Matthew Woodward Maintains Chip Lead at EPT Grand Final, Annette Obrestad Makes Charge

At post time this morning, Matthew Woodward has built on his overnight chip lead at the EPT Grand Final. He is currently stacked at 2,800,000.

Only 18 players remain. Unless you live near a fjord you probably don't know/don't care about the rest, except for perhaps Annette Obrestad, a woman, who is currently stackd at 1,400,000.

Follow the action live here.

Annette Obrestad, A Woman, Among EPT Grand Final Day 2 Chip Leaders; Phil Laak Still Alive (!)

Vanessa Claudio, a woman, is not among the many female chip leaders at the EPT Grand Final. However, she IS among the hottest girls we've ever seen come out of Mexico. Granted, that list is like five girls deep, but still, we'd gladly self-inflict ourselves with the swine flu for a romp with Claudio...if we were single. Love you honeys! View more Vanessa Claudio in Max Magazine here.

Some big stories are developing in Monte Carlo at the EPT Grand Final: 1) Can Annette Obrestad, a woman, capture her second major live tournament title in two years? 2) Can Sandra Naujoks, a woman, capture her second EPT title? 3) Did Phil Laak really make it to Day 3 of a major event? How did that happen? Phil Laak? 4) Seriously though, Phil Laak?

Of the 935 starting field, 149 remain after Day 2 wrapped. Marc Naaldenis overall chip leader, stacked at 770,000. Among other chip leaders are the aforementioned Annette Obrestad, a woman (600,000), the aforementioned Naujoks, also a woman (280,000), Ilari "ziigmund" Sahamies (200,000), Sorel Mizzi (170,000), Alexander Kravchenko(157,000), seriously wtf Phil Laak (150,000), Dennis Phillips (135,000), J.J. Liu, a woman (130,000), and "Salty" Joe Hachem (130,000).

Also still alive going into Day 3 is Phil Laak. Wait, what?

Get full chip counts here.

Phil Laak.

2008 WSOP Europe Schedule Announced

The 2008 WSOP Europe will take place at LCI London locations, which is in the UK, which is where GQ UK is published, which is where the above Marisa Miller photo appeared.

With the U.S. American version of the WSOP wrapped for a couple of weeks and The November 9^TM still months away, the WSOP-E is ready to take center stage.

Set to begin on September 19th, this year's WSOP Europe will have four bracelet events. They are:

Sept 19 - Event #1: £1,500 - No-Limit Hold'em
Sept 22 - Event #2: £2,500 - H.O.R.S.E. 
Sept 24 - Event #3: £5,000 - Pot Limit Omaha 
Sept 27 - Event #4: £10,000 - Main Event

Last year, Annette Obrestad, a woman, almost single-handedly ended humanity by capturing the Main Event championship.

Get more WSOP-E details here. Get the full Marisa Miller GQ UK spread here. See a Marisa Miller video photo shoot here.

The Wicked Chops Poker Awards

In our Bluff Magazine article this month, we introduced what we think is possibly our first ever Wicked Chops Poker Awards.

Below are those awards. However, we're expanding this list. For real. For the remainder of the week. So check back tomorrow and Friday. Cause this shit is prestigious.

Today's awards are presented by Denise Milani (at right, more here).

Best Poker Player While Drinking Alcohol Award: Scotty Nguyen. Many poker players claim they play better while drunk. But poker isn’t like driving or having sex. For the most part, alcohol impairs your poker judgment and performance, or it at least turns you into a first class a-hole (Exhibit A: Men the Master Nguyen vs. Erick Lindgren WPT World Poker Open this past January). However, Scotty Nguyen defies all logic here. He’s insanely entertaining, makes saying “baby” incredibly cool, and plays some vicious poker while downing longneck after longneck. The dude even pulls off a Jerry Curl mullet. And he’s got a wife that’s not bad on the eyes. See, drinking does really make you more attractive to the opposite sex. That’s an important life lesson there for all of our female readers.

