When Dwan put the original challenge out, there were plenty of players that said they wanted a piece of him, but Dwan stated, “There looks to be a lot of interest in people wanting to play me, but they never seem to appear online.”  That being the case, he has taken his challenge live and will be putting up $500,000 to play anyone for 500 hands in either Omaha or No Limit Hold’em.

All of the matches will take place in London and will start out with $500/$1,000 blinds.  The match cannot end until someone is broke or the 500 hands have been played out.  Rumor has it that 4 players have stepped up to take on Dwan in his latest challenge, but no details have been released as of yet as to who they are.

Dwan continues to be one of the hottest young names in the game and with his latest circus act, he pretty much assures himself that he will remain in the limelight.  While his online play speaks for itself, his live play comes under a lot of fire as he plays very aggressively and recklessly.   He has benefited from some incredible cards during his days on the High Limit Poker show, but still donked off a lot of money as he refused to ever back off.  The style did manage to get him some large payoffs as the session was winding down, but you have to question how that will work in a heads-up match.

He no longer has the benefit of the element of surprise as everyone knows his name and how he plays.  Antonius is proving that he is very beatable if you are patient and don’t get caught up in letting him bully you out of pots.  Dwan is not afraid to throw a large amount of money at the pot in order to take it down regardless of what he has in his hand.  You better be prepared to fight back when you have something or he will walk all over you.

Antonius has laid down the blueprint of how to beat him so far, but will other players follow his lead.  When he pushes, you have to push back and when you get a hand, you have to make him pay.  The ideal match would have him up against Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu. All three of those players treat chips as weapons and have no problem mixing it up with middle cards.  The fireworks would surely be going off if they sit across from Dwan in London.

The last elimination was a heartbreaker as Jordan Smith was positive he had the best and got slapped right in the teeth when the cards were flipped.  Buchman opened for 650,000 and Moon made a smooth call from the button.  The next to act was Jordan Smith on the small blind and he fired out a huge raise to make it 2,600,000 to go.  Buchman immediately folded and Moon once again made the call.  The flop came out all babies, 8c4d2d. Smith probably put Moon and a mid pair and checked to set up a check-raise.  Moon bit and fired out 4,000,000 at which point Smith moved all in.  The read was right, but unfortunately the mid pair that Moon has was 88 and he had flopped a set.

The turn card made things interesting as a 5h hit and now gave Smith 4 additional outs as he could hit an inside straight.  7 cards stood in the way of the final table being named.  The river cards fell harmlessly as a 10h was turned and Smith was shown to the rail.  He has $896,730 to console him, but even that may not be enough as he has the dubious pleasure of being bubbled on the final table of a WSOP Main Event.

The pace of play was actually a rather large surprise.  27 players started the day and with what was at stake, you would have thought that the players would have slowed things down a bit.  That was hardly the case as it took only 20 minutes to get the first casualty of the day.  One of the disappointments for the fans was when Anotonio Esfandiari went out early.  He has a rather large television fan base and is great for the table when he is playing.  At this point, the only true super star remaining was Phil Ivey.

Ivey never seemed to get going on the day, in fact he dropped about 2,000,000 from his starting total, but he did manage to avoid elimination and we all know anything can happen on a final table.  You can bet he will try and find out everything he can about his 8 opponents before they all sit down for a friendly SNG tournament from November 7th – 10th.

Here are the final table chip counts for the November Nine:

Darvin Moon – 58,930,000

It is the end of Day 7 for all of the 27 players remaining and the 11th total day for the tournament. The biggest news has to be the presence of Phil Ivey who is 4th in at the end of the day. He has put his large chip stack to work by punishing the rest of the field. It will be his first cash in the Main Event since being bounced on a bad beat by Chris Moneymaker in 2003, a hand that was immortalized as one of the best hands of the year. He has to be the odds on favorite to win the title as he is one of only a few professionals remaining. He is within firing distance of the chip leader, Darvin Moon, who has over 20 million in chips. Ivey sits with just over 11 million.

Another notable pro who is remaining in the tournament is Antonio Esfandiari. With a little over 4 million in chips is on the short end of the field. Esfandiari has seen little success in the WSOP and has a small fan base thanks to other televised poker events such as High Stakes Poker and the WPT. He has a very good skill set and can be dangerous at any point in a tournament so he is one to watch out for, but “The Magician” needs to have a few tricks up his sleeve to take down this bracelet.

After today, the ”November Nine” will be set, so look for updates on the tournament along with player profiles right here.

With only 27 players remaining, the pressure gets turned up and we will see what these guys are made of.  While most of the pros that have entered have since gone to the rail, two names are still glaring on the leader board.  Antonia Esfandiari (4,470,000) has never really had a truly great run of cards, but he seems to make the most of every hand that he is involved in.  He is grinding away and continues to survive.  His style of play is ideal in this type of tourney and while he may never get that monster stack, do not be surprised to see his name on the final table.

The one person that everyone has to fear at this point is Phil Ivey (11,350,000).  He is currently sitting in 4th place, but that doesn’t really matter.  As he has been having an incredible WSOP, the rest of the field must take notice and beware of any hand that they play with him.  He has a tendency to go early or go deep and deep is obviously the case here. Only one other player managed to get three bracelets this time around and Phil obviously has his heart set on being the second one to hold that honor this year.

