The center of the poker universe right now is the Amazon Room at the Rio. So why do I have such a tough time driving there?

The Rio has been humming along with event after event, but I can tell you I've enjoyed not being there day after day.

It's a situation that I think is a struggle for many pros. There are so many tournaments going on, it's easy to simply keep signing up hoping for the big score.

And that makes sense in some ways. You can't win a bracelet if you're not in an event, and there are some big payoffs waiting for those who can take one down. The problem with that is you have to go really deep to maximize the payoff. Sneak into the cash and it doesn't do much for you.

I've taken a different path. I'm trying to mix WSOP events with cash games at the Bellagio and time away from poker. It's kept me fresh and I think playing much better than if I were just grinding day after day at the World Series.

Event 30, $10,000 Limit Hold'em, was probably the event I was looking forward to the most. If there is any game I'd say I'm an expert at, it is Limit Hold'em. With a deep stack, I felt it was a great shot for me.

I was the chip leader after Level 3, and then I went through four levels of being card dead. I also ran up against some pretty strange customers.

Here's an example. A guy raised before me, and I three-bet on the button with 8 9. The flop was beautiful for me, a T-J-3 rainbow. He checked, and I bet with his call. The turn was some rag and he again check-called my bet.

The K came on the river. Again, he checked, and I bet with my busted straight draw. He thought for a bit, then finally called. His cards: A 6. How could he have made all those calls with only an ace-high and no draws? I still have no clue!

Here's another example. I clawed back to $25k when this hand came up. I raised with K T; then the lady in the four seat makes it three bets, Minh Ly on the blind calls, then I call. The flop comes A 8 T, which is a great flop for my hand.

Minh Ly and I both check to the lady in the four seat; she bets out, Minh Ly calls, I check-raise, and the lady three-bets. Minh folds, and I call. The turn is a blank and I check-call to her.

T comes on the river, giving me trip tens. I bet for value and she just calls. Her hand: pocket aces. River call with top boat. Bizarre.

That put me almost out, and with just about three minutes left on the clock until everyone started bagging up their chips for Day 2, I ended up going all-in blind with a small raise holding 4 5, one of my favorite hands.

The flop came 55x, and I had to stick around a bit more, having to end Day 1 with $8,600 in chips. I went out soon after Day 2 started, short of the cash by far and a bit frustrated that I couldn't make my way through the land mines.

I also played Event 21, $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em and had probably the funniest tournament table I've ever been at. My table included Andy Black, Greg Raymer and Eli Elezra, only to be joined later by Gavin Smith.

I kept grinning throughout the first two levels as they kept making wisecracks back and forth. Of course, it wasn't too great a time as none of us cashed in the event ...

I took three days off and played cash games at the Bellagio this week. The games have gotten a bit bigger, and I played in a $400/$800 game that included Mike Schneider, Eddie Ting, Shawn Keller and Joe Malcolm.

Another guy who joined us later came from Bobby's Room, where he'd gotten stuck. He was a maniac, blind three-betting and flipping the table into a maniac zone. I got unstuck myself by the end of the session.

I used one of my tricks to keep me focused in this game. I had some tough hand (I can't exactly remember), and I got up and left the poker room, pulled out a $100 bill, stuffed it into a slot machine, then plopped down to get started.

It's my little secret way to keep the tilt demons away. I figure donking off $100 at slots is much better than tilting off a few grand. I don't know if other players do this, but it works for me.

Another $400/$800 session included Jennifer Harman, Nick Schulman, Greg Mueller, Hansu Chu and Van Diesel (no, not the actor). To make the game a bit juicier, Nick suggested that we add a $100 ante pre-flop.

Eddie Ting and Minh Ly joined the game later in the night, and I think I played pretty well. I stuck with the game until 7:30 a.m. and ended up booking a very nice win:).

I had my personal assistant from Asia, Zach, in town along with Alvin, one of his friends. They'd never been to Las Vegas before, so I took them out and treated them to see "O" at the Bellagio.

I fell asleep twice and almost got my camera taken away! They told us no photography was permitted, but I snuck my camera out (without the flash) and snapped five shots for Zach.

Out of nowhere, a security guard came up to me. "I'm not going to take your camera away," he said, "but you have to put it away." I did, believe me! I have to say I have turned away from my criminal ways. Thank you, Bellagio!

I had a great night with six of my girlfriends in town from L.A., but you'll have to head to www.lizlieu.net to hear all about that. It's a little too scandalous for PokerListings!

I did want to congratulate all of the top pros taking down bracelets. I also want to congratulate Barry for winning the $1.5k Razz event, and my dear John Phan took down the $3k NLHE title.

