2008 WSOP, Day 8: Shootout!

I am presently sitting at my workstation, about twenty minutes before Event No. 11 gets underway. Here is what else is going on at the Rio today . . .

Looks like Tom Schneider made it to 12th last night in Event No. 8, the $10,000 World Championship Mixed Game event. A fine showing, though I’m sure he’d prefer to be at today’s final table. As expected, it’ll be a tough one, with James Mackey, Matt Glantz, Sam Farha, Michael DeMichele, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Eli Elezra, Anthony Rivera, and Jeff Madsen comprising the final eight. Glantz has a big chip lead heading into today’s play, but I’d be inclined to pick Dwan (currently in third) to take this one.

One other final table today as well, in Event No. 7, the $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. Theo Tran has been leading this one pretty much from the beginning, and has a big chip lead heading into tonight’s play. He’ll have to outlast J.C. Tran, Shannon Shorr, and the other six to get there.

Like yesterday, there will be six events altogether being played today. Event No. 9, the $1,500 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, begins Day 2 with 71 of the original 1,236 entrants still alive. Matt Matros is the chip leader in that one at the moment. And Event No. 10, the $2,500 Omaha/8-Stud/8 event, gets going again this afternoon as well, with 108 remaining from the 388 who entered. Jordan Rich has the chip lead in that one heading into today’s play, but there are a number of big-name pros still alive, including Michael Mizrachi, Steve Zolotow, Todd Brunson, John Cernuto, Howard Lederer, Barbara Enright, Scott Clements, Greg Raymer, and Allen Cunningham, just to name a few.

Two more events get started today, Event No. 11, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout, and Event No. 12, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event.

As much as I like limit hold’em, I’m glad I drew the shootout to help cover for PokerNews today. As I discovered covering the Mixed Hold’em event, those limit hands aren’t always the most exciting on which to report, even though in our tournament some of the most crucial hands of the event happened during the limit rounds.

Like I said, Event No. 11 gets started in just a little while (at noon), so for the first couple of hours it will be the only tournament in action in the Amazon Room. It’ll be like reporting on a whole series of final tables, really, which should be pretty interesting.

If I understand the structure sheet correctly, we’ll start out with a bunch of full-handed tables where players will start with 10,000 chips and play down to a winner (like a sit-n-go). Then all of those who win their tables will redraw and be sat again at full-handed tables, this time with 100,000 chips (and higher blinds/antes, thankfully). They’ll each play down to one, and they do it again, for Round 3, where the sheet says they will have a million chips each to start.

Not sure how many rounds it will take to complete this tournament, though the sheet seems to indicate there will be only three -- one each day of the event. I am sitting here at our workstation and I see the dealers each have ten stacks of chips in front of them, so I assume they will be going ten-handed. It appears there are thirty or so tables set up for the event, so that would mean 360 players. In fact, I just heard the announcer say they are capping it at 360.

Anyhow, do head over to PokerNews’ live reporting if you want to follow my reports. I’ll be paired with Steve Horton again for this event.