WTP Inaugural Event

We're at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, home of High Stakes Poker. Today it's also home to team-style poker as it plays host for the inaugural event of World Team Poker.

World Team Poker bills itself as an exciting and unique new style of poker, with teams competing against each other for a substantial prize pool. Coaching and substitutions are allowed and encouraged.

How exactly does World Team Poker work? Eight teams will represent their home countries in a unique double shootout tournament. One player from each team will be seated at each of the five tables in play. The top two players from each table will advance to the final table. If any country has more than one player that advance to the final table, the chips of each winner will be consolidated into one stack and then the team may choose which of the winners will advance to the final table.

The event has attracted the best of the best in poker, each playing for country pride and for their share of a $400,000 prize pool. How about a quick look at each team?

Team USA: Doyle Brunson (captain), Phil Hellmuth, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow

Team England: Ben Roberts (captain), Joe Beevers, David "Devilfish" Ulliot, David Colclough, Peter Costa, Surinder Sunar

Team Brazil: Juliano Maesano (captain), Christian Kruel, Leandro "Brasa" Pimentel, Rodrigo "Zidane" Caprioli, Felipe "Mojave" Ramos

Team China: Johnny Chan (co-captain), David Chiu (co-captain), Maria Ho, Rich Zhu, Chau Giang, Winfred Yu, Derek Cheung

Team Australia: Tony G (co-captain), Jeffrey Lisandro (co-captain), Gary Benson, Mel Judah, David Saab, Steve Topakas, Marsha Waggoner

Team Greece: George Theofanopoulos (captain), Georgios Kapalas (co-captain), Alex Zervos, Stavros "IDOLLS" Kalfas, Dimitris Lyritsis, Dimitris "lentis" Chatziriotis

Team Israel: Eli Elezra (captain), Josh Arieh, David Levi, Robert Mizrachi, Michael Mizrachi, Abe Mosseri

Team Vietnam: Men Nguyen (captain), Van Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, John Phan, Kenny Tran, Karina Jett

Last night at the press conference and party, Tony G declared Team Australia the underdogs. While it's true that this is a tough field, we're sure that Team Australia's formidable line-up will be able to hold its own -- even despite the fact that one of their top weapons (David Saab's table banter) is out of commission today due to a case of laryngitis.

This is a television production (to be broadcast on FSN in the United States) and, as is typical with television productions, is running behind schedule. Play was slated to begin at noon local time, about fifty minutes ago. It's clear that we're nowhere near starting any time soon. Our best guess right now is that play might be underway by 1:30pm.

We'll be here biding our time until then. Once play starts, keep your browser pointed to PokerNews.com for live updates throughout the day of what is sure to be a very, very fun event.

Tags: Tony GWorld Team Poker

One of the hosts of the event, Robert Williamson III, has started making introductions. Team Australia is first to make its entrance. Play is probably about 10 minutes away at this point.

Teams are being introduced alphabetically by country, with each team entering to a pre-selected entrance song through a blast from a smoke machine. When Team England made its entrance, David "Devilfish" Ulliot, instead of cheering to the crowd, tried to wave the smoke out from in front of his face.

Team USA, one of the favorites in this event, was also last to make its entrance. It got the largest applause.

This double-shootout tournament is a mixed game consisting of one round of Limit Hold'em, one round of Pot-Limit Omaha, and one round of No-Limit Hold'em. The hold'em rounds are 30 minutes each; the Omaha round is 45 minutes.

Players start with 10,000 in chips. The opening blinds for the LHE round are 25-50, limits 50-100.

All team captains will start at the feature table. Johnny Chan has taken Team China's seat at the final table. Team Australia is represented by Jeffrey Lisandro.

Substitutions are allowed, and team captains are allowed to coach other players. There are tournament referees who will monitor coaching, substitions and whatever else.

Matt Cordroy and Kenna James are hosting this for the TV production and are doing their opening bit right now.

We've already had our first substitution of the day and we just started. Kenny Tran got up from his table and walked over to team mate Tim Phan and said, "Man, you take over. I can't play limit. It's too slow."

Tran now sits on the sidelines alongside David Benyamine from Team Israel watching the action.

Tags: Kenny TranTim Phan

We don't have a table draw handy, and because of the television set we don't have the greatest sight lines on each table. But here's who we see:

Outer Table 1:
Seat 1: Abe Mosseri (Israel)
Seat 2: Alex Zervos (Greece)
Seat 3: David Saab (Australia)
Seat 4: Peter Costa (England)
Seat 5: Karina Jett (Vietnam)
Seat 6: Chris Ferguson (USA)
Seat 7: Chau Giang (China)
Seat 8: Leandro "Brasa" Pimentel (Brazil)

Outer Table 2:
Seat 1: Tommy Hang (Vietnam)
Seat 2: Marsha Waggoner (Australia)
Seat 3: Jen Harman (USA)
Seat 4: Felipe Ramos (Brazil)
Seat 5: Dimitris Lyritsis (Greece)
Seat 6: Joe Beevers (England)
Seat 7: Rich Zhu (China)
Seat 8: Robert Mizrachi (Israel)

Outer Table 3:
Seat 1: Dave "Devilfish" Ulliot (England)
Seat 2: David Levi (Israel)
Seat 3: Tim Phan (Vietnam)
Seat 4: Steve Topakas (Australia)
Seat 5: David Chiu (China)
Seat 6: Howard Lederer (USA)
Seat 7: Rodrigo Caprioli (Brazil)
Seat 8: Dimitris Chatziriotis (Greece)

Outer Table 4:
Seat 1: (England)
Seat 2: Kenny Tran (Vietnam)
Seat 3: Phil Hellmuth (USA)
Seat 4: Georgios Kapalas (Greece)
Seat 5: Christian Kruel(Brazil)
Seat 6: Gary Benson (Australia)
Seat 7: Michael Mizrachi (Israel)
Seat 8: Maria Ho (China)

The game switched just now to Pot-Limit Omaha. To announce the switch, a woman in a "sexy referee" outfit waltzed through the tournament area with a dry erase board marked PLO, with the new limits. Substitutions then commenced, with several teams switching in a PLO specialist.

Immediately afterwards the whole tournament went on a break. Teams are huddling up now at various points on the tournament floor.

The feature table of this event (the table at which all of the team captains are playing) is being streamed on the Internet on a 30-minute delay. You can watch the action -- with hole cards! -- on this stream.

Cards are back in the air. At the captains table, Doyle Brunson and Ben Roberts played a huge pot, with Roberts' making a tough river call for the win.

"Doyle, are you trying to commit suicide by getting in a PLO pot with Ben Roberts?" Mike Matusow shouted from the rail. "You know you're never going to win against him."

Tags: Ben RobertsDoyle BrunsonMike Matusow