the bleachers here.

Joe Elpayaa

Hafiz Khan

Meanwhile, Kris Kuykendall has been at the summit of the leaderboard ever since late yesterday, and he'll be a force to be reckoned with, yet to make a mistake. It's an unorthodox way to celebrate one's 25th birthday, but one we're sure Kris wouldn't trade for any other gift.

Kris Kuykendall

The final spot is taken by Craig Hopkins, a British player who is having his finest tournament to date. Cheered on by wife Lindsay, the serial PokerStars qualifier has gone deeper than ever before.

Craig Hopkins

Of course, in order for these eight to have made it, we lost 32. They included Victor Ramdin, the Team PokerStars Pro member, as well as other known players Eric "Rizen" Lynch and Rhett Butler. Thierry Van Den Berg also took a tumble when his aces were cracked by kings.

Behind all the grass skirts, it was just another day of brutality on the EPT.

Tomorrow, we start early. The cards will be in the air at the ungodly hour of 10am ET. Be sure to check back for the blow-by-blow account of the final table.

We can't end the day without recognizing Dustin "neverwin" Woolf for winning the third annual PokerStars World Championship of Battleship Poker. Woolf won six straight heads-up matches to capture the $48,000 firt prize and gold bracelet. For more on the Battleship Poker Championship, click here.

Woolf and his bracelet

As we close Day 4, see HERE for all the winners so far.

The full prize pool is listed HERE.

For a look at the entirety of the action today, seen any of the links below.

Level 19 news
Level 20 news
Level 21 news
Level 22 news
Level 23 news
Level 24 news

All photos © Neil Stoddart

"I'm not being cocky," Dustin Woolf said as he strode across the psychedelic carpet of the Atlantis Grand Ballroom. "I'm just in the zone."

One of online poker's best-known players, Woolf arrived today as one of 32 players in the second flight of the PokerStars World Championship of Battleship Poker. He won his first four matches to advance to tonight's finals. He and Terrance Eischens met Vanessa "suckoutqueen" Selbst and Sorel Mizzi, the winners from Flight 1.

Woolf battled Eischens in the first round and emerged with the victory. The match between 2007 Battleship Champion Mizzi and Selbst took a bit longer. Selbst made sure Mizzi would not repeat his title and went on to face Woolf in the final. With a rowdy rail on hand, Woolf made quick work of the suckoutqueen from Brooklyn.

For winning six straight heads up matches, Woolf won $48,800 and the gold Battleship bracelet.

Woolf with his bracelet

Woolf and runner-up, Selbst

Here's a full rundown of the winners from the third annual Battleship Poker Championship.

1. Dustin Woolf $48,000
2. Vanessa Selbst $25,600
3-4. Sorel Mizzi and Terrance Eischens $12,800
5-8. Steve Silverman, Elia Ahmadia, Matt Kay, Mike Glasser $8,000

We'll be updating all the news from Level 24 in this post. We're moving to 25,000/50,000/5,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 23 PCA news can be found HERE.

Final table--

David Pham 7,390,000
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier 3,060,000
Joe Elpayaa 2,755,000
Haffiz Khan 2,560,000
Kris Kuykendall 2,150,000
Richard Fohrenbach 1,855,000
Craig Hopkins 1,770,000
Christian Harder 905,000

Thorson out--William Thorson has just been busted in ninth place by David Pham. Thorson held 44 to Pham's aces. They got it in on a 66x flop. We're down to the final table. Chip coutns and a warap to come. [10:35pm]

Racing for millions

--Evan Tindell just went to the races for his tournament life. He started the action for a raise, Pham re-raised, Tindell pushed with tens, and Pham called almost instantly with AK. The race was over fast. The flop brought the ace and Tindell never caught up. He's out in tenth place $104,000.
[9:58]

Battleship in the books--Dustin "neverwin" Woolf is the 2008 World Championship of Battleship Poker winner. He takes home $44,800 and a bracelet. Congratulations to all the players. [9:50pm]

Huge pot, no eliminations--A massive pot was brewing on the featured table featuring Haffiz Khan, Joe Elpayaa and Craig Hopkins. Four players actually saw the Ks-8d-Qc flop, and Joe bet 95,000. Haffiz called, as did Craig. ElkY got out the way. Then Joe bet 250,000 on the 9s turn, Haffiz raised, Craig moved all in, and Joe moved in behind him. Now Haffiz knew he was beaten and got out the way, and the two all in players showed their J-10 hands for the nut straight and a split pot.

Battleship Finals underway--"suckoutqueen" and "neverwin" are battling here in the Grand Ballroom at Atlantis. Second place will take home $25,600. First will win $44,800 and a bracelet. [9:48pm]

Battleship Finals set--Vanessa "suckoutqueen" Selbst just took it down. She will face Dustin "neverwin" Woolf in the World Championship of Battleship Poker finals. Sorel Mizzi takes home $12,800. [9:44pm]

Battleship back-and-forth--They're fighting hard here in the second semi-final round of the World Championship of Battleship Poker. The rail here in the Grand Ballroom is growing for this match-up, which has been going back and forth for the past several hands. Vanessa "suckoutqueen" Selbst just doubled up.

Battleship finalist--Dustin "neverwin" Woolf will advance to the Battleship finals. He knocked out Terrance "Asiandude77" Eischens, who wins $12,800.[9:30pm]

Well, that was ugly--David Pham came in for a button raise to 150,000. Paul Holub called from the big blind. The flop came 9s7cQs. Holub pushed all in for 630,000. Pham thought for a long time before calling and saying, "I have big draw." He had, in fact, 5s8s for the flush draw and gutshot draw. But, wait. Holub held KsTs. The turn, in this case was irrelevant. The river...the 6c, making Pham's straight. Holub's out in 11th place for $96,000.

Battle underway--The battle has begun here at Atlantis. The Final Four of the World Championship of Battleship poker are facing off in two heads-up matches. Sorel “zangbez24” Mizzi of Toronto is playing Vanessa “suckoutqueen” Selbst of Brooklyn. Terrance “Asiandude77” Eischens of Minnesota is battling Dustin “neverwin” Woolf of Los Angeles. Stay tuned for updates. [9:14pm]

The eleven remaining players and their chip counts are as follows:

Featured table
1 - Joe Elpayaa 2,556,000
2 - Richard Fohrenbach 1,740,000
3 - empty
4 - Haffiz Khan 2,100,000
5 - empty
6 - Craig Hopkins 1,360,000
7 - empty
8 - ElkY 3,780,000

Outer table
1 - Christian Harder 893,000
2 - Evan Tindell 2,230,000
3 - empty
4 - Kris Kuykendall 3,400,000
5 - David Pham 2,005,000
6 - empty
7 - William Thorson 1,505,000
8 - Paul Holub 873,000

We'll be updating all the news from Level 23 in this post. We're moving to 20,000/40,000/4,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 22 PCA news can be found HERE.

End of the level--The level is over, with 11 players still in the mix.

Not all right Jacques--Jacques Zaicik becomes our 12th place finisher. He'd allowed himself to get down to just 400,000 and shoved pre-flop with pocket fours. Haffiz Khan found aces and there were no complications on the board for the bullets. Zaicik, from France, takes $88,000. Eleven left.

BigEgypt gets bigger--Joseph Elpayaa, otherwise known as BigEgypt, just accounted for Glen Chorny on the featured table. Glen raised from the button to 110,000 and Joe defended his big blind. The flop came nine-high, rainbow -- 9d-2c-8s. Joe checked, Glen bet 160 and Joe moved all in. It was Glen risk, though, and he called, showing A-8 for middle pair, top kicker. Joe had check-raised holding Q-9 for top pair, and the third nine on the turn ended it. Glen takes $80,000. Joe's rail began chanting his name: his brother and four friends landed in the Bahamas today and have been to the bar, it seems.

Battleship docking soon--The Final Four of the World Championship of Battleship Poker kicks off at 9pm ET. They’re playing here in the Grand Ballroom at Atlantis, but you can watch it online in the Events section of the PokerStars Tournament Lobby. First place will take home $44,800. Second will get $25,600. Stay tuned for updates. 8:34pm

And the suckouts just keep on comin'--Marius Olsvik was getting way too short and finally jammed with AT. The bet was 241,000. Play folded around to Richard Fohrenbach who thought for a bit before saying "This is marginal" and calling with K2. Olsvik was good until the river when a king hit. Still, not too bad a week for Olsvik. He earns $72,000. [8:25pm]

Say goodbye to the overalls--Justin Phillips, the overall-wearing guy everybody calls "Red," has just run into a piece of bad luck. He came in for a raise on the button and saw William Thorson re-raise from the small blind. Phillips barely thought before pushing in the rest of his stack. Thorson was committed and called with Q4. The four came on the flop and Phillips didn't catch up. He's out in 15th place for $64,000 [8:22pm]

Ryan Phillips

Two quick busts--We're down to 16 and re-drawing for the final table tables. Pierre Neuville busted in 18th place. Mikko Pirinen went out in 17th place. Both were short-stacked going into the beginning of the level. We are working on getting details of their departure. Both players won $48,000. The next player out gets $56,000. For a complete look at the payout table, visit the PCA Prizes page.

Level 23 begins--Players are back in their seats, and play has begun in Level 23. Chip counts have been updated HERE.[7:27pm]

Level 23 about to begin--After a 15 minute break, Level 23 is about to begin. Eighteen players remain. We'll break down to two tables at 16 players. Headed into Level 23, it looks like Kris Kuykendall is still our chip leader with 3.3 million chips. The PokerStars cash qualifier is celebrating is 25th birthday. Right now, there is no birthday cake. He is, however, getting to munch on peanut butter Ritz bits at the break. He does not have the easiest table in the room. David Pham and William Thorson are to his left. [7:21pm]

Kris Kuykendall

All photos © Neil Stoddart

We'll be updating all the news from Level 22 in this post. We're moving to 15,000/30,000/4,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 21 PCA news can be found HERE.

Freeroller runs out of steam--Emil Timberg's fairytale run deep in this tournament has finally come to an end. He was all-in pre-flop with 10s and was not in such a bad spot against Evan Tindell's A-Q. But there was an ace in the window and Timberg couldn't catch up. The freeroller, who won his seat on a PokerStars-hosted Swedish magazine-sponsored tournament, is out in 19th.

Battleship ho!--We now have our finalists for tonight's World Championship of Battleship Poker. Dustin Woolf and Terrance Eischens will join yesterday's winners Sorel Mizzi and Vanessa Selbst tonight at 9pm to play for the big money and bracelet. Today, Stew Silverman and Eli Ahmadiam won $8,000 a piece for their finishes. [6:50]

Cooper down--Michael Cooper is out after getting AT in against David Pham's AK. Cooper wins $48,000 for his 20th place finish. [6:44pm]

ElKy making moves, Chorny fading--Glen Chorny is moving in the wrong direction after playing a big hand aganst ElkY and having to fold to an all-in raise on the river. Then he got involved and dropped some more to Joe Elpayaa. A few minutes later, ElkY got paid with QJ after making trip jacks. Elpayaa had JT. [6:35pm]

Mikko Pirinen doubles--Mikko doubles through Marius Olsvik all-in pre-flop. Mikko held As5s to Olsvik;s JhTc. An ace on the flop and Mikkko moved up to 480,000. Olsvik dropped to 240,000. [6:34pm]

Double-up-- The two relatively short-stacked Scandinavian players tangle on table two. Mikko Pirinen pushes, Marius Olsvik reluctantly calls. The former has A-5, the latter J-10. Olsvik pleads for any jack or any ten, but his prayers go unanswered as an ace flops. Pirinen doubles up, Olsvik down to his final 150,000-odd.

D'Ambrosio d'own and d'one-- James D'Ambrosio's tournament is over after he ran K-10 into William Thorson's A-J. They were all in preflop, but by the turn, Thorson had top two pair and D'Ambrosio a diamond flush draw. It didn't hit and D'Ambrosio is out in 21st for $48,000.

Gettler gotten-- Lance Gettler is out. He found ace king and got it all in pre-flop against Glen Chorny's ace-jack. Good spot, until a jack turned and Gettler was gone in 22nd.

King for a day...or at least a couple minutes--Richard Fohrenbach just doubled up and ranked a 1.1 million pot after getting KK to hold up against Allisen Connor's pocket sevens.

Break chat--During the break, I talked to Joe “BigEgypt” Elpayaa. He’s sitting at a little less than a million in chips right now, but he’s still feeling pretty good. His crew is making sure he’s fed and feeling the love from the rail.

Joe “BigEgypt” Elpayaa

I also caught up with Kris Kuykendall, who is the current chip leader. He has just under 2.6 million in chips, a pretty solid lead at this point. Kris told me he’s feeling pretty good. He thought he’d be a little nervous being at the featured TV table, but he says the hardest part was getting used to the hole card camera. He feels pretty comfortable about that now. He wishes his girlfriend, Kristyn Russell, could join his parents on the rail, but she had to return home to Cincinnati. She’s a teacher, and she’s also got a job to do. [5:53pm]

New level--Players are returning from a break to begin Level 22. [5:47pm]

We'll be updating all the news from Level 21 in this post. We're moving to 12,000/24,000/3,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 20 PCA news can be found HERE.

Lights, camera, action--They’re standing on chairs at the rail of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. It’s obvious the stakes are getting higher, and the crowd here knows it. Their first clue might be all the TV equipment: the giant boom camera, boom microphones, and lights. Now under those hot lights at the featured TV table is an interesting story. The two guys who started the day as first and second in chips are now sitting side-by-side. David Pham, with a significantly smaller stack than a few hours ago, is sitting to the left of Kris Kuykendall, who still has a monster stack. At last check, he had more than $2 million. Kris’ parents say this is his first time on TV. Same goes for Michael Cooper of Atlanta. His wife is also sitting up there watching her husband’s TV debut. At one point, she looked up at me and said, “his hair is standing up.” He could certainly pay someone to deal with that problem with the money he’s already guaranteed here today.

Steady--It's all got a bit cagey out there, with the big stacks knowing that they don't really need to be taking any ridiculous risks. For instance, Allisen Connor just raised it up to 65,000 pre-flop and found a called in Marius Olsvik. The flop had two sevens and a three on it, and Connor bet 110,000. Olsvik thought better of it and folded.

New chip--There's a new chip in town. It's white and is worth 25,000. Not all players have any; some have a tower.

Last Brit sitting--Lindsey Hopkins is sitting on the rail, rubbing two coins in her hands. Every time her husband Craig is in a hand, his wife’s coins heat up. Craig is an online qualifier from Chesterfield, England. He’s the last Brit in the pack here at the PCA. Lindsey has been sitting on the rail watching for the past two days. She says she loves the atmosphere here, and she’s really proud of her husband, who also qualified for EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo and APPT Singapore. He didn’t cash in those events, but he’s already guaranteed at least $48,000 here in the Bahamas.[5:08pm]

Goodbye to the Dutch--Erik Van Der Burg just got in with AJ against Allisen Connor's KsJs on a 4c7s2s flop. The turn was the 4s and Erik was drawing dead. He's out in 23rd place for $48,000. [5:05]

Redraw seating--The tables have been redrawn, and the new seating plan is as follows:

Featured table
1 - Christian Harder
2 - Michael Cooper
3 - James D'Ambrosio
4 - Kris Kuykendall
5 - Davd Pham
6 - Justin Phillips
7 - William Thorson
8 - Paul Holub

Table 2
1 - Mikko Pirinen
2 - empty
3 - Jacques Zaicik
4 - Allisen Connor
5 - Marius Olsvik
6 - Craig Hopkins
7 - Pierre Neuville
8 - Eric Van Den Burg

Table 3
1 - Lance Gettler
2 - Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier
3 - Richard Fohrenbach
4 - Evan Tindell
5 - Hafiz Khan
6 - Emil Timberg
7 - Joseph Elpayaa
8 - Glen Chorny

Winner's list updated--For a complete look at the winners up until now, visit the PCA Winners list.

Set up gone bad for Adelstein--"I'd been setting him up all day," Garrett Adelstein said of Hafiz Khan. In the last hand before the re-draw, Adelstein managed to get queens in aganst Khan's pocket tens. A ten on the flop and Adelstein in sent out in 24th place, earning $48,000.

Redraw--With 24 players remaining, they are currently redrawing for the final three tables. Details to follow. We play to the final eight today.

Ramdin rammed--Victor Ramdin's impressive run is over. He has played impeccably over the past three days, grinding his way up from a low of 2,500 to 25th place. He got his last 140,000 in with ace-ten and was up against Joseph Elpayaa's threes. The threes held up and Ramdin is gone.

Victor Ramdin

Tipping the dealer for services rendered--More details have emerged about the hand that saw Thierry Van Den Berg eliminated. The Dutchman and Glen Chorny were all in pre-flop with aces and kings, respectively. When Chorny saw what he was facing, he told the dealer that if he dealt him a king, he'd give him a thousand dollars. The king duly arrived and Chorny delved into his pockets, handing the dealer everything he had. It amounted to about $950, but the king could be worth a whole lot more to Chorny.

Thorson doubles--The action was hard to see on the featured table, but the upshot is William Thorson has doubled up with jacks up against Christian Harder.

Rizen deflated and done--Eric "Rizen" Lynch is out. He pushed his last 140,000 in with king-six and James D'Ambrosio looked at one card and called. D'Ambrosio's one card was also a king, and his jack kicker was better. A six came on the flop, but a jack on the turn, and Rizen is finished.

Butler busted--Rhett Butler is out in 27th. Hand details are not known, but he left the tournament area moments ago. The World Series final table player from 2006 couldn't make it that far this time.

Huge swings--Two massive hands on two different tables. David "Dragon" Pham is almost breathing his last. He just shipped another million dollar pot to Paul Holub, his nemesis today. The board read 3c-Kc-7h-8s-6s and Holub made a call for his tournament life with K-Q. It was good and he rockets up the leaderboard. Moments later, Eric "Rizen" Lynch went to the races against Richard Fohrenbach. Fohrenbach had queens, Lynch A-K. The board bricked and Fohrenbach doubled up, leaving Lynch absolutely crippled.