And I told you to watch Vanessa Selbst. A great job with her PLO bracelet and another semifinal finish at the $10k HU championship.

Every final table is full of pros this year, and the events are hardly pushovers. I'm itching to jump back into an event, but I'll keep picking my spots.

I love when you guys post comments, so let me ask your opinion. Cash games or WSOP events? What do you think?

Cheers!

-- Liz Lieu
Pro Poker Player- Poker Diva

More Blogs from Liz Lieu:

• 28th is Not Quite First
• Bagging Chips for the First Time!
• Feeling Good at WSOP but Aces Cracked Again
• My Thoughts on WSOP ME Final-Table Delay

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It's Friday again at the 2008 World Series of Poker, folks, and thank God for that - just one more day until another $1,500 donkament kicks off at the Rio!

Just kidding, y'all - we at PokerListings.com love all WSOP events equally, though it must be said that we love the $10,000 World Championship events a little more equally than the others.

Regardless, it's Day 22 at the '08 Dub-Sop and come noontime the cards will be back in the air as we kick off another bracelet bonanza!

Today's sole starter is Event 38, the $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em tournament. As this is the only tournament starting up today (and a Hold'em variant) you can expect to see a heavyweight field, although the teeming hordes that seem to patronize the low-level HE events will likely stay away.

Last year, this event called itself Event 37 and ran from June 22 to the 24th, attracting 599 entrants who did battle on the Amazon Room floor for that WSOP bracelet and a $1,090,180 prize pool. A total of 54 players were paid, including David Colclough (49th), Thayer Rasmussen (31st), Michael Keiner (24th), William Thorson (22nd), Daniel Alaei (20th) and T.J. Cloutier, who barely missed the final table with an 11th-place finish.

That final table would feature few (if any) big poker names, and in the end it was Alaskan poker pro Greg Hopkins who emerged from that damned poker shroud the victor, claiming $269,274 in prize money to complement his first WSOP bracelet and this glorious PokerListings.com interview.

While Event 38 plays out its first baby steps, Events 34 and 35 will play down to a winner tonight, with the former, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha w/Rebuys event, bringing Ted Forrest, Layne Flack, Tim West, Frank Vizza and 2008 WSOP Most Underrated Player Jacobo Fernandez to the final felt in pursuit of that bracelet.

Event 35, on the other hand, brings a largely anonymous final eight to the felt to contest for the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud title. Chip leader is Michael Rocco and that's about all we have to say about that.

Hit us up in the 2008 WSOP and Live Tournaments sections for everything you need to know about every tournament except that $25 rebuy at the Tuscany Suites you've been bubbling every night. We'll keep you in the loop and if you play your cards right, we might even win you a seat in the Big Measy, ya dig?

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Today's snapshot digs deep into the biggest pots list for a smaller pot but an intriguing hand between leggopoker.com coach aejones and Full Tilt pro John Juanda.

(Hand history and stats from PL.com MarketPulse Biggest Pots section.)

Players: John Juanda vs. aejones

Game: $100/$200 No-Limit Hold'em, heads-up, deep-stacked

Stack Sizes: John Juanda $52,141.50; aejones $44,873

The Setup

Juanda min-raises from the small blind/button and aejones three-bets to $1,555. The flop comes down A T 5. aejones continuation bets $1,700.

Juanda decides to smooth-call and the turn comes K. aejones checks and Juanda checks behind.

The river drops out 3 and aejones bets $4,600. Juanda raises to $10,650 and aejones goes into the tank, letting his time run all the way down before shoving all-in for $41,618.

Now it is Juanda's turn to tank before eventually calling the shove. aejones shows A Q and Juanda shows Q J for the nut straight. Juanda's straight takes the $89,745 pot.

The Breakdown

The hand begins with Juanda making a min-raise off the button with Q J. Though raising with Q-J heads-up is incredibly standard, the min-raise is a little peculiar.

Maybe the min-raise off the button is catching on in heads-up games. Online dominator David "raptor" Benefield has been toying with the strategy himself in the recent $25k Full TiltHeads-Up tourney as well as in the $10,000 World Series Heads-Up tournament.

Whatever the reason, Juanda min-raises and aejones three-bets his A Q for value. A-Q is a huge hand heads-up; he wants to extract as much as he can while he is ahead. He goes with $1,555 and Juanda calls.

Juanda makes the call because they are both more than 200 BBs deep. The deeper the stacks, the more implied odds one has. The concept is simple: if Juanda can hit a big hand with more money behind, the bigger the pot is going to be.

