Top Rated Poker Rooms

Lacey Jones has become a bit of a poker icon.  Not for winning a major (yet) or dominating the high stakes games in Bobby’s Room (give it time) but because she is about the hardest working lady in poker journalism.  This was filmed at last year’s WSOP final table right when Demidov and Eastgate were clashing heads up.  At the same time, Lacey was hosting “The Real Deal” an amazing, audience interactive show featuring top pros playing audience members.  Sadly, its not around any more, but I can tell you from getting to see it, it was a blast.  Even people in the audience that were just there to support some poker nut in their life were cracking up and it all went by way, way to fast.  Maybe ‘Face the Ace’ will fare better.  This year, she is not only interviewing and hosting for the WSOP but has been the spokes-person du jour for about everything from opening parties to energy/health fizzers.  This is a gal that speaks multiple languages, has studied around the world, plays a pretty good game of poker AND knows how to bring it all together and look good all night at the WSOP.

SPEAKING of our World Series of Poker — the final numbers are in as we head into day 2 of the main event and here they are for you:

Some Final Numbers From This Year:

· 60,875 entrants (new record)

· 10 ¼ sellouts (new record)

· $174,011,894 – Total Prize Pool This Year

· $1,041,265,271 – Total Prize Money Awarded through 40 years of WSOP (That is BILLION with a B.)

Main Event Prize Pool: $61,043,600 for 6,494 entries (you do the math on the juice kids…) paying out starting at 648.  This in including turning away hundreds on Day 1d that could not figure out how to show up on one of four opening days and just had to play on the last day.  PS — if you had the over on last year’s entrants — this screwed you.

Over $27 million on the final table alone, top 9 will become millionaires (until they pay their taxes) and places 63 and up earn at least 6 figures.

Final table payouts are:

I am not in the running for the big prize this year, instead I’ll just have to be content with a shot at the Dream Team Poker event on July 12th and 13th at the Rio.  This is the second installment of the wildly popular team event that took place at Caesar’s earlier in the year and one that I (and about everyone I know) really hopes catches on.  For $560 per person your team of three gets custom jerseys and an entry into a very unique format of poker.  An individual wins the tournament and a share of the total prize money but the real cash is in the team win.  In the first event…even with the ‘low’ buy-in.. it would be easier for me to tell you which top pros DIDN’T play than for me to rattle of the list of which ones did.  The mood was great, we clashed with top stars and celebs AND we were playing for some pretty decent money.  So get online and register NOW (don’t want to be shut-out like the Day 1d knuckleheads) and come and play me.  There is a special bounty ‘on my head’ come find out what it is.

Oh…who did I get to play with this year?  Well, lets just say I almost named the team “Suck it Greenstein” due to the vivacious beauty of my two teammates, Liz Lieu and Anh Tran, but…we went with Liz’s sponsor Chili Poker.    Here are a couple shots for you:

Liz Lieu -- charming and deadly

Anh Tran -- deadly and charming

So look for your favorite Life’s A Bluff roving reporter in the mix and try not to stare too long at my partners…ok?

Possibly Related Posts:

• Random Questions with Jose Canseco
• Random Questions with Dani Ansky Stern
• Happy New Year!
• Holiday Tale pt. 3 of 3
• Holiday Tale – pt 2 of 3

Tags: anh tran, dream team poker, lacey jones, liz lieu, random questions

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 4:10 am and is filed under Bluff Blog, Pro Player Interviews, Random Question Interviews, World Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.