Chips, chips, chips--The full chip counts from the last break can be found HERE.

Aces cracked, bust-out--First round after the break and Thierry Van Den Berg is out. He found aces, and Glen Chorny had kings, but the king flopped and Thierry was taking the walk, leaving Chorny to stack a chip-leader's stack of about 1,800,000. Ouch.

Thierry Van Den Berg

All photos © Neil Stoddart

We'll be updating all the news from Level 20 in this post. We're moving to 10,000/20,000/3,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 19 PCA news can be found HERE.

Break time--Players are on a 10-minute break.

Elpayaa hits the Dragon--A pair of nines went in ahead for Joe Elpayaa against David Pham's AQ. The board ran out 77322 and Elpayaa doubled up.

Level coming to a close--Level 20 is about to end. We're going to dig into the chips and try to get a good count at the break.

Winner's list updated--For a look at who is making the most money today, check out the PCA Winner's List.

Ballroom paradise--Overnight, the Grand Ballroom has become an island paradise. Doubt it? Check out Neil Stoddart's pictures.

Dull done--John Dull becomes the 30th placed finisher when his ace-king doesn't win the race against Evan Tindell's jacks. They were all in pre-flop and there were no surprises.
[3.10pm]

"Dragon slayer, baby!"--David "Dragon" Pham takes a sizeable hit to his sizeable stack. He bets 250,000 on a flop of 4h-9h-2d, but Paul Holub moves 280,000 more into the pot, putting himself all in. Pham folds and Holub's supporters chant "Dragon slayer," from the rail.

All the money was going in--Magnus Karlsson and Miko Pirinen just got it all in pre-flop behind queens and kings, respectively. The flop brought both a king and a queen, and Thierry Van Den Berg noted that Magnus was down to one out. Even that hope was snatched away when Richard Fohrenbach admitted that he'd folded a queen pre-flop. Pirinen doubled up.

Nothing Dull here

--His mom says it's in the blood. Both sides of Jonathan "KidPokerJD" Dull's family love to gamble, and he is no exception. 24 year old Jonathan is sitting at Table 2 this afternoon. His mother, Nahid, is on the rail. She and his father follow their professional poker player son to many of his tournaments. She says she's calm inside and is thinking positively, but she doesn't want to know his chip count. It's a superstition she has. Jonathan's sister, Jacqueline, was at his side in 2006, when KidPokerJD finished 7th at the EPT Barcelona event. It seems poker is a family affair for the Dulls.[3:02pm]

BigEgypt still walking

--19 year old professional poker player Joe "BigEgypt" Elpayaa has quite a crew with him here in the Bahamas. His buddy, Steve Marifjeren, has been here with him all week, but his brother and four friends arrived today to surprise him. They're already coming up with Joe chants. The leader so far is "Walk like an Egyptian." At the break, Joe had 664,000 in chips. So, to all the "Cashville" buddies out there reading on the internet, Joe is still walking the walk. [3:01pm]

Break report--I talked to some of the people on the rail just after play resumed here in the Grand Ballroom. Kris Kuykendall's parents say he had about $1.56 million in chips at the break. They say he's in good shape and feels comfortable and relaxed. His dad says Kris likes his table.

Michael Cooper's wife, Tina, says he had about $1.2 million in chips. She says he won a big hand just before the break to bust someone out. Tina says Michael is "in a zone." [2:58pm]

Battleship locking and loading--Lee Jones is making the call. The buzz is getting louder next to the blogger table, as players start to gather for the Battleship tournament. It gets underway in just a few minutes, so stay tuned for updates. [2:57pm]

D'Ambrosio: "I gotta defend my raise"--It's a raise to 49,000 from James "I was stuck 60k at blackjack" D'Ambrosio. Evan Tindell pushes all in for 219,000 more from the small blind. D'Ambrosio talks and talks and finally says, "I gotta defennd my raise. I have Q7, I call." And so he does. It's Qs7s vs Tindell's As3s. D'Ambrosio calls for a queen on the river. He doesn't get it anywhere and Tindell doubled up. [2:45pm]

Ramdin burned-- Victor Ramdin just paid off Dragon Pham's 165,000 river bet, starng at a board of A-K-4-4-3. Pham tabled ace-seven, Victor mucked, presumably holding a king. [2.40pm]

Van Den Berg likes ladies-- Thierry Van Den Berg just doubled up after he flopped a set of queens and got James D'Ambrosio to call his all in. D'Ambrosio mucked, but claimed to have king-queen, and still had a rubdown for Van Den Berg: "You weren't as good as you thought you were," he said. And: "You almost slow-rolled yourself into trouble." The amiable Dutchman smiled and stacked his chips, knowing that he might be as good as he thinks he is. Having made the final table of the past two EPTs in Dublin and Baden, as well as a Masters Classics fifth place, Van Den Berg is Europe's form player.
2.30pm

Hiccup--Sorry for the brief delay, folks. We had an isolated power failure that dropped our internet service for a bit. We're back at full power. [2:29pm]

One player per blind-- We start this level wth 30 players, having lost ten in the opening round and a half. The big blind is now 20,000, which is what each player started with at the beginning of the tournament; an entire existence rendered in the form of two red chips.

We'll be updating all the news from Level 19 in this post. We're moving to 8,000/16,000/2,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 18 PCA news can be found HERE and HERE.

Reed falls with A9--All in with A9 against Paul Holub's AK, the last thing Reed wanted to see was a king on the flop. No miracle runners and Reed is out.

No club! Yes, a club.--It's a three way pot with a flop of Kd3cQc. Michael Cooper bets out 100,000. John Zioulas tanks and eventually puts in his final 176,000. Cooper calls to see Zioulas' QJ. Cooper has 8c9c. The turn blanks out, but the river is the 5c. Zioulas is eliminated.

At it again-- And now Richard doubles Magnus up again. (See previous post). This time Magnus has J-J, Richard K-8 and there's no improvement.
[1.53pm]

Double-up, double-down-- Magnus Karlsson and Richard Fohrenbach are playing their own game on table five. First Richard doubles up Magnus, when his K-10 can't overtake Magnus's A-4. Then Magnus returns the favour and doubles up Fohrenbach when both players flop a king but Fohrenbach's kicker plays.
[13.45]

Chop-chop-- The board read 9s-10h-8d-Qd-Jh when David Pham slid in 120,000. Pierre Neuville, from Belgium, had some thinking to do, but eventually called and announced he was playing the board. So was Pham and they chopped it.
[13.40]

Elpayaa gives some back-- Joseph Elpayaa just doubled up Richard Fohrenback, whose kings held up against Elpayaa's ace-nine.
[1.28]

Klodnicki completes his descent-- Christopher Klodnicki started the day sixth in chips, but he's now out, having been brutally beaten by the deck this afternoon. His last hand was typical: he had ace-queen, his opponent, Joseph Elpayaa, had tens. They were all in pre-flop and it looked good for Klodnicki when a queen appeared in the window. An ace turned, making two pair, but the jack on the river filled a straight for the tens and Klodnicki was out.
[1.20]

Chinni gets unlucky, broke--Jesse Chinni is on the rail after making the mistake of getting AQ in against Craig Hopkins' AJ pre-flop. The inability to see the suckout coming means Chinni is done for the day. [1:18pm]

Cooper's nines--'Twas a scary board of 678 with two hearts when Michael Cooper got his 9h9d in against Christopher Klodnicki. Turned out, Cooper was in decent shape. Klodnicki held 5c7c and missed. Cooper is up close to a million now. 1:13pm

Kuykendall crew--Kris Kuykendall came into this world 25 years ago today. This afternoon, his parents are standing at the rail here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, watching their "baby" play for nearly $8.6 million in prize money. His rail crew is a little smaller today. His sister and childhood friend had to return home, but they're reportedly checking in here for updates (we'll do our best, guys). Kris' parents are a strong support system, though, unwavering at the rail. Kris' mom says after play ended here in the Grand Ballroom last night, they all had a sandwich, went back to the room, and made A LOT of phone calls. For everyone following Kris who was second in chips at the start of play today, he's now seated at Table 3 along with starting chip leader, David Pham. A lot of chips on that table, folks. A lot of chips. 1:08pm

Tsang done-- Elton Tsang's tournament is over. He moved his short stack in with 3-3; he ran into Michael Cooper's larger stack and J-J. No outdraws this time and Tsang's day is done.
1.05pm

Pham's flames fizzle-- David "Dragon" Pham just tried to send Lance Gettler's tournament up in smoke, but Gettler survived and double through the chip leader. All the chips went in on an ace-high flop, and they both had one. But Gettler had A-J in the hole; Pham only had A-9. The kicker played.12.55pm

Colin out--Bryan Colin is no longer in his seat at the final table. The pro player from New York is 24. He's a mixed game specialist who plays high stakes games online and live. The world traveler used to be a trader on Wall Street. Today, he finishes short of the big cash.

Flushed--Magnus Karlsson likes him some spades, especially the fourth one on the river that kept him alive against Christopher Klodnicki. Fortunately for Klodnicki, it's not a big hit.

No break--There is no break as we barrel into Level 19. [12:48pm]

We'll be updating all the news from the end of Level 18 in this post. We're still at 6,000/12,000/2,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top.

Mahoney outdrawn-- Jared Mahoney, the PokerStars qualifier, is today's first casualty, and he got unlucky. He was all in pre-flop with K-Q and was called by Evan Tindell. Tindell was dominated, with K-J, but the jack flopped and by the end of it, Tindell had a full house. "Sorry, man," he offered. "That's sick," was Mahoney's only comment as he shook hands with all and departed. He's $32,000 richer.
12.45pm

Victor victorious, doubles up-- It started slowly but suddenly there was a rush of activity. Victor Ramdin was loving a flop of 4d-4c-7c, especially with his A-4 in hand. All his money found its way into the center of the table, and Craig Hopkins called. Hopkins tabled Ac-Jc for the flush draw, but turn and river bricked, doubling up the Team PokerStars Pro member.
12.40pm

EPT Live--We'll be updating the news from all tables, but if you'd like a live look at the featured table, check out EPTLive.com.

Dream in the making--If you had looked at Michael Cooper's original airline ticket, you would think that he wasn't supposed to be here right now. They were scheduled to leave on Monday. "I never thought we would be here," his wife Tina told me a few moments ago with a nervous smile. They now have open-tickets to return to Atlanta, Georgia, because Michael is among the final 40 here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. To get prepared for today, Michael and Tina ate some dinner last night and rented a movie. Now, he's taken his place at Table 5 with 426,000 in chips. That's a below-average stack, but anything can happen here. Michael and all the others left in this tournament are guaranteed to take home $32,000. So for the family reading this at home, your boy is well on his way to an American dream here in the Bahamas.

Play resumes--Play is underway with 40 players starting the day. [12:20pm]

Things have changed in the Grand Ballroom at the Atlantis. What was once a convention centre hosting a poker tournament -- think the Rio, Las Vegas, with fish -- is now a full-on tiki lounge hosting a poker tournament. Think Paradise Island, palm trees, a parrot, a straw cocktail shack, an aquarium, and a treasure chest stocked with the EPT trophy and bounteous wealth.

The bartender in the cocktail hut is wearing a busy, multi-colored shirt. And even Lee Jones is wearing a tie. It's a special day.

The reason? Today we play down from 40 to eight, and we edge ever nearer the $2 million first prize. The television crews have been industriously recreating the Bahamian beauty in the tournament room, while the players themselves have probably been trying to sleep and not really succeeding, dreaming of diving head first into the heap of gold coins.

A reminder of how many gold coins are up for grabs can be found by clicking HERE for the full tournament payout list. The names of those players who have already registered their wins can be found HERE.

They last 40 are unbagging their heaps of chips as I type. Mountains and mountains of red and blue disks are appearing in front of the remaining players, soon to be put to work. For a list of who has what, click HERE for the current chip-counts. We'll keep that list updated throughout the day.

For nine of them, their time in the spotlight has already begun. The cameras are out, the bleechers are packed and you can watch it all live online if you like. The live webcast begins today, so click HERE for the coverage. (The full edited version won't be on television for a while yet.)

We'll have all the updates here throughout the day, as well as interviews and profiles with the players and their families. This is also the best place to find the best tournament photographs.

Continue to check back as we go all the way to the final table.

In any poker tournament, the multitude of styles in the field is bound to run the gamut. There are the people who just want to survive until the money. There are the wide-eyed chip-slingers who play for nothing but first place. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is the definitive example of the phenomenon.

At the beginning of the day, all eyes in the tournament room were on big-stacked Eric "Rizen" Lynch. He came out of Day 2 as the chip leader with a commanding 526,900 in chips. His nearest competitor was Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier at 435,000. While both players come from a feared subset of the poker tournament circuit, it soon became clear that there were other people who were not prepared to hand over their chips.

Enter the Dragon.

David "The Dragon" Pham is no wild, screaming, fire-breathing pro. To hear him make a noise or even break more than a small smile is an occasion. Today, the well-known pro let his stack do the talking. By day's end, Pham had risen above the two million chip mark and sat with a comfortable chip lead.

David Pham

Pham's story has been told in many venues over the years. For an untold tale, we had to look to Sweden's Emil Timberg. Not so long ago, Timberg won a freeroll sponsored by PokerStars and a Swedish newspaper. Having never played for real money online and having little to no big poker experience to his name, Timberg has proven to be a player with whom one shouldn't trifle. Late in the day, Timberg made a huge call with two-pair on a three-heart KQJ96 board. Tonight, he finishes fourth in chips.

While not an ongoing story of success tonight, Jeff Neuman is more than happy with how he ended the day. Neuman qualified for the PCA in a PokerStars Steps tournament for $7.50. The athletic club ownder from Maryland finished in 56th place for $16,000.

Jeff Neuman

The members of Team PokerStars Pro spent a good portion of the day beating each other into pieces. Barry Greenstein's kings couldn't outrun Hevad Khan's aces. While Khan got a copy of Greenstein's "Ace on the River," he would not be able to finish the day. ElkY put Khan out toward the end of play. Andre Akkari was also among the players who didn't finish the day. Remaining in the field tonight are ElkY and Victor Ramdin.

ElkY

Victor Ramdin

PokerStars qualifier Kris Kuykendall finished the day second in chips. He's here with family and a friend and will celebrate his 25th birthday tomorrow. At one point yesterday, the one-time high school wrestling champion was down to 17,000 in chips. He finished the day with 83,000 in chips and managed to work his stack over a million before going to bed tonight. Kuykendall is a VIP Club Supernova who qualified for the PCA in a Steps tournament. While he has a business degree from the University of Cincinnati, he's got his eye on a the $2 million first prize to fund his retirement.

The end of play saw 40 players finish with chips, including a sea of other notables including William Thorson, Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Eric Van der Berg, Rhett Butler, and Thierry Van Den Berg. Tomorrow, the field will resume at noon to play down to the final table of eight. Day 4 will also see the start of televised play and broadcast on EPT Live.

Here's a quick look at how the news looked from the camera's eye just before the end of the day.

Many a story played itself out here today. While the main event wound its way through the coolers, bad beats, and big bluffs, the Third Annual PokerStars World Championship of Battleship Poker also started in the Grand Ballroom of the Atlantis today. It was a good day for Imper1um and suckoutqueen. Find the details HERE.

If you're looking for some hard numbers from the day, check out the PCA Chip Counts and PCA Winners pages.

For all the action from the $8,000 main event, see all of the updates from Day 3.

Day3 players to see the money
Level 13 news
Level 14 news
Level 15 news
Level 16 news
Level 17 news
Level 18 news

All photos © Neil Stoddart

We'll be updating all the news from Level 18 in this post. We're moving to 6,000/12,000/2,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 17 PCA news can be found HERE.

It had to end, but it wasn't pleasant-- Asa Smith is the unfortunate man who's tournament is over at the last. He flopped the nuts with his 8-9 on a 7-6-10 board. Glen Chorny had also hit pretty hard too, and his 6-7 then got even better when a 6 came on the turn to fill him up and send Smith out. That's it for the day. Counts and wrap to follow.

Ramdin survives-- The first called all-in of the hand-for-hand period was Victor Ramdin's. The Team PokerStars Pro member had A-K and chip-leader David Pham had K-9. Pham flopped an inside straight draw but it never filled and Ramdin doubled up.

Hand-for-agonising-hand-- We're down to 41 players and only 40 come back tomorrow. So we're going hand for hand across the five tables until that unfortunate sole is lost.

How do you know when someone's bluffing?--When they push all-in, get a call, and muck their cards without seeing what their opponent is holding. That's the last chapter in the story that was Peter Jetten's PCA. With the board reading KJ9Q6 with three hearts, Jetten moved all-in. Emil Timberg, the freeroller from Sweden, tanked hard before making the tough call. He had KQ. Jetten's out and Timberg is healthy again at 900,000. [8:33pm]

Friedberg finished-- John Friedberg, who started the day fifth in chips, has become the latest casualty of this brutal day. Asa Smith pushed his short-stack in from the hijack; Friedberg had a decision in the big blind. Smith only just had him covered, but it was still a decision for his tournament life. He called, flipped K-Q and Smith showed eights. The board bricked and Smith all but doubles up, while Friedberg is out.
[8.20pm]

Double double for ElkY--ElkY looked like he was about to go the way of the 1,100 or so other folks who are on the beach or in the bar. Instead, inside of two hands he doubled up twice. Once, however, was at the expense of fellow Team PokertStars Pro member Hevad Khan. Khan is now looking for something else to do tonight. 8:19pm

Winners enclosure-- As they've continued to fall, we've continued to update the list of winners. Click HERE to see where all the money went.

Hanging around-- A lot of players have entered the mandatory double up or go home mode, Paul Holub, of the United States among them. He pushed pre-flop and ran into Christian Harder's aces. But the taxi was cancelled when a five flopped and Holub survived to double up.
[7.55pm]

Battleship report--If you'd like a look at how today's World Championship of Battleship Poker went, check out Howard Swains' report HERE.

