Home at last. After seven-and-a-half weeks away watching other people play poker, I have finally returned to my home on the east coast of the United States. Most of that period was spent in the Nevada desert, where the temperatures outside were exceeding 110°F (43°C) by the time I left last weekend. Of course, for the most part I was inside the sometimes frigid Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, helping cover the 41st Annual World Series of Poker for PokerNews.

I’ve come home with a lot of memories from the 2010 WSOP. One of them is pictured above — the moment the cash bubble burst in the Main Event, when the Amazon room was filled with raucous shouting and cheers. That moment is always one of the most exciting of the summer.

I thought it would fun as a kind of WSOP postscript to share ten memories from my summer in Vegas — all specific moments which kind of stand out as I think back on the experience of helping report on the Series.

1. The first event I helped cover was Event No. 3, the first of six open-field $1,000 no-limit hold’em events. The field for that first one ended up being the largest in the entire WSOP save the Main Event — 4,345 runners in all. The witty Danafish was my blogging partner for those first couple of days, and I remember asking her at some point early on for an estimate on how many players had shown up. Her deadpanned reply came without hesitation: “One million.”

2. Event No. 17, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event, attracted a star-studded field, including one table featuring Brandon Adams, Shannon Elizabeth, Dan Heimiller, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, and David Williams. I happened to be watching the table when a big hand developed that involved Heimiller, Hellmuth, Ferguson, and Williams. During the hand, Elizabeth snapped a photo of her tablemates and sent it out on Twitter. I noticed later I was in the picture, and joked with my colleagues that the American Pie star was taking pictures of me reporting.

3. Event No. 19, the $10,000 Deuce-to-Seven Draw Championship (No-Limit), also attracted quite a few well-known pros. On Day 1, I watched a funny hand between Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Andy Bloch. Ferguson opened with a raise from the cutoff seat, and only Bloch called from the big blind. Bloch then drew two cards, while Ferguson stood pat. Bloch then bet, at which point Ferguson folded his hand face up — quad fours! Ferguson and Bloch — well known for their mathematical minds — shared a good laugh at the sight of Ferguson’s statistically improbable hand.

4. I helped cover Event No. 22, the $1,000 buy-in Ladies Hold’em Championship, although I didn’t join the coverage until Day 2. That meant I’d missed a lot of the brouhaha that happened on the first day when about a dozen men entered the event. Before the final table, WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla (whom I interviewed here a couple of weeks ago), said a few words about the history of the Ladies Event at the WSOP, adding that “The WSOP will always support the ladies poker championship. The ladies deserve their day.” His declaration was met with applause, and while the Ladies event will surely continue to draw controversy, I thought it significant that Dalla made the statement he did.

5. Day 3 of Event No. 35, the $10,000 Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship, was supposed to be the last day of the event. The final round — which was best two out of three — didn’t start until around 11 p.m., and the first match between Ayaz Mahmood and Ernst Schmejkal was still going more than six hours after it had begun. By that point the sun had risen, and the players and tourney officials were debating whether to continue with the second match right after or come back later in the day. My blogging partner Tim and I were exhausted — we’d been at it for something like 16 hours. Schmejkal was ready to go ahead and reschedule the second match, but Mahmood wanted assurance that it wouldn’t start until 7 p.m. “If we can’t do seven, I want to play now,” said Mahmood. Tim and I looked at each other in horror. Thankfully seven did work, and our long day-slash-night-slash-day finally concluded shortly thereafter.

6. I reported on Event No. 39, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout, in which Annette Obrestad won her first two tables and thus made it to the final day. I was intrigued to watch Obrestad play, having only seen her on television before this summer — indeed, I’ll admit to have been a little starstruck when watching that first hand or two of hers, something I haven’t experienced at the WSOP in a long time.

7. I had the chance to cover Event No. 44, the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em event in which Gavin Smith won his first WSOP bracelet. Smith cut an interesting figure at that final table, wearing a sport jacket, a fedora, and eyeglasses. There was a seriousness about him that seemed a bit different from the usual happy-go-lucky persona we have seen in the past from “the Caveman.” I remember at one point Smith won a hand and his friend Layne Flack shouted “Winning never gets old, does it?” from the stands. Smith had a reply: “Yeah, but sometimes it gets hard to remember.” He smiled a moment more, but then was back to business. It was clear he wasn’t going to indulge in a lot of extracurricular activity on that day, and I suppose one has to conclude his focus served him well.

