We're telling you, there are some tough tables in the room today, and they're playing short-handed to boot. Table 40 sticks out as a particularly tough five-handed table. Amnon Filippi and Jonathan Little are in Seats 1 and 2 respectively, chatting about the last episode of The Big Game. Brock Parker is in the three seat (not really chatting about anything), and Allen Kessler and Todd Terry are buddy-buddy in the seven and eight seats. The two of them are currently involved in a big discussion with the floor, trying to get their table relocated to a brighter part of the room. There's a dead stack sitting in the five seat, and we don't envy the poor soul who'll have to endure that seat to start their day.
"Has Matt Stout found an opponent yet?" T.D. Jack Effel asked over the mic. Stout was standing behind Table 8 all alone, and it looks like he's the only one who's shown up on time from his table.
Just as we wandered over there, Ravi Raghavan arrived to sit down in the eight hole, and two players is enough to play some poker. They're six-seated but playing heads-up for now, and it looks like they're going to battle for those 75 preflop chips for a few orbits until that table fills up.
Looking around the room, we recognize nearly everyone in the field. We'll have a full (and growing) list of people we're tracking in the Chip Counts tab as the day goes on, but here are some highlights:
Josh Arieh
Beth Shak
Dan "imabigkidnow" Kelly
Matt Affleck
James "Mig_com" Mackey
Matt "allinat420" Stout
Vanessa Selbst
Matthew Woodward
Lee Childs
John Monnette
Chad Brown
Barry Shulman
Jack Effel has just announced that we will be starting at 11:30 come hell or high water. If we're honest, we needed a few minutes to run back down to the coffee shop for more caffeine anyways. We'll be back in about 20 minutes.
These 11:00 A.M. start times always generate a lot of latecomers, and this one appears to be no exception. There are only a handful of players in the room, though they are starting to trickle through the doors at an increasing pace. Tournament Director Jack Effel is just chillin' over here with us media folk, and someone asked him why he was delaying the start.
Effel just smirked. "I ain't delaying anything. I just haven't gotten up there and started anything yet."
It's been five days since last we left the Ballroom at Harrah's Atlantic City, and we're back today to close out the World Series of Poker Circuit events for the 2010 calendar year. It's the inaugural $10,000 Northeast Regional Championship, and it is going to attract a relatively small but pro-heavy field.
The $1,500 event last weekend drew 352 runners, and we'll hazard a guess that we'll have about half that many for this one. One of the many appears to be T.J. Cloutier who is loitering around our media table talking about the Durrrr Challenge, oddly. Also spotted at this early hour are Jon Aguiar, Steve O'Dwyer, David "Bakes" Baker, Eric "sheets" Haber, and Allen Kessler.
"Best bet in the world is that he'll make it through the first day," Cloutier said when Kessler walked in the doors.
There are about 80 players registered thus far with the window open for at least three full levels. We're just about 15 minutes shy of our 11:00 starting time, and the dealers are hurriedly preparing their tables and suiting their decks for play. It looks like we'll be starting six-handed today as three of the nine stacks are in the well.
Sit tight; we'll be back when the cards go in the air.
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