The flop comes A T 5 and aejones c-bets $1,700. This is a half-pot-size bet. A little on the small side, but he holds a very strong hand - top pair, second-best kicker - and a backdoor flush draw. A half-pot bet disguises the actual strength of his hand.

Juanda elects to make the call with his gut-shot. Again, he calls not because of the immediate pot odds, but because of the implied odds that a deep-stack table offers.

The turn brings Juanda's K, making him the nut straight. aejones checks and Juanda checks behind.

I believe aejones checks the turn not because he fears the flush but instead in an attempt to check-raise. His hand, top pair, good kicker, now with the nut-flush draw, figures to be good here a high percentage of the time.

Those times it is not, he has the nut-flush draw to fall back on. I believe the turn is a whiffed check-raise semibluff. Juanda decides to check through on the turn because he now holds the nut straight and raising will expose the strength of his hand.

The Q gives Juanda the second nut-flush draw to go along with his made straight. So the check through on the turn is in fact a good play in the long run, because if a heart falls it's very unlikely that aejones has the one card that can beat him.

Of course we know that now because we can see the player's cards, but in the heat of the moment that information wasn't available. In any case, Juanda checks through.

The river comes the 3 and aejones bets $4,600. The pot is $6,510 and aejones' bet is a two-thirds pot-value bet. When the turn goes check/check, aejones likely feels that he has the best hand and he is hoping for a call.

Juanda, however, has a straight and raises to $10,650. This bet is simple from Juanda's eyes. He has the nut straight and would like to get value out of it.

From aejones' point of view, though, this bet is actually much more complex. aejones' hand is actually very underrepresented. He bets half the pot on the flop and when called, checks the turn. It almost looks like he gives up on the hand.

Now when the river comes he takes a stab at the pot. With the information that Juanda has, it looks like aejone's range is weak. Thus the river raise by Juanda could be a complete bluff, trying to move aejones off his weak hand.

We obviously know that that isn't the case but one can understand how aejones could think that Juanda is putting a move on him.

For those reasons aejones decides to reraise all-in, a move I do not really like. If he did indeed think that Juanda was bluffing, then simply calling the river bet would be a far better (and safer) move.

The reraise I believe is not a value raise but an elaborate resteal. He knows that Juanda knows that his (aejones') range is weak. Thus Juanda's river raise could be weak.

So he attempts to steal the pot back. This logic is somewhat flawed, though, because I don't think there are any hands that aejones loses to that fold to his river shove. Which means the shove really accomplishes the same as just calling the river raise.

After all, if Juanda is bluffing, aejones wins either way. Juanda folds to the reraise only if he is bluffing, and if he is bluffing, then aejones has the best hand at showdown. Thus the raise does not accomplish anything.

To see more hand histories from their session, or more of the Top 100 biggest pots online over the last day, week, month and year, jump to the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section.

More Strategy Snapshots:

• Strategy Snapshot: Image is Everything
• Strategy Snapshot: No Way in a Million Years
• Strategy Snapshot: The World Is Not Enough
• Strategy Snapshot: Deep-Stack Cooler

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It's a few weeks from now and it's the night before the Main Event. You want to play so badly you can taste it. You've got your A-1 Sauce ready to go but you don't have the stake. You reach into your pocket and you realize all you have are two five dollar chips. What to do next?

The quickest and dirtiest way to get this done is probably roulette. Albert Einstein once said that the only to beat to roulette was to cheat. What did he know anyway? The key is to find a lucky wheel! If you're lucky enough to win the first time, let it all ride! Put the whole $350 on the same number and hit it again. The dealers will count out $12,250 and push it in your general direction. Tip the dealers $2,000, wink at the girl sitting across the table, head straight for the casino cage, and hop in the nearest limo to give you a ride back to your room.

Gambling too risky for you? Figure out some sort of service you can offer. Be creative. Head on down to the local print shop and make up 100 business cards with your phone number and hotel room. Go to the strip and hand them out. Be safe.

The roulette didn't work or the phone never rang. You lay your head down to go to sleep and realize there is a $100 bill under your pillow. How did that get there? Doesn't matter. Time is short and you need to get to work. It's too late and no American sports are on. Time to improvise. Find a sportsbook that is still open and hopefully running some dog or horse races in some land far, far away. Look for a dog that is priced at 100-1 and place the bet. Sure the dog might only have three legs, but imagine the weight savings! Nobody said you weren't going to need some luck pull this off.

The sportsbooks were all closed but luckily for you the dice never sleep in Vegas. Mosey over to the closest dice table in sight and lay your cash on the felt. Wait for the dice to pass through the shooters until it's your turn to roll - tonight your fate should rest only in your hands. The smartest way to play craps is to bet the least amount on the pass line possible with the highest amount on the odds behind. What fun is that? The bets you're looking for in this case are located at the center of the table. These long shot bets with poor odds will pay anything from 7-1 all the way up to 30-1.

