Round-the-Clock Poker

Am back on the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) beat again this week, helping cover the events for the PokerStars blog. Was up late last night with Event No. 26, the $320 mixed hold’em event (recap here), and I’ll be writing up other events over the next week as well.

Yesterday started with my dialing up PokerNews’ coverage of Event No. 1 of the World Series of Poker Europe, the £2,650 six-handed no-limit hold’em event. Looks like they attracted a healthy-sized field of 244 for that one, and this afternoon (or evening in London) they are down to nine players at the moment with Phil Laak, Chris Bjorin, John Tabatabai still with chips.

David Peters, whom I saw come heart-breakingly close to winning a bracelet this summer at the WSOP (in Event No. 54, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event), is there, too, currently in second behind Andrew Pantling. They will play down to the final six today -- unless they get through 10 more levels first, which is unlikely -- with that bracelet being awarded tomorrow.

That event had begun by the time I woke up here on the east coast yesterday. Then I was up until about four in the morning with my WCOOP event. A long day-slash-night-slash-morning of poker.

My WCOOP event was the first to conclude last night, actually, with both of the other events lasting another hour or so. In one, Event No. 27 ($320 Badugi), John Monnette won the bracelet, outlasting (among others) Greg “Fossilman” Raymer who finished third.

Our buddy Dr. Pauly wrote up the story of that Badugi event early this morning (see here). He was a guest on yesterday’s episode of This Week in Poker, and if you happened to watch you might’ve noticed he had his laptop open and at one point mentioned he was covering the event.

Another good episode of TWiP, by the way, including some conversation in there about about Pauly’s book, Lost Vegas. Worth catching, if you missed it. Oh, and Lacey Jones is on there, too, in a bathrobe, if Pauly ain’t enough to get you over to watch.

I spent a couple of hours last night watching ESPN’s coverage of Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event as well. I was especially interested to watch last night as I was covering the two feature tables for PokerNews that day, and so had been there for a lot of the action that was shown last night. Even caught a number of glimpses of an out-of-focus Shamus last night, too -- mostly over Johnny Chan’s shoulder -- which Vera Valmore got a kick out of. (And maybe I did, too, a little.)

That Day 4 of the Main Event was one of my favorite days of the WSOP this summer, actually, the day the money bubble burst. I wrote at length about it back in July here in a post titled “Your Roving Reporter.”

By the time I packed it in early this morning, I found myself thinking about how full the day had been, poker-wise, taken up as it was with following all the tourneys and shows. Poker players and fans certainly have plenty to occupy themselves these days, never mind actually getting to the tables (online or live) and playing themselves.

Gonna rest up a little for another late night. Meanwhile, I send you over to PokerNews and the PokerStars blog for more pokery fun on these here intertubes.