WSOP Circuit Main Event notes

[bigbrett]

I was lucky enough to be in vegas this weekend, so I went over to check out the WSOP Circuit Event at Bally's.

I took some horrible cellphone photos and have them posted here.

These were the only ones that turned even halfway decent. I kind of
thought it would be boring to watch the first couple of rounds, but it
was interesting. You could walk right up the middle of the floor
(which had ropes really close to the inner aisle of tables).

The boring details:

Stars spotted: Chau 'poker good/i like play poker' Giang, Mike Sexton,
Doyle/Todd Brunson, Johnny Chan, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Jennifer
Harmon, Daniel Negreanu, Paul Williams, Barry Greenstein, Max
Pescatori, Doug Lee, Paul Magriel, Joseph Hachem, Minh Ly, John Phan,
Michael 'the Grinder' Mizraichi and probably a bunch more that I'm not remembering

When I first walked in, here were the notable tables that I saw:
johnny chan and men "the master" sitting at the same table on either side of the dealer.
right on the rail a table with John Phan (rocking a ridiculous platinum
buddha with lots of ice filling his belly) and Michael Mizraichi.

watching john phan and michael Mizraichi play the first round was
hilarious. they would just raise in the dark and call down to the
river with each other. they would just trade chips, basically stealing the blinds from
the stacks that hadn't shown up and the guys that weren't
about to mix it up with them. my favorite hand in that round
goes something like this: blinds are 25/50, everyone still has around
$9-11k in chips. phan raises to $150 under the gun..everyone folds to
Mizraichi, who reraises to $300. Folds back around to Phan, who calls.
preflop-phan throw in a $150 smoke bet..flop comes KQQ. Mizraichi
calls. Another $150 smoke bet from Phan, turn is a K, Mizraichi
raises to $300. Phan hesitates, but calls. River is a 4, phan bets out
for like $250..Mizraichi thinks and calls. Phan shows 8-4 off suit,
Mizraichi shows Ace - 7 offsuit to win the biggest pot that had been played up to that point at that table. it was clear they were playing a different game than I have ever played. After Negreanu showed up at their table near the end of the first round, both of these guys tightened up and started folding most of their hands, just picking off blinds and not really tangling with each other.

later, my wife and i watched johnny chan get eliminated by that Doug Lee guy that won one of the circuit events last year..that dude was just calling people down with anything and knocking them out with his big stack of chips. chan
tripled up through mike sexton and that Lee dude about 2 hands before he got knocked out (flopping the nut flush, after having been all in preflop).

As I said, it was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. All the pros were taking pictures with people and Chan signed an autograph after getting steaming after his bad beat.