If you have a problem figuring out what to bet on, find the most degenerate looking person on your table and ask them for advice. They'll be more than happy to help. In the seventies a young Bobby Baldwin was down to just a few hundred dollars when he decided to take a chance on the craps table and ended up walking away with over $20,000. This win helped finance his bankroll and was part of the reason he decided to stay in Las Vegas. Look at him now, CEO of MGM Mirage properties. He did it, why can't you?

Because you're not Bobby Baldwin that's why. You listened to the degen at the dice table and minutes later you're flat broke again. Imagine that! Fresh out of ideas, you head back to your hotel room to try and forget this night ever happened. You put the television on and try to go to sleep. A commercial comes on for one of the dozens of companies that exist in Vegas to loan you money. They promise fast and easy cash and low interest rates. Instant approval!

You've already hit the low point of your life, why not dig a little deeper? You hitch hike to the nearest one and you find the most they will give you is $1,000. That's better than nothing, you're back in action!

You hear that blackjack offers some of the best odds in Vegas. Find yourself a good game and buy in. Purple chips only please (you get two chips). This way you have two bets in case you need to double down. The way to minimize the edge in games like this is to play as few hands as possible. Get in get out. Strike when the iron is hot! You can choose to try to win 20 hands in a row but that's nearly impossible. Instead keep doubling your bet. With a bit of luck you'll be in and out in five minutes. Wait a second though, before you sit down and try some blackjack there is one last option.

You came to Vegas to play poker. Satellites usually run around the clock and they have $1,000 ones running almost up until the start of the main event. If you can't win one of those, what business do you have playing anyway? Go down to the satellite room get in line and take a shot. You play well and you get heads up and you're about even in chips with your opponent. He offers you an even chop but you're here to play to win. You politely decline and say you would rather play it out.

You look down and you see pocket aces! You get all in and are delighted to be up against ace-king. The flop is A-3-T and you're well ahead. The turn is a Q but the river is a J! You just suffered the most horrifying beat of your entire life! The main event is about to start and you're not even close to being in it.

Left with nothing, your head hanging low, you leave the satellite room. Out of options you begin to wonder what brought you to Vegas in the first place. As you walk down the hall you see Phil Ivey. The same one that's always on TV. He's offerring to stake anybody and everybody that asks. You go up to him and ask if he'll put you into the tournament. He tosses you two $5,000 Bellagio chips with a wink a smile. You're in the game! Now get out there and win!

If all else fails feel free to come prepared and win a seat online beforehand. 

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The WSOP Player of the Year award isn't an honor with an awful lot of history behind it at this stage in its existence. This tournament series began its life, after all, as a gamblers convention where the "winner" was declared by the vote of his peers.

What the POY award lacks in history it makes up for just because it's a way of declaring a winner. Poker is notorious for not having any real way of keeping score, so the POY gives those following (and participating in) the game some sort of framework by which they can judge who is truly the best player at the WSOP in any given year.

After 21 days of the 2008 World Series of Poker, the standings are tied:

Name	WSOP POY points	Bracelets	Total cashes	2008 WSOP Earnings
Barry Greenstein	185	1	4	$409,177
Erick Lindgren	185	1	4	$567,088
Daniel Negreanu	170	1	4	$378,224
Vanessa Selbst	163	1	3	$350,391
David Singer	160	1	4	$340,363
Jacobo Fernandez-Hernandez	157	0	4	$425,762
Farzad Rouhani	140	1	3	$265,443
Andy Bloch	135	0	3	$585,620
Scott Seiver	130	1	3	$781,886
Theo Tran	125	0	4	$550,168

It's easy to see that the POY race is wide open; as others have suggested, this is indeed the Year of the Pro. The higher number of high buy-in events, with their attendant smaller fields, is leading to more final tables and deep in-the-money cashes for players like Team PokerStars pro Greenstein and Full Tilt's Lindgren. However, they're not out of the woods yet; anyone in the top ten could take over the top spot with a bracelet win in any open event, worth 100 POY points.

Imagine if Andy Bloch got things to fall his way and won a bracelet instead of finishing in 2nd, or if one of the chip leads Theo Tran so consistently builds can hold up and propel him to a win. Either of those situations, both well within the realm of possibility, would make the winner in question the leader of the POY race.

