The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure might have outgrown its name these days. Really it's more of an extravaganza than a plain old adventure: countless tournaments, thousands of players, millions of bucks.

We're only just through the first of six days and we've already seen enough action to last right through 2009. We kicked off on Paradise Island with a photo-shoot for tomorrow's World Cup of Poker, then 660 players filed into the room for day 1A of the $10,000 main event.


The Usual Suspects, Team PokerStars Pro style

Add to that a nine-handed battle for our friends from colder climes known as the Nordic PokerStars Expedition, and then there was Battle Boris, where all-comers took on the former tennis champion Boris Becker heads-up for a seat in the main event.

And even if we focus solely on that big dance, there's probably not enough room in cyberspace to note all the subtle intricacies of a full day's intriguing play. In its most basic form, here's the story of day 1a: 660 started, 188 remain after eight 75-minute levels.

From Team PokerStars Pro, the following live to fight another day: Marcin Horecki, Barry Greenstein, Greg Raymer, Vicky Coren, Tom McEvoy, Lee Nelson, Vanessa Rousso. The happiest of all of them will be the Polish professional Horecki, who hit quad aces on the way from a short stack to more than 150,000. McEvoy has plenty and Greenstein has ground his way to a big stack.


Lee Nelson



Greg Raymer

On the flip-side, the party is sadly over for the following: Daniel Negreanu, Luca Pagano, Chad Brown, Steve Paul-Ambrose, Joe Hachem, Alex Kravchenko and Gavin Griffin. Each departed at various junctures of this characteristically unforgiving day of competition.


Joe Hachem

We were also joined in the Bahamas by a fine showing of the PokerStars Million Dollar Men, those World Series final table players who earned themselves a fortune in November. Although Dennis Phillips and Darus Suharto departed, Ylon Schwartz flew up the chip ladder early on and remained there until sundown and beyond.


Ylon Schwartz

Late on this evening, the room filled with Brazilians, which in the absence of a soccer game, a blazing sun or a bag of nuts could only mean one thing: one of their own was prospering around the tables.


Felipe Ramos

So it proved, with the PokerStars qualifier Felipe Ramos, previously known as the first Brazilian ever to cash on the EPT, racing into a late-day chip lead. Ramos stayed there until the players began bagging up chips this evening, and will spend a day on the sand tomorrow feeling very comfortable indeed.


The chip leading duo of Marcin Horecki and Felipe Ramos

Also among the leaders breathing down Ramos's neck are David Baker, Jeff Madsen and Courtland Twyman, all from the United States. Then there's the PokerStars ShootingStar George Danzer, from Germany, Ludovic Lacay, and Edward Sabat.


Edward Sabat

All of those will be coming back for day two on Wednesday, but not before we've gone through Tuesday, which will be a lot like today. Join us at 10am EST for the start of the World Cup, followed by day 1b of the main event.

And if you're in the mood to stay up all night, then why not look back at all of today's action with any of the following quick clicks.

Five years on Paradise Island
Party on
As big as it gets
Team PokerStars Pros
A peek at paradise
early musings
The online invasion
Honorary members of the team
A sample of the field
Fossilman on the up
A tale of two Gavins
Not the softest table
Of all the tables in the room, he sits down at mine
Some words with the Bear
The four corners
Fifteen minutes
D'Amato on the stump
PokerStars Columbus
A Polish drama
Post-dinner malaise
Raymer's vow
The Tom McEvoy experiment
Greenstein rising
Vamos Ramos

The estimated chip counts for some notable players can be found on the chip count page. These will be magically replaced overnight by the full official counts, as and when they are made available from tournament officials.

There's also all this in numerous indecipherable languages, which you might like to click through to, provided you understand it. In which case, there's German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Polish. Fill your boots.

All of today's photography comes from either Joe Giron/IMPD or Neil Stoddart - as it will do for the rest of the week. And there's also plenty of moving pictures over at PokerStars.tv

Thanks for your attention and see you all tomorrow for more from Paradise.

Rummaging through the official World Series of Poker archive at the University of Nevada this summer, I found the original, official bracelet winner's questionnaire handed to the 1983 Main Event champion.

That man was a then-unknown player relatively new to poker, who had won a bracelet in a $1,000 limit event and then booked his place to the big dance in a satellite tournament at Binion's. When he went on to take down the most prestigious prize in the game, he entered the history books as the first satellite qualifier to go all the way to the winner's enclosure.

The name proudly written at the top of this questionnaire was that of Tom McEvoy. In the "Hometown" section he had written Grand Rapids, MI., and in the section marked "What will you do with the money?" he had charmingly answered "I collect stamps and so I will probably buy some more of them."


