2008 WSOP, Day 5: Five for Five

Today there will be five different events going on at the World Series of Poker.

Event No. 2, that massive first $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event, stopped short of the final table at almost 6 a.m., suspending play with 18 players remaining. They actually just started playing a few minutes ago, not even eight hours later.

Event No. 3, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em event, begins their Day 2 in 15 minutes or so. After starting with 713 runners yesterday, there are 63 left who will be playing down to nine today.

Event No. 4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em event (which I’ll be covering), is at a similar stage. We have 91 of the original 332 players left, and we, too, will be playing down to the final nine. Those of us covering Event Nos. 3 & 4 were all counting our blessings yesterday as we watch the poor souls who had to cover Event No. 2 wondering how long it was going to take them to get from a whopping 448 players down to nine. (As mentioned, they didn’t quite get there.)

Two other events get started today. Actually, one has already started, Event No. 5, the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em with Re-Buys event. The other one, Event No. 6, the $1,500 Omaha/8 event, kicks off at 5 p.m. local time.

All of which means there will likely be a stretch around the late afternoon-early evening when all five events will be active. Another big challenge for the WSOP staff to accommodate.

I expect I’ll be back in my same corner of the Amazon Room about an hour from now, near the “Blue” tables blogging away at Event No. 4. I’m not seeing any break scheduled at all today on the “Schedule of Play” they scatter about that list the blinds/antes for each level. Ninety-one players means we will probably have eleven tables at the start (and at 90 they’ll break down to ten). Today is also the day we should start to notice that different structure for this year’s version of the event having its effect (discussed previously).

There are still a lot of big names left in Event No. 4, so it is possible we might get to enjoy a final table with the star power of Event No. 1’s final table. High profile pros still left in the event include Jon “PearlJammer” Turner (current chipleader with 100,200), Justin Bonomo (in fourth), David Williams (eighth), Gavin Griffin (ninth), Barry Schulman (14th), Bill Chen (15th), Ted Forrest (16th), Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke (19th), Roland de Wolfe (20th), Andy Bloch (29th), Howard Lederer (30th), Chau Giang (32nd), Josh Arieh (33rd), Andy Black (36th), Antonio Esfandiari (41th), Patrik Antonius (42nd), Michael Craig (51st), David Grey (53rd), Robert Williamson III (54th), Marcel Luske (60th), Michael Binger (67th), Phil Laak (72nd), Hoyt Corkins (74th), Alex Kravchenko (76th), David Benyamine (77th), and Erick Lindgren (88th).

About time for me to head on over to the Rio. More later. As always, follow all the action over at PokerNews.