Best Impersonation of Al Krux Award: Jason Lester. Seriously, is there any difference between these two guys? Can any one tell them apart? If Al Krux busts out during Level 1 of a tournament, does he go back up to the cage and re-buy claiming he’s Jason Lester? No one would even question this, right?
UPDATE: Since publishing this one, the same rules apply to Lee Markholt and Lee Watkinson.

Best Poker Nickname: Darrell “Deep” Dicken. OK, so maybe we’re the only ones who call him by this nickname. But seriously, try saying Darrell “Deep” Dicken without laughing. Speaking of deep dicken, here's that link to Denise Milani again.

Best Female Poker Player: Tie. Whoa boy. That’s a funny one. Best female poker player. That’s grand. Pretty sure they’re all tied for last on this one.

Martina Stella is a Hot Girl from Italy Which is in Europe Which is Where the EPT German Open Is Being Led by a Frenchman

The above headline pretty much sums up what we've learned during the past 13 and a half minutes on the Internet. Well that and how to survive a freestyle rap battle and that watching some mentally ill pop star lose her shit every single day isn't as much fun as we thought it would be. Don't get us wrong, it's fun, just not as fun as we thought.

Going beyond the headline though, Day 2 is underway at the EPT German Open in Dortmund, Germany, and Daniel Negreanu is among the top ten in chips with 59,900. WSOPE Main Event champion Annette Obrestad, a woman, is not far behind with 50,200.

Leading the field is some French guy named Chabot Cyrille who's stacked at 111,110, followed by Italian Claudio Rinaldi (71,300).

The rest of the 149 players left on Day 2 consist of people with ridiculous names like Peyman Mohammadzadeh, Jioí Kulhánek, Korosh Mollaie, Szikrai Istvàn, Nazim Kicik, Yngne Anderberg and Jarkko Paasisalo.

We're guessing Rekop Spohc Dekciw, the legendary Scandinavian tennis player, didn't play the event.

Finally, Martina Stella, who has nothing to do with the EPT German Open and who has been mentioned on this site briefly before, is a reprehensibly hot Italian actress and model who you may remember from her small role in Ocean's Twelve. Jog your memory with more photos of Martina Stella plus a video of her dancing on a stage after the jump.

Live updates from the EPT German Open from PokerListings.com's Owen Laukkanen here.

Annette Obrestad, a Girl, May Be Good at Poker

So perhaps her turning nothing into a few hundred thousand dollars online, winning tournaments without looking at her hole cards and beating out the world's best to take down the inaugural WSOPE Main Event wasn't all a fluke, like we thought.

Maybe 19-year-old Annette "Annette_15" Obrestad, a girl, is actually good at poker.

Stranger things have happened. Like Nickelback* selling millions of records despite sucking. Or that time one of us didn't have to take a poop in the morning. Or when that Czech supermodel didn't give it up after a night of partying in Prague. That was strange. Obviously a lesbian. But still.

Anyway, going into Day 3 of the EPT Dublin, Obrestad is second in chips with 284,700, and from all reports, or at least those at PokerListings.com, the young Norwegian has been steamrolling the competition with the same aggressive play she showed in London this past September.

At the top of the count is 2005 WSOP final table-ist Andy Black, who starts the day with 350,300. Other players still in include a bunch of guys with names that look like a bunch of consonants and vowels randomly thrown together like Michiel Brummelhuis and Ziad Kaady and Csaba Malnai.

For live updates head over to PokerListings.com, who's all over the action at the EPT Dublin like Sheiky on underage girls at a high school party.

Also check out Raise.TV for video streams from the EPT Dublin.

* A band loved by ALL Canadians.

UPDATE: Totally missed this but FOWCP Simon Munoz of Poquer-Red.com, who just yesterday commented on this post, was third in chips at the start of Day 3 but was just sent to the rail after being crippled by Annette, then getting it in bad against Andy Black, according to PL. Check out an interview we did with Simon back in 2006 here.