Tom McEvoy

These days, McEvoy's stamp collection must be huge. He added another two bracelets to that pair won in 1983 and has career tournament earnings of more than $2m. Moreover he is the author of numerous poker books and strategy columns and he joined Team PokerStars Pro a few years back to bring a wealth of experience and some serious, durable talent to the toughest playing team in the game.

McEvoy's latest achievement is a stack on day 1a of the 2009 PCA of close to 90,000. I saw two hands: one was a kings versus ace-king encounter in the second level; the second was K-10 versus pocket eights and a king on the flop.

McEvoy has today spent some time kitted out in a wrap-around visor preferred by a newer breed of player. But he has maintained, as ever, the impeccable table demeanour of the old school, who have seen all there is to see in the game.

Yesterday, McEvoy shared his wisdom on the subject of a single hand played by his Team PokerStars Pro colleague ElkY during last year's PCA final table. It's always worth listening to, like every word that comes out of McEvoy's mouth.

Watch PCA 09: Hand analysis from 2008 Final Table on PokerStars.tv

It's a quiet moment on media row at the mid-point of level six. One PokerStars.com blogger is talking to the one and only PokerStars.pl (Poland) blogger about the tournament to date.

Dot.com: "I just heard that Marcin Horecki has close to 70,000."
Dot.pl: "No, he's got about 17,000. That's all. But I'll check."

[PAUSE]

Dot.pl goes galloping across the tournament floor to catch up with the Team PokerStars Pro from Zakopane, Poland.

Dot.pl: "It's true. He's got 72,000. He had two big hands. Here.

Dot.pl hands scrap of paper to Dot.com.

Dot.com: I can't read it. What does it say? You need to read it out so that it will fit into the contrived dramatic structure of the next post that I haven't yet thought of, but will retrospectively demand.


Marcin Horecki

Dot.pl Sure. He had ace-king against queens just after the dinner break and that doubled him up to about 34,000. Then he got aces and flat called pre-flop when another player raised. The flop came A-3-2 and they both checked and then the turn was another ace, so he had quads already. The other player went all in, Horecki called and that's how he got to 72,000.
Dot.com: Brilliant.

[PAUSE. SILENCE.]

The tournament continues.

Last year the intrepid explorers hired by the European Poker Tour discovered a new part of their continent. It was here in the Bahamas, previously erroneously considered to be part of the Americas, but established now - and forever more - as a wonderful outcrop of Europe.

Making themselves at home this afternoon around the same table in the centre of the Imperial Ballroom are three stalwarts of the other wing of the EPT, the one that takes place in the land-mass more traditionally referred to as Europe.

They are Ludovic Lacay, from France, Juan Maceiras, the PokerStars sponsored player from Spain, and Sebastian Ruthenberg, the PokerStars ShootingStar from Germany. They each sat around a final table on the EPT in 2008: Lacay in Warsaw on season five, Maceiras in the same city in season four, and Ruthenberg in Barcelona, where he ended up with everyone else's chips for his first EPT crown.


Juan Maceiras

Ruthenberg added that to a World Series bracelet won in Las Vegas last summer and Maceiras took down a weekly Bellagio $1,000 event in June, proving they can travel well.


Sebastian Ruthenberg

Ludovic Lacay

Here it's Lacay making the most head-way, with about 114,000 going into the dinner break. Ruthenberg had been down to around 5,000 before he surged back to 25,000 and Maceiras tripled up with pocket fives, cracking queens and jacks in the same hand when he flopped a set.

It's a table worth watching, whatever part of Europe, on whichever side of the Atlantic, you come from.

* * * * *

The Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu is out - choosing the wrong time to defend his small blind with a 5-7. It was folded round to the button, who made it 2,000 to go (blinds are 400-800 in level eight). Negreanu, sitting on only 7,000 or so, called from the small blind and the big blind came along for the ride. The flop came 4-5-9, two hearts, and Negreanu turned on the speech play. "What's the best way to play this?" he asked out loud. "That hit me. Err, I'm all in."

The big blind folded but the button, the original pre-flop raiser, called and showed pocket jacks that by the time the turn and river had come 9-J had become a full house. Negreanu had been hit by that flop, but his middle pair didn't improve that much.

It's day 1A at the PCA and the tournament officials have told us that 660 players stumped up the $10,000 for a shot at the big time. These days, that's small-fry for the likes of Ylon Schwartz, the PokerStars Million Dollar Man who cruised to fourth in the World Series Main Event this summer (and autumn) and earned $3.8m for his troubles.

It's also a fairly small drop in the ocean of Scott Montgomery, another player who extended their summer foray to Las Vegas into the final table shebang in November. He took $3.1m for fifth place, staring across the same felt as Schwartz for several hours at the Penn and Teller Theater as they went to battle for those vast amounts.