Back in action--With 45 players remaining, we are back in action.

Day drawing to a close-- We know better than to count our chickens before they have hatched, but there's a good chance that this will be the final level of the day. We need to lose five more players before we get down to the final 40 who will return tomorrow.

One $8,000 tournament was never going to be enough for the battalion of poker players that has made its way to the Bahamas this week, and as the main event continues, there have been hundreds of cash games and sit and goes underway, as well as two $1,000 side-events.

Then, this afternoon, the third annual PokerStars World Championship of Battleship Poker began in the Grand Ballroom, giving a head-to-head, laptop-to-laptop fix for all those stumping up the $2,000 entry fee.

For those who haven't seen this before, Battleship Poker made its debut at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2006. Everyone remembers the kids' game, where two players sit opposite one another and try to sink each other's fleet of ships by calling out their grid reference numbers.

The World Championship of Battleship Poker

Poker Battleship follows a similar format: two players flip open their laptops and sit across the table from one another, then log on to PokerStars and play a heads-up sit and go.

These kind of matches happen all the time online, but they are significantly more spicy when table talk (instead of table type) is possible. And the Caribbean backdrop doesn't hurt either: there may or may not have been a couple of cocktails involved.

We played the first flight this afternoon, where the 16 winners from the first round of 32 progressed to the second stage and were pitted against one another. The surviving eight, then went through, and played four match-ups.

The final four from today all made the money, but still played one more match. The same thing will happen tomorrow and that will leave four players to scrap for the major cash as the main event plays down to the final table.

Today's final four included a couple of notable names. Vanessa Selbst made two World Series final tables in 2007, adding to her 7th place finish in a $2000 hold 'em event in 2006.

Sorel Mizzi doesn't need a whole lot of introduction either. Imper1um has been tearing up the online tables for a good long while, and he's in his element here. Last year he was the champion of the Battleship event at the PCA. Today, he's back in the cash.

Sorel Mizzi

Just a bit ago ago, they took on Matt Kay and Mike Glasser for the last two spots. And both won. Those two go through to await the final players from tomorrow's flight. We'll have the coverage here, of course.

Meanwhile, here is the prize structure:

1st - $44,800
2nd - $25,600
3rd-4th - $12,800
5th - 8th - $8,000

Photos © Neil Stoddart

We'll be updating all the news from Level 16 in this post. We're moving to 5,000/10,000/1,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 16 PCA news can be found HERE.

Pirinen profitsMikko Pirinen just took down a decent pot in something of a cooler. His A-10 filled a straight on the river when a queen popped out; that same lady gave Christopher Klodnicki a set with his pocket queens.
7.35pm

Fantastic Pham-- David "Dragon" Pham just added another 200,000-odd to his stack, courtesy of Garrett Adelstein. Pham bet 80,000 on a board of 6s-10s-4c, which Adelstein called. The turn was the 2d; check, check. The river was the 3s, completing a potential spade flush, and Pham bet another 85,000 at it. Garrett called, but mucked when Pham showed K-10 for top pair. "He knows when to value bet," said BJ Nemeth. He sure does.
7.30pm

David Pham

Rizen moved again, more misery-- Eric "Rizen" Lynch has sat on about three different tables today but has never managed to get it easy. He started out with Elky and John Friedberg, he was moved to Peter Jetten and William Thorson's table, and his latest move has landed him beside David Pham and Garrett Adelstein, both chipped right up.
7.25pm

Getting close to day's end--We're down to 46 players. Play will end at 40 players.

Jetten bounces Crawford--Chris Crawford just got his money in good. On a 789 flop, Crawford check-raised all-in from the small blind. Jetten called with QT. Crawford held A7. He was good until the river, a six. That's the tournament for Crawford.

Non-action Pham-- David "Dragon" Pham is our chip leader and he got most of them by breathing his fire across the field and shrivelling them up. However, there's more to his game than just flames, and he just made a huge laydown against Kristoffer Edberg. Edberg bet 150,000 on a king-high board, into a pot of about 200,000. Pham thought but folded and Edberg showed pocket kings. Pham was delighted with his fold.

Chip counts updated--We're down to 49 players. If you care to see how the chip counts looked at the beginning of this level, check out the PCA Chip Counts page.

Thrilla--PCA Step 1 qualifier Jeff Neuman who entered this event for $7.50 says, "I'm thrilled." It's rare to hear anyone say that after busting out of a tournament, but Neuman is an exception. He's happily walking away with $16,000 after busting out in 56th place. [7:09pm]

Nosebleed poker--Diego Perez's table was broken and he carried about 700,000 to his new one. Within two hands he was down to about 20,000 after successive double-ups of other players. The first was Jesse Chinni, a PokerStars qualifier from the United States. Chinni's kings were good against A-J and he now sits with about 900,000. Then Perez also shipped plenty to Christopher Klodnicki. Eric Van Den Burg, also on the table, was left shaking his head and wondering where his hand-out is coming from.

Good news, bad news for Team PokerStars Pro--The good news for Team PokerStars Pro is that Victor Ramdin just made the nuts for a double-up. The bad news is ElkY is steaming after a confounding hand that he'll be thinking about for a bit. Facing a raise and a call, ElkY re-raised from the small blind with AQ. Jose Cuenca decided it was time to put ElkY to a test and pushed in another 335,000. ElkY passed the test and called to see Cuenca's JdTd. Let it suffice to say, AQ didn't hold. ElkY is still alive, but with about half the chips he had a few minutes ago. [6:48pm]

Victor Ramdin

Live by the tens, die by the tens--Christopher Klodnicki decided he'd had enough of Diego Perez's bullying. When Klodnicki picked up jacks on the button, he came in for a raise, and Perez re-raised from the blinds. Perez decided the re-raise looked too big and put Klodnicki on some sort of re-steal. So, he pushed. Maybe to Klodnicki's surprise, Perez called. No worries, though. Perez held tens. The board blanked out and Klodnicki jumped over one million chips. [6:32pm]

Play resumes--Play in the main event has resumed. [6:25pm]

Mizzi, Selbst stay afloat--For those interested in the Battleship event, Sorel Mizzi and Vanessa Selbst have advanced to Day 2. They will play the two finalists from tomorrow. A full report will be out in a bit. [6:20pm]

Players on break--Players will be back in just a bit. So will we.

We'll be updating all the news from Level 16 in this post. We're moving to 4,000/8,000/1,000. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 15 PCA news can be found HERE.

Level 16 ends--The 16th level of the 2008 PCA has ended with 58 players remaining. Tournament organizers are planning to play down to 40 tonight. Updated chip counts and bust outs coming soon. [6:14pm]

Battleship players in the money--We'll have a full report on the World Championship of Battleship Poker coming soon, but in the meantime, we thought we'd let you know that Flight 1's starting field is now in the money with the final four playing as I type. Last year's winner Sorel Mizzoo is playing vs. Mike Glasser. Vanessa "suckoutqueen" Selbst is facing off against Matt Kay. [6:07pm]

Sorel Mizzi

Winner list updated--The list of 2008 PCA Winners has been updated.

Sickness--It's a three-way pot with Pierre Neuville raising, and ElkY, and Bryan Colin calling. A flop of TdQs3h draws a 35,000 bet from Neuville. Both his opponents call. The turn is a seven of clubs. Now, ElkY starts the betting for 60,000, Neuville calls, and Colin min-raises. Now, ElkY decides to fold. Neuville seemed to go deep into the tank, before announcing "All-in." Colin insta-calls to see Neuville's TT. Colin says, "That is so sick" and tables 77. The nine in the river meant Colin had to ship another 184,000 across the table. [6:02pm]

New chip millionaire--Diego Perez loves France. Actually, he loves Frenchman Jacques Zaicik. It was TT for Perez, AK for Zaicik. For a million chips. Perez flopped a set, Zaicik flopped, turned, and rivered...nothing. Zaicik hadn't even gotten used to the new chip smell. He's just picked them up from Duy Le, who is now on the verge of being finished. [5:49pm]

Getting through them--The field continues to thin here at the PCA, with the latest count finding just 66 remaining in the main event. There's a relatively flat pay structure, meaning the first 70 players all get the same money, $16,000. The first jump comes when the 51st player is eliminated and we expect it to slow a bit as that mini-bubble approaches.
[5.30pm]

Keeping the pun-makers at bay-- He's no doubt heard all the puns in the world surrounding his cinematic namesake, but Rhett Butler is also a name in the poker world. Today the World Series fifth placed finisher from 2006 is going deep here. He has 238,000 at last count, and is not gone, with the wind or otherwise.
[5.20]

Klodnicki doubles--It's a good day when aces don't get cracked. It's a good week when aces don't get cracked this deep in the field. Just ask Christopher Klodnicki. He got paid in full with aces on a kigh-high flop against an opponent who held KQ. Klodnicki is up to 270,000. [5:15pm]

Outdraw, double-up--Thierry Van Den Berg is heading in the right direction, courtesy of a pretty nasty outdraw. All in pre-flop, the Dutchman showed 9-9; Hunter Frey, his American opponent, tabled Q-Q. The nine flopped, and everyone winced, but then Frey also picked up a club flush-draw. But the river was a brick and Van Den Berg is up to about 380,000.

Selected chip counts updated--We will have a full list of chip counts at the end of this level. Until then, we have added some selected to chip counts to the PCA Chip Counts page.

Winner list updated--The list of 2008 PCA Winners has been updated. [4:55pm]

Now that's what I call a freeroll--A great story is developing surrounding Emil Timberg, from Gothenburg, Sweden. The young player won his seat here via a series of freeroll tournaments hosted on PokerStars in association with "Slitz" magazine in Scandinavia. He has never deposited any money in an online poker account and plays only in the freeroll tournaments. He's had a wonderful day today -- including flopping quad fives -- and is currently sitting with about 600,000. The freeroll continues all the way into the thousands.

Color up--The pink chips, worth $500, have been removed from play. The smallest denomination are now the gold $1,000 chips. We also have blue chips worth $5,000 and red, worth $10,000.
[4.30pm]

We'll be updating all the news from Level 15 in this post. We're moving to 3,000/6,000/500. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 14 PCA news can be found HERE.

Level over--Level 15 is done. We'll have updated chip counts and bust outs very soon.

Non-stop action on the table of death--The table featuring William Thorson, Peter Jetten and Eric Lynch is undoubtedly the one to watch. Thorson is an action player, raising at least three hands an orbit. Lynch is utterly fearless, and isn't scared of Thorson. Jetten is going deep in here, just like he did last month in the Five Diamond Classic at the Bellagio. Sparks are flying. Also seated are Jeff Neuman, a short-stack at the start of the day, but who has shoved his way back into contention. And Craig Hopkins, a PokerStars qualifier from England, who is continuing his silent progress.
[4.30pm]

Shipping out--We should also mention the World Championship of Battleship Poker is underway here at Atlantis. Pictures and stories will be coming a little bit later. [4:36pm]

Jose Cuenca flops two, doubles up--Cuenca picked a good time to raise with 78. The 78K flop missed his opponent, but that didn't stop them from getting it all in on the turn. Cuenca was up against a pair of nines. His hand held and he's one happy Spaniard. [4:36pm]

Jetten gets halved--Not a good level so far for one-time chip leader Peter Jetten. Looks like William Thorson got the bulk of the half million missing from Jetten's stack. [4:22pm]

Neuman bumped...from Battleship--Jeff Neuman, the man from Maryland who qualified for the PCA in the PCA Steps tournaments for $7.50, has just been bumped...to Day 2 of the World Championship of Battleship Poker event. He was signed up to play today, but is still alive in the main event. In fact, he just doubled up. He was signed up for the Battleship event Day 1, but had to get a pass to play tomorrow. Now he's hoping he won't be available tomorrow either. Neuman is here with his wife, on a breif vacation from running an athletic club in Maryland. [4:02pm]

ElkY slew Thew--Julian Thew is gone. He took a huge hit earlier and re-raised all in after ElkY had raised with pocket tens. Thew had A-10h but failed to hit and the Team PokerStars Pro member took out the EPT Baden champion. ElkY now has close to 600,000.[3.55pm]

Julian Thew

Akkari out--Team PokerStars Pro member Andre Akkari is out. No details how, as yet, but he's now railbirding friends still in the tournament. Victor Ramdin, ElkY and Hevad Khan are the three remaining Team PokerStars Pro members still in the field.[3.45pm]

Busting out, staying in--Irina Liepina's day is done. She found queens but ran into kings and there were no miracles. Different story two table away, though, where Ross Romash doubled up by cracking kings with A-J. He flopped the straight and John Friedberg was forced to pay him off.[3.40pm]

Chip counts updated--Selected chip counts have been updated on the PCA Chip counts page. [3:40pm]

PCA winners--We have just started a list of all the people you cashed. You can keep track of the cashers on the 2008 PCA Winners page. [3:30pm]

Back to it--Level 15 just began with 106 players remaining. We're playing to 40 today. [3:15pm]

We'll be updating all the news from Level 13 in this post. We're moving to 2,500/5,000/500. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top. Level 13 PCA news can be found HERE.

Nibbling into the break-The last hand of the level on table nine actually went deep into the break. Looking at a board of 7c-Qs-8s-Jh-5c and a river bet of 70,000 from Emil Timberg, Eric Liu tanked and tanked and tanked. Timberg called a clock, and with about five seconds remaining, Liu called. He showed K-J for second pair, but Timberg flipped pocket eights for the set.

Table of death--The newest table of death includes the new chip leader, Peter Jetten. The Canadian PokerStars qualifier has more than 1 million chips and sits at the same table with William Thorson and Eric Lynch. [2:59pm]

Peter Jetten

Petersen down--Jacob Petersen open pushed with QJ and got called by Lance Gettler's AK. Big slick held and Petersen out. [2:56pm]

Michaels double-up--William Thorson just doubled the stack of Alex Michaels. Michaels flopped top two with ace-ten, and Thorson refused to show his losing hand.
[2.55pm]

Cousineau out--Tony Cousineau's tournament is over. He was all in with A-10 and ran into William Thorson's A-Q. No miracles, and Cousineau was out in 114th.
[2.50pm]

Thew ships 150,000--Swedish blogger Lina just reported with some faintly disguised glee that Swedish player Emil Timberg just took down a 300,000 pot from Julian Thew. Timberg had A-K, Julian didn't show.
[2.45]

Enough of the outs, what about the ins--For obvious reasons, it's easy to report on those seen leaving the tournament arena. But there are still plenty of players in the money who have flown under the radar slightly so far. Here are a handful:

Ted Lawson -- Made the final table in EPT Baden this season. Also has a World Series bracelet to his name.
David "Dragon" Pham -- Hardly a newcomer to tournament poker; his winnings are in excess of $6 million, and he has two World Series bracelets. Here, the professional from Atlantic City is a PokerStars qualifier.
Irina Liepina--Liepina is the wife of British professional Steve Jelinek, who also entered here. But Irina has the bragging rights in the homestead, having progressed all the way into the money. She's one of only two women remaining in the tournament. A PokerStars qualifier.
Rosamelia Ferreia--The other remaining woman in the field, the player from Brazil shares a table with Liepina.
Thierry Van Den Berg--A familiar face on the EPT from Holland. Talkative yet fearsome, he's the go-to guy for a story from the tables. And going deep in a major tournament for the umpteenth time.
2.30pm

The passion of the Mauro--Mauro Stivoli has just been voted most likely to end up at either the final table or infirmary. His victories today have been many. His celebrations, while not out of line, have verged on violent. The passion with which he hugs his sweater borders on homicidal. We have a medic on standby. [2:36pm]

King of ROI--"I'm just so happy to be in the money." That's the Jeff Neuman, who sits at Table 12 with barely a stack left. Doesn't matter to him though. He is now guaranteed $16,000. He got into this event through a PokerStars qualifier for $7.50. [2:33pm]

Bubble boy--The unlucky player of the day is Frederik Agersnap. He started the day with more than 300,000 in chips. Today, he is the bubble boy. [2:30pm]

Frederik Agersnap

In the money--All remaining players are in the money. [2:20pm]

Bubble approacheth--Play is tightening up now as we get ever-closer to the money. One hundred twenty-three players remain. Play will go hand-for-hand when it gets down to 122.

Chip counts updated--The selected PCA Chip Counts have been updated. [1:59pm]

Levi fades, out--Nicholas Levi just got all his chips in with KQ against Italy's Mauro Stivoli's AK. No queens or other miracles and Levi is out just short of the money. Stivoli, the PokerStars qulaifier from Italy, has made AK good for him twice today. [1:47pm]

Nicholas Levi

Level 14 about to begin--The big board tells us 130 players remain. Players are getting ready to take their seats. The $100 chips have been removed from the table, and a new $10,000 one has made its way into circulation. It's red.

We'll be updating all the news from Level 13 in this post. We're moving to 2,000/4,000/400. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top.

Level 13 ends--Level 13 is now in the books. Looks like we'll get close to the money in Level 14. Updated chip counts will be available soon.

