Sliding Back

Back on the farm today after a week-and-a-half in the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, so I thought I would slide back in here for a quick check-in.

It’s called the “PCA” again after that one-year trial by PokerStars with new names and different branding, and I know many are pleased we’ll soon be talking about the “LAPT” and “EPT” once again. I suppose down the road those results from 2017 tournaments will all be referred to as part of the distinct histories of each of those other tours.

Vera got to accompany me for part of this one as well, which made the trip all the more enjoyable. There were a few cloudy days in the Bahamas this time around, although for the most part the temperatures were warm and skies relatively clear. Much different from back on the farm where we’ve had some of the coldest days and nights all winter, as well as a big snowfall yesterday.

On the last day before leaving, I went back to the waterslides at the Atlantis for the second time during my stay. Before I started going to the PCA a few years ago, I can’t even remember the last time I went on a waterslide -- probably as a pre-teen. But now it has become a kind of annual ritual for me to jump in a tube and go every January.

When staying at the Atlantis, riding the slides is included, which means guests can go as many times as they wish. Technically there are what they call “River Rides” and “Water Slides.” River Rides are like long, multi-day, multi-table tournaments, winding around large sections of the resort. Water Slides are like single-day turbos, tending to produce more adrenaline but over quickly.

Of the River Rides, I prefer the one called the “Current” which has a few rushes here and there to keep you engaged. (The “Lazy River,” by contrast, is a bit too lazy for me.) Vera and I took a turn on the Current while she was there.

Of the Water Slides, the Leap of Faith (a single 60-foot drop) and the Challenger (a similar straight drop on which you can race a friend) are okay, but I prefer the longer ones -- the Abyss (starts with a 50-foot drop, then 200 more feet of twists and turns, some through dark tunnels) and the Surge (also starting with a big drop followed by a twisty finish).

The Drop is fun, too (and a little scary, as you drop through a dark tunnel), while the Serpent Slide (pictured above) neatly shoots you through a clear tunnel submerged in a shark lagoon, putting you in uncanny proximity to the predators.

The farm is covered with snow today. We live on a sloping hill, actually. Hmm... I wonder if I could build a course starting at the barn and twisting around the house down to the creek.

Photo: Atlantis Bahamas.

On the Square

My Pop gave me a call about a week-and-a-half ago. He had a question for me. Having retired, he’s living down in Florida now in a pretty great community where he’s spending a lot of his time fishing, playing golf, playing music (he’s a guitar player), and having fun.

A Super Bowl gathering is being planned there where he’s living, and the organizers of it had an idea to raise a little bit of money for use in future activities. They’re going to do a “Super Bowl Squares” pool, and while he had an idea what that was about, he was wondering if I could describe to him what it involved.

I was able to explain it to him fairly well, noting how I remembered at last year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure a game had been organized during the playoff games one weekend. You probably know how the game works, too.

A 10 x 10 grid is created with the rows and columns each numbered 0 through 9. Players contribute whatever the entry fee is to the pool, then put their name or initials in one of the squares. Each side goes with one of the teams, so, say, the rows are the Panthers and the columns are the Broncos (as above).

Then at the end of each quarter, whatever the score is determines who wins that quarter’s worth of the cabbage. Say the first quarter ends with the score 13-7 in favor of Carolina -- that would mean whoever had the square in row 3, column 7 would win the quarter (the last digit in each team’s score). Same happens at end of second, third, and fourth quarters, too, with the pool divided up among the four winners.

Unfortunately for him there’s no choosing squares -- they’ll just draw ’em out of hat -- otherwise there would be some strategy involved. Upon learning how the game worked, he noted how it’d be great to draw 0/0, then for the game to go to overtime as a scoreless tie, thus giving that square all four quarters. I noted how there ain’t gonna be a scoreless tie on Sunday, but he knew that already.

Curious, I looked around a little and found an article on The Harvard Sports Analysis Collective website offering “The Optimal Strategy for Playing Squares.” Of course, these were the guys who also published something last July suggesting the Miami Dolphins would be making the Super Bowl this year (and giving the Carolina Panthers a 22% chance of making the playoffs, ranking them 22nd out of 30 in the NFL), so I suppose we should take this squares advice with a grain of salt.