8. I helped cover Event No. 54, the last those $1,000 no-limit hold’em events, at which there occurred something quite unique. As is usually the case, late registrants were seated together at newly-opened tables, and at one of the tables were sat no less than five players with WSOP bracelets. Not only that, they had a whopping 16 bracelets between them — Layne Flack (six), Chris Ferguson (five), Tom Schneider (two), Ryan Hughes (two), and Gavin Smith (one). “What are the odds of this at a $1K event?” asked Schneider.

9. On Day 1d of Event No. 57, the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship (a.k.a., the Main Event), I was there helping report on the action when a fellow leaned over the rail and began asking me questions about the prize pool, the average stack size, and so forth. He wanted to know what sort of stack would guarantee a person reaching the money. His questions became more and more specific; for example, he wanted me to assess what sort of shape a player would be in if he had ended Day 1 with 94,000 chips. Then I finally realized — he had played Day 1a, and was asking about his own situation! Then came the funniest part of our conversation. “Do you think I should play tight?” he asked. While I tried to answer all of his other questions as well as I could, I didn’t presume to advise him on that one.

10. One last story from Event No. 57 (the Main Event), an especially strange hand from Day 2a involving Chris Moneymaker and Bryan Pellegrino. While all of the other players had already left for dinner break, Moneymaker and Pellgrino had reached the river on a hand in which Pellegrino was sitting motionless while the 2003 Main Event champ stood and wandered about, appearing as though he were waiting for Pellegrino to decide how to respond to Moneymaker’s river bet. Finally, after more than ten minutes, Moneymaker said somewhat reluctantly that he was going to have to call the clock. That’s when Pellegrino explained that he had already reraised all in, and was waiting for Moneymaker to act! A pretty strange scene. Moneymaker would eventually bust shy of the cash, but Pellegrino made a deep run, finishing 143rd.

Of course, there were more moments along the way that stand out, including several from the Main Event. And there will be still more come November when the final table resumes. Such is the case every summer at the World Series of Poker!

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An especially long one yesterday — about a 16-hour workday, all told. Still a little tired this morning, but ready to get back over to the Atlantic City Casino to see how the story of LAPT Lima continues to unfold.

There were 197 players returning for Day 2 of the $2,700 buy-in Main Event. The plan was to play down to 24. (That picture to the left shows the main feature table starting to be constructed at the far end of the poker room.) After ten one-hour levels there was talk of just stopping things after two more levels (at the end of Level 20), regardless of how many players were left. As it happened, the elimination of Costa Rican player Luis Jaikel in 25th place happened just a few minutes before the end of that level, and so we’ll have the three eight-handed tables as planned when play restarts today.

As the day wore on, I began more and more to notice differences in the way the players interacted and what might be called the “culture” of the LAPT event when compared to, say, the World Series of Poker or U.S.-based tourneys.

As happens at the WSOP, there have been occasional displays of emotion as players react to various situations, most often during the all-ins when a player’s tourney life is on the line. And there have been a couple of dust-ups about rulings and such, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary.

I’ve found it interesting, however, to witness what seems like a lot of genuine human interaction at the tables as well, with much conversation and smiling. You’ll see that at the WSOP, too, now and then, but not with as much frequency as I have here, I don’t think.

For example, another player from Costa Rica, Steven Thompson, is one of the 24 coming back today. He has been kind of a gregarious type, talking and laughing quite a bit. And his tablemates seem often to be following suit. Even a simple blind-vs.-blind hand between Thompson and another player in which one bets the other out of a pot seemed always to elicit a lot of grins and good-natured back-and-forthing.

There was one particularly funny moment yesterday when there were just 51 players remaining. The top 48 spots paid, and so the tension had risen somewhat (and play slowed down a lot). Suddenly I noticed a player at Thompson’s table — Leandro Csome of Argentina — standing up with a piece of paper. He had written the number “48” on the paper, and with a huge grin was holding it up over the “51” on the electronic board indicating players remaining.