Khan vs Robin Hood--Sounds like a great movie, huh? In this case, it's reality. We just saw a Team PokerStars Pro vs Team PokerStars Pro cooler. It was aces for Hevad Khan and kings for Barry Greenstein. They got it all-in on an all-heart flop and the aces held. Greenstein, as always, signed his copy of "Ace on the River" for Khan. There are around 130 players remaining. Hevad sits close to 340,000 in chips. [1:15pm]

Hevad Khan

Presto--Matt Zoorob started the day at Table 5, Seat 5. A few minutes ago, he got it all in from the small abling against AT. Zoorob pushed out his pocket fives. "Table 5, Seat 5? There's no way I'm laying this down." His fives held and Zoorob is still in the running for the money. [1:09pm]

Akkari misses, still hanging on--Brazil blogger Maria reports that Team PokerStars Pro member Andre Akkari just missed his nut flush draw and has now entered the land of the short stacks. [1:02pm]

Slick double-up--Mauro Stivoli, a PokerStars qualifier from Italy, just pulled off a double-up against Rob Lederer, another qualifier. Lederer raised pre-flop, Stivoli moved in for 81,000 more and Lederer tanked. Eventually he called, and showed A-10h. Stivoli's A-K was good.
12.50

All-in, no call--Three times I've passed by table 18 and three times I've seen short-stacked Richard Fohrenbach all-in. Each time it was pre-flop, and each time he found no callers. Still plugging away.
12.45

Class of the titans, redux--And who is now in the one-seat at Eric Lynch and Jon Friedberg's table? Yeah, that's ElkY. I'd say eleven other tables have to feel really lucky right now. [12:45pm]

Khan gets even with Thew--Some shocking gamesmanship now from Hevad Khan, who came over to greet table-mate Julian Thew this morning, lent over to shake his hand, and poured coffee all down Julian's white trousers. Totally accidental, of course, but these two do have some previous, so no one would have blamed Hevad if it had been deliberate. En route to his EPT Baden triumph, Julian took a massive pot off Hevad when he called a pre-flop raise with 5-3, bluffed on the turn and filled a straight on the river to crack Hevad's jacks. The Team PokerStars Pro player wasn't happy about that, but after the coffee incident today, I guess they're even.
[12.40]

Clash of the titans--Eric "Rizen" Lynch has been moved and now sits at the same table with Jon Friedberg. [12:32pm]

Chorny's set holds--It looked like it might be sickness for Glen Chorny. He got it all in with a flopped set of sixes against Justin Wright's gutshot and flush draws. Wright missed and Chorny is looking healthy. [12:30pm]

Hevad Khan gives some away--Khan is doing his best to elimate the shorter stacks here. This time, it didn't work. Eugenio Carmoneto got it all in with AJ vs Khan's A9. The best hand held and Eugenio is up to more than 100,000. [12:24pm]

Ezzo's double exit--Bill Ezzo started the day with 49,000 chips and lost them all very early in play...or so he thought. As he walked away, the dealer called, "Excuse me, sir! You're not out." Ezoo came back to find 2,000 worth of chips in front of him. It was enough for a few hands of antes. Finally, he was all-in in the big blind...with 2-4 offsuit. It didn't hold. Ezzo is out just short of the money. [12:20pm]

Big-stack bullies--At the other end of the spectrum, the big stacks can take a few liberties. Peter Jetten, a cash qualifier, raised under-the-gun, Chris Pearsall, an FPP qualifier, reraised 3,500 more. Then William Thorson, the aggressive Swedish player took them both on, bumping it another 85,000. They both folded and Thorson didn't need to show anything except a bit of muscle.
[12:15pm]

Short stacks get them in--A few all in moves on the first couple of hands. First, Jeffrey Neuman doubles up through William Thorson (ace-king good enough), then Jens Eriksson, Neuman's neighbor and even shorter-stacked does the same. His pocket threes were better than Neuman's A-9.
[12:10pm]

The plan for the day--Today's schedule is already decided. We're playing down to 40 players, no matter how long it takes. That might mean a dinner break, it might not. It might mean past midnight, it might not. I'm not prepared to guess.
[12:10pm]

Play begins--Tournament players have just finished unbagging their chips and getting all their instructions from Mike Ward. We're told hand-for-hand play will begin at 122 players. [12:07pm]

One hundred fifty-three players. That's how many we'll see stagger into the Atlantis Grand Ballroom this morning.

Only 120 of those players will walk out of here with anything resembling a smile on their face.

Today, Day 3 of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, will see us hit the money bubble. Over the course of the next several hours, the remaining players will play down to 40 seats before breaking for the day.

We'll be starting at Level 13 today at 2,000/4,000/400 blinds. The average stack going into play today is around 150,000, well enough to give these players some breathing room as they play.

As mentioned last night, Eric "Rizen" Lynch will start the day with the chip lead, 526,900. Team PokerStars Pro Betrand "ElkY" Grospellier sits in second place at 435,000. Full chip counts coming into Day 3 can be found HERE.

Today is also the kickoff of the PokerStars World Championship of Battleship Poker, a $2,000 live heads-up competition, played on PokerStars software.

Keep it here all day long for full coverage.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

by Howard Swains and Brad Willis

Day 2 is the day that the moves are made. Some slide out of contention, some come bludgeoning into view.

When they started at noon today, there were 478 without the knowledge of which way it would go. When they finished tonight, 159 knew that they had had a better day than most.

Of those, Eric "Rizen" Lynch rose the highest. The soft-spoken poker player's poker player spent the day building an admirable stack. Toward the end of the night, he had edged into the top ten in chips. With just minutes to go before the end of the night, Lynch sat looking at a 524/9 two-diamond board. His opponent had just pushed all-in--enough to cut well into Lynch's stack. Lynch pondered for a moment, but it seemed he already knew what he was going to do. He called and flipped two kings. The look on his opponent's face made it clear the call was a good one. His opponent held Ad6d. A non-diamond nine fell on the river and Lynch raked in enough chips to give him the tournament lead at 526,900.

Had Lynch not won the last big pot of the day, the story would be different. Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier spent the day playing the style that has landed him at more than a few final tables. One of his biggest hands of the night came when he went racing for a 200,000 pot with AK vs. QQ. A king on the river put the one-time pro-gamer over the top of the 400,000 mark. The Team PokerStars Pro player sits second in chips at 435,000.

ElkY was not the only Team PokerStars Pro member to finish well today. Hevad Khan, Barry Greenstein, Victor Ramdin, and Andre Akkari have all made it to Day 3.

And also sleeping very soundly tonight will be Julian Thew, the EPT Baden champion, EPT multiple-casher, and all-round EPT hero. He started the day with just more than 16,000 in chips. He ended it with 372,500 and a weary grin. Thew has mastered the art of winning the coin flips at the right moment, finding the hands when he needs them. Or so it seems from the rail.

But the habit of winning at showdown masks an even keener ability to pick up pots without exposing his cards, and also to let them go when he knows he's behind. And he can also grind, which he did for the first three levels, never getting above 30,000. Then suddenly the explosion, and Thew could do no wrong.

Jon Friedberg also spent his day making the right moves at the right times. He was the face of Josh Arieh's demise, not to mention the bane of everone else who sent Friedberg up the ladder with 372,000 in chips.

It wasn't all so happy for the likes of Ryan Collett, who led after day 1A, but perished late on tonight. After the flop, he had 19 outs with two cards to come -- a flush draw, an open-ended straight draw, and two overcards. He missed them all and was out.

Team PokerStars Pro also lost several of its finest. Daniel Negreanu and Isabelle Mercier both left it late, but hit the rail. Noah Boeken and Tom McEvoy, who had started on the same table, left it within about an hour of each other.

Steve Paul-Ambrose, who won here two years ago, also looked a hot prospect after day one. But he took a few wrong turns, and couldn't repeat his success. This wasn't Chris Moneymaker's day either: he was seen leaving the tournament room during the last two levels. Another good show from the 2003 champ, but no cash.

Play is due to start again at noon tomorrow, when the first thing on everyone's mind will be the money. That kicks in for the last 120 standing, which means the first 39 out tomorrow leave with nothing.

The full list of those trying to avoid that fate will be posted HERE as soon as we know it. In the meantime, click the same spot for our approximate counts.

Here's a look back at all the Day 2 coverage.

Day two ready to roll
News in brief
Champions in the bullpen
Consolation prize
Quick hits from day two
A round with Daniel Negreanu
Warming up
Level 11 news
Level 12 news

All photos © Neil Stoddart

We'll be updating all the news from Level 12 in this post. We're moving to 1,500/3,000/400. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top.

Chip counts updated--Selected chip counts of the biggest stacks have been updated on the PCA Chip Counts page.

Unofficial player number--159 players have made it to Day 3 of the PCA. Notable chip counts and Day 2 recap on the way.

Lynch jumps into lead--Eric "Rizen" Lynch has surged to the chip lead after making a big call to end the night. He now has 526,900. More to come soon.

Day 2 play ends--The final hands for Day 2 of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure have been played. The bagging and tagging process is underway. Stay tuned for chip leader updates.

Railbirds jockeying--The rail is a tough place to be near the end of Day 2. There's a lot of jockeying for position going on. It's hard to see even the closest tables from behind the barriers. A binoculars salesperson could make a killing in here right now.

New chip leader--It appears we have a new chip leader and his name is ElkY. Facing a raise to 12,000, ElkY made it 24,000. Another player came over the top for 80,000. The original raiser folded and ElkY called to see QQ. The board didn't help...until the river. The king there gave ElkY the win and more than 400,000 in chips.

Khaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!--We've never seen Hevad Khan so quiet. And for good reason. On a 8hJc2d flop, Khan went all-in for approximately 90,000. His opponent tanked, then called with AsJs. Khan rapped the table and didn't say a word. The 3d on the turn made the hand slightly more interesting. The 4d on the river, though...well, that's a suckout folks. Khan, against his nature, barely made a noise. Instead, he raked in a pot worth more than 200,000.

Two from the Team--Daniel Negreanu might be no more, but Victor Ramdin and ElkY are two of his Team PokerStars Pro teammates still prospering. Ramdin is bossing his table now, forcing other players to put their tournament life on the line. One such moved in free-flop moments ago, and Victor laid his hand down, flashing a king. Meanwhile ElkY just set his opponent in on the river with the board showing Qd-Js-Qs-10h-8s. After a lot of chatter, his opponent folded but showed 9s-7s for the straight and the flush. Good fold?

Friedberg continues to fly--And the Friedberg show continues all the way to the chip lead now. He just busted Josh Arieh with A-K against Arieh's A-Q, all-in pre-flop. Friedberg has a long line of very tall towers, numbering about 380,000 total.

Friedberg talks his way to success--With 40,000 in the pot and a flop of A4J, Jon Friedberg's opponent bet 29,000. Friedberg made it another 36,000 to play. His opponent tanked and Friedberg started talking. "Ace jack and you got lucky?" he asked. After an extended period of thought his opponent mucked AK. Then he stood and grasped Frieberg by the shoulders and asked to see Friedberg's cards. Friedberg responded, "I only show when I bluff."

Goodbye, Kid Poker--After holding onto a short stack for most of the late afternoon, Daniel Negreanu is gone.

Collett to the rail--Day 1A chip leader Ryan Collett just played what he called, "A very strange hand." Collett made it 8,000 from the hijack with 8d9d. The button called. The flop came T74 with two diamonds. Collett pretty much knew his money was going in, it was just a matter of how. Collett checked, the button bet 13,000 and Collet min-raised. The button came over the top for 80,000. Collett pushed and the button had to call for 20,000 more. After a while, the button called with pocket threes. So, any jack, any six, any eight, any nine, and any diamond...and Collett wins. Well, not so much. He missed twice and is now off to enjoy Atlantis.

Chip counts updated -- We have updated the selected counts on the PCA Chip Counts page.

Last longer?--ElkY, Barry Greenstein, Hevad Khan, and Victor Ramdin are the remaining members of Team PokerStars Pro in the 2008 PCA. At the break, Greenstein steppped over to discuss a few things and Team PokerStars Blog's Brazilian writer, Maria, asked if Barry and the other guys have any sort of last longer. "No," Barry said, "but I hear if I last long enough, they give me money." With a wry smile, he walked away. His stack sits near 100,000 with about an hour left to play.

Big stacks get bigger--At the start of level 12, the players leading the charge are those that dominated level 11. And level 10. Eric "Rizen" Lynch took down a sizeable pot moments before the break and now has at least 325,000 and the probable chip lead. Johan Bergqvist is around the 290,000 mark; David Pham something similar, and William Thorsson has 245,000.

We'll be updating all the news from Level 11 in this post. We're moving to 1,200/2,400/300. If you're refreshing on a regular basis, the latest information will be at the top.

Fans Divided--Ohio State is taking on Louisiana State University tonight for the national football championship, and some big fans will be torn. Kris "runningsolo" Kuykendall, a Supernova from Cincinnati, will be fighting for his tournament life here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure as the game begins. He turns 25 on Wednesday, and his family is here to cheer him on to a birthday victory in the Bahamas. They're all decked out in Ohio State gear on the rail, rooting for Kris, a former high school wrestling state champion. Right now, Kris has about 65,000 in chips and needs to double up.

Odds on Ramdin--While walking the floor, we're told by Greg Raymer that Victor Ramdin was offered 5-1 on an unknown amount of money that he wouldn't make Day 2. At the time, Ramdin was down to 2,500 chips. Today, Ramdin has more than 150,000 and a big smile on his face. With 196 players remaining, the chip average is about 115,000. We are scheduled to play until about 8pm tonight. I'd put the chances of us hitting the money at...well, it's just not gonna happen.

Tough break--Ryan Collett, the PokerStars qualifier who led after day 1A just had his table broken. He picked up his 140,000-odd chips and found his new spot - immediately to the right of David "Dragon" Pham, who is sitting with something close to 290,000. Ouch.

Hey, look who is here!--We've just spotted John Ford. We're just sure how he slipped by us over the last day or so, but it's good to see him. Ford final tabled the PCA last year, winning $550,000 for his third place finish. He's still in today, sitting with a moderately short stack.

Double-up for Thew--Julian Thew, who started the day with only 16,000 in chips has just doubled up. With around 70K in the pot and the board reading 8h8d3c2s, Thew put the rest of his chips (around 25K) in the pot. His opponent thought for an age before calling. When Thew reveled 78 offsuit, his opponent mucked. Apparently, he was drawing dead.

No repeat for Steve--Steve Paul-Ambrose will not repeat his 2006 championship at the PCA. After facing a button raise, Steve put it all-in with 77. After no small amount of thought, the button called for more than half his stack with AQ. An ace on the flop and no seven forthcoming, and Steve Paul-Ambrose is out.

Chip counts updated-- Selected chip counts from the end of Level 10 can be found on the PCA Chip Counts page.

Chip, chip, chip leader Much is known about the Scandinavian domination of the EPT. And just because we're now in the Caribbean, it doesn't mean those pale-faced Nordics are off their game. Probable chip leader at the moment is Johan Bergqvist, from Sweden, who is the right side of 300,000 at the moment.

Chasing the second title Yesterday, we ran through the players chasing an elusive second EPT title, but missed off the name of Rueben Peters, EPT Dublin champion in season four. That could be a major oversight because Peters is still in the field today and sitting with about 80,000.

Playing time--Tourney director Mike Ward confirms, we will be playing this level and one more before breaking for the night. 234 players remain.

Thor Hansen's departure--Thor Hansen departed at the end of Level 10 after running his shortstack headlong into kings.

Akkari accelerates - News reaches us that Andre Akkari just doubled up to about 300,000. He had queens, he was up against A-K and won the race when a queen flopped.

Rizen rising - Eric "Rizen" Lynch, the online sensation who made a splash at the 2006 and 2007 World Series, has been a silent assassin today, moving up to the neighborhood of 280,000. He recently took a bit of a hit, doubling up Thierry Van Den Burg, who now has about 95,000, but Rizen is still very comfortable and looking strong.

Ramdin still in - Team PokerStars Pro member Victor Ramdin has flown under the radar somewhat at this event, never troubling the chip leaders, perhaps, but still confidently going about his business. And his long grind continues deep into day two, where he's still sitting behind about 35,000. A couple of double-ups, and you never know.

Team-mates still in the hunt - Ramdin still has seven Team PokerStars Pro team-mates afloat in the event, each with enough chips to stay there for a while. ElKy has somewhere close to 80,000, Barry Greenstein just reported in with 105,000; Daniel Negreanu has close to 100,000; Steve Paul-Ambrose has been on a slide today, but still has 80,000; Andre Akkari has been going in the right direction, and has 95,000. Hevad Khan, meanwhile, is on the charge. RaiNKhan has 120,000.

Moneymaker no more - Chris Moneymaker was seen departing the Grand Ballroom moments ago, confirming on the way out that he had, indeed, busted. No details known, and none requested. Sometimes it's best for all not to ask.

Making grinding pay - Julian Thew, EPT Baden champion, started the day with little more than 16,000. About three hours in, he still had 16,000. Now, though, he's been finding the hands and making the moves and is up to about 85,000. Known for his wild swings -- his nickname is Yo-Yo -- Julian has been showing that he can grind like the best of them today.

The atmosphere is changing outside on the grounds of the Atlantis resort as the temperature rises and the sky clears, but things are also getting hotter inside the Grand Ballroom. There's a palpable change in the air here. You can feel it as you walk through the tournament area. Everyone who made it to Day 2 knows that they've outlasted 700 others, including some big names in the poker world, and they all want a piece of that $8.6 million prize pool.

There's also a little more emotion on the rail today. Steve Paul-Ambrose's mom is there, riding what she calls an emotional roller coaster, as her son tries to battle back from a significant chip loss. She's sitting next to Tina Cooper, whose husband, Michael, is playing in his second PCA. He made it to Day 2 last year as well, but that's where his tournament ended. His goal is to make the money this year. Tina is here for the first time, and she's likely more nervous than her husband.

Tournament Director, Mike Ward, is running a tight ship as always. He's reminding the spectators of the high stakes and asking them to respect the players by watching from the rail. It's a big request for some people, who clearly want to belly-up to the tables to take in all the action.

Touring the tables is like being an extra in a commercial for iPod or Bose. Nearly every table has at least one of each. Those two companies could find a few spokespeople in this crowd, for sure. Everyone has their own way of getting into the zone, and for some people, tuning out the chatter is the best way.

The PokerStars blog team intends to stay tuned-in to all the action here. Keep hitting refresh for the latest on your favorite players and some rising PokerStars.

The more poker you play, the more important it becomes to develop a way to stay alert during the long, long periods it can sometimes take around the tables. Some players listen to music, others wave to friends on the rail. People eat, drink, read and talk; others lock into silence and enter some kind of yogic zone.

Daniel Negreanu is always alert, and seems to stay that way on sheer vitality. He's always surrounded by swarms of railbirds but if they bother him, he doesn't show it. Quite the contrary, he'll happily chatter away, sing them a song, sign an autograph, pose for a photo. And yet his focus is never found wanting when there's poker to play. He's always straight back in the zone if he finds a hand. And sometimes, I have reason to believe, if he just fancies playing whatever rubbish he's been dealt.

