2009 WSOP, Day 26: Mixing It Up

“Hey, I’ve got more PokerNews stuff on than you do.”

Said Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler to me about a half-hour before play began for Event No. 42, the $2,500 Mixed Game event that started about 5:15 p.m. yesterday, the late start due to the longer-than-anticipated lines at the registration desk to enter. Kessler was the first player I saw show for the event.

I had gotten in a little earlier than I normally do and already had set up shop back in the corner of the Brasilia Room where the event was due to begin. I saw Kessler had patches for PokerRoad, Doyle’s Room, and PokerNews there on the front of his short-sleeved powder blue shirt.

Kessler is one of a few pros keeping a WSOP blog for PokerNews this summer. I know people have fun with the “Chainsaw” a lot over on Two Plus Two, where he’s known for starting numerous threads. Some also like to give him a hard time for his especially nitty playing style that often leaves him nursing a short stack for much of his tourney life, sometimes sneaking into the money though not going deep that often. (List those who gave him his ironic nickname among that latter group.)

Kessler’s a good sport, though, whose self-effacing sense of humor is endearing (imo, as they say). That sense of humor comes out a bit it in the “Calling the Clock” segment he did with PokerNews’ Melissa Castello a few days ago (see bottom of post).

I had several interactions with players yesterday during the Mixed Game event, which ended up attracting 412 total entrants, including just about every big name you can imagine. At one point, Jennifer Harman came over to my table to ask me if I knew how her husband, Marco Traniello, was faring over in Event No. 41, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout event. Harman had won her table already, and last she had heard Traniello was still alive at his.

A quick check enabled me to tell her that it looked as though Traniello had made it to heads up and was about even in chips with his opponent. “I’ll let you know,” I said. Alas, soon after I learned from MarcC that Traniello had been eliminated. I stood up, caught Harman’s eye, and gave her the thumbs down signal with a soundless “sorry.”

Layne Flack was also in not-so-rare form, bouncing around the room and making a lot of noise, especially near the end of the night. He was seated right near where I was set up, and at some point began digging into the reporters’ bags of Jack Link’s beef jerky. Then he began ordering beers a few at a time. I couldn’t resist writing one post about it.

Slow Cooked and Mesquite Smoked
Layne Flack has just now found a couple of bags of Jack Link's Beef Jerky (not hard to do -- they're everywhere) and has gone down the path many others have tread over the last few weeks here at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. That would be the path to the bottom of the bag, having discovered like many others it is especially difficult to eat just one piece of the stuff.

Not surprisingly, Flack now finds himself feeling a little parched. "Cocktails!" he just cried. "I've got a bigger order this time!"

Flack has about 20,000 at the moment.

Finally, just as the night was about to end, a no-limit hold’em hand came up involving Kessler and Jonathan “Fatal Error” Aguiar which my reporter happened to catch and relate to me just before he left for the night. I wrote it up, and not five minutes later Aguiar was there beside me retelling the story to Jonathan Fricke and others, pretty much exactly as we had reported it.

Kessler's Kings Kracked
No-Limit Hold'em

Allen "Chainsaw" Kessler just lost a big pot versus Jonathan "Fatal Error" Aguiar in one of the last hands of the night. Aguiar was all in preflop. Once Kessler called him, Aguiar said "Please have kings." He got his wish, as Kessler indeed had K-K.

When Aguiar showed his hand -- A-3 -- Kessler had a comment as well: "Oh no."

The flop changed nothing, but the turn brought a trey, and the river another trey, and Aguiar survived. Kessler gets knocked back to 7,000 right before night's end.

Poor Chainsaw. It actually looks like he has 25,000, though, as Day 2 begins, so he either picked some chips back up or we had that last estimate wrong there.

I’m glad to see, in any case, that he has a stack. Maybe his kings will hold up for him today and he’ll last a bit longer. Or his 7-6-4-3-2 will hold up in 2-7 Triple Draw. Or his king-high flush with the nut low won’t get quartered in Omaha/8. Or his rolled up jacks will hold up in Stud.

Follow along on PokerNews’ live reporting page and find out.