I'm mad at "Lead Tournament Reporter" Jeremiah Smith. I wanted to call the new roped off area the "media moat." Unfortunately, Jeremiah's much more industrious than me, and he already made the joke in a previous post. Although, I can add that the "moat" works two-fold. It not only pisses people off (as Jeremiah mentioned earlier), but it also forces annoying railbirds to shout even louder so that they can be heard by the pros they are pestering. Awesome.
In other news, someone decided it would be a good idea to make all the chips in play at this point in the tournament the same color - orange. Basically the denominations break down as follows: orange, slightly darker orange, and slightly lighter orange. It's a little disorienting. The people doing chip counts look more confused than the cops chasing Pierce Brosnan at the end of The Thomas Crown Affair.
More from the post-dinner break level:
* Kenny Tran - Took a bad when an opponent doubled up through him with a flopped set of sevens against pocket aces. Still with a healthy stack, Tran walked over to the rail and said to a friend, "that would have put me over $7 million. If I had won that pot nobody at my table would have any chips." Not only did Kenny rebound and build back up to around were he was before the beat, but also, in my opinion, showed the kind of confidence necessary to win this thing.
* Bill Edler - "The Stunning One" doubled up to over $3 million when his pocket tens held to an opponent's A-K. If you listen to our radio show, you know G. Smith's pulling big time for Bill, and if Gavin could have it his way, Bill would be on PokerWire Radio more times than Alec Baldwin's hosted SNL. Which reminds me...Bill Edler will be our guest on Monday's show.
* Lee Watkinson - Because of Lee's playing style, and the fact that he entered the post-dinner break level near the top of the leader board, the general consensus seemed to be that he'd have to run into one or two medium-to-serious coolers to not reach the final table (aka he's no maniac). Well, minutes after talking about this with ESPN columnist, Gary WIse, I watched Watkinson lose a decent chunk of his stack to Rep Porter. Lee had a set, Porter doubled up with a flush. Stay tuned (remember, because he qualified online, Lee would receive $10,000,000 from Full Tilt were he to win the main event).
A pair of interesting prospects:
* Maria Ho - Alive, and kind of well. In the summer-of-bashing-the-female-poker-player, imagine if she won the big one...
* Scotty Nguyen - Alive and quite well. In the age of the never-again-see-a-two-time-champion, imagine if he won...