All of this makes the Canadian Team PokerStars Pro member a wonderful player to watch. Standing for an orbit with Negreanu is an education and an entertainment, whether or not he has it all his own way. I passed his table with Negreanu sitting behind about 98,000, on the button. I stuck around.

Hand one - BUTTON
Negreanu joins the rest of the table in folding pre-flop, giving the big blind a walk.
The players then begin talking about roulette theory, to which Daniel can add that "If it's been red for eight times in a row, the chances of it being black on the next spin are about 84 percent. Some Greek guy wrote that."

Hand two - CUT-OFF
Again Negreanu folds pre-flop.
Now, in the time it takes the dealer to cut, shuffle and spray a few cards around the table, the conversation has moved on to dancing. And Daniel knows something about that too. He even demonstrates it; a kind of torso shake, hands aloft. It won't win any prizes.

Hand three - MID-POSITION
Another fold. Three in a row.

Hand four - MID-POSITION
Aha. We have a raise. The action is folded to Negreanu, who peeks at his cards, then makes it 3,800 to go; just more than double the big blind of 1,600. It's good enough.

Hand five - MID-POSITION
It worked once, why not try it again. The action is again folded to the Team PokerStars Pro member, and he makes it 3,800 again. It's called in the seat to Daniel's left, and the flop comes queen high, with two hearts. Daniel fires out 6,000 and takes it down.

Hand six - UTG+1
Negreanu isn't tempted back into the action and folds pre-flop. But he is tempted into a conversation with a railbird, who seems to be discussing a charity tournament. "You remember that time?" the gentleman on the rail asks. "You were there." Daniel nods and smiles.

Hand seven - UTG
A hiccup. Daniel makes it 3,800 pre-flop, the third time this round. This time, it's called by the player in the cut-off and they both see a flop of 5s 3s 8h. Both players check. Then, after the Js turns, Daniel checks and his opponent fires 6,800 at it. Daniel thinks, checks his cards, and moves a huge stack of blue chips into the middle, putting his opponent all in. It's called in a heartbeat, and the player shows pocket eights, for the flopped, slow-played set. Daniel flashes 6-6 and is drawing dead. It costs him about 25,000 total.

Hand eight - big blind
An early-position raiser makes it 4,000 to go, and after it's called on the button, Daniel defends his blind. The flop comes jack-high, Daniel checks, the original raiser bets 11,000 and the button player re-raises. Negreanu gets out the way.

Hand nine - small blind
Daniel folds at the first opportunity.

That's that. The round cost him close to 25,000, but Negreanu still has chips - about 65,000 of them, which is something around the average.

For the latest counts, click HERE
For a reminder of the payouts, click HERE

All photos © Neil Stoddart

There comes a point in every poker tournament where the action starts to edge in on us. With approximately 300 players remaining, the money is getting closer and closer. While there is still a long way to go, we're now starting to get an idea of who might have the stuff to go the distance. We have updated some selected Day 2 PCA Chip Counts. When we do reach the money, it will look like THIS.

Meanwhile, here are a few quick hits from the floor.

Steve Paul-Ambrose suffering through Day 2--After a fantastic Day 1, 2006 PCA champ Steve Paul-Ambrose has had a very bad day. He is down to 40,000 in chips after seeing his AK fall to a shortstacks AQ. He lost another chunk when he reportedly read weakness in an opponent on a 72x board and his pair of twos wasn't good enough against a pair of sevens.

Boomer getting bombed--David Wells has busted. The pitcher had a great day at the mound yesterday, getting up to 100,000. But one curveball too many saw him slump to around 40,000 by mid-afternoon today, and now he's gone. (Not far, however. He's now sweating Daniel Negreanu.)

Good luck for Hansen--Thor Hansen was getting pretty short and pushed in his stack from early position with AK. He got called by a pair of nines. The dealer remarked, "Good luck." Hansen laughed out loud. "Good luck for who? One of us is going to be unlucky." The dealer answered with his hands, putting out a king in the door. Hansen is still short with about half the average stack.

In Dutch--The Dutch are having an up and down day. Team PokerStars Pro's Noah Boeken is out. The details are sketchy, but when Noah says "I'm going to the beach," he goes to the beach. On the flip side, Erik Van der Burg is having a great day and sits above 200,000 in chips. He's doing so well, he has time to tell me I need to leave the building and get some sun. I think he'll have better luck than I will.

Two more team-mates floored--Tom McEvoy and Isabelle Mercier are both out. Tom moved in with pocket sevens and ran into kings. No one knows what happened to Isabelle, and no one dares ask for a little while yet.

All photos © Neil Stoddardt

About the same time the cards were hitting the felt here in the Grand Ballroom, a fierce wind blew outside. It was the kind of island wind most of us don't feel in our daily lives, and if your legs aren't firmly planted, it could blow you over.

As that wind tattered the leaves of the palm trees, it also changed the scenery outside the Atlantis resort. The soft white cover of clouds started to move, slowly but surely, somewhere out over the water. The sun started beating down on the beach, the pools, and the people milling about the grounds of the resort.

It was as if Paradise Island decided to bestow upon the 700 or so people knocked out of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure a much needed consolation prize: some sun therapy. Up until today, the people attending the 2008 PCA have seen only short glimpses of the sun. I found myself chasing it yesterday, desperate to go home to winter with a little color on my face. However, every time I got set up to soak in the sun, it went behind the clouds that soon started to spit a warm island rain. The sun remained elusive until I set myself up to work here in the Grand Ballroom, where we only hear rumors of what the weather's like outside.

I'm sure those 700 or so people who are getting a tan today would rather be here inside the Grand Ballroom playing for nearly $8.6 million in prize money. However, there's a lot to do here on Paradise Island. I'm sure they'll all find a way to entertain themselves. Besides, it beats working an office job any day of the week.

All photos © Neil Stoddart

Coming into Day 1A, David Wells was considered to be a novelty in the field. The leather-assed grinders in the room didn't figure to face any curve balls from the major league pitcher. After all, as the story went, Wells had never played in a serious poker tournament before. That said, Wells also did receive a crash course on Friday night from members of Team PokerStars Pro.

As we reported here before, Wells finished his Day 1A flight with an above-average stack and more than a few new fans. After that, he had a day to rest his arm.

While we're not sure what Wells did throughout the afternoon, we know where he ended up last night. As the PCA broke for the day, Wells sauntered in to play in the media and celebrity tournament. He ended up seated right next to 2003 World Series Champion Chris Moneymaker. We'll leave it to you to decide if there is any resemblance.

Whether it is an inborn competitive edge or the time spent with Team PokerStars Pro champions, Wells appears to be functioning as the real deal. In the first couple of hours today, Wells has not faded. In fact, he's kept his stack well above average.

Today, though, is where the pretenders will be culled from the players.

Only time will tell whether Wells can put up a win or get yanked before the game is over.

Wells in action on Day 2

All photos © Neil Stoddart

Sparkling conversation and incisive observations are common fare on media row. Put a bunch of hacks together in a confined space and some of the chatter is pure poetry.

"What's going on over there?" asked one noted journalist, spotting a colleague returning from the thick of the action.
"It's a poker tournament," was the weary reply. And that, for the moment, was that.

OK, so sometimes the dazzling repartee loses a little in translation to the page. But the key point behind this small exchange was that nothing can really be said with any conviction this early in proceedings. There's plenty to look at during a quick stroll around the tournament floor, but whether it will have any lasting bearing come the end of the day is not yet certain.

That said, it's always kind of interesting, and so here's a quick news in brief wrap from the early stages of today's play:

- Andre Akkari doubles up
The Team PokerStars Pro member from Brazil got an early boost to his chances here, taking five pots down without a showdown to get up to the 90,000 mark. The last of these, he confided, involved aces and a jack-high board. But he never had to show. That's poker.

- Rivered quads
An anguished yelp from table fourteen could mean only one thing: a bad beat, and they don't come much worse than a rivered one-outer. Pre-flop it was jacks against nines; on the flop, it was set over set. The money goes in, and Trevor Williams, the PokerStars qualifier holding the nines, is half-way to the beach. But the river brought the last nine in the deck, and David Lacoste, whose jacks had been cracked, was squealing.

- Noah Boeken in good company. Again.
Noah, the Team PokerStars Pro member from Holland, celebrated his 27th birthday yesterday by finding himself next to team-mate Hevad Khan. Today, after a redraw, he's a couple of seats down from another member of Team PokerStars Pro, former World Champion Tom McEvoy.

- Table of death develops
After the flurry of early all-ins, a few tables were broken, and the players scattered among the remaining field. Among those on the move was Eric "Rizen" Lynch, and he found his way to the table already featuring William Thorsson and Thierry Van Den Burg, fiercely aggressive EPT regulars from Sweden and Holland, respectively. Fireworks will no doubt ensue.

- Chris Moneymaker's reputation precedes him
No matter how many big hands he shows down, no one believe Chris Moneymaker, and that suits him fine. He bet out 17,000 on a board of 3d-8s-2s-9c-9d and was called by an evident disbeliever in Robert Wisiak, next to him. Moneymaker flipped his 9-7h and added a few more chips to his stack.

- Arnaud Mattern misses out
The most recent EPT champion, Arnaud Mattern, who won in Prague last month, will not be claiming back to back titles. He found jacks, his opponent found kings, and it won't be Mattern who becomes the first ever two-time winner. Julian Thew remains in the hunt, but is scratching the felt with about 16,000.

- Liebert's day is done
Kathy Liebert headed straight to the cash tables after busting from the tournament. Her departure leaves just a handful of women in the PCA field: Team PokerStars Pro's Isabelle Mercier among them. Two of the other remaining female players, Wilhelmina Detz and Rosamelia Ferreira, are seated next to one another.

- Brenes busted
The very latest news is that Humberto Brenes is out. He was busted by David "The Dragon" Pham.

All photos © Neil Stoddardt

I always make it a point to go to the Coral Lobby lounge on Sunday nights at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. When I heard this week's Sunday Million had more than 7,100 runners, I made tracks to the lounge as soon as I was finished with my PCA work. And, of course, there I heard the cheers.

Seated on one of the plush couches was mkind0516. When I arrived, he was down to the final two tables of the Million and surrounded by crowd of supporters.

By the end of the night, mkind0516 had taken fifth and won more than $42,000.

Full tournament results for all the big Sunday events are below.

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and four-way deal

1. Spinvis (Netherlands) $78,234.66
2. jwvdcw (United States) $51,507.27
3. FXXX (Germany) $53,755.44
4. Atila5 (Spain) $37,022.13
5. TheChosenWun (Canada) $23,165.00
6. noth inc (Germany) $17,515.00
7. MORIÑA (Spain) $12,317.00
8. mully_85 (Ireland) $7,797.00
9. shaniac (United States) $4,520.00

PokerStars Sunday $5,200 Freezeout

1. aaaaaaaa (United States) $40,000.00

PokerStars Sunday Hundred Grand Final Table Results

1. (Ger)Scar (Germany) $20,000.00
2. Raudi20 (Germany) $10,000.00
3. VINDOG1 (United States) $7,000.00
4. myyty924 (United States) $5,000.00
5. Basfisher99 (United States) $3,000.00
6. gorfman123 (Canada) $2,000.00
7. StepingRazor (United States) $1,600.00
8. bertholdbrun (Germany) $1,300.00
9. ryan_tc_19 (United States) $1,000.00

PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and two-way deal

1. giorango (United States) $153,209.60
2. mister cc (United States) $148,000.00
3. nieezz (Sweden) $71,040.00
4. hanes1971 (Czech Republic) $56,832.00
5. mkind0516 (United States) $42,624.00
6. diegoscotti1 (Bulgaria) $31,257.60
7. Gnuhunter (Denmark) $22,022.40
8. abel127 (United States) $12,787.20
9. pocktnizzles (United States) $8,382.72

Today is Monday. I think. In tournament terms, it's Day Two. Which is the day that comes after the two Day Ones, that happened yesterday and the day before. Tomorrow will be Day Three, then Day Four, until Thursday, which is neither Thursday nor Day Five. Rather, it's Final Table Day.

If this all sounds a touch confusing, it's no surprise. Reality was suspended the moment we crossed over into Paradise Island and were greeted by dolphins and turtles. Days are just another convention to which no one really pays much attention. Most people have other matters on their mind.

In this case, those other matters number 8,594,976. That's the figure, in dollars, that we're playing for today. And when I say "we", I mean of course, "they": the 478 players returning, from an original field of 1,136. One hundred and twenty players will get some return on their original stake, while the last man standing will take home $2 million even.

The approximate full payout structure, just announced by tournament director Mike Ward, is as follows:

1st - $2,000,000
2nd - $1,100,000
3rd - $800,000
4th - $600,000
5th - $450,000
6th - $300,000
7th - $200,000
8th - $150,000

9th - $120,000
10th - $104,000
11th - $96,000
12th - $88,000
13th - $80,000
14th - $72,000
15th - $64,000
16th - $56,000

17-24 - $48,000
25-32 - $40,000
33-40 - $32,000
41-50 - $24,000
51-120 - $16,000

These figures are not final as yet, but there won't be any major changes. Stay tuned to see how the day progresses.

Not so long ago, the label "internet qualifier" had a different connotation in the bricks and mortar environment than the one it has now. Regular "live" tournament entrants would frequently scoff at what they imagined to be inexperienced, raw players, likely to mishandle their chips, give away tells and not understand how its done face-to-face.

Wow. How wrong they were.

After two World Series champions came straight from the PokerStars rooms, it suddenly became apparent just how many truly outstanding players ply their trade online. And the drip-dripping into the live scene soon became a torrent. Now being an internet qualifier is frequently a badge of honour. Defeating the ultra-tough satellite fields to book a seat in the Caribbean, for instance, is no mean feat.

The chip leader at the end of yesterday was Ryan Collett, a PokerStars qualifier from Colorado. Ace rail reporter Michelle caught up with his family today, and their story is HERE.

While Collett's efforts were certainly laudable, he will have a few people ahead of him going into Day 2, not least of which is the 33-year old claims investigator from south Floriday, Brian Lindsay. The part-time player bought-in directly to this event and exploded to more than 225,000 chips at the end of the day.

At the end of day 1B, there are another bunch of PokerStars players somewhere near the summit.

Jared Mahoney has 142,650, Marco Savoni is sitting pretty with 141,925. Then there's Michael Benedetto, a cash qualifier from the United States. He has 100,575. Samuel Oberlin has also been worth tracking today -- and has also been easy to pick out from the throngs. Oberlin is resplendent in an Italy soccer shirt, which is a touch misleading given that he's from the United States. Oberlin hit the 100,000 mark early this afternoon, and although things slid a little towards the end of the day, he's still healthy. Eighty-thousand wouldn't be too far off the mark.

Daniel Stern is also worth a shout. He has 74,600.

For long periods, these young pretenders outshone even the members of Team PokerStars Pro. Greg Raymer was first out the door today, when his pocket sixes lost a race to ace-queen. Raymer stopped to chat to Joe Hachem on his way out the door, but the Australian player was soon taking a similar walk himself, finally succumbing to a wretched illness that has hindered his enjoyment - and ultimately his tournament - here in the Bahamas.

Vanessa Rousso was also on the rail by the end of the night. She'd been card dead for long periods and barely managed to get herself going. Lady Maverick finally busted in the final level.

It's been an up and down day for Hevad Khan. He suffered a couple of beats in the early evening, but rallied back from less than 10,000 to end the day on around 54,000. As he bagged his chips, he wiped his head and said with emphasis, "I worked for this stack."

Good news too for Noah Boeken. The Team PokerStars Pro member at one point looked like his 27th birthday would be one to forget. He was down to about 6,000. But as he could probably taste his birthday beer, it all started to look up and by the end of the day he had 56,000 in front of him. Perhaps enough for another pint.

Barry Greenstein had also silently progressed to close to 50,000 by the day's close; a copy of "Ace On The River" unautographed beneath his chair. Barry gives out the book to anyone who busts him from a tournament, but he'll be taking it back to his room tonight. Also appearing on day two will be Tom McEvoy. The former World Series champ also ended with 50,000. He's still alive.

And how about Daniel Negreanu? Well, we saved the best until last. For the longest time on the table closest to the rail, Daniel did what Daniel does best. He grinned, chattered, played and won, entertaining a throng of spectators, as well as all the dealers and any player on his table.

And right at the death, as the announcements started about bagging and tagging, Daniel was still on his game. On a flop featuring a queen and a king, it went raise, re-raise, all-in, call between Negreanu and the PokerStars Supernova Elite, Spencer Cossette.

Daniel flipped king-queen; Cossette ace-king. There was no help and Kid Poker is bagging up something like 93,000 tonight. This time, Daniel took the spoils for the old guard.

As ever, official chip counts will be on their way as and when we have them. Our late-night unofficial counts can be found by clicking HERE.

Tomorrow, the 250-odd who survived day 1B will join with the 232 who survived 1A.

It's only just begun.

All photos © Neil Stoddart

Previous Day 1B coverage

Day one, mark two
How many can you play
Finding a Fossil in the Caribbean
Hitting at the right time
The quest for poker's Holy Grail
Get your news how you want it
Spring training for the poker set
Final numbers and Hachem's exit
Familiar Faces
Day 1B Rail Report
The stories of McEvoy
Day 1 leader getting healthy

by Michelle Willis

The chip leader from Day 1A, Ryan Collett, had a fantastic day off from playing today. He went snorkeling and swam with the sharks. When asked which was scarier, the real sharks or the poker sharks he played against yesterday here at Atlantis, Ryan smiled, shrugged, and said neither group scared him, but they were all exciting.

His father, Rob, is extremely proud of his 24 year old son who just graduated from Colorado School of Mines with a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. Ryan's parents are both engineers, but his father says his son takes it to a whole new level. Ryan paid for his Masters degree with his online poker winnings. He's achieved Supernova status, and his goal for this year is to become a Supernova Elite.

Ryan has decided to take a year off from engineering to pursue poker and travel. He's very dedicated to his game.