While the rest of the players are going after the bracelet and the $8,546,435 that goes with it, Phil Ivey probably stands to make more in side bets were he to take down the Main Event.  Everyone knows he loves to gamble and the circuit that he hangs around in is not scared to throw out a $1,000,000 on anything.  You can rest assured that if Phil makes it to the final table, the gallery will be a star studded field of poker superstars with their hands in their wallets.

The overall leader of the tournament is an unknown player by the name of Darvin Moon (20,160,000).  He has never had a cash in the WSOP and has sure picked a great time to break his cherry.  At this point, all of the players are guaranteed well over $300,000 and once they get it down to two tables, the payouts start to increase significantly.

Unfortunately for Moon, he will have to sit across from Ivey when play resumes.  You can be assured that his eye balls will be popping out of their sockets when he sees that chip stack and make it is sole purpose in life to move it across to his side of the table.  How will Moon handle the pressure of being the big stack with one of the greatest poker players in the world on his table?  Only time will tell, but we should have that answer in about 24 hours.

Mourshaki was in early position and fired out a raise of 22,000.  It folded around to Hellmuth who was in late position and he flat called.  This is all hindsight of course, but just calling gave everyone behind Hellmuth, including two blinds, the odds to make the call regardless of what their hands were.  With the amount of money he had left, the move here was for him to push all in and try and get heads-up.  Instead, he wanted as many people as possible in the pot and that never bodes well for AA.

Once Hellmuth called, 3 more players joined the dance to a flop of Jc10d5c. This is precisely the type of flop that you do not want to see with AA.  Flush and straight draw on the board and someone very well may be sitting with J10.  Hellmuth was about to find out the hard way that he made a mistake and it was going to cost him the tournament.

Once the flop hit, Jenkins was first to act and immediately pushed all in.  The original raiser and the one person that Hellmuth would have more than likely been heads-up against, Mourshaki, folded his hand and then Hellmuth pushed the rests of his chips into the pot (110,000).  Gomez let his hand go and Hsiung made the call putting both players at risk for elimination.

The cards were turned and Hellmuth saw his worst nightmare come true.  Jenkins had flopped an open ended straight and was holding 89h, Hellmuth of course had AA with the A of clubs and Hsiung was holding the winning hand at the moment, Jh10c.  The turn card fell and gave Jenkins the lead with a 7d.  Hellmuth was drawing dead for the outright win at this point and Hsiung was down to 4 outs.  However, he had Hellmuth covered so Phil had a small shot at the rest of the board pairing or possibly hitting one of the remaining two A’s to get a small piece and survive.  Neither happened as the river was a 3s and Phil was shown the rail.  If Phil had pushed all in preflop, he probably would have been able to get Mourshaki isolated and would more than likely have lived to see another day.

While Hellmuth was being shown the door, Ivey has continued on and is not one of the chip leaders of the tournament.  He now has 1,276,000 and if far and away the best of the remaining 400 or so players.  The overall chip leader is Matt Affleck who has accumulated 1,819,000.  It will be interesting to see how he holds up as the numbers get lower and he starts to face off with the likes of Ivey.  Other notables that are still alive are Dan Harrington, Joe Sebok, Antonio Esfandiari, Kenny Tran and Vitaly Lunkin.

While he had several outbursts, 2 of them stood out from the rest.  In one hand, he went to the flop with the lead of KQ to KJ.  His opponent took the lead on the flop with a J hitting and the K on the river spelled disaster for Hellmuth.  He continued to call down and then expected to win when he hit the river.  He went off on the dealer about how he allowed a dominated hand to catch up to him as though it is unacceptable for anyone to hit a hand against him.

His last tirade of the day came during the last few minutes.  The tournaments have had countdowns in the last 10 minutes by drawing cards to decide how many hands would be played.  This prevents players from stalling so that they can avoid the blinds at the end of the day.  For some reason, the tournament director allowed them to play down to zero and Hellmuth once again went off.  While his point was correct, the scenes that he makes are quite annoying.

While the antics of Hellmuth tend to steal the headlines, the real story is the humongous stack that Bertrand Grospellier has managed to build.  With a stack of 1,380,500, he holds over 400,000 to the second place player.  While he was building his stack, well over 1,500 players found the rail.  Some of the most notable victims of the day were: Jennifer Harman, Grey Raymer, Marco Traniello, John Cernuto, John Juanda, Robert Mizrachi, Jason Alexander, Matthew Vogel, Jeff Lisandro and David Ulliott.

Even though he was knocked out, Jeff Lisandro has wrapped up the Player of the Year Award as he had outlasted everyone that was within striking distance.  There is no denying that he was far and away the best of the season with 3 bracelets to his credit and several other deep runs.

Day 4 will kick off at noon and there should still be plenty of fireworks to see.  With 800 players still alive, we are over 100 people away from the bubble.  Expect some aggressive play until there are about 10 players to go when the play will slow down dramatically.  The short stacks will delay every hand in the hopes that someone else will get knocked out before them and the big stacks will get hyper-aggressive in the hopes of stealing blind after blind.