Fans, fellow professionals, and the folks running the WSOP should all be rejoicing that we actually have a tight POY race that's likely to stay competitive right to the end. Even if this year's WSOP doesn't produce a two-bracelet winner a la Jeff Madsen, Bill Chen, Tom Schneider, Mark Seif, or Scott Fischman, a couple of final table finishes by any of the top players has the ability to alter the standings. In other words, nobody who really wants the title can afford to slip up because there's always someone else waiting to take advantage.

While poker tours are popping up all around the world, there's no denying that the mix of history and hard cash on the line make the WSOP the king of tournaments. Because of that, a competitive race here in Las Vegas is great way for poker is really going to elevate itself to a status more in line with professional sports. What's really encouraging is that the changes that Harrah's has made to the WSOP as a whole, such as improving the structures and adding more game variety to the schedule, are really what's responsible for the competition at the top of the leaderboard.

More established, solid tournament professionals are making final tables as a result of these changes. That means it's going to be very important for Harrah's not to fix what isn't broken. Continuing to add more Omaha, Stud, and lowball events, as well as keeping the improved structures in place rather than changing them, will be the keys to preserving all this competition.

For now, we still get another two weeks to watch this year's POY race evolve and finish itself out. Right now Greenstein and Lindgren have the lead, but anything can happen given the number of preliminary events remaining on the schedule. Anyone who loves poker, and in particular the WSOP, should have a great time seeing how the situation shakes out.

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A fascinating day's poker played out today with the schedule rolling out a full spectrum of different poker events. Two new bracelet winners were crowned, two final tables set up and if that weren't enough, there was a host of thrills and spills occurring in the $10k Omaha/8 split world championship and the latest $1,500 NLHE event.

The $5,000 Seven Card Stud Hi Lo Split World Championship final brought a healthy mix of European and American pros to the felt with Marcel Luske, Chris Ferguson and Annie Duke battling it out with the other remaining five players.

Bob Beveridge was soon off to get himself a beverage, busting out 8th at the hands of Sebastian Ruthenberg, who was to prove an important figure as the final progressed.

Steve Sung followed soon afterwards, his song sung when Annie Duke's pair of Kings was good enough to send him first class to busto-ville in 7th. Ruthenberg took his second scalp in Alessio Isaia, and Ferguson took care of the shortstacked Annie Duke in 5th, falling just short of picking up her 2nd bracelet.

The flying Dutchman, Marcel Luske crashed to earth in 4th at the hands of Bob Lauria, who was himself eliminated in 3rd before long by the rampaging Ferguson, who faced off against Ruthenberg for the title.

On paper, Ferguson was the favourite, his wealth of experience at these stages trumping the young German's relative unfamiliarity at this level, this being his first WSOP final table.

It was to be no short lived affair however as the chip counts fluctuated wildly, the lead swapping hands multiple times over a marathon four hour mexican stand-off.

Neither player looked capable of landing a knockout blow but after several millenia had passed and with the bring-ins and limits bigger than Pavarotti's fridge, Ruthenberg finally overcame Jesus, his two pair besting Ferguson's pair of Aces and missed low draw.

No sixth bracelet for Ferguson then, but a new champion was crowned, Sebastian Ruthenberg picking up his first bracelet and $328,756 to the boisterous cheers of the raucous crowd watching on from the rail.

The final table of the $1,500 reconvened with Luis Velador the dominant chip leader, and it was a position he would not surrender easily.

Utsab Saha and Justin Hoffman fell at an eary stage, and once Dany Georges, Dean Bui and Shane Stacey fell in quick succession we were left battling for the bracelet four handed.

Jae Chung was the next elimination, Chung's bell rung by a combination of a Luis Velador and Osmin Dardon, both making a fulll house. Three handed Velador had maintained his dominant chip advantage and once he knocked out Osmin Dardon, he faced off against Anthony Signore with a 5-1 chip advantage.

Signore would have needed a miracle to reverse this deficit and though he did well to claw his way back to parity, it seemed destiny that Velador would take the title and he did just that, making aces up to send Signore crashing out just short.

Meanwhile Jose Luis Velador was overjoyed to pick up the bracelet, glory and no small matter of $573,374.

The $10,000 Omaha/8 split World Championship event revved into action today, attracting a star studded field making it a not only lucrative, but also prestigious, title to win.

Erick Lindgren, Roland De Wolfe and Mike Matusow were in the upper echelons of the leaderboard by the time they bagged them and tagged them with half the 235 strong field set to return tomorrow for day 2.

In the WSOP day release re-habilitation programme, otherwise known as the latest $1,500 NLHE event, the field of largely inexperienced animals, sorry amateurs, was whittled down from 2,447 to the 187 who will don gloves and resume battle tomorrow, Owen Crowe leading the way as we stand.

