LAKE TAHOE, NV–Oooh! We’re down to five players here at the slot gacor Circuit main event (7-foot poker player Randy Gil has surrendered the chip lead to Darrell Steed Jerry Renfroe) and we just had a chip-count discrepancy! After a break, there were apparently 1,275,000 in play. Poker is so fun, especially when tourney officials are scared!

The problem was noticed by Kaeline from PokerPages (whom Harrah’s has presented a $50 Starbuck’s card for her assistance, even though the casino Starbuck’s is currently unable slot gacor to accept gift cards). TD Jack Effel disputed her claim, saying there would only be an extra 500 in play … to which Kaeline said no, because if his round-up explanation were valid, it would be an extra 1,000. (Because the 500s were just taken out of play.)

Watch 60 Minutes Tonight

LAKE TAHOE, NV–For anyone who has a stake in the future of online gaming in America, they may want to watch 60 Minutes tonight … they’re doing a story on the proposed Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.

UPDATE: Apparently it has already aired in the non-Pacific time zones. Did anyone out there see it?

Quickest Tournament Ever

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ—We’re done for the day here at the WPT Borgata Poker Open. The tournament wound down to 27 players (the predetermined finishing point for Day 3) when Chris Bell eliminated Russell Rossenblum.

Notables who remain: Barry Greenstein (19th chip position), John Phan (17th), David Tran (15th), David Sklansky (11th) and Jennifer Tilly (4th).

Speaking of poker, I’ll be playing in the $500 NL event tomorrow (and, naturally, blogging about it). Anyone who wants a piece of my action should send word immediately.

Hit the Road / Welcome, Bill

The good thing is that companies are starting to recognize the value of bloggers. The bad thing is that that means some of us actually have to work. Now “longtime” pokerbloggy great Bill Rini (one of my favorites), who helped develop Full Tilt’s Mac software, has been recruited by the Good Guys at PartyPoker. Fantastic.

My only bummer is that whatever contract he signed didn’t force him to blog here at PokerBlog. I tried to use all my clout to make that happen, but a) I don’t have any; and b) the top Party dogs said then we’d have no room for Dr. Tim. Anyhow, here is the email that Bill sent out today explaining his situation:

RE: New Math in Tahoe

LAKE TAHOE, NV–By the way, Tim and Amy, I inquired how chip counts were being handled differently … because indeed, WSOP tourney officials all acknowledged this was a big issue now. (Kudos to our PokerBloggers looking to keep the game honest!) But I couldn’t get a definitive answer on procedural differences.

I’m still trying to get an official word, but so far the best I have gotten is, “we’re being very careful.”

So what does that mean? Well, they have been doing the chip-ups with players at the table, and a dealer at the table, and another tourney official looming behind … not watching every move or counting every stack, but letting everyone know he is there. After that, Harrah’s suits are doublechecking against the manual chip counts performed by Kaelaine from PokerPages.

As Tim points out below, it’s working fine here at this main event … but again, there’s a big difference between goind through this process at a couple tables and more than 100 tables.