The Poker Lab Rat

With four day 1’s in this Main Event looking at chip counts and player standings across the board is fairly pointless. Many “big name” players have already been eliminated including Steve Brecher, T.J. Cloutier, Kristy Gazes, Rafe Furst, Clonie Gowen…

Just to give you a sense of scale, here are the all-up player numbers:

Day 1A had 1,287 players, Day 1B 1,545 players, Day 1C 1,743, and Day 1D 1,772. That’s a event total of around 6,347 players - more than in 2005, but less than in 2006. Given the crazy constraints imposed on US poker players via UIGEA, that’s an impressive number.

A couple of the media highlights for WSOP Day 1D include:
Jack “Jeffrey’” Ury who is 94 years old, making him the oldest player in the history of the World Series of Poker. And you though poker was turning into a game for whizz kids.

And, as always, getting more attention than he deserves, the Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth shows us once again that he has no shame.

Hellmuth was staged to arrive in an Ultimate Bet racing car. As you do. He apparently crashed the car in the parking lot yesterday so arrived in a limo wearing a racing uniform and carrying a helmet. Eleven women (each supposedly representing one of the eleven bracelets he’s won) greeted him and escorted the him to the Amazon Ballroom on his quest for bracelet #12 and his second overall World Championship.

A frenzy of media and fans chased him down the hallway as he posed for photos and signed autographs. ESPN’s film crew of course capturing his every move. He finally entered the Amazon Ballroom to take up his empty seat, two hours late. Would he be a pain to have at your table, or what?

His tablemates joked that he should wear the racing helmet so he didn’t have to hide his face with his hands. I bet many of them wished he’d done more damage in his carpark prang.

–Mike