The latest stud event, the $1,500, played down to the select group of eight who had managed to skillfully negotiate, and in some cases, luck-box their way through to the final table.

The chip leader Michael Rocco will be dreaming of bracelet-clad glory tomorrow, well placed as he is, just a smidgen ahead of Al Barbieri, who is hot on his heels.

In other news, the $1,500 PL Omaha rebuy event also played down to the final table, with living legend Ted Forrest and Layne Flack two of the star names rostered to appear in tomorrow's grand finale to the competition.

More fun and frolics beckon tomorrow. Join PokerListings.com for the finest coverage of what is shaping up to be the best WSOP in history.

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Who's poised to conquer at Event 37, $10,000 World Championship Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better, starting today?

Tough to say. In the past few years the vast majority of all tournaments have been No-Limit Hold'em, limiting our sample size for evaluating the most likely-to-win rounders.

As with my Stud Hi-Lo World Championship choices, these are based on O8 tournament results, most importantly WSOP results, as well as on popular consensus among other players.

This list isn't an attempt at a definitive "best of the best" O8 players; rather, it's a roundup of those I think have the best shot at winning this particular WSOP event.

5) Ted Forrest. Coming in at No. 5 is Ted Forrest. He was No. 3 on my Stud list, so it's not surprising he shows up here as well.

With the majority of the world being Hold'em specialists, the players who play one alternate game at a world-class level are usually the same ones who excel at the other non-HE variations.

Forrest's most recent cash was second place in Event 16, $2,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better, at the 2008 WSOP. He's one of the world's best poker players, with an almost unmatched skill level for O8.

4) "Miami" John Cernuto. Miami John also made my Stud list. His record for Omaha Split games is almost as impressive as his Stud record, with 65 O8 tournament cashes and 11 of those wins. In 2004 he was a runner-up for a WSOP O8 bracelet.

On top of his tournament results, he also has the respect and support of many of the other top players. Just like Ted Forrest, his most recent cash was also in this year's Event 16, Omaha Eight-or-Better.

3) Mike "The Mouth" Matusow. With three bracelets - one of them from a 2002 Omaha O8 event - Mike makes this list with ease. He has over $6.2 million in tournament winnings and he's just coming off a 2008 WSOP bracelet win, which can only boost his confidence even further.

The No. 1 reason Matusow makes this list is that he truly believes that the Championship O8 event is his for the taking. He is focusing all of his energy on that one event, and plans to do nothing less than take it down.

His dedication to this single event is unparalleled, and might give him the edge he needs. Not only does he have a bracelet win in the genre, but he finished runner-up in the 1997 O8 event to my No. 2 choice ...

2) Scotty Nguyen. Scotty Nguyen has over $7.4 million in tournament winnings. He has cashed in 32 Omaha Hi-Lo events, nine times in first place.

Two of his three WSOP bracelets are in Omaha Hi-Lo events, his third having come in Omaha Hi. He's widely viewed as one of the top O8 players in the world, and without a doubt has a solid chance at taking it home.

1) Scott Clements. Clements' name is far less familiar than those of the other players on this list, but there is a good chance that will not be the case for long.

He has over $3 million in tournament wins, and won his second WSOP bracelet in a 2007 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi event, with his first in 2006 for Championship Omaha Hi-Lo. And he's won many large Hold'em events, proving to everyone that he can go the distance in large fields and finish on final tables.

The reason Scott gets my top slot is for his latest impressive feat - cashing in all three of the 2008 WSOP events to have featured Omaha Hi-Lo Split so far, including making the final tables of Event 6 and Event 16, both exclusively Omaha O8.

Event 10, an Omaha/Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo event, saw him reach the money in 39th place overall. That means he's three for three with a bracelet for the very event in question, so Scott Clements is my hands-down favorite to win.

To follow all the action in the Omaha Hi-Lo Split World Championship, jump to the PokerListings.com live 2008 WSOP coverage section here.

More Poker Top Lists:

• Top 5 Finns to Watch at 2008 WSOP
• Top 5 Stud Players to Watch at 2008 WSOP
• Top 5 Players Who Deserve a Bracelet
• Top 10 Players I'm Cheering For

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It's that time again, poker fans! I mean, it's morning, and that means there's just a little while longer before the action heats up again at the 2008 World Series of Poker!

Today is Day 21 of this epic festival of degeneracy. As usual, we've got two events kicking off, and I bet you can't guess what game and buy-in the noon event will be (hint: it's a donkament).

