End of the Night WSOP Post

It appears that someone is finally drawing Mike Matusow's emotions out. I don't know if it is related, but as I post this Matusow has sunk to 7th out of 11 in chips (although the guy he has been battling with, Shawn Sheikhan, is the short stack). Apparently some supporters of Sheikhan had to be escorted out by security after some comments by Matusow, and penalties have been meted out to the two players during the day as a result of their verbal sparring. Is this the blowup everyone has been waiting for? ESPN has to be loving it.

Also at that link, you can see that which "Day One" a player drew doesn't appear to have affected anything. The supposed worst day (the third day) actually had the most representatives (11) in the final 27.

If Matusow doesn't make the final table, the final 9 will be a pretty fresh set of faces, as the Hendon Mob Database supports. I'm pretty sure that Full Tilt had a "Piece of the Pros" for Matusow, so the player that won that (and the 10% of Matusow that came with it) has to be sweating the Cardplayer.com updates pretty tightly.

Cardplayer says that 11 of the 27 finalists qualified online. I haven't seen much on where the remaining players qualified online as of yet (though I haven't looked that hard), but I do know that two of the final eleven qualified via Poker Stars. That's nearly in line with the percentage of total players that qualified via Stars. What would really be interesting is finding out if anyone of the remaining players qualified through Full Tilt, as that would mean they are playing for an additional $10 million if they take home the bracelet (which would mean that the insurer Full Tilt employed is sweating cardplayer.com updates tighter than anyone). If such a player is still alive, I'm sure whatever insurance premium Full Tilt paid will be more than made up for by all the free advertising they get when ESPN keeps talking about how the player is actually playing to win $17.5 million (although I could imagine ESPN stupidly just ignoring the angle altogether). I'm sure Party Poker will let us know if the eventual winner qualified through their site, although probably in a way destined to make the software even more clumsy than it is already.

I just saw that Matusow knocked out Sheikhan and did a celebration dance that is unlikely to be left on the editing room floor. 10 left.