Csome let out a cheer, and Thompson immediately joined in the celebration, hugging Csome and drawing huge laughs all around. A very funny moment. Felt bad for Csome when he in fact went out soon after, just missing the cash, but he still had a smile on his face as he left.

There were other interesting stories yesterday. American player Martin Mathis started the day with 20,075 chips — just 75 more than the starting stack for the tourney — but survived multiple all-ins early on, then showed a lot of savvy to make it into the money before getting knocked out in 42nd.

There were a couple of other huge comebacks yesterday, too. Probably the most remarkable was that of U.S. player Ben Barrows. Sporting a t-shirt that said “Dazed and Confused,” Barrows started the day with just a little over 18,000, but is still in the sucker, currently in 11th place.

Also — and this is kind of a wild one — the last woman in the event, Pamela Espinosa of Chile, went out in 31st place, and was followed in 30th place by her husband, Mauricio Zeman! Not quite the Mizrachi brothers both making the final table of the $50K Player’s Championship at the WSOP, but remarkable nonetheless.

The big story as we ended the night — told by my blogging partner Brad “Otis” Willis over on the PokerStars blog — is the fact that the two previous winners of this season of the LAPT are first and second in chips heading into Day 3.

Amer Sulaiman, the chip leader, ran especially well during the last hours of play on Day 2, picking up pocket aces at least twice, and seemingly always having the goods when short-stacked players were pushing all in against him. The Canadian Sulaiman won the LAPT Playa Conchal event in Costa Rica last November which kicked off this Season 3 of the LAPT.

And Team PokerStars pro Jose “Nacho” Barbero of Argentina is second in chips. Barbero is an especially tricky player whom I remember covering at last summer’s WSOP when he made a final table in the $1,500 limit hold’em shootout (won by Greg Mueller). Barbero won LAPT Punta del Este in Uruguay this past February.

Both Sulaiman and Barbero had vocal supporters on the rail yesterday, and indeed the scene was pretty raucous at times with a lot of cheering and singing as more than 100 spectators crowded the action.

Incidentally, there wasn’t too much talk yesterday about the Joran van der Sloot situation. We heard he’d been arrested in Chile, but that was about it.

The only other evidence of the story was the fact that a couple of times during the day there were news crews — not covering the tourney — shooting segments there near and in the poker room. On the left is a picture of one such segment being shot as I walked in early yesterday.

We expect there will be more excitement today as they play down to the final eight. Check in on the PokerStars blog to see the next chapter of the story.

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Game 6 in Boston could very well be the biggest game yet in the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the 2010 NBA playoffs, this year’s league MVP LeBron James and the heavy favorites to win the title, that’s the Cleveland Cavaliers, are on the verge of being sent off to an early summer after the Boston Celtics won Game 5 in Cleveland convincingly, 120-88, to take the 3-2 series lead and give themselves a shot at eliminating the Cavaliers this Thursday night in Boston.

Yep, the Cleveland Cavaliers are in a whole lot of trouble and I can’t even stress how badly these guys NEED to win Game 6 in Boston and force a Game 7 back home in Cleveland. If the Cavs lose this, they can kiss the NBA title goodbye for the second straight year as the odds on favorites to win the title.

To make matters worse, a loss could also mean that LeBron James may have played his last game in Cleveland as a Cleveland Cavalier.

That’s right, we may have seen James playing in Cleveland in a Cavaliers uniform for the last time and if our last picture of LeBron as Cleveland’s king is watching him lose to the Boston Celtics 120-88 after shooting an awful 3-14 from…

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The NBA season comes to a close on Wednesday but the post season picture is far from clear. Nick Shiambouros selects the best bets from what looks set to be a dramatic night on the basketball court.

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Yesterday it was announced that there will be a “Tournament of Champions” at this summer’s World Series of Poker, reviving an event that last officially took place in 2006. The new TOC will be a 27-player freeroll tournament with a $1 million prize pool, $500,000 of which will go to the champions’ champion.

The field will include 20 players voted on via an internet poll. Only “living WSOP bracelet winners” are eligible as candidates. (No dead guys!) In his article about the event, Stephen A. Murphy notes there are currently 521 living bracelet holders.

Only one vote per email address, so ballot-box stuffing will only work to the extent that a person uses multiple emails. Voting is now open and will remain so through June 15. One can track how the voting is going by checking the current “Top 50” vote-getters (presented in random order) on the WSOP site. Should be interesting to watch that list over the next three months to see which players prove most popular.