That's right - despite having started a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em tournament on Tuesday, Thursday will see yet another $1.5k NLHE tournament make its introductions. If you ever dreamed of playing mid-stakes Hold'em in a turbo-structured three-day tournament with a thousand and one other poker addicts, junkies and dreamers - well boyo, this week is your manna.

Don't worry, though. Even if you're in Abu Dhabi today you can still make Saturday's $1.5k NLHE affair, or next Saturday's, or the one on the Monday after that. If you haven't played by then, that's your problem and don't come complaining to us.

Last year, this donkament called itself Event 35 (it's Event 36 this year) and attracted 2,541 runners, half of whom were eliminated by end of the fourth hour of play. That's a lot of runners. It meant the prize pool was $3,468,465, which is a lot of dollars, although it was dispersed among 271 finalists.

The final table featured John Esposito, Nam Le and Dustin Dirksen, but in the end it was young gun Ryan Young who took down the title, defeating Dirksen in heads-up play to clinch his first WSOP bracelet and $615,955 in spending money. Young talked to the PL about his win in this exclusive interview.

At 5 p.m. the $10,000 World Championship Omaha Hi-Lo Eight-or-Better tournament gets under way. Now this is a tournament worth getting excited for!

Last year's event (Event 36) attracted 280 players, but with the tournament costing $5,000 they found themselves all duking it out for a prize pool worth $1,316,000. Twenty-seven players took a cut, with the final table featuring less of a scary roster than one might expect from a World Championship event.

In the end, it was "Sir Scoopalot," John Guth, a 26-year-old online pro from Vancouver, Washington, who took down first prize after defeating Robert Stevanovski in heads-up play. Guth scored his first WSOP bracelet and banked $363,216 for the win, although as he relates in this exclusive PokerListings.com interview, he may not have actually banked very much of that cash at all.

If the Series thus far is any indication you can expect to see a far more ballerific final table than last year's. PokerListings.com will have all the details on this and the other five events playing out in the Amazon Room tonight, so keep it locked on our WSOP section for details and be sure to check out last night's recap blog for the full scoop on what to expect from tonight's final tables!

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For some reason I can't quite explain, I showed up for another circus full of monkeys chasing a bracelet the other day ... otherwise known as a WSOP $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event.

Because these are the smallest-buy-in NL events at the WSOP, they naturally attract the largest and weakest fields of all NL events. Unfortunately, I have what equates to a snowball's chance in hell of winning a bracelet in one of these events.

Even if I thought my edge was so great that I was twice as likely as the average schmo to win the tournament (which I don't), I'd have less than a 0.1% chance of winning the bracelet, given that the field is over 2,000 players.

I know it sounds pessimistic, but I'm merely trying to be rational here. Okay, maybe the fact that I've been running like battery acid for the most part since getting to the WSOP has an influence on this outlook, too.

Anyway, my overwhelming desire to get a bracelet in this lifetime caused me to pony up the $1,500 and show up. You only get $3k chips and the blinds are $100/$200 after two hours of play, so you need to hope to accumulate early.

And if you think that's bad, you should have been there two years ago when players received exactly the buy-in in chips for their starting stack!

To say I had a bad run of cards in the first level would be an understatement. I only voluntarily put a chip in the pot once, and it was limping the button behind other limpers with J 9 and folding on the 6 5 3 flop.

I picked up A A in the second level, but my only customer folded to my bet on the 6 7 3 flop. In fact, the only big pot I played before the first break was when I got a short stack all-in for half of my stack pre-flop holding 9 9.

Almost symbolically of how uneventful my day had been, he turned over the red nines.

After the break, I had $3,700 chips during the $100/$200 level. After four players had limped in, I looked down at 8 9 on the small blind.

I almost limped in, and then the devil on my shoulder (who has the voice of my good friend "BodogAri" Engel, coincidentally) told me that I needed to punish the limpers and pick up the $1,100 chips in the pot without showdown. Since the limpers were all "chronic limpers," I decided to go for it.

I raised to $2k with $1,700 behind, trying to make my hand look extra-strong. Unfortunately, the first limper then moved in for about $6k total.

It folded back to me, and I obviously made the call, getting almost 4-1 on my money. Thankfully, he had the hand I was praying he had at this point - A K - and I doubled up after flopping a nine and holding.

Don't ever forget, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. =)

After getting all my money in pre-flop with nine-high, I went back into hibernation and folded hand after hand. In fact, it's almost embarrassing to admit it, but during the $100/$200 ($25) and $150/$300 ($25) levels, I only voluntarily put a chip in the pot once.

You'd think I had aces, right? No ... I made a similar move to the 8 9 from earlier! This time I committed my stack with the T 8 after limpers. But unlike the previous time, I was successful without showdown.