Even if the game won’t be a scoreless tie after four quarters, the 0/0 square is actually one of the best squares to get (unsurprisingly). 0/3, 0/4, 0/7, 3/0, 3/3, 3/4, 3/7, 4/0, 4/3, 4/4, 4/7, 7/0, 7/3, 7/4, and 7/7 are also good ones. Meanwhile pretty much any square with a 2 or a 5 in it is terrible to get, with the ones with a 1, 6, 8, or 9 also pretty bad -- no shocker there for those who know how scoring typically goes in NFL games. That said, the new 33-yard extra point increasing the chance of a miss (and perhaps encouraging teams to go for two) may affect things a bit this year.

The Harvard article actually factors in the favorite-versus-underdog variable to create its chart, although I think that’s probably more fiddling than you’d really need to think about when picking a square (if allowed to pick your own). Even so, for them the 7/0 square in which the 7 is the favorite side is worth about twice what the 0/7 square would be, so perhaps it is something to consider.

Would taking the faves/dogs distinction into account be how the sharps play squares?

Image: PrintYourBrackets.com.

Best of Luck to Everyone

The Panthers are in the NFC Championship game this Sunday, and I can hardly bear making myself even think about it.

I’ve been a fan since the first year of the franchise, and can safely say my rooting interest in the Panthers has been greater than for any other pro team in my lifetime. In other words, it is impossible for me to be at all objective about the team and/or what might happen on Sunday in their game versus the Cardinals.

I think it’s fair, though, to suggest both games Sunday will feature evenly matched teams, and whoever happens to win the games will then be evenly-matched in Super Bowl 50 two weeks later.

Both games feature the top two teams in each conference, with the No. 1-seeded Denver Broncos hosting the No. 2-seeded New England Patriots in the early game, then the top-seeded Panthers hosting the second-seeded Arizona Cardinals in the nightcap. Both games have had lines of around three points favoring the home teams, which is generally the number of points allotted for home-field advantage, meaning the sportsbooks are essentially calling the matchups even.

You can reasonably argue in favor of one team or another on Sunday, but I think most rational-thinking people would admit that with the match-ups this close (on paper, anyway), it’s hard to guess what might happen. Even rabid fans of one of the teams involved (like me) have to admit as much. A couple of coin tosses.

It makes me think a little of the situation that often arises in certain tournaments such as the $25K High Roller I helped cover at the conclusion the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. The players making it to the final table are all so skilled, you have to call the match-ups essentially even. With four left (for instance) a person certainly could have argued in favor of Nick Maimone, Sean Winter, Dario Sammartino, or Josh Beckley being the best of those remaining. But the skill distinction was so small between them (in my view), it was mostly negligible.

Somewhat ironically, then, luck matters more in these spots. How the cards are dealt matters more when everyone knows equally well how to play them. Maimone rivered a straight flush to beat Beckley’s turned ace-high flush, and Beckley was eliminated in fourth. Sammartino’s king-ten couldn’t outrace Winter’s pocket sevens, and he was out in third. After a heads-up deal, Maimone got dealt better cards than Winter did, and Maimone eventually prevailed.

“Good thing we made the deal,” said Winter at one point, noting how Maimone had won several pots in a row. “Nah, I’m just picking up hands,” Maimone insisted, and I don’t doubt that he was right.

With both games so even this weekend, both will probably hinge on a turnover or key play -- likely something that can be classified as lucky -- to determine the outcomes. It could go otherwise, of course, and we might see two blowouts. Even so, luck will play a role.

I’m reminded of those two earlier playoff games, the one ending on a couple of flukey penalties and a field goal to win (Pittsburgh at Cincinnati), the other ending on a missed 27-yard field goal that would have changed the outcome (Seattle at Minnesota).

I’m thinking as well of an interview I heard this week with Green Bay Packers injured receiver Jordy Nelson. He was asked about the Packers’ having successfully completed multiple “Hail Mary” passes this season, including two in short succession at the end of regulation in that wild finish versus Arizona last Sunday.

“What do the Packers know that other teams don’t know about Hail Mary passes?” went the question (I’m paraphrasing). Nelson had a great answer.

“They’re all luck.”

Photo: “www.Army.mil,” The U.S. Army. CC BY 2.0.

A Reunion with Blackjack

Was looking over this PokerStars Caribbean Adventure schedule coming up in January. I’ll be back at the Atlantis again this time after having gotten there a year ago, and am looking forward not just to getting back together with lots of colleagues and friends -- the PCA really is like a yearly reunion in that respect -- but also to checking out some of the more intriguing side events on the schedule as always happens at the PCA and on the EPT.

