Isabelle Mercier, Phil Hellmuth, Marcel Luske

There is a chance, that tonight's final table for the $5000 No Limit Hold'em (Event #9) will be the most talked about event of the WSOP besides the final table. The buzz has already started and everyone is excitedly picking their favorites. Phil Hellmuth who is on a tear with three cashes already is after his 10th bracelet. Poker's darling, Isabelle Mercier, is after her first, as is the singing stallion, Marcel Luske. But the talk isn't just about these three starlets vying for the golden wristband. The more important discussion is that ESPN is not covering this. Wow, what a mistake. Will they hurry on up and do a quick add? We shall see, but there is no doubt it my mind you'll hear it from the bloggers first.

Phil Hellmuth updated his blog after midnight last night when they ended the day's play. He talked about some high and lows from the day, and some secret plan. Here's a great play that he discribed.

I began to ante off my chips from $90,000 down to $75,000, before I finally picked up the hand I was waiting for all day, twice!  First Vinh opened for $19,000, and I smooth called with my A-A.  The big blind called and the flop came down 8h-3h-3s, and both players checked to me.  I figured that they were both drawing dead, so I checked (I did not have the Ah so that I could potentially lose to heart-heart finish).  The turn was the Kc, and now the big blind bet out $50,000, Vinh folded, and I moved all-in for another $6,000.  The blind had the king, plus an eight so that he had four wins in the deck (I was a ten-to-one favorite) and a four hit the river.  Now I was back!  I was now near my high for the tournament in chips, and four hands later La raised my blind from the button and I looked down at A-A!  Wow, this time I called the $25,000 and raised $50,000 more.  He moved all-in with what turned out to be Q-Q, and now I had over $340,000 in chips. Bang, bang!  My patience finally paid off! — Phil Hellmuth Blog

Here's more talk from the blogosphere about this final table:
Tao of Poker
PokerNews.com
Wicked Chops Poker
Pokerati

 

Comments

[olivert]

As far as I know, 441 Productions does NOT have a full TV crew at the Rio this week. Most of the crew left the Rio after Monday's $2000 NL final table and won't return until next Monday's $1000 NL/Rebuys final table.

441 Productions always has an ENG crew (hand-held camera man and sound tech) on standby at the Rio to take video footage of every final table.

--

We'll see how much of an influence ESPN Original Entertainment/441 Productions have on the scheduling of televised events in 2007 so that the "high end" $5000 buy-in events won't be left off the TV schedule as they were in 2006.