Five more spots will be filled by the TOC winners from its last incarnation (2004-2006), Annie Duke, Mike Matusow, and Mike Sexton, plus last year’s WSOP Main Event winner Joe Cada and WSOPE Main Event winner Barry Shulman. The last two seats are being reserved for “wild card exceptions” — no word as yet what that means, although Harrah’s VP Ty Stewart has said it could be that those spots will be taken by winners of online tourneys.

Sounds like the TOC, like the Main Event, will have its own delay (of sorts) insofar as the tourney is set to begin on Sunday, June 27 and then conclude on the following Sunday, July 4 (an off-day for the Main Event). This will be a televised event, too (on ESPN, natch).

I’m referring to this as TOC 3.0 because the “original” TOC — the one envisioned by Mike Sexton in the late 1990s and run from 1999-2001 at the Orleans Casino — while not specifically connected with the WSOP, not only shared the same name but had a couple of features not completely unrelated to those of the new TOC.

That original Tournament of Champions lasted for three years (1999-2001). There was an entry fee ($1,500 the first year, and $2,000 the next two), but it was not an open tournament. Rather, one earned the right to enter by various means, including winning a WSOP bracelet, winning a TOC-sanctioned event, winning the TOC itself, or being a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.

Reading about the original TOC online, I’ve encountered conflicting reports on those qualifications, but you get the picture. The idea was to create a “champions” event involving the best of the best — sort of like the “Tour Championship” that comes at the end of the year in golf to which only the top money winners for the year are invited.

One other nifty aspect of the original TOC — it was a mixed-game event that featured different games throughout. The first two days players rotated between limit hold’em, Omaha eight-or-better, and seven-card stud. Then on the final day, the last 27 players played no-limit hold’em.

That first year, 1999, there were 664 entrants, and David Chiu was the winner, with Louis Asmo finishing second and Doyle Brunson third. There was a somewhat famous hand between Chiu and Asmo at the final table, one in which following some preflop action Chiu folded pocket kings face up, and Asmo revealed he held pocket aces. Click here to read Lee Munzer’s description of that hand, along with an interview with Asmo.

In 2000, 440 players entered the event, with a computer programmer named Spencer Sun taking the title. The great poker reporter Andy Glazer participated that year (as he did in ’99, I believe), and finished a respectable 35th. Glazer reported on the event for PokerPages, and you can read what he had to say here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

In 2001, there were 402 entries, and Brian Saltus won, defeating T.J. Cloutier heads up. Scotty Nguyen finished third, and Miami John Cernuto fourth. Lee Munzer wrote up the first day of action for PokerPages here (giving Andy Glazer a chance to concentrate on playing), then Glazer wrote up Day 2 and Day 3.

The TOC was discontinued, then the name was used again for that one-table, ten-player event won by Annie Duke in 2004. I mentioned this one last week — no entry fee, $2 million prize pool, winner-take-all. Harrah’s had recently acquired the WSOP, and as they donated the prize pool, the TOC became associated with the WSOP.

In 2005, 111 players earned their way into the event by winning either WSOP bracelets or WSOP Circuit events. A bit of a hubbub that year also as three additional players — Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Chan — were allowed to play as “sponsor exemptions,” and in fact all three did well, finishing 13th (Chan), 10th (Brunson), and third (Hellmuth). Mike Matusow won the event and the $1,000,000 first prize. The rest of the prize pool — another $1 million — was divided among the other eight players who made the final table.

In 2006, the TOC was reduced to a 27-player invitational tourney, with the nine WSOP Main Event final tablists and 11 WSOP Circuit event winners all playing along with seven other “exemptions.” Mike Sexton won that year, defeating Daniel Negreanu heads-up. Again, the prize pool — donated by Harrah’s — totaled $2 million, with half of that going to Sexton for winning.

Now, after a four-year hiatus, the TOC is back. Already seeing debates on Twitter and in the forums about the new format. Kind of a popularity contest, really, as far as who will primarily make up the field. But it should prove interesting nonetheless — another good buzz-creator.

I see Dr. Pauly has already shared his voting guide. Who is getting my vote? Billy Baxter FTW!

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