One bit of news from last week's World Series of Poker media teleconference emerged with a bit of a twist: The WSOP will be doubling the starting chip stacks for all 55 events listed on the current schedule. In response to a question posed during the conference, WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel announced that the starting chip stacks would be doubled in all events, and in the days after the conference, the new structures were added in to the content on the official worldseriesofpoker.com site. Interested parties can review the structures for any of the events by first clicking into the '07 WSOP schedule, and then by clicking on the title of any event, which is a hyperlink to a page containing

the blind structure and other event specifics. Effel explained that the doubling of chips was necessary to add a couple of extra levels of play to the intermediate levels of early, low buy-in events; these events have been cited in earlier years as not offering much real poker play. In turn, the WSOP seems to have decided that doubling chip stacks across the board was the best way to provide uniformity, even if in some events such as the Main Event, the higher chip stacks do not necessarily mean more play. The Main Event's move to $20,000 in starting chips brought notice in several discussion forums. Early conjecture that the reason for doubling the chip stacks across the board centered on the need to prevent the surreptitious theft and reintroduction of chips from smaller events into the Main Event. However, those thoughts are not born out by the facts; as reported by Pokernews.com's own Tim Lavalli a few weeks ago, the WSOP will introduce many distinct chip sets for this year's WSOP. Three of the sets will be used for actual event play, while the other three are reserved for varying satellite formats. In addition, one of the three 'live event' patterns will be used only in the Main Event and nowhere else. It should not be possible for a rogue player to introduce chips into the ME that have been extracted from earlier events. Opinions vary as to how much of the changes in starting stacks and blind structures will add to play, and how much is cosmetic. Lower buy-in events clearly make a marginal gain in terms of added play, while examinations of the Main Event structures show that the new structure mirrors the old quite closely, bouncing up and down in comparative measure with many of the minor differences accounted for by rounding and chip-denomination needs. One emerging tournament force, Joe Sebok, sees them as "cosmetic, albeit good cosmetic changes." "The added levels are nice," said Sebok, "but really don't drastically change much in terms of play. The bottom line is that it will make players feel better regardless of much change in play, and that is a good thing." Sebok continued by noting, "The WSOP is really stuck in a tough spot with this issue, though, as they have to compete with so many different events in an extremely finite amount of time. It's simply the nature of the beast at such a massive event as the WSOP." On whole, of course, Sebok's thoughts echo the general player sentiment that the adjustments are a good and necessary thing. Or, as Sebok put it, "I applaud [WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey] Pollack and the boys for those changes."

The cold war may be over but that won't stop Tony G. and The Devilfish doing battle across the felt during Party Poker's European Challenge tournament, at the Concorde Card Casino, Vienna, this spring. In four days time the PartyPoker.net European Challenge in Vienna, Austria will be getting underway. The event will be at the heart of the 2007 Spring Poker Festival. A team of online qualifiers from Eastern Europe take on a team of Western European online qualifiers in the PartyPoker.net East versus West Cup, a €100,000 freeroll at the Concord Card Casino. Just to spice things up, Party Poker have brought in two of the highest profile names

in poker as team captains. Tony G. will head the team from the East. Tony, who is no stranger to controversy, caused a stir in last year's Intercontinental Poker Championship at the Palms Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas (also a Party Poker event). After an interesting hand involving Russian Ralph Perry, which many readers will have seen on the YouTube web site, commentator Gabe Kaplan said, "Tony G is single handedly trying to reignite the cold war". Tony, who is of Lithuanian descent, will be leading a number of Russian players in this challenge! Meanwhile the West will be captained by UK favourite, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliot. The Devilfish has already tangled with Tony G. in the last week. Both of these big guns were firing at the Party Poker Premier League in Maidstone, which was covered exclusively on UK PokerNews. The Devilfish started the war of words early with Guoga when he said, "Tony G is like a puppy dog, lots of bark but no bite." Never one to take a shot across the bows lying down, Tony G. retorted, "Devilfish lost it at Premier League Poker – it should be easy because he is not on his game." A PartyPoker.net spokesman said: "Something has got to give here. They've been in each others faces so much in the last week or so and it wasn't all smiles when they failed to say goodbye to each other at the Poker Den. Phil Hellmuth really stirred the pot too. We'll definitely need to draw an iron curtain between them now. I think we've done a good job in making them both insane! It was deliberate, of course!" The final table of 10 for the PartyPoker.net East versus West Cup will share €50,000, while the winning team will get €50,000 split between them. PartyBets, which can be accessed by PartyPoker account holders, cannot split the two teams when it comes to pricing up this event. Both teams are 5/6 currently with the online betting site.

54 players returned to the Commerce Casino for the fourth day of action at the L.A. Poker Classic main event. By Midnight, only 18 players remained and JC Tran leaped out in front of the pack with a massive $3.46 million stack, which was almost as much as second, third and fourth places… combined. In less than eight hours of play, Tran started with 636K and amassed almost three million in chips. The money bubble burst late on Day 3, and every returning player was guaranteed at least $22,780 in prize money. You figured that the entrants would be thrilled to make the money, but several players including pros complained at the top-heavy structure, where first place and second place will take home a

