Congratulations to my friend Dennis Phillips, who has made it through Day 4 of the Main Event at the World Series of Poker. From a starting roster of 6,844 players a week ago, they are down to 189, and he's hanging in there. Considering that at one point Dennis took a hit and dropped from 200,000 chips to only 22,000, he has rebounded nicely to just over 800,000 -- nowhere near the chip leader, but doing fine, right in the middle of the pack.
Dennis is well known in St. Louis as one of the best tournament players in town, who won his seat in the $10,000 main event via a qualifying tourney at Harrah's. While it'd be great to win the $9.1 million top prize, he's earned a huge return on the few hundred dollars he invested even if he's the next player eliminated.
Play resumes at 2pm CT on Saturday, and you can read all about it on PokerNews.com, which has reporters roaming the Amazon Room at The Rio for live reports on what's happening at many of the tables (particularly hands involving poker pros you may have seen on TV, including Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Allen Cunningham, Gus Hansen, and others).
Interestingly, PokerNews.com hasn't reported on a single hand Dennis has been involved in, probably because his table image is such that he's getting a lot of respect from the other players, who avoid getting into big pots with him. But if he can double up in the next round, and move up from there, he might even attract some attention from the ubiquitous ESPN cameras at the event.
By the way, ESPN will begin airing its WSOP coverage on June 22, with two hours every Tuesday night. The first six weeks will cover other events at the WSOP like the Pot Limit Omaha Championship and the $50,000 Horse Championship. Main Event coverage will begin September 2 and run through the final table on November 11.Labels: poker/vegas