Ryan broke his collar bone playing flag football the day before he left to play in the APPT Seoul. In spite of his injury, he fought through the pack and got knocked out just short of the money. He's studied poker like he's studied engineering. Ryan says he's read just about every poker book out there, including the books of many of his opponents here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

One of the highlights of Ryan's PCA experience so far has been meeting Team PokerStars Pro member Daniel Negreanu at the opening party. Ryan says he got a picture with Negreanu, and he can't wait to put it on Facebook.

During Day 1A, Ryan says he had a great seat. He was on the end, so he could see his family supporting him on the rail. You can tell it meant a lot to him to have them there. You can be sure they'll be here tomorrow when the action begins.

Ryan is very humble about his poker success so far. He says tomorrow he plans to try his best, just like yesterday, but he believes there are a lot of better players out there. If he does happen to win, though, he's already promised a cut to his younger brother, Matthew, who got him started playing poker.

In poker, one does not rest on his laurels. Time skirts by too fast. Just ask Tom McEvoy. In 1983, he was the first person to ever enter the World Series of Poker main event via satelilte and win the championship. This year will mark the 25-year anniversary of that achievement. Today, McEvoy is still grinding.

Just a quick look at McEvoy at the tables today will show how the world champion and author is still pounding away. Watching just a couple of hands, we see McEvoy jamming on a 2s8sQd8h flop and winning, then three-betting pre-flop to take down another big pot. Late tonight, he sits on 30,000 chips.

McEvoy at rest -- © Neil Stoddart

Across the room, however, there is a PokerStars qualifier who still takes immense pleasure in playing with McEvoy in the 2006 World Series.

Patrick "bigpanda88" Sullivan is at the PCA for his third consecutive year. This time, he won a $16 double shoot-out that put in him immediately into a $175 winner-take-all qualifier to the PCA. He won that one, too.

Sullivan is one of those serial qualifers who not only made it to three PCAs, but also two World Series main events. In 2006, Sullivan cashed for $35,000 and picked up his 15 minutes of fame. His TV time came at McEvoy's expense after McEvoy played a wired pair of queens a tad too cautiously and let Sullivan hit a gutshot straight on the river. Sullivan still gets a great deal of joy recounting the tale.

Tonight, both men are still fighting to make it to Day 2 of the 2008 PCA.

With just 45 minutes left to play, they don't have to make it far.

The rail at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is a cultural experience. In just a few minutes, I met women from Holland, Germany and the United States. They're all here supporting players in Day 1B of the PCA, and they all have a story to tell.

Melissa Rivera is rooting for her boyfriend of three years, Sean Timney, a professional poker player living in Raleigh, North Carolina. You might know him by his PokerStars screen name, lyerly_. Timney won a World Championship of Online Poker bracelet in 2007. He took home $76,540 in Event #20, a $530 Triple Shootout.

Melissa Rivera says she talked to Sean at the last break, and he said he was getting bad cards. Rivera says this is Timney's first big live tournament. He was an attorney before he decided to make a run at being a poker pro. He plays mostly online.

The view from the rail

Marloes Versloot is a law student from the Netherlands. She is here to support her boyfriend, Pieter Van Gils. He is a student as well, trying to earn a Masters degree in Health Care Management at Rotterdam. Both are on a break from school.

Van Gils won a seat here through a PokerStars PCA Steps tournament. He's mostly an online player. He recently played a small live tournament in the Netherlands, but his girlfriend says the PCA is his first big live event.

At the last break, Van Gils told his girlfriend he was card dead and wasn't doing very well today. They're still having a great vacation from school, though. They've both played in some SNGs, they've seen the aquariums here at Atlantis, and they've had some really nice dinners. As long as her boyfriend's still in the tournament, you will likely find Marloes Versloot on the rail, reading a fascinating book.

Beate Bretschneider is people-watching from the rail. Beate and her husband Uwe work in banks in Germany. When they left home, it was bitterly cold, and the weather here, although not as good as it could be, is a welcome change.

Beate says this is the first live tournament for Uwe and their first trip to the Bahamas. Uwe won his seat into the PCA. At home, poker is his hobby, and his wife says he plays about three times a week. So far, that hobby has served him well. Even if he doesn't make the money here, the Bretschneiders have still gotten a much-needed break from winter in their home country. Beate seems excited to have a chance to meet new people and experience all the excitement surrounding a tournament like this one.

Kristen Roberts is a civil engineer in the Los Angeles area. She's on the very first paid vacation of her entire life. I found her on the rail, looking relaxed with her flip flops off and her legs crossed in her chair. Getting here wasn't so relaxing, however. She and her boyfriend missed their connecting flight and got stranded in Philadelphia. They didn't get here until noon yesterday, and then they had to sleep off the jet lag.

Luck is on their side, though. Kristen's boyfriend, a guy named Gavin Griffin (you might have heard of him) was scheduled to play in flight B, so they still had time to relax a bit before he had to take his place at the tables. At the last break, Gavin told Kristen things were going pretty well. He had about 115,000 in chips.

Kristen is a very dedicated supporter. She says Gavin has told her to go out and enjoy herself while he plays, but she prefers to find a comfy spot on the rail. She was with him when he won the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Kristen says she was on the rail for all but one level. Even though she says Gavin is not superstitious, she is. She plans to keep her spot here at the PCA as well, just in case. Kristen admits it's a little harder to resist the pull of the waves here in the Bahamas.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

Fans of televised poker will recognise the two faces below. One is Barry Greenstein, one is Hevad Khan. Both have had their fair share of screentime in the past year or so.

Greenstein is a stalwart on "High Stakes Poker", arguably the most fascinating televised spectacle for the poker purist. For those who have never seen it, High Stakes Poker is a cash game featuring some of the most fearsome players in the business, stumping up their own money to play a no-limit cash game, where the minimum buy-in is, most recently, $500,000.

There's none of the all-in pre-flop shenanigans common in some of the final-table tournament play. These guys play through every street for pots getting near to a million dollars. The regular line up includes Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonious -- and Barry Greenstein, maintaining a silent table presence as he clambers his way to a fortune. Huge wins, bad beats are all taken very much in his stride.

RainKhan, on the other hand, first bounded into poker viewers' field of vision via YouTube, when a clip surfaced of him playing more than 20 sit 'n' goes on PokerStars, all at the same time.

Then, as a PokerStars qualifier to the 2007 World Series, Hevad secured his place in the limelight with a boisterous charge to the final table, engaging, entertaining and infuriating in equal measure.

These days, Hevad is nothing like his television persona. The World Series was a one off and the adrenalin was pumping hard. For the most part he's as steady, polite and seated as the next man -- Barry Greenstein, for instance.

These two Team PokerStars Pro members are on adjacent tables here at the Atlantis, where they're both still in with a shout. Hevad just doubled up his 8,000 stack when his K-10 outdrew an opponent's A-Q. But he then shipped most of it back, when his queens lost to eights.

Barry, on the other hand, recently folded six hands in a row, then picked up all the blinds and antes he'd surrendered with a firm pre-flop raise that got no callers. He has something around 22,000 as we enter level six.

Two players, two styles, one team, and one shared ambition: to still be here when the PCA crown is awarded on Thursday evening.

Here's a look at some more familiar faces in today's flight.

T.J. Cloutier

Tom McEvoy

Isabelle Mercier

Vanessa Rousso

All photos © Neil Stoddart

We've been watching the number crunchers in the back of the room. After several consultations with an abacus and what might've been a bit of black magic, they have handed over the official numbers for the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Day 1A hosted 556 players and Day 1B started with 580, making for a total of 1,136 runners in this year's contest. That's nearly 200 more players than last year's record-breaking event. The official prize breakdown is yet to come, but it's looking like first place could be somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million.

I'll let that sink in for a bit while we wait for the all-important official prize structure to hit our desks.

One player who won't be making the run for the big money is Team PokerStars Pro's Joe Hachem. The 2005 World Series Champion has been battling illness for the past several days. With barely any speaking voice and feeling like he's been hit by a truck, Hachem labored through the event today before finally succumbing to the bitter end.

Throughout Day 1A, people kept coming up and asking, "Is David Wells a poker player or is he just getting lucky?"

It's starting to look like the people weren't asking the right question.

It's not that Wells is a poker player. There hasn't been a lot of time to learn the game, what with the major league baseball pitching and all. However, it looks like he wasn't entirely getting lucky either.

We learned just today that, in advance of Day 1, some names from the sports and entertainment world got a crash course in tournament poker strategy. Not only that, they got the instruction from some pretty good teachers, known in some circles as Kid Poker and Tom McEvoy.

Friday night, Daniel Negreanu and McEvoy sat down with pitcher Wells, former Philadelhia Flyer Dave "the Hammer" Schultz, and Saturday Night Live alum and comedian Norm Macdonald. While a couple hours of instruction from the likes of Negreanu and McEvoy aren't going to turn the neophytes into champions overnight, it can't hurt.

Negreanu and Wells

Schultz, Wells, Kathy Liebert, and Humberto Brenes

If we need any evidence that Team PokerStars Pro's tutelage worked, witness the chip counts at the end of Day 1A. Schultz finished with 31,000 chips and Wells went to bed well above average with more than 88,000.

I don't know if the athletes will pay Negreanu back in kind, but it would be really fun to see Kid Poker throwing some fastballs and playing the role of "designated fighter" on a local ice rink.

While we certainly appreciate the thousands of you who are logging on all day long checking in on the PCA news, we also should point you to a number of different ways you can get your PokerStars Caribbean Adventure news.

If you'd like to see updates from the PCA in your native language, be sure to check out the German PokerStars Blog, Swedish PokerStars Blog, and PokerStars Brazilian Blog.

Also, there is a fun new podcast coming out of Atlantis. The PokerStars VIP Club is sponsoring the Two Plus Two Pokercast live from the PCA, featuring interviews and updates from the tournament floor.

Enjoy!

The European Poker Tour is now in its fourth season. There have been 27 tournaments played under the EPT banner, with ever-growing buy-ins and fields since 229 players sat down in Barcelona in 2004 to contest the first event, costing €1,000.

At the time, it was something of an experiment. No one really knew whether there was sufficient appetite for high-stakes tournaments on the other side of the Atlantic to support such a tour. But by the time we reached the Monte Carlo Grand Final in season three, 706 players were persuaded to part with €10,000. No such doubts could possibly remain.

Ever since the early days, however, we have been looking for the first two-time champion. From 27 tournaments we have crowned 27 winners; no one has yet held the trophy aloft more than once. Some have come close -- Brandon Schaefer and Mark Teltscher have a first and a runner-up finish on their resume -- and there have been a number who have final tabled more than twice. But the highest figure in anyone's win column remains 1.

Will this change in the Bahamas this week?

Well, it's unlikely but is by no means impossible. In today's field, we still have five former champions -- Noah Boeken, Mats Iremark, Rob Hollink, Pascal Perrault and Gavin Griffin -- while Julian Thew made it through yesterday.

If proof were needed of how tough a task this is, Arnaud Mattern, Andreas Hoivold, John Shipley and Jeff Williams all fell by the wayside on day 1A.

Of those still in the hunt, Griffin would appear to have the best chance at this early stage. The young American was already a World Series bracelet holder when he crushed the field at the season three Grand Final in Monte Carlo.

He was also PokerStars qualifier when he took his seat in that tournament, and went all the way to the summit and a €1.8 million win. Here in the Bahamas, Griffin has flown out of the blocks, and had more than 60,000 at the mid-point of level three, triple his starting stack.

Griffin is in a pretty exclusive club as the holder of EPT and World Series crowns. Only Ram Vaswani has done the same, and Griffin beat him to it by a year. But not even those two luminaries have yet managed the triple crown of WSOP, EPT and WPT titles. That accolade remains something of a holy grail, and no one has pulled it off.

Swashbuckling their way towards it, though, are Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and Joe Hachem, all Team PokerStars Pro members, and all playing today. These are the three men whose mantelpieces are only missing an EPT trophy, a space they can fill this week.

Their chip counts, as well as the other notable stacks, can be found HERE.

Soon to be removed from that list, though, are the names of Greg Raymer and Annette Obrestad. The latest news from the tournament floor is that both are out: Annette on a failed bluff, Greg without any details at present. Well find out as and when the information is available.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

Jesse "Hittman76" Hitt is not a big-name poker player. The real estate agent from Tacoa, Georgia spends his days weather the tough home selling market and taking care of his wife and four kids. Still, he likes to play around at the lower limits.

With seven bucks, he took a shot at a PCA Step 1 tournament. After three or four tries, he advanced. The story was the same all the way up to Step 4. Then, it was a Friday night. His wife was very pregnant. He knew the Steps tournament qualifers were about to come to an end.

After three years of playing poker, he had never had a chance to play in a big buy-in tournament. By the time he made it through the Step 5 tourney, he started to realize he had a chance. In fact, his friend wanted Hitt to wait on playing so he could watch the Step 6 event. It was good Hitt didn't wait. He sat down on a Sunday and played one of the last Steps events before they were just down for the year.

With nothing but smiles in his eyes, Hitt said, "I won the tournament and two days later I had a little boy."

Now, Hitt has a chance to win more than a million bucks on an investment of $7. That would be a pretty decent ROI, eh?

We found Hitt today because he's sitting next to Eric "erbloore" Bloore, a PCA and tournament circuit regular who we've been following for years. Bloore has worked his way up to more than 50,000 chips after flopping a straight and having to make a tough call on a board that paired queens on turn. His opponent had KQ and Bloore's straight held.

The PokerStars Blog has a lot of good eys on the table. Bryan, who some of you might know from the PokerStars tournament scene, has been keeping an eye on Daniel Negreanu's table.

With 3,000 in the pot, the flop came down Ts9c7c. When then turn came the Th, a player bet 1,000 and Negreanu put his opponent all-in. Negreanu knew he was good on the flop. He held Jh8h. With the board paired, there may be a chance he was behind. When the insta-call didn't come, Negreanu knew he was still good.

Enter, the Kid Poker Show.

"What are you thinking about doing here?" Negreanu asked before making it clear that his chips were already in. There was no changing that.

With his opponent in the tank, Negreanu kept talking. Whatever he said worked. With one card to come, his opponent called with KJ...and missed.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

For a look at updated select chip counts, visit the PCA Chip Counts page.

Before Greg Raymer was "World Champion Greg Raymer," Greg Raymer was "Fossilman." The moniker was his online identity as well as his live poker nickname, prompted by the distinctive fossil card protector that he brought to the tables.

During his spectacular run to the World Series title in 2004, a feat achieved after qualifying on PokerStars, Raymer earned himself another colloquial nickname. Across the card rooms and home games of the world, he was "the guy with the lizard-eye glasses." Everyone, it seemed, had seen the iconic images of Raymer with his reptilian shades, and felt a shiver at his piercing, cold-blooded gaze.

"People used to stop me in stores and say 'Where are the glasses?'" he told me during an interview at the time. But strangely enough he didn't take them grocery shopping; the cashiers wouldn't budge on the total, no matter how icy the glare.

Raymer these days is a fixture on the poker circuit, as well as a founder member of Team PokerStars Pro, and the fossils and the specs are still very much part of the experience. There's also the small matter of a shimmering, platinum bracelet on his right wrist, which will blind anyone whose eyes stray in that direction.

What's more, Raymer today has added a neat Caribbean touch: he's also wearing a wonderful straw hat above a peach-coloured polo-shirt and beige slacks. He's every inch the relaxed, amiable adventurer, who just so happens to be ruthless at the tables. Moments ago, he took down a pot with the mighty jack-three; no one fancied tangling and the chips were his.

Raymer is among a strong Team PokerStars Pro showing today, and we'll be keeping our eyes locked on his progress. Just as long as he doesn't stare back.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

As the players get their rear ends settled into their seat cushions for the day, there are a number of interesting tables taking shape. Team PokerStars Pro players Noah Boeken and Hevad Khan are seated immediately next to each other at Table 60, two young guns among a table of qualifiers and old guard poker players. Two seats away, PokerStars qualifier Hank Sitton sits far away from his home in Greenville, South Carolina. An aggressive player in his own right, he's got two of the game's most aggressive online players to his left.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

In the middle of the room, Team PokerStars Pro member Tom McEvoy serves as the chief of the old guard at the table. Within spittle distance is young wunderkind Justin Bonomo. The conversation there should be more than a little interesting.

At Table 2, the conversation may be the most interesting. The ever-talkative member of team PokerStars Pro, Daniel Negreanu, sits just two seats away from PokerStars Supernova Elite Spencer Cossette. As the coversation wound through the efforts of making it to Elite, Negreanu asked Cossette how he achieved it. The answer: SNGs. Negreanu seemed interested and asked how many Cossette played at a time. The answer: Only 12.

Negreanu was more than a little flabbergasted. "Only 12?"

While widely considered to be one of the best poker players in the world, Negreanu is still getting used to the idea of multi-tabling online.

Now in level 2, we have already lost a longtime PokerStars Blog favorite Benard Lee who went out in Level 1.

For a look at updated select chip counts from Level 1, visit the PCA Chip Counts page.

Take a wrong turn on Paradise Island and you're likely to run into a fish tank. These aquariums (aquaria?) fill every available space in the walls and rock formations scattered across the resort. In front of them, there is usually a row of sunkissed tourists, pointing and the one with the funny mouth, the boggle eyes, the one swimming sideways, the sharks and the seeming bait.

It might not sound like it has a lot to do with poker, but the view from media row at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is really not at all dissimilar.

There are a few funny mouths, a few boggle eyes and more than a few swimming sideways. There is also a very healthy number of sharks, hoping to find a generous helping of bait. The feeding frenzy just began, when Joe Hachem, 2005 World Series Champion, and member of Team PokerStars Pro, grabbed the mic and uttered the famous "Shuffle up and deal!"

The shoal of poker players shimmied quickly to settle in their seats.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Day 1B of the PCA is underway. Yesterday we thinned 556 down to 232. Today we start with a few more -- probably in the neighborhood of 600 -- and in nine hours time we'll be below 300 again and ready for day two.