combined 44% of the total prize pool. The final TV table's combined cut is almost two-third of the total $7.9 million prize pool. In a top-heavy tournament such as the L.A. Poker Classic, players tweak their strategy a little knowing that there's very little difference between 54th and 24th place's prize money. As soon as the money bubble burst, there was a series of quick bustouts. Smaller stacks who had been hanging on hoping to squeak into the money finally loosen up and made moves. Since play ended last night just as the bubble broke, the first level of Day 4 featured a series of rapid fire eliminations. 21 players began Day 4 above the average stack of 293K. The remaining 33 were below average with ten players under 100K in chips. The short stacks had no choice but to aggressively pick and hand and move all-in. Bill Edler entered the Day 4 as the chipleader with Jason Strasser not far behind in second place. Edler has a reputation of being one of the nicest guys on the tournament circuit. He's a patient player with solid fundamentals. He admits that his biggest leak is that he has issues with mathematics. Edler is meticulous about keeping his stacks in a specific order and size, and can often seen trading chips with other players to maintain a uniformity of chip stacks and colors. When asked about this behavior he answered, "I'm not very good at math. Earlier today I forget whether I had 260,000 or 360,000. The well ordered stacks are because I can't count." Jason Strasser was the first player to pass the $1 million chip mark on Day 4 after he busted Gary Kainer in 44th place. Bill Edler soon followed suit and joined the $1 million club after he scooped one of the biggest pots of the tournament off of Isaac Haxton. Haxton had trip Queens, but Edler had flopped a set, then turned a full house with . JC Tran slowly built up his stack to $1 million when he rivered a runner-runner flush against Chris Bell. He busted Sung Yi in 24th place, and with 21 players left in the field, he had $1.3 million and a slight lead over Jason Strasser. Tran became the first player to rush past the $2 million as he took advantage of the short-handed tables and bullied everyone in his path. With a series of well-timed re-raises in position, Tran accumulated chips by winning several pots pre-flop. With a big stack, he was able to see plenty of flops and outplayed everyone at his table post-flop. "Everything I've been doing has been working out," Tran explained. "I go with the flow and whatever is working, I stick with it. I've hit some flops and I'm running good." Tran surpassed the $3 million mark when he eliminated Hans "Tuna" Lund in 20th place. Lund had Tran dominated when he flopped a King with Big Slick. With , Tran flopped an 8 and smooth called Lund's flop bet of 150K. The turn was another 8 and Tran bet out 250K. Lund quickly pushed all in and Tran could not have called faster with trip 8s. The river did not help Lund as he headed to the rail. At that point, no one at Tran's table wanted to tangle with his monster stack. Kristy Gazes cashed in her sixth straight event. She had been limiting her tournament play which she credited to her recent run. She picked up chips early when she busted Greg "FTB" Mueller with against his . She was never near the top of the leaderboard and hovered around average for most of Day 4. Her tight image allowed her to occasionally pick up chips against her opponents to stay alive. Gazes avoided slipping into tiltdom when she became the short-stack at her six-handed table. On a board of , Gazes faced a 100K bet from Ben Johnson and went into the tank. After only two minutes, Johnson called the clock on Gazes. She folded, but was visibly unhappy about having the clock called on her when so many players, including a few at her table, had been stalling in later stages of the evening. "I'm a professional," she sternly said to Johnson. "Have you ever seen me stall in this tournament? We're playing for $2 million here, how about you let me make a decision?" Gazes eventually regained her composure and survived Day 4. She ended up 16th in chips with a little over 300K. CK Hua busted out in 19th place as play was suspended for the day. The final 18 players will return on Day 5 and play down to the final six. Here are the end of Day 4 chipcounts: 1 JC Tran $3,461,000 2 Jacobo Fernandez $1,334,000 3 Jason Strasser $1,196,000 4 Bill Edler $1,160,000 5 Tad Jurgens $1,059,000 6 Benjamin Johnson $1,055,000 7 David Bach $985,000 8 Chau Giang $813,000 9 Paul Wasicka $806,000 10 Eric Hershler $745,000 11 Chris Bell $636,000 12 Vincent Procopio $512,000 13 Joseph Cordi $512,000 14 Richard Munro $371,000 15 Jay Chang $333,000 16 Kristy Gazes $307,000 17 Juan Alvarado $282,000 18 Shan Jing $266,000 Here's a current list of Day 4 money winners: 19 CK Hua $45,560 20 Hans "Tuna" Lund $45,560 21 Suk Sung $45,560 22 Nam Le $45,560 23 Nick Schulman $45,560 24 Sung Yi $45,560 25 Isaac Haxton $45,560 26 Jeff Cabanillas $45,560 27 Babak Razi $45,560 28 Matthew Gianetti $35,690 29 Lee Markholt $35,690 30 Markus Stranzinger $35,690 31 Ted Lawson $35,690 32 Sean McCabe $35,690 33 Joe Awada $35,690 34 John Galbraith $35,690 35 John Little $35,690 36 Michael Carson $35,690 37 Roland Weedon $28,855 38 Daniel Idema $28,855 39 Avdo Djokovic $28,855 40 Lester Naquin $28,855 41 Robert Nehorayan $28,855 42 Greg "FTB"Mueller $28,855 43 Edward "Bolivia" Moncada $28,855 44 Gary Kainer $28,855 45 Richard Tatalovich $28,855 46 Jeffrey Anderson $22,780 47 Nhut Minh Tran $22,780 48 Dan Harmetz $22,780 49 Alan 'Bodog Ari' Engel $22,780 50 Peter Getten $22,780 51 Stan Jablonski $22,780 52 Steve Yoon $22,780 53 Daniel Woodward $22,780 54 Nick Binger $22,780 The average stack is $659,166. Action for Day 5 at the L.A. Poker Classic resumes at 3:30 P.M. local time in the ballroom at the Commerce Casino.