There are over 100 numbered events crammed into less than two weeks (a total that includes about a dozen satellites). One non-numbered event has caught my eye, a $500 buy-in single-day blackjack event with a $100,000 guarantee.

I have a blackjack playing friend who I’ve been telling about this one. He’s a skillful player, I know, and I’ve been saying to him I imagine he’d do well in this event given the fact that it’ll probably attract a number of poker players who may not be as well versed as he is on standard blackjack strategy.

Of course, the cost would be a lot more than five hundy for him were he to take a shot. Whether he plays it or not, I’m going to be curious to see who does take part and what kind of turnout they get.

The whole idea of inserting a blackjack event in the middle of a poker festival makes me think of where poker was some 15-20 years ago -- that is to say, before the “boom” and the effort exerted by many online sites to try to distinguish poker from other casino games. The result was a whole generation of new poker players for whom the thought of mixing their beloved poker with, say, blackjack was made to seem a kind of anathema.

Before that mass education occurred, poker and blackjack overlapped a lot more readily in the minds of many. It still does, actually, in particular among those who only casually play one or the other or who don’t play at all. I remember writing something here a few years ago about that common “mistake” people make asking poker players about “counting cards,” a kind of evidence, I suppose, that for a number of people the games aren’t that distinct from one another.

As I say, it’s an unnumbered event and thus I suppose not officially considered part of the PCA schedule. Still, should be interesting to see players doing something different with their two-card starting hands in this reunion of sorts between blackjack and poker.

The Polar Vortex and the PCA

Yeah, it’s cold here, too. I’m looking at the headline on the front page of our local paper -- which I think we’re just about ready to cancel, actually, with the move out to the country -- and how it is screaming this phrase “POLAR VORTEX” at me.

How could I live this long and encounter an entirely new term for some sort of weather phenomenon? This one sounds made up, like something that can’t really be achieved without CGI or something. Reading further it still sounds a bit SF, with some sort of sentient-sounding “lobe” of cold air breaking free in a rogue-like maneuver to descend upon the continent from above.

Whatever is actually causing the temps to dive so precipitously today and tonight, we’re definitely feeling it here in North Carolina where our skins are thin thanks to the usually mild winters. We’ve got coats and scarves and hats and central heating, though, so no worries for us. Our main concern here on the farm over the last few hours has been to fashion some warm places for our newly inherited barn cats to ride things out as we dip further and further below freezing.

Meanwhile the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has already started to heat up -- haha, get it? hooo boy! -- with the $100,000 Super High Roller event kicking off the calendar year. I’m seeing the temperature there in Nassau is in the 70s, making it a nice place to get away at the moment (if one can get a flight).

This is the 11th year for the PCA and it has now well established itself as a primary stop that kind of brings together all of the different tours as players from all over the globe carve out time to be there. The European Poker Tour kind of claims it as one of its stops, I suppose, and I think in the past the LAPT might have done so, too.

Really, though, it’s easy to imagine the PCA as existing at the center of all the various tours circling around it... kind of like a vortex spinning about with the Atlantis sitting there comfortably in the eye.

Image above by the great Joe Giron for the PokerStars blog, which is a good place to follow for features every day from the PCA. Also check over at PokerNews for live reports from the $100K Super High Roller, the $25K High Roller, and the $10K Main Event.

Correcting the Zoom

Noticed a little earlier today that PokerStars has responded to complaints regarding that Zoom Challenge event at the PCA. As some may have heard, an issue came up near the end of the event regarding the tourney’s fairness, and it appears Stars is now giving out a number of additional cash prizes in order to try to make things right.

Others have reported on the snafu at length, most inspired to do so following a thread having been started on 2+2 by a player who was unhappy with how the event played out.

To give a quick thumbnail... there was a $1,025 buy-in “Zoom Challenge” event among the 40 on the PCA schedule this year. Unlike a regular multi-table tourney, this one involved having players sit down with an iPad for 12 minutes and play a quick session of no-limit hold’em Zoom on Stars (for play money). The idea was to try to run up a starting stack of 20,000 as high as possible during the allotted time, and in the end those accumulating the biggest stacks divided the prize pool according to a traditional MTT payout schedule.

Players could take part over the course of five days, and near the end of the fifth day trouble arose when several wanted to play at once just before the event was to conclude. A couple of groups of players were subsequently allowed to play at the same time, and in fact there were instances of Challenge players occasionally being seated at the same tables and playing against one another.

