Watching the High Rollers

Have to admit my eagerness to follow what has been going on at the World Series of Poker has been coming and going here over the last week or so. Kind of surprising to look up and realize the Main Event is almost here (it starts Sunday).

In fact, I’ve found my attention as a poker-spectator divided this week somewhat by what’s happening over at the ARIA Resort & Casino, in particular by that big three-day “Super High Roller” cash game featuring $400/$800 blinds, $200 antes, and a quarter-million minimum buy-in. That’s leading up to a $500,000 buy-in “Super High Roller Bowl” tourney at the ARIA that starts tomorrow.

All of the action at the ARIA is being delivered over the PokerCentral Twitch channel, albeit without hole cards. It’s all being shot as well for broadcast later on NBCSN. The cash game has at times resembled the old High Stakes Poker shows given the emphasis on table talk and having lots of well known personalities sitting around the table. And I think I heard something about Gabe Kaplan and A.J. Benza coming back to do the commentary, although I’m not 100% on that.

Among those taking part thus far have been Jean-Robert Bellande, Bob Bright, Doyle Brunson, Daniel Colman, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Ivey, Matthew Kirk, Paul Newey, Doug Polk, Andrew Robl, David “Doc” Sands, Scott Seiver, Jennifer Tilly, and Sam Trickett.

There have been some huge pots and interesting props -- if you’re curious you can read PokerNews’ recaps of Day 1 and Day 2 and/or look through the live reporting blog.

You might’ve heard about one hand from yesterday involving Daniel Colman and Doug Polk in which the flop came -- that’s right, a second queen of clubs snuck in there. The craziest part of the hand, though, was the fact that neither Colman, Polk, nor anyone else at the table seemed to notice the duplicated card, and in fact the hand played to a conclusion before the fouled deck was realized. Take a look:

Seiver had a funny line soon after when Robl holding ace-queen called a preflop all-in by Polk who had a pair of kings. “Obviously Andrew’s playing this because there’s a bonus queen in the deck,” Seiver cracked.

The did fall on the flop in that one the first time they ran it, and Seiver said “I’m rooting for another queen of spades.” The then came on the turn to put Robl ahead, but a king came on the river to give Polk kings full. (Polk won the second run, too.)

Going back to hand with the duplicated card, though -- everyone’s so unfazed, despite the huge amount of money on the line. Safe to say if something similar happened at the Rio -- say, at a WSOP final table -- the response would hardly be so ho-hum.