One player has already departed on the first hand. He had kings, his opponent flopped top set with his queens. It all went in and we're one down. Stay tuned for plenty more to follow.

Currently we're taking a quick tour of the room to spot the notable names and familiar faces. Team PokerStars Pro is well represented: Joe Hachem, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Raymer, Hevad Khan, Noah Boeken, Barry Greenstein, Isabelle Mercier, Tom McEvoy and Vanessa Rousso are all out there in their proud PokerStars livery.

We'll have their chipcounts, as well as those of all the movers and shakers, HERE as the day progresses.

For full PCA information, click HERE

Photo © Neil Stoddart

Let's start with an understatement:

Winning the PokerStars yearly Tournament Leader Board is no easy task--one person in a sea of thousands of tournaments and tens of thousands of tournament players. One must dedicate so many hours and endure so much tournament play, it's almost impossible to conceive of how they do it.

Last year, PokerStars player Shaun Deeb came tantalizingly close to the top of the board. He finished in third place, just a couple of thousand TLB points behind the eventual winner, tnetter. This past year, Deeb could look above his name on the list and find no one else.

In 2007, Deeb started playing with no real idea what his achievement might earn him. Of course, it comes with the tournament winnings and the respect of countless online peers. This year, it comes with something more.

This week, PokerStars told Deeb he would also receive a full prize package to the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.

Deeb, as you might expect, accepted his prize and will now be taking his astounding tournament game to Monaco in April.

So, if you have plans to be in Monte Carlo this year, you might watch out for this year's TLB winner, Shaun Deeb. The word on the street is...he knows what he's doing.

Congratulations to Deeb for his achievement in 2007 and his entry into the EPT Grand Final.

by Howard Swains and Brad Willis

You don't win a poker tournament on the first day. But you can definitely lose one. And for about 320 of the 556 players who started the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure today, their dream of rolling in a bundle of banknotes on a paradise beach is already over. The starting stack of 20,000, costing $8,000 real money, soon disappeared.

The cash games are already remarkably lively here in the Bahamas -- especially the one featuring Dario Minieri, the Team PokerStars Pro member, who made his way out of the tournament sometime this afternoon. His teammates Luca Pagano, Tuan Lam and Katja Thater also perished. Flopped sets, turned straights and pocket kings, not good enough, respectively.

Still, while (to repeat) you can't win a poker tournament on the first day, it's definitely possible to go to sleep feeling pretty good about your nine hours' work. Sleeping most soundly tonight is Ryan Collett, a PokerStars qualifier from the United States, who finished the day at the summit, with 176,450. Collett just graduated with a Masters degree in electrical engineering.

"Right now, I'm playing full time," he said.

As the day ended, Collett stuffed his chips into the chip bag and entertained a few questions from the media. As he did so, something in the physics of a chip-lead caused no small number of his chips to explode out of the bag and onto the floor. While some people speculated he had enough to lose a couple, Collett was not at all relaxed. On his hands and knees, he made sure he had every chip. When he was certain, he sealed his bag and prepared to walk away. As his foot lifted off the carpet, one black chip appeared. Worth 100, it was the equivalent of one ante.

Collett looked up at the dealer and said, "I'm going to need a new bag."

Just a few tables away sat Steve Paul-Ambrose. He won this event in 2006 and came tantalizingly close to making the final table last year. It's starting to look like Paul-Ambrose owns this tournament. Tonight, he sits in what appears to be second place with 170,925.

Humble, sometimes to a fault, he shrugged. "I got kings a lot." When pressed to stop being so humble, he allowed, "Basically, people never folded and I got a lot of good hands."

To become the first double winner of the PCA, however, Paul-Ambrose will have to best six other of his team-mates, among all the others, with the new slimline Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier currently his closest rival. "Elky" has somewhere in the region of 123,000. Also in the mix are Andre Akkari, Humberto Brenes and Victor Ramdin. There's also some guy named Moneymaker floating around with close to 50,000.

Other players with top chip stacks tonight include Eric Lynch, better known as "Rizen", with 141,000. Johan Bergquist, an EPT regular from Sweden, is also among the leaders with 120,000. The full, accurate run down of all players' stacks will be with us shortly.

It was a good day too for one of the well-known faces who made the trip to Nassau. David Wells -- yes, the pitcher -- rocketed to the 90,000 mark before some players had even taken their seats. He's stayed comfortably on that kind of level for the duration of the day. He'll come back to the mound on day two with 88,000.

Finding the way to day's end was not possible for everyone. You might recall, this time last year, a young Jim Morrison-esqe Brown student named Isaac Haxton was getting ready to start his blitzkrieg that landed him at the 2007 PCA final table. Today, Haxton couldn't get any traction. At the end of Level 6, Haxton went racing with pocket nines couldn't win the flip.

Tonight, as the chips fall in the bags, everyone realizes the futility of trying to pick a winner. There is still another full flight to play before we even start Day 2. Tournament organizers are expecting in excess of 600 players in Day 1B. Of course, the PokerStars Blog will be here with full coverage.

Be sure to check out the PCA chip counts and updated PCA information.

Here's a look at all the coverage from Day 1A of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Rumble on the horizon
Cards in the air
From Brazil to baseball
Turning nothing into something
The Incredible Shrinking ElkY
Team PokerStars Pro minus one
Day 1A Rail Report
Dressed for Success
Off the mound with David Wells
Reason to celebrate
Making moves with Moneymaker

Tomorrow, we start all this again. Day 1B begins at noon ET. Join us then.

During the last break in play -- a luxurious whole ten minutes -- I took a quick breather in my hotel room, flicking on the TV and taking my mind off the game.

Well, it was a nice idea.

Instead, a quick flick round the channels ended up on ESPN, where Chris Moneymaker was sitting around the feature table during day one of the 2007 World Series. In a segment lasting no more than about five minutes, the announcers mentioned the phrase "poker boom" somewhere in the region of ten times, while Moneymaker's table-mates asked him a few questions that I fancy he's heard one or two times before.

"What was going through your mind when you pulled that bluff on Sammy Farha?" for instance. Then, "Did they redesign the bracelet after you won it?" and "Are you going to win the World Series again this year?"

In his studio interview, Moneymaker went through it all one more time: some people say he was lucky to win in 2003; that the doubters will never go away; that it doesn't let it bother him, he just plays his game.

Downstairs, in the Grand Ballroom of the Atlantis Hotel, Chris Moneymaker was doing just that. He was playing his game at the PCA. And although, like he says, those doubters will always be there, Moneymaker plays a pretty good game.

After folding a couple of hands, the Team PokerStars Pro member fired out a pre-flop raise of 1,600, which was called in the small blind. No surprise. Moneymaker also mentioned in his television interview how he has to assess the other players these days.

"I have to figure out whether they're just trying to make a move on Chris Moneymaker," he said. "Or are they trying to win the tournament."

In this instance, the flop came eight high, with two clubs. The small blind took a stab, flicking his wrists to deposit 4,100 chips in the pot. This, the former World Champ decided, might have been one of those moves. Moneymaker found two blue chips and made it 10,000. Fold.

Two hands later, a similar story. Moneymaker raised pre-flop from mid-position; he was called in three spots. This flop came ace high, checked to Moneymaker, he bets 3,700. Fold, fold, fold.

It's difficult to know whether anyone had anything, Moneymaker included. But there was only one player making the moves, and he picked up all the chips.

The former World Champ has about 42,000 at the end of the level, a little above the average.

This is a big time for the Andler family of Sweden. I found Anita Andler sitting next to the door of the Grand Ballroom here at Atlantis. Her 23 year old son, Christopher, is still playing after five levels on Day 1A of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Playing in this tournament is certainly a big deal for most of the entrants, but that's not the only reason the Andler family is all smiles. Christopher's dad is celebrating his 60th birthday, and his parents are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary. They hope to toast a PCA victory here in a few days.

Christopher Andler is an engineering and physics student at a university in Sweden. His mother says he played in the PCA last year, and he's also played in some tournaments in Las Vegas. While I was interviewing his parents, Christopher popped over quickly to ask his dad to get him two Snickers bars. He says he's never been this hungry. It's been a long day for Christopher and all of the other players who've been at it since about noon ET today.

Anita Andler says she plans to retire soon, and she thinks she would like to learn to play poker. Now, she says, listening to her son and his friends talk about the game is like listening to a conversation in a foreign language. Watching her on the rail, it's obvious that Anita Andler is very proud of her son. She says Christopher is a good boy, and she hopes he will find a nice girl who can tolerate him playing poker. Perhaps one of these days, Christopher will be celebrating his 35th wedding anniversary in the Bahamas, watching his own son play in the PCA.

David Wells is, for the moment, not a baseball player.

His cap sports a PokerStars logo and is turned backward on his head. His sunglasses are turned backward and hanging off the back of his thick neck. His chair is turned backward, its back straining against the weight of Wells' leisure.

Wells is, without question, the biggest star at Table 1. What's more, he has the biggest stack, not just at his table, but seemingly in the entire room. The closest anyone in the vicinity comes to such celebrity is the man in the four seat at Table 2.

Wells looks that way and stands. "Uh-oh! Chris must be in. He's got his shades on!"

The Chris in question is, as you might guess, a Mr. Moneymaker. Wells can't continue his heckling for long, though. He has a chip lead to protect.

I am trying not to chat with Wells, both because it seems he has more important things to do, and because I likely couldn't get in a word edgewise. A railbird has actually pulled up a chair and engaged Wells in a conversation about, of all things, baseball. The railbird wonders aloud whether Wells will be on the mound this season.

"Not unless I get a phone call," Wells says.

The player to Wells' left can't help but wonder what a pro baseball pitcher would do without baseball to fill his days. Wells answers quickly enough, as if its something he thinks about every day.

"Hunt," he says, peaking at rag cards in his hands, "and spend time with my kids."

Now living in San Diego, Wells took this opportunity to play some cards, in part, because he could bring his children with him. One is 15, the other eight years old.

"Are they baseball players?" somebody asks.

"One is," Wells muses. "The other is a drummer." He pulls out an imaginary pair of drum sticks and silently rolls on the table. "The kid just shreds!"

The rail accepts this. Harder to figure out, though, is Wells' assertion that he's a rank amateur at poker. He tells his new friend on the rail that the PCA is his first big tourney ever. Looking at his stack, one has to wonder about ye olde beginner's luck.

"Are you just outplaying everybody?" asks the railbird.

Wells scoffs at the idea. "I'm not outplaying anybody."

"So, people just think you don't know what you're doing?"

"Thing is," Wells says with a smile, "I don't."

It is, in fact, hard to believe. Wells is not playing every hand. Not even playing a lot. Maybe earlier in the day people thought they could shell him into submission. Seven hours into the event, however, he's brushing back more than a few comers. His stack sits around 90,000.

As I walk away, Wells stands, put his hands in the air and says, "Whew! I'm hot."

And, he's actually talking about the temperature.

That's David Wells today. All laughs, completely relaxed, and sitting on a stack as big as a pitcher's mound.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

Scott Seiver is all dressed up and ready to go to dinner tonight, but tomorrow, he'll be hard at work at the tables of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. He bought in to the tournament and is scheduled to play in Day 1B. Seiver seems to be in good spirits. He played in the PCA last year and says he thinks he has the right mentality about it all this year. He knows that there can be only one winner, and in a tournament this size, the odds of taking it all down are small. If he gets knocked out, Seiver says he plans to brush it off quickly and enjoy the Bahamas.

The weather here is quite a contrast from what Seiver left back in Providence, Rhode Island. He lives there with his roommate and old college buddy Isaac Haxton. You might recognize the name. Haxton took second place in the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Last we saw this evening, Haxton had about 30,000 in chips.

Haxton's buddy Scott Seiver will get his shot tomorrow. He graduated in May with a degree in Computer Science and Economics and now makes his living playing poker. He plays mostly online, but he has played several live tournaments since graduation. Seiver says he recently played a 10K at the Borgata, the Bellagio series, and a 10K event at the Legends of Poker. The PCA is his latest tournament stop, and, who knows? Maybe this year, he'll be the big winner of the house.

Editor's note: From time to time at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, we take a quick break from watching the tables and look over our shoulder at the rail. Some people here have brought friends. Other players have an entourage. The Rail Report introduces us to some of the best sweaters on Paradise Island and the people they are rooting on.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is more than a poker tournament for Michael Cooper. He just got married in October, and his wife, Tina, says this trip is like a honeymoon for them. Tina's heart is in two places this evening, though. She's here in the Bahamas supporting her husband, but she says she misses her three month old baby boy who's back home in Atlanta.

This is not Michael Cooper's first year at the PCA. His wife says he came last year but got knocked out on the second day. If he can make it to the money this time, perhaps he can start a college fund for his baby boy.

A reflection of Atlantis

Another person on the rail today caught my eye because of his t-shirt. I noticed the logo immediately, because it said "Missouri" in big bold letters. It seems like forever ago, but I was once a student at the University of Missouri, and I assumed this young man was, too. Although Craig "craigthedeac" Boyd is not a Mizzou student, he is a Missouri boy. He's from St. Louis, but he's a junior finance major at Wake Forest University.

Boyd's not just on the rail today to check out all the famous faces in the crowd. He's here sizing up the situation. Boyd qualified for his own seat through a PCA Steps tournament. He says he wants to get a feel for the action before he has to take his seat tomorrow.

This isn't Boyd's first live tournament, but it's certainly his biggest. He says he's played in a few small tournaments in casinos. He started playing poker in home games with friends and then worked on his game online. Boyd has quite a crew with him here at the PCA. In that bunch, there are five Wake Forest students, including one other who is playing in the tournament, and two of Boyd's friends from St Louis.

Photo © Neil Stoddart

We started with more than 60 tables, we're down to fewer than 50. And the latest news is that we're also missing one Tuan Lam, who busted moments ago.

It's not pretty, so look away now if this kind of thing offends you.

All the money was in on a board of 9h-10c-2c; two players were involved. Tuan tabled Qh-Js for the open-ended straight draw, Michael "martine23" Martin has 10s-Kd for top pair.

Then the swings. The turn was the Kh, filling Tuan's straight and giving Martin a counterfeited two-pair. That is until another king arrived on the river, filling the house for Martin and sending the Team PokerStars Pro member to the beach.

He'll probably find Luca Pagano and Dario Minieri there. But Bill Chen, Andre Akkari, Katja Thater, Steve Paul-Ambrose, Huberto Brenes, ElkY, Chris Moneymaker are still in and still going strong.

Latest notable chip counts are HERE

Full PCA information is HERE

Photo © Neil Stoddart

Most people in the poker world don't pay you much mind if you bring up the name Bertrand Grospellier. It's a nice enough name and all, but it doesn't slap poker folks in the face like, say, the name ElkY.

Long-revered in the pro gaming world, ElkY made the move to poker a few years back. Since then, he's been the the first Supernova and first Supernova Elite at PokerStars. If you're at all familiar with how much time and dedication it takes to make it to Supernova Elite, you know it requires one heckuva lot of sitting hours. Over time, the days and nights ElkY spent in front of the computer earned ElkY more than a million VIP Player Points and more than a few pounds on the scale.

When ElkY arrived at the PCA, though, it was easy to miss him. Once a little plump, ElkY decided it was probably time to lose some weight. The problem was, he didn't have the proper motivation. So, like any good player, ElkY found some.

Now, ElkY has some serious cash down on a weight loss bet. It appears, at the moment, he is wininng.

Today, ElKY is looking to find some traction in the contest of the week. We'll have to wait and see if he can win as many chips as pounds he's lost.

In other Team PokerStars Pro news, Luca Pagano has suffered a suckout for his last time in the 2008 PCA main event. Our spies tell us Pagano was playing at the 100/200 level and made it 1,400 to play from late position. He got six callers. The ten-high board matched well with Pagano's pair of tens. Everyone checked to Pagano who made it 4,000 to play. He got one caller who held J8. By the turn, his opponent had a double gutshot and flush draw. Pagano's opponent pushed all-in and Pagano called. The river gave the J8 a straight and put Pagano out to the beach.

With 20 members of Team PokerStars Pro in the field, there ws bound to be a few confrontations between the team members. Today, Dario Minieri and Tuan Lam have been mixing it up and putting to rest any rumors about team spirit. Just a bit ago, Lam flopped the nut straight from the big blind and took more than a few chips from the young Italian.

And the very latest from the floor is that Dario is finito. And it was Tuan who took him out. After folding four hands in a row -- itself something of a record -- Dario re-raised all-in from the button, for about 9,000, after the cut-off had made a regulation three-times the big blind bet.

This seemed entirely regulation; Dario re-raising is kind of the default move. But Tuan Lam was in the big blind and didn't take much time to push all-in over the top. He had about 14,000 at the time. That, of course, gave the cut-off a decision, and he may have read something into the way that Dario stood up, put both straps of his knapsack over his shoulders, and actually walked out of the tournament room.

"That's a great play if he has aces," noted someone else at the table.

Priced in, the cut-off player called and they were three-way, all-in pre-flop. By this point, Dario was back and turned over his A-4 diamonds. "I'm hoping both of you have pairs," he said.

Unfortunately not. The cut-off had A-Q spades; Tuan had 10-10; Dario dead to some diamonds or a miracle. Neither came. They ran it all the way and Lam's pocket pair held up.

Dario departed, Tuan tripled. One gone, one up for Team PokerStars Pro.

Counting poker players in the early stages of a major tournament is like trying to number bees in a swarm. Everyone has an assigned seat, of course, but they also often have a friend or family on the rail, a scheduled trip to the bathroom, or a nicotine habit needing feeding. They're often buzzing to and from the tables, leaving a vacant chair.

The word coming from the man with the microphone, tournament director Mike Ward, is that about 580 players are registered today, parting with $8,000 for their shot at the big time. Of those, we have a list of 255 players who won their seat here in a PokerStars satellite, attempting to parlay a paltry couple of hundred dollars into something near to a million bucks.