Such wouldn’t necessarily have been as big of an issue if not for the fact that play money players on Stars generally play a tight game (you’d be surprised how protective they are of their play money chips), thus making it difficult for the Zoom Challenge players to run up their stacks. But with multiple Challenge players playing against one another, that ensured a better chance for them to find opponents (i.e., each other) willing to shove their stacks.

As it turned out, four of the players who played at the end under these favorable circumstances ended up cashing, although none managed to outchip David Williams (who had played earlier in the week) who ultimately won the event.

Anyhow, after hearing the complaints PokerStars is now awarding prizes to four players who just missed cashing, plus giving some more cabbage to three who did make the money. For a full rundown of what happened and these additional “goodwill payments” being doled out by PokerStars, see Lee Jones’ post in the 2+2 thread.

I followed the reports about the PCA Zoom Challenge with some interest. Back in November when I was in Macau, I had a chance to participate in a kind of trial run of the Zoom Challenge. They had a similar set up there with a “mobile lounge” situated near the tournament area where the Asia Championship of Poker events were playing out. Among the offerings was a version of the Zoom Challenge in which people could play for free with an iPod going to the player amassing the biggest stack, and I took a shot.

I wrote a post on the PokerStars blog about my Zoom Challenge attempt. (That’s a picture of me to the left playing, courtesy Kenneth Lim Photography.) I didn’t win, but did enjoy trying. If you read my post, you’ll see that when I played I busted one time but was allowed to “rebuy” (so to speak) and continue.

I had actually been under the impression that when it came time to run the actual Zoom Challenge at the PCA, there wouldn’t be any rebuying -- that is to say, if you lost your original stack of 20,000, you ended the tourney registering a score of zero. Thus when those complaints came up at the PCA, I was a little surprised to hear how players there were in fact able to continue even after busting their original stacks.

It sounds like from Lee Jones’s post that if they were to try another Zoom Challenge down the road, they’ll get rid of the unlimited rebuy option (or limit players to one rebuy). Seems like that would be a good idea to me.

There may have still been issues at the PCA with multiple players simultaneously participating in the Zoom Challenge even if no rebuys were allowed (e.g., collusion possibilities), and I think they’ll be working to keep that from happening going forward, too. I still think there’s probably something a little weird about having players play events for real money against random play money players on Stars. But I’m glad to see Stars trying to fix a past slip-up and getting things in place to try to avoid any similar mistakes in the future.

Speaking of playing for play money on PokerStars, the first two tournaments of Season 3 of Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games are happening this Sunday night. See the sidebar for more information on this week’s events and joining the league. Season 3 will run through the end of March, and once again I’ll be awarding prizes to the top three finishers in the season’s standings.

Good luck to all. And just so you know, no matter how much you complain, don’t expect any “goodwill payments” to those finishing outside the top three.

Selbst in the Lead

My first experience watching Vanessa Selbst play in person was at the 2008 World Series of Poker when I happened to help report on her bracelet win in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event. It remains a memorable tournament for me, punctuated by a crazy finale that saw her heads-up opponent, Jamie Pickering, raising pot blind hand after hand in an effort to gamble his way to victory.

That actually marked Selbst’s fourth WSOP final table in three years, and she’d go on to add a semifinal (or third-place) finish in that year’s $10,000 World Championship Heads-Up No-Limit tournament. In other words, out of seven WSOP cashes she’d had up to that point, five of them were eighth-place finishes or higher.

As Shawnee Barton wrote about late last week in her terrific (and timely) article about Selbst for The Atlantic, Selbst usually employs a “relentlessly attacking, boom-and-bust style” that finds her often either accumulating chips early then making a deep run or falling shy of the cash altogether. Barton evokes Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi as a suitable comparison.

Such was the case in that PLO tourney back in 2008 where Selbst essentially led wire-to-wire. The first long day saw the field shrink from 759 all of the way down to 46, with posts about “Selbst Soaring” already starting to appear by late afternoon. I remember her having the chip lead for certain with about 100 left, maintaining it overnight and throughout Day 2. In fact she’d start the final table with more than 1 million chips while the nearest challenger (Pickering) had but 329,000. She’d then lead for most of the final table, too, before ultimately winning.

Since then Selbst has enjoyed numerous other victories and final-table finishes, among them a $1.8 million-plus score at the 2010 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event, back-to-back Main Event victories at NAPT Mohegan Sun in 2010 and 2011, and a second WSOP bracelet last summer in the $2,500 10-game event.

