Place names today. Mostly European as we started naming towns after the Lords of the Manor:

Dublin, Dearborn, Richmond, Hamburg, Sutherland, Albuquerque, Blackburn,

Holland, Oxford, Hamilton, Nelson … all still alive.

Minh Nguyen has NOT left the building

You may recall the news earlier this week that Minh Nguyen did not show for his scheduled Day 1 appearance and was blinded completely out of the Sihoki Slot . So I was a Sihoki bit surprised when I walked through the aisles and saw him alive and well on Day 2.

It turns out Nguyen originally signed up to play Day 1, but had a conflict and changed his starting day to the fourth one. Unfortunately, someone in accounting forgot to void the original entry and a spot was still reserved for the Vietnam native.

Harrah’s corrected the mistake and Nguyen made it through to today and has a healthy stack of 64,000 as the dinner break approaches.

Greg Raymer out

The 2004 WSOP Champion was just felled by pocket aces. The personable former attorney battled with a short stack all day and finally got all in with pocket eights against the aces. An ace flopped and an eight hit on the river to pour salt in the wound.

With the ESPN cameras filming, Raymer jokingly threw the ace off the board and into the muck and grabbed a replacement card out of the deck. Any guesses what it was? Yep, the case ace.

Aces cracked but only for a bit, wheras it could have been worse.

Passing by table 34 Mike Laing is chatting; he is talking to the guy in seat 6 who has called the all-in open raise by seat 4. The bet had been 5,900 on top of Mike’s BB of 800. Now it was the SBs turn she thinks for a few moments and goes all-in for 95,000 Mike mucks and calls me over to say she has Kings. The caller contemplates, asking her if she wants him to call ( he doesn’t have Aces, I think ). More chat ( I dont think he has Kings ) ( probably Queens or Ace King ), his remaining stack is 29,000.

I felt she was happy for him to call – and when he folds his Queens face up she shows Aces. The all-in open bettor shows Queen Jack suited.

The flop comes 9 Ten Jack. The turn is a Jack and the river an 8. The all-in wins firstly with trips and then a straight and the Aces dodge a big hit from the two Queens.

The Patience of a Saint

When talk of dealer pay and tokes come up, some people feel that dealers are whiners. They say the job isn’t hard, they make too many mistakes, and resent having to toke for something they don’t see as much of a service. These people are probably the same ones who think teachers earn plenty, because their day ends at 3 and they get summers off.

I’m beginning to think that in a lot of ways, dealers and teachers are similar. Both need a lot of patience, to keep them from jumping across a table/desk and strangling that player/student who just won’t listen. Case in point: