Foxwoods, Godsmack and Tony Bennett
The 2006 Foxwoods Poker Classic got underway yesterday with 431 players in the field and a WPT title and $1,331,889 first-place cash at stake. While a number of pros stayed behind in Vegas getting ready for the Five-Star Classic, many familiar names were in the field including some of the new youngin's finding success over the past year like 24-year-old Brad Kondracki (8th - 2005 WSOP ME), 21-year-old Josh "Sdouble" Schlein (2nd - WPT Aruba Poker Classic) and '12-year-old' Nick Schulman, who's back at Foxwoods after becoming the WPT's youngest champion there at last November's World Poker Finals.
Other notables at the start included Barry Greenstein (& Son), Carlos Mortensen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy, Freddy Deeb, Paul Darden, Erick Lindgren, David Singer, John Juanda, Isabelle Mercier, Hoyt Corkins, Surinder "I hate Tony G" Sunar, David Pham, John Phan, John D'Agostino, Gavin Smith and Evy "Bodog" Ng.
And oh yeh, Robert Varkonyi and his wife Olga were there too.
Snake, Chops and the Addict were nowhere to be seen.
After Day One, only 156 players remained, and Floridian Greg Monaldi was stacking the most with $222,000T. Monaldi just finished 4th ($32,536) a few days earlier at Foxwoods $300 NLHE event so no doubt he's just a lucky bastard getting a great run of cards. We kid. We kid.
Also stacked nicely after day one was Steve Zolotow ($115,000T), Paul Darden ($70,000T), John Juanda ($70,000T), Farzad Bonyadi ($70,000T), Erik Seidel ($65,000T) and John D'Agostino ($40,000T). Out after Day One were aforementioned pros such as Smith, Singer, Greenstein (& Son), Negreanu, Mortensen and Schlein (who Vince Van Patten erroneously likened to Stu Ungar, but that's another story for another day).
A quick look at CardPlayer's Live Update Log, shows that in Day Two, Farzad "Freddy" Bonyadi, Surinder Sunar, Erick Lindgren, Amnon Filippi and Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy have all been sent to the rail.
And speaking of CardPlayer, they reported that yesterday's crowd favorite was Sully Erna, lead singer for the band Godsmack, who at one time was up to $50,000T but flamed out before the day ended. We personally have a funny story about Sully but we forgot what it was. Somehow it had to do with a music festival we handled PR for, Sully being really short and Tony Bennett. Seriously, it was really funny. Wish we remembered. Anyway, that reminds us of how Josie Scott from Saliva was so excited to meet Tony Bennett and we set up this photo opp and ... crap, forgot that story too. But hey, at least we found matching photos of Bennett and Sully and worked in Josie "Fucking" Scott from Saliva to this post about Foxwoods. What did you accomplish today?
Anyway, in other Sully poker-related news (seriously), the Godsmack frontman will join KISS guitarist Ace Frehley and former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul for the VH1 Classic Rock 'n' Roll Charity Poker Tournament presented by CelebrityPokerPlayer.net. The event, hosted by Phil Laak, will take place on June 8 at the Flamingo.
Kind of reminds me of this story.
Stay on top of the action at Foxwoods at CardPlayer.com and Pokerwire.com.
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