And yesterday Selbst added another huge line to her poker resume by winning the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $25K High Roller event (photo above courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars). Thanks to a larger than expected field plus numerous re-entries, the prize pool ballooned up close to $5 million in that one, thereby meaning Selbst’s victory earned her an eye-popping $1,424,420 first prize.

Selbst outlasted a final table that included Micah Raskin (who also final tabled the Sands Bethlehem last month), Tobias Reinkemeier, Bryn Kenney, Shaun Deeb, online star Ole “wizowizo” Schemion, Mike “SirWatts” Watson, and finally the Russian Vladimir Troyanovskiy who also final tabled the PCA $100K Super High Roller last week where he finished seventh.

Now Selbst’s career earnings have inched over the $7 million mark, more than $6 million of which has been won since the start of 2010. A quick scan of the top earners over the same period shows only a handful of players earning more than that, and most of those finished first or second in either the WSOP Main Event, the “Big One for One Drop,” or that $2 million HKD High Roller event in Macau last August.

Excluding those guys, it looks like only Erik Seidel ($7,338,543), Michael Mizrachi ($7,130,635), and Phil Hellmuth ($6,508,181) have earned more than Selbst in tourney winnings since 2010 (unless I’ve missed someone), and of course Hellmuth got a big boost by earning more than $2.6 million for taking fourth in the “One Drop.” Meanwhile, on the overall “All-Time Money List,” Selbst is now listed in 40th place, just ahead of Scott Seiver who jumped up when he won the $100K Super High Roller at the PCA last week.

And of course, as many have been reporting, with her finish yesterday Selbst catapults past Kathy Liebert and into the top spot on Hendon Mob’s “Women’s All-Time Money List.”

I was saying yesterday how I was finding it hard to get too excited over Viktor Blom’s big online swings, but such is not the case here. While bigger payouts and more high-roller events have obviously skewed these all-time lists considerably, Selbst becoming the all-time leader in tourney winnings among female players nonetheless seems like a moment worth noting.

Liebert first grabbed the lead in that race way back in 2002, lost it to Annie Duke in 2004 after Duke won $2 million in that invite-only, single-table Tournament of Champions freeroll, then reclaimed the lead in early 2006 and had held it for nearly seven years before Selbst pushed in front. (Chart via Hendon Mob.)

Selbst now has a big lead in that race, more than $1 million ahead of Liebert (2nd, $5,855,655), with Duke (3rd, $4,270,549), Annette Obrestad ($3,780,520), and Vanessa Rousso (5th, $3,471,293) following.

In other words -- just like happened in that 2008 WSOP event -- now that she’s pushed into the lead on that list, chances are good Selbst will be remaining in front for a good while.

Perusing the PCA’s Progress

Busy week. When it comes to poker, I’ve been doing a lot more reading about the game than playing it or writing about it these last few days, including following events down at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure where the Main Event is now well underway.

There’s a ton of coverage emanating every day from the Atlantis resort. Have spent the last few days reading about Scott Seiver taking down the $100K Super High Roller event and a $2 million-plus first prize, Peter Jetten winning the first ever Open Face Chinese tourney (which saw 59 entries), and the first few days of the Main Event.

Indeed, for the ME the coverage has been especially extensive. For example, just yesterday the PokerStars blog team churned out more than a dozen features discussing the Main Event, covering both the action on the tables and other contextual color.

Among my favorite posts on the PS blog from yesterday were a couple from Stephen Bartley describing the surrounding environs, including the hallways and the poker kitchen. Brad Willis wrote at length about Jason Mercier and Shaun Deeb’s late morning Q&A focusing largely on Open Face Chinese, then later pointed readers to Sarah Grant’s interview with 18-time Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps who played the ME before busting late on Day 2. And those two, Sergio Prado, and Rick Dacey additionally provided updates regarding the action as the field continued to shrink from the original 987 entries down to 166 players.

Meanwhile over on PokerNews one finds the usual hand reports and chip count updates to help readers keep up with the tourney’s progress. Amid their coverage yesterday, Josh Cahlik managed to sneak in “An Orbit with an Olympian,” reporting a sequence of hands involving Phelps prior to the swimmer’s being eliminated later in the evening. And of course Joe Giron is there adding further to the coverage with his photos, not to mention the other videos with Sarah and Kristy Arnett.

