It was a long day/night so it’s kind of hard for us to "sex up" this 2008 WSOP round-up post. That’s where Greek babe Nikoleta Ralli comes in. Ralli is some Tourism Queen pageant winner who parlayed that "success" into this Maxim cover spread.Opa!

As one of our all-time least favorite t-shirts once said, yesterday’s 2008 World Series of Poker events schedule was nucking futs. Lots of action, lots to cover. Before proceeding though, which poker pro is most likely to wear a shirt that says nucking futs? Some reason Mike "The Mouth" Matusow comes to mind. But leave your thoughts in the comments section. Again, long night. Random thoughts abound. F’ off.

Here’s an abridged summation of the happenings:

:: Event #2 ($1,500 NLH) - Harrah’s/WSOP officials somehow thought they’d be able to play down from a split-session-Day-1-4,000-person-field to 9 in two days? Really? Amazingly that didn’t happen. Harrah’s and ESPN actually wanted to stop the event early, but "the rules" have generally been that you need 10 hours between play and all players must agree to the stoppage (something we like to call the old "unanimous vote") for it to happen. With about 20 remaining the first vote was held and came out to a 6-6 tie with some abstentions (Abstentions??? What were they voting on, the Constitution? This isn’t a difficult decision. Grow a pair.). The second vote was then held once they got down to 18 players and came out 10-6 to stop. Play resumes today at 1:30pm. The chip leader is Aaron Coulthard (1,327,000). He’s followed by Theo Tran (1,199,000). Also remaining include Tiltboy Perry Friedman (653,000), Minh Nguyen (600,000), and Chris "Jesus" Ferguson (444,000). Get full chip counts from the snazzy new and improved WorldSeriesofPoker.com site here.

:: Event #3 ($1,500 PLH) - Play whittled down from 713 to 63. Robert Workman put in workmanlike production ending up as big stack with 146,800. Other notables include but are certainly not limited to David Singer (123,600), David Daneshgar (41,200), Tom McEvoy (22,900), and Joe Tehan, whose name looks too much like "Tehran" for our liking (8,000). Full chip counts here.

:: Event #4  ($5,000 Mixed Hold’em) - Some of the bigger name bust-outs from Event #3 came back at 5pm to play in this slightly more prestigious event. The field totaled 332 (for a first place payout of $375,617) and played down to 91. Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, a ginger, finished as chip leader, stacked at 100,200. Lots of big names remain, and some notable chip leaders include Justin Bonomo (73,900), David Williams (67,000), Gavin Griffin (65,800), Thomas "Thunder" Keller (63,500…and where the f’ have you been?), Maria Ho! (60,400), Barry Shulman (60,100), Bill Chen (60,000), Ted Forrest (59,400), Jimmy Fricke (57,600), Roland de Wolfe (57,400), and Mark Newhouse (56,500). Full chip couuuunts…here.

2008 WSOP Band of Bloggers: Get full recaps and payouts from WorldSeriesofPoker.com here. Get Dr. Pauly’s take on WSOP happenings here. Gary Wise has some thoughts here. Please please don’t forget Pokerati here. And get Poker Prof’s recap and more photos here.

Tagged as: 2008 WSOP, Maxim

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