After going into "ninja mode" and moving in pre-flop to steal blinds over and over once they had moved up to $200/$400 ($50), I called a shove from the desperately short-stacked Mike Gracz.

He moved in for $2,250 from the cut-off with J 5 and I called with A 6 from the big blind. He doubled through me after making two pair on the river and knocked me back down to $4k.

A few hands later, I moved in from late position for $3,775 with the K Q. Jay Heimowitz called from the big blind, holding A T. I was packing up my things and ready to head for the exit on a J 6 4 8 board, but the Q on the river gave me a little life to go to the dinner break with.

On break I realized something very ironic about this tourney. I had played some of the most patient poker I had in the entire Series during this event and yet I repeatedly got all of my money in bad!!!

Unfortunately, my run after the break was short-lived ... basically because I forgot how to suck out during dinner. After stealing the blinds a few times at the $300/$600 ($75) level, I got caught by a short stack after raising with the 7 9.

I made it $1,650 and called $3,950 more after he moved in. Apparently, my nine-high was no match for his A A.

Two hands later, I moved in for $6,525 with A 8 from late position. The small blind woke up with T T, which held, and another attempt at getting a bracelet at the circus had failed.

--Matt Stout

"All In At 420"

More WSOP Blogs from Matt Stout:

• WSOP Event 23: $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em
• WSOP Event 17: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Shootout
  
• WSOP Event 13: $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em
• WSOP Event 9: $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em

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An old subject came back onto the Plan3t Gong radar today, that of the polarization between the 'Play To Win' and 'Play To Cash, Then To Win' SNG camps... the great thing about this debate is that both sides are adamant that they are 100% right, yet there are very few who could back up their assumption with statistics.

Let us refresh the grey matter with a look at the arguments / profiles of each camp and before we go on to look at the often overlooked factors which affect these.

The 'Cash First, Win Later' camp will tell you that making a -$2ev call at the bubble will cost you those $2 over time no matter what. These players are usually the pro SNG grinders with an excellent understanding of push / fold (icm) poker and 1000's of games experience.

The 'Play To Win' camp argue that reaching 3rd without a big stack will never pay for those times you bust out - thus the correct strategy is to 'swap' a couple of 4ths for a 1st or 2... the jump in the prize money makes up for the busts. While some notable pro grinders use this logic to some extent this is usually the view of non-specialists (this argument works very nicely in MTTs after all... why fear the bubble when taking a chance there can give you a realistic shot at the final table??).

To my mind there are elements of both arguments which are useful in visualising a winning strategy, there are also major flaws in sticking to one side only.

- The 'Play To Cash' proponents do not take into account the future dynamic at the table when considering whether a bubble call is +$ev, for example if winning a hand when 5-handed would give you 4400 chips and each of 3 opponents just 1200 each at the bubble then taking one dollar in equity 'the worst of it' has given you the opportunity to accumulate several dollars in prize pool equity that you could not have gained with a medium stack.

- The 'Play To Win' proponents often fail to account for the $ equity they loose (especially with weak calls), this most often manifests itself in calls that cost 15% (or more) of the equity in play such as calling a bubble all-in with Ace-rag, no amount of 'wins' can make up for the size of such a mistake... or putting it another way, if you have a ROI of 15% and then take a -15% situation every game you become a break even player over time regardless of your finish distribution... since your finish distribution is already factored into the 15% ROI!

The next factor to take into account applies to both sides or the argument... skill.

If you are taking a -$ev risk in order to win then you'd better know exactly how to use your big stack to its maximum advantage - so as not to give away any futher prize pool equity. If not then you are not really 'playing to win'... more 'taking the worst of it to get a big stack that, while improving your chances, only gives you a limited edge'.

For the 'Play To Cashers', what if waiting for that +$ev spot leads to you losing your fold equity? Say you turn down a marginally -$ev spot while waiting, and see shoves that you can not call ahead of you for the next 6 hands (including your blinds) by the time you get to shove in a +$ev situation it might well be too late... you'll be called wide because you can not hurt your opponents chances! And wait a minute here, if you are really going to turn down an opportunity to be the dominant stack at the bubble with only a marginal ev risk then you'd better be damn sure you can play all the upcoming bubble situations perfectly.

The final factor I'd like to introduce is the skill level and predictability of your opponents... in the tradition of Planet Gong being the blog that likes to get you thinking I will not discuss - in the context of the above points it should seem obvious that this affects both camps... especially since a fish at the bubble does not only kill their own chances, he spews your equity too!

Anyway, whether you play SNGs to win or play to cash - GL at those tables!

Mark