Monday Morning Linkage

I'm back in the Rio covering the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo event, or as AlCantHang has dubbed it "The Rock Garden Open." However, hardly anyone was paying attention to the stud action tonight with the Tom Dwan circus unfolding across the room. A good percentage of the Stud hi/lo field was sweating gargantuan side bets on whether Dwan would win a bracelet and seemed to be playing the $10K only to distract themselves. When Dwan lost heads-up, I've never seen all the tension sucked out of the Amazon Room so quickly. Goddammit, I was looking forward to writing the story of how "durrrr" broke the poker economy and took "The Corporation" for more money than Andy Beal ever did.

Anyway, since we don't have that to go on, here's a few stories I wrote this week along with some stellar reads penned by my friends and colleagues.

The $50K Players' Championship drew 116 players, up from last year, but the numbers are down overall at this year's WSOP, as I addressed in Deconstructing the $50K and Declining Donkament Fields.

F-Train also took a look at the year-to-year numbers in his post The Numbers Game.

I had to ship Pauly $60 yesterday after losing my first prop bet of the WSOP. He gave me 3-1 that another Brit would win a bracelet this year and thanks to James "Flushy" Dempsey, I'm out the price of a good eighth of hydro. Check out my beloved's recap God Save the Queen Reprise and Seven for Men.

I made a guest appearance on the Tao of Pokerati, where Michaski and I discussed the finer points of the "douchebag look."

Two pieces I wrote last week on my reaction to Victory Poker's ad campaign have received a bit of attention and plenty of haters. Victory's CEO even commented on the post on the Wicked Chops Poker Podcast. Decide for yourself by reading Ladies, Here's What Victory Poker Thinks of You and Victory Poker CEO Responds to Ad Campaign Criticism.

Finally, if you're around the Rio, take the time and give some of the PokerNews WSOP bloggers and floor reporters some love. They have a grueling, utterly thankless job and certainly aren't getting rich from it. Several high-profile pros have taken to Twitter to bash PN's WSOP reporting and if I had the necessary dough, I'd challenge any of them to do our job for a day and see if they could hack it.

That's it. The sky is beginning to lighten, so I'm bongin' out and going to bed.