A further ten names playing today have the potential to write themselves an even more spectacular story. These are the FPP qualifiers, people who saved up their Frequent Player Points on PokerStars, exchanged them for an entry fee to an online tournament, and came out on top. They earned their ticket to the Bahamas for precisely nothing except a good few hours grinding around the virtual tables. If, or maybe when, they make the money, figuring out their return on investment breaks the calculator. It's round about infinity.

Among the FPP qualifiers here in the Bahamas is Joan Schank, from Miami, Florida. She took up poker a couple of years ago, playing for play money on PokerStars, getting a feel for the software, the game and the way these tournaments go. She soon graduated into the real money ranks and earned 70 FPPs that she used to enter a satellite into a satellite, prevailing in both and successfully climbing a double-runged ladder into the main event.

To put things into perspective, a stress ball at the PokerStars store costs 400 FPPs. Joan is in the Bahamas for less than a quarter the price of that. Her, her husband and daughter made the trip, and so far they're having a blast.

"My daughter played her first live sit and go yesterday," Joan said. "And now she's out on the water slides with Humberto Brenes's son."

Only at the PCA.

This is Joan's first live tournament, but she's made a few forays into the casinos of Fort Lauderdale, so knows a fair bit about live cash play, enjoying the chance to take longer over decisions and pick up tells. She's sitting opposite Sorel Mizzi this afternoon, another who has made a successful leap from the virtual to bricks-and-mortar world. It's not going to be an easy table, but so far Joan is up, with a couple of thousand more than her starting 20,000.

One more thing: don't expect Joan to be intimidated in this male-dominated environment. Although there are only a handful of women in the entire field, it's hardly new to Joan, who is a real estate investor and used to taking on a 99 percent male field in the auction houses of Florida. Just like there, brain beats brawn and Joan's ambition at the PCA is remarkably clear:

"I want to win!" she said.

All photos © Neil Stoddart

It was getting on toward midnight last night when I spotted Team Poker Stars Pro member Andre Akkari. He sat at the back of the Coral Lobby lounge in a long line of Brazilian players.

"I'm going to bed. I play tomorrow," he said.

There was something, though, binding him to the table. Poker friend and running buddy Igor Federale sat focused on his computer screen and busy playing the final table of the PokerStars $100-rebuy. Just a couple of feet away sat PokerStars player FU_15, who had busted out just short of the final table...at Federale's hands.

That was a preview of what the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is all about. Many of these players who sat down here today have spent years battling each other in the virutal PokerStars world. Now, they sit down across from each other in a very, very live venue. Instead of merely relying on bet-sizing and timing, these players can now look at their PokerStars opponent's face.

Akkari, as usual, did the smart thing and made it to bed in time to come down to the PCA poker room today. It was just a few years ago that Akkari and his Brazilian crew went to Las Vegas on a bit of a soul-searching mission. Akkari had built a modest bankroll playing freeroll tournaments and small buy-in events. With $2,000 in his pocket, he went to Las Vegas for ten days of play. Just off the plane, he entered a small tournament at Binion's and won nearly $500. Bouyed by his first success, he entered a $450 tournament the next day and won the entire thing for $22,000.

Today, Akkari is a member of Team PokerStars Pro and living a dream built on a foundation of freerolls. He's resting comfortably on 24,000 after the first level of play.

Just a couple of tables away, fate decided to wink at the poker room in the form of a fun table assignment. At table 56, Tampa Bay Devil Ray baseball player Wade Townsend sat in seat 1. Two seats away sat none other than David Wells. Wells has managed to show he can collect more than strikeouts. After only an hour and fifteen minutes of play, Wells has more than doubled his stack.

In other news, the word on the street is Erik Seidel has made an early exit from the PCA.

After a cautious first level of play, the runners here have settled into that slow and rhythmic mindset so familiar at these big events. Day 1A play is scheduled to continue here until around 9pm tonight.

All photos © Neil Stoddart

No matter how remote the location nor how early one arrives, checking in at a major poker tournament means an end to anonymity. Not everyone knows your name, perhaps, but no player worth their salt forgets a face, and walking through the labyrinthine corridors between lobby and poker room means a nod and a smile in this direction, a quick wave over there, maybe even a stop-and-chat if you really go way back -- to EPT season two, or something equally as distant.

This week, the extended family have decamped to the Bahamas, and in the past couple of pre-tournament nights, the bars have been reliably packed with the chatter of old acquaintances. Newcomers quickly join the fray as screen-names are matched with handshakes; avatars fixed to a real-life visage. Meanwhile, the lobbies turn into what look like air-traffic control towers: rows upon rows of laptops keeping the online seats warm.

And now, as the tournament has just begun, the faces are scattered far and wide across the Grand Ballroom of the Beach Tower in the Atlantis Resort. No matter how well you know them, picking them out becomes a real feat of identification. It's amazing how easy it becomes to walk down the line of tables, right past a world champion, and not even know they were there, hidden behind a pile of chips, a pair of shades and a scowl.

However, we still try -- and among the 580 players eyeing their share of the $10 million (approx) prize pool are:

Team PokerStars Pro members Dario Minieri and Tuan Lam both on table 10.
Luca Pagano peering over at his team-mates from table 11.
Bertrand "ElKy" Grospellier also in the region, on table 13.
Chris Moneymaker, who will never again need an introduction, on table 2.
Katja Thater, Bill Chen, Steve Paul-Ambrose, Humberto Brenes, Andre Akkari, the remaining Team PokerStars Pro members also in today's field.

Also spotted:

Erik Seidel sharing table 16 with British pro Peter Gould.
One spilt drink on table 44.
John Shipley, a former EPT champion and PokerStars qualifier here.
Erik Friberg, who made the World Series final table while a PokerStars qualifier, sharing a table with Thor Hansen, legendary Scandinavian pro.
Patrick Bruel, French actor/singer/poker player.
Norm MacDonald, announcer, comedian, player.

For a full list of notables, click here. We'll be updating their chip counts throughout the day.

As a reminder, players started with 20,000 units in chips for their $8,000 buy in. We're playing 75 minute levels, with a ten minute break at the end of each. Full details of the PCA structure, are here.

And check out the main EPT site by clicking here.

In southwest Missouri, many miles and a lifetime away, storms from the Kansas plains introduce themselves well in advance of their arrival. Distant flashes of light pop on the horizon, slow rumbles roll across the Ozark Mountains, and urgent winds carry the smell of giant raindrops. It's impossible to ignore the midwest thunderstorms.

I bring it up only because it's the one frame of reference I have for the impending start of such a big event.

With just minutes to go to before the start of Day 1A at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, there are certain indicators that were about to see something big, something record-breaking here at Atlantis. More than 600 seats surround more than 60 tables in a well-appointed, but cavernous poker room. Each seat will be awarded eight green, eight black, four purple, seven yellow, and two blue chips. In total, the players in those seats will have 20,000 in starting chips.

The storm, however, is not so much in the sitting as what will happen over the next nine hours. While the stacks are as deep as anybody could want, the battle to make it to day's end will be more than your average storm. Some of the people in this room will take shelter and let their giant starting stack protect them. Other players will climb to the top of their stacks, face the lightning and driving rain, and challenge anyone to smite them. I'm not big on using the word 'epic' as it applies to poker, but if I were going to, this would be a good start.

By the time the poker room closed at 4am this morning, a $500 rebuy super satellite had awarded 24 seats to the main event. While that event played out, the huge cash games rose up from the carpet. If it's any indication how big the games were, the tables featured Barry Greenstein, Victor Ramdin, Dario Minieri, and Thomas Walhroos.

One of the many sharks at Atlantis this week

And some of the fish

Now, there is no more waiting for the storm to arrive.

The 2008 PCA is here and only one will survive.

All photos © Neil Stoddart

"Get lower...lower...lower!"

The rich, Bahamian voice was not at all subtle. It was asking a woman to get as close to the floor as possible. It was impossible to see if the target was complying, because the crowd was packed as close as possible.

And a lot of things were on fire.

Tonight, PokerStars threw the biggest party in all of the Bahamas. More than 1,000 people showed up for hot music, hot food, and, indeed, hot fire. Fire dancers, fire limbo, fire eating.

For a couple hours tonight, players forgot about poker for a little bit and relaxed. Twenty members of Team PokerStars Pro worked their way through a crowd of people who have their sights set on a first prize that will pass $1 million with ease. From shrimp, to pot stickers, to sweep potato fritters, the food was as hot as the fire dancers. Maybe hotter.

The main event begins Satuday at noon ET. Until the action gets as hot as tonight's fire dancers, here's Team PokerStars Blog photographer Neil Stoddart's look at the first 2008 party in paradise.

Lee Jones, an old hand at the PCA, stood like a poker king surveying his land. The poker room (now 33% bigger!) had just opened and within minutes, three single table tournaments and a big cash game were running.

"A poker player without action is like a bee without wings," he said.

And I think he knew he was understating it a bit.

Despite the fact PokerStars is about to throw a huge party for hundreds of people, the action inside the poker room is already starting and will not end until the last dealer collapses, all the money is in one person's hands, or time runs out. Frankly, I'm not laying bets on which happens first.

Elsewhere, the EPT crew is beginning to build the featured/final table set. This year, all of the action, including the final table and EPT Live broadcast, will take place inside the Grand Ballroom.

In a little less than an hour, PokerStars will officially welcome all its players to this record-breaking PCA. Post-party, an untold number of people will get into the first tournament action of the weekend, a $500 rebuy super satellite to the main event.

There is so much to see here that it is sometimes easy to cradle one's self in tunnel vision. As this is my fourth trip to the PCA, I asked co-blogger Howard Swains to give us a first-timer's impression of all that is the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure at Atlantis.

A new Europe
by Howard Swains

Living in New York but originating in London, England, I have made a number of flights between America and Europe over the years. And yet there was something peculiar about this particular trip from the Big Apple to the European Poker Tour, most notably that we flew over Florida, then a landed on a tiny island surrounded by bright blue sea.

I realise that this might be the impression that some folk have of Great Britain, but the blue surrounding that particular small island is somewhere between an oil slick and a Monday morning hangover. This, however, was the kind of shade that would please an elementary school artist: shiny, translucent and really, honestly, blue.

The weirdness didn't end there. In place of the familiar grizzled immigration officers at the airport was a guy tinkling a sweet melody on the upturned lid of a trash can, accompanied by a wah-wah guitar. I'm sure the guy who checked my passport even smiled at me and then my taxi driver shook my hand. Twice. We then drove past palm trees, lagoons and a fleet of million-dollar yachts, and there wasn't a single ill-informed rant about the miserable state of the country.

Europe sure had changed in the couple of months I'd been away. And I think I kind of liked it.

Welcome, of course, to Europe, Bahamanian style. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is in its fifth renewal, but for the first time it joins the likes of London, Copenhagen, Dublin and Monte Carlo as a part of the spectacular success story that is the EPT. Much of what we've come to expect is present and correct: there are hoards of supremely talented poker players, a vast tournament room, a massive prize pool, and bad beat stories in a hundred languages. But so much is very different indeed.

For the uninitiated, it takes some getting used to Paradise Island, our home for the next six days. Flipping around somewhere outside the poker room are a bunch of Galapagos turtles, the likes of which you don't tend to find in Dortmund. The network of swimming pools, slides and sun-loungers don't immediately spring to mind when you think of Prague. And strolling through the aquarium the this morning, I passed Humberto Brenes in the viewing tunnel peering up and around as sharks cut menacingly through the water. A new card protector, perhaps?

The first glimpse of Paradise Island comes while traversing one of two, humped, narrow road bridges that join the larger part of Nassau to the party island. The Atlantis Resort covers the entire expanse of this smaller land-mass, but while it might be little more than a speck on a map, it's plenty big enough to wander aimlessly around for hour upon hour.

There are towering blocks of hotel rooms, pink and orange against the Caribbean sky. But just because you can see them, it doesn't mean you can get to them. Not without making a right over the rope bridge, left at the volcano, trudge across the beach, crack a coconut, slurp a cocktail, play a couple of hands of blackjack, swim with a dolphin, clamber up the climbing wall, count your millions on a sailboat, dance a rumba, surf the breakers, and fight a pirate.

It's Disneyland, crossed with Las Vegas on Monkey Island. And the next week should be a lot of fun.

Island time.

It's a phrase used to describe a certain relaxed attitude toward the urgency of a mission. It's also the phrase one could've applied to the man who brought us here. Suffice it to say, the cab driver was not in a hurry. He had a woman to pick up, a gas tank to fill, and a dinner to order before dropping us at our destination, the luxurious Atlantis Resort and Casino. Regardless, the hungry, lonely, un-fueled driver brought this weary crew of blog writers to the one place in the Bahamas where a poker player (and yea verily, a poker writer) can feel at home.

As I type, poker players and their ilk are making their way onto Paradise Island. As the world turns and waves crash, the weather is not what forecasters would call ideal. The temperature is below normal and wind is making a play for hurricane status. If it weren't for the cheery predictions of sunny skies and 80 degree days on Saturday, some folks here might find reason to be depressed. Instead, everyone is looking toward fantastic weather and what is certain to be the biggest PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in its five-year history. The prize pool is creeping ever closer to a record amount. Tournament director Mike Ward is all but assuring more than 1,200 players. If for some reason the tournament should find its way toward 1,300 players, the prize pool would hit an astounding $10,000,000.

The wind-blown beach on Paradise Island

The biggest poker room in PCA history in set-up mode

Player bags waiting for their owners

The Grand Ballroom of the Atlantis is now outfitted with more than 60 poker tables, enough to accommodate the expected 1,200 players at the 2008 PCA. Already, organizers are making preparations for insane cash games, and a multitude of single-table and multi-table tournaments. More than 100 dealers are finding their rooms and massaging their hands in expectation of eight days of hard-core dealing.

Tonight, 20 mile per hour winds are pushing the sea onto the beach and blowing red flag warnings toward the hotel. By the time the tournament starts, the winds will have settled and sunburns will be the only thing about which to worry.

By this time tomorrow, most all the players will be here and full from the PokerStars welcome party. Right now, however, the story is all about enjoying what Atlantis has to offer.

Here are a few things to note as you prepare for the greatest week in live poker.

The poker room opens Friday at 6pm.

PokerStars will host a welcome party at 7:30pm in the Imperial Ballroom.

The PCA will run one live super satellite on Friday. Registration opens at 5pm for the 8pm $500 (with a $400 one-time re-buy) super satellite.

Players with PokerStars accounts will be able to withdraw up to $10,000 cash each day. On Friday, players will be able to access their accounts from 9-11pm. Every other day, accounts will be open from 12pm-2pm, and 7pm-9pm.

Registration for the PCA is scheduled remain open until the beginning of Day 1B and there will be the opportunity for alternate players. However, due to unprecedented demand, everyone should be aware, registration could be cut off without notice. It is in every player's best interest to register as soon as possible.

For the PCA-traveler waking up on Friday morning, that's all you need to know.

For everyone headed here on Friday, we wish you a safe and comfortable journey.

For all updated information on the PCA, visit EPT.com

If there was ever a Tournament Leader Board battle at PokerStars, the month of December was the one to remember. The top 100 TLB leaders from December knew they were fighting for the dream poker prize: The PokerStars Passport. The player who walks away with that prize will get ten free buy-ins to major poker events from the world, beginning with the EPT event in Dortmund, Germany and ending at the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventures.

Now, those top 100 players will get a free shot at the following prizes.

1. PokerStars Passport
2. EPT Monte Carlo Package
3. $10,000
4. $5,000
5. $3,000
6. $2,500
7. $2,000
8. $1,500
9. $1,000

See the end of this post for a listing of the top 100 players who have a shot at the poker prize of a lifetime.

We also can't forget the top 1000 TLB players who will also get a shot at some more great prices.

1. EPT Monte Carlo Package
2. $5,000
3. $3,000
4. $2,000
5. $1,500
6. $1,250
7. $1,000
8. $750
9. $500

Both tournaments will go off Sunday, January 13th. Good luck to everyone!

PokerStars December TLB Top 100

1. cheddarmon
2. DESS66
3. shini_333
4. Borys313
5. bparis
6. mossified84
7. Pipedream17
8. stacksanchez
9. the_duces
10. 55lucky55
11. Aryamehr
12. krmont22
13. ael1979
14. TheMiltMan
15. Joe_Banks
16. mattymat
17. fabregarp
18. Maniac4Life
19. butch_dk
20. ImaLuckSac
21. PearlJammer
22. ryanb9
23. pairDboard21
24. rublish
25. DaEmbezzler
26. bluntman82
27. jitterbug777
28. gbmantis
29. ugotblufd
30. dcookie
31. Charbarj41
32. ImaLucSac
33. DenverSports
34. stealurmoney
35. supreamdream
36. lendusachip
37. na8tivestyle
38. BIGbossM
39. funkyc
40. jornxx
41. JayPez
42. alesanre
43. real-nic
44. inheritance
45. Pappe_Ruk
46. roachclips
47. - DoV -
48. pokerjamers
49. VOLCANO360
50. 4ofaKindBud
51. king-el che
52. QuasiFiction
53. 4ofAAAAkind
54. Kcannon
55. DoobMan420
56. a$$ou
57. pokerfun4321
58. icallseat3
59. arbianight
60. manticore666
61. cajundaddy1
62. AynRand
63. LePlein
64. shaundeeb
65. gabo05
66. thewh00sel
67. Entropy xx
68. JRBluff
69. ch0ppy
70. augie99
71. dumbhand
72. Stammdogg
73. BigDaddyKing
74. aksuited13
75. holdplz
76. xthesteinx
77. MrteddyKGB
78. bukowski101
79. DonkeyWrenn
80. sketchy1
81. ozenc
82. dajatt13
83. AcEGoDD
84. CHIPFLOW
85. prosimon
86. PaPaDoC719
87. dave798111
88. player9ball
89. Tired Loser
90. DNA2RNA
91. pblader100
92. bd3109
93. D.Nowitzki
94. dudeoflife21
95. KevKoN
96. white3303
97. devsdynamite
98. TX Princess
99. JAMES-OO7
100. Keystone_FoH