PokerListings and Bluff are there, too, frequently filing reports. And there will be live streaming of the PCA Main Event final table (with commentary) on Sunday over on PokerStars.tv.

It sounds like the money bubble will likely be bursting today, with the real drama reserved for the weekend when a champion will be found. As I was saying last week, it would be nice to be there, but it’s not too bad being able to follow it all from afar, either.

Captivated by the PCA

Getting interesting down in the Bahamas, where the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event has now played through Day 4. The plan yesterday had been to play down to 24 players (three eight-handed tables). But the final hand early yesterday evening saw three bustouts happen on different tables, leaving just 22 players to come back for today’s Day 5.

The top of the leaderboard heading into play today is compelling for a couple of reasons. For one, Ana Marquez of Spain leads the way, the only woman left in the event. And Chris Moneymaker is right behind her in second.

Marquez currently has only one small cash in a Venetian Deep Stack event last summer on her poker resume. Meanwhile, everyone knows Moneymaker’s previous biggest cash -- his first one, too. Interestingly, the $2.3 million due the winner of the 2011 PCA isn’t that far from the $2.5 million Moneymaker earned for his 2003 WSOP Main Event triumph.

Will obviously be highly interesting to see if Moneymaker can stick around for the final table of this one. Such is the lot of the man who remains the most famous amateur ever to win the WSOP Main Event.

Intrigue automatically builds whenever Moneymaker comes within shouting distance of a big final table or bracelet. Heck, even when he survives half the field with an above-average stack, the former Tennessee accountant necessarily gets our attention.

I remember at the 2009 WSOP where I helped cover the big “Special 40th Annual No-Limit Hold’em Event,” the one with the big $40,000 buy-in. A small, tough field of 201 entered, and after Day 1 just 89 remained with Bruno Fitoussi on top and Moneymaker in second place. (Had a bit to say about that at the time here.)

If you recall, there was a lot of hype built up around that one, the biggest buy-in NLHE event in WSOP history. And all eyes were on Moneymaker on Day 2. He made it through the dinner break still in relatively fine shape, but lost a big all-in race versus Tony G with pocket queens versus A-K, then ran pocket tens into Ted Forrest’s K-K to get bounced shy of the money in 38th place. (Wrote a little about Moneymaker’s exit from that event here.)

He’s well in the money this time, though. And seemingly well positioned to make it to that final eight. Adding to the building excitement here is the fact that the PCA Main Event final table is going to be broadcast from start to finish, beginning on ESPN3.com at 5 p.m. Eastern time, then moving over to ESPN2 at 10 p.m.

That’s right! Same-day, final table action right there on our teevees!

I’m not completely sure about how the coverage will be handled, though it sounds like we’ll be seeing the event on a one-hour delay with hole cards being shown along the way. The EPT Live team headed by James Hartigan will be there for the ESPN3 stuff (with Daniel Negreanu commentating as well), then I believe Lon McEachern and David Williams will be in a studio providing some input as well once things move over to ESPN2. A glance at the ESPN2 schedule shows that the network has nothing scheduled for the next eight hours, so it appears the plan will be to show every hand of the sucker right down to the conclusion.

Poker nuts like you and me will enjoy the show regardless of which eight players make it to the final table. But you gotta think if Moneymaker is there, too, there are going to be a lot more eyes on ESPN2 late Saturday night.

Listening to the latest ESPN Poker Edge podcast with Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee (the 1/12/11 episode), it seems once again that poker finds itself situated in that same awkward, uncertain spot it has been for some time now -- the game’s popularity is obviously continuing to rise, but trouble looms.

Feldman and Lee talked a bit about Moneymaker’s deep run and how fascinating it would be should “the stars and moons align” (as Lee put it) and the 2003 WSOP ME champ somehow take this one down.

The pair also noted how the turnout of 1,560 for the PCA Main Event, while impressive, hadn’t reached the 2,000 or so some had predicted for the tournament. Since the PCA ME field has traditionally been filled by online qualifiers, Feldman and Lee interpreted the turnout as having perhaps been affected by the fact that the “growth of the online [poker] world is really slowing.”

All of which would make a Moneymaker final table appearance -- or even a victory -- all the more curious to watch, both for the drama it would create down there at the Atlantis and for whatever “effect” might subsequently ensue.

In any event, I know I’ll be checking in again today over at PokerNews as well as at the PokerStars blog (from which that pic of Moneymaker at the 2010 WSOP comes, btw) for ongoing coverage of the PCA ME.