Scotty Nguyen has made a recent appearance in the tournament area. The 2008 WSOP H.O.R.S.E. champion has been walking around, glad-handing old friends and acquaintances alike and enjoying his celebrity status.
While there's always the chance Scotty was on vacation and stumbled in and saw some familiar faces, it's probably a safer bet that we'll see Mr. Nguyen on the felt as part of tomorrow's Day 1b field.
We caught up to this hand on the flop. The board read and there was just under 1,500 in the pot. Chad Brown was first to act against two opponents and pushed out a bet of 1,200 from middle position. Both of his opponents called and it was on to the turn.
The hit the turn and Brown fired again, this time 3,000. His middle position opponent folded but the player on the button called all in for his last 2,825. The players showed:
Brown:
Opponent:
Brown's queens were best but his opponent had plenty of outs including the that hit the river. Brown doubled his opponent up, but is still a force with just over 22,000 chips.
In a three-way pot involving Barny Boatman and Danny Ryan, the former bet 1,600 into a board, one opponent called and Ryan folded. On the 8h river, the caller led out for 2,100, but as Barny was thinking about his decision, the dealer called out for the "floor" and whispered into the tournament director's ear. After a brief pause and a selection of different hand gestures, the TD announced that a string bet had taken place and that the bet would only be 1,000, the first chip to hit the felt.
"I don't know what happened," observed an intrigued as always Greg Raymer, "but I didn't notice anything suspicious."
After a brief pause, Barny flicked in the call, to which his opponent leapt from his seat, hurled his cards across the table and yelled "That's bullshit! I don't know what you do here in Europe, but that was not a string bet."
With Barny still clutching onto his cards, his opponent continued to roar. "That's a bad ruling! I would rather lose more doing what I wanted to do." "I was going to call anyhow," declared Barny, as his cards entered the muck.
At that point, the TD ordered the dealer to retrieve the cards from the muck, and reveal what was ultimately a . "You're not calling," he argued. "I was," protested Barny.
PokerStars-sponsored player Andre Akkari could well be your early chip leader with 32,000. He just called 600, 1,600 and 2,200 respectively on every street of a 8-8-5-3-A rainbow board, the bullet on the river shooting his A-Q into a last minute lead against a disgruntled opponent's pocket queens.
Tournament Director Thomas Kremser has sent half the field (tables 1-15) on dinner break from 7:10-8:10 p.m. local time. Once they return, tables 16-30 will get to chow down from 8:25-9:25 p.m.
On one of the few remaining outer tables (they're being whittled down quicker than a contestant on Singled Out), Erik Friberg raised to 700 from the button, only for Osman Mustanoglu to make it 2,200 to play from the big blind. Friberg called, and both players saw a flop. But a leading bet of 4,000 was more than enough to take the pot, leaving the Swede and former WSOP finalist with a depleted stack of 6,850.
Annette Obrestad has hit the rail and made an early end to her tournament. Obrestad moved all in with a gutshot straight flush draw but couldn't hit any of her outs. Time to hit the cash games... or the shops!