Flash forward a couple of months to the Bahamas and Schwartz and Montgomery have renewed their acquaintance around the same day one table. There were more than 60 tables at the start of the day and they wound up right opposite one another again.

Both made comfortable starts, pushing their stacks up around the 25,000 mark. But that's before the good got way better for Schwartz. Looking at a flop of Kc-3d-9h, Schwartz's opponent bet 2,000, to which the Million Dollar Man added another 3,000 on the button. Call. The 6h turned and both players checked. Then the 8c came on the river and the original bettor fired 7,500 at it, prompting Schwartz to move all in for another 17,500. Think, think, call. Schwartz showed his pocket kings for the flopped set and he's now north of 50,000.

On a neighbouring table, there was a familiar Canadian chirp coming from the mouth of the Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu. "What do I think of my table?" he said. "None of them are going to make it through the day. They're all totally nuts online guys who play like they're crazy."

This, of course, was part mimicry of a another well-known live-action professional, and part tongue-in-cheek gibing at the stacked talents around him. One of them is indeed an "online guy" whose playing style might on occasion be described as "totally nuts". But few could doubt that there is a ruthless and effective method behind this particular online guy's madness: it's Chris Moorman, the British player better known as Moorman1 when he's rocketing to the top of all the online ranking ladders.

Negreanu and Moorman have kept out of one another's way to date, but we fully expect that to change in the levels to come.

Even though he is only 44-years-old, Greg Raymer is among the more senior competitors lining up here at the PCA. But as has been documented on countless previous occasions, the extreme youth exhibited around the major poker tournament tables these days owes a large amount to Raymer, specifically his 2004 World Series victory, achieved as a PokerStars qualifier to the Main Event.


Greg Raymer

That success, coupled with Chris Moneymaker's the year before, was the inspiration for many of the new breed of players to take up the game. Among that clutch of youthful sensations is the likes of Mike "Timex" McDonald, who became the youngest European Poker Tour champion when he snaffled the title in Dortmund on season four, earning close to a million dollars as an 18-year-old.


And Greg Raymer with Mike McDonald

Today Timex sits beside the Fossilman in a neat quirk of the random draw. Also on the table is Evelyn Ng, among the best-known women players in the world game, and the three of them seem to be getting on famously.

Raymer, with platinum bracelet glistening on his right wrist, is happily chattering away to Ng, only pausing to receive an email on his palm pilot, then tapping out a quick reply. As he did so, Ng also went for her cell-phone and began writing to someone; it was as if the two of them were engaging in table-talk across the airwaves.

Whatever they were saying, and whoever they were saying it to, it had been Raymer whose poker skills had been speaking the loudest in the opening couple of hours. He rocketed close to the chip lead midway through level two after he got close to 10,000 in the middle pre-flop against a single opponent and then sighed "I have to call," after the player moved all in, for 14,500, on a ten-high flop.

Raymer tabled pocket jacks, his opponent flipped a suited A-K and the turn and river bricked out, giving the former world champ a stack of more than 55,000. That sent the PokerStars blog photographer Joe Giron over to shoot the dominant tournament force, and Giron skipped back moments after to report that Raymer's stack had swelled again, on the back of pocket aces.

It's been a while, but the Fossilman may be heading to the winner's enclosure again soon.

In many respects covering a huge poker tournament, both in terms of field size and prestige, is markedly easier than dealing with a smaller event. Although it's easy to be daunted by the mammoth line-up and long, long hours, one does not have to travel too far to find a story. And that's good for the shoe leather.

"I'm looking for some of the young online superstar players," said a friend a moment ago. He is the editor of a UK-based poker magazine and he was seeking to put faces to the names he reads about on the poker forums and in the results lists.

We didn't even have to move. "There's Danny Ryan," I said, pointing to the table immediately in front of where we stood. "He's THE_D_RY. And over there is apestyles, or Jon Van Fleet." That was one table behind.


Danny Ryan

Jon Van Fleet

A few paces across the room and there was John "PearlJammer" Turner. Behind him was a table featuring Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke and Shaun "shaundeeb" Deeb. One step in the other direction was Adam "ajunglen" Junglen. We hadn't even covered half the tables.


Jimmy Fricke (seat one) and Shaun Deeb (seat four)

None of these players are much north of 25-years-old and most are significantly younger. We can safely expect a sizeable handful of the ever-growing crop of online professionals to go very deep into the money here, and few would bet against an all-out victory.

After all, there are rumours that ElkY had played the odd hand of online poker before his success here last year.

PokerStars has developed a reputation for sending its players to the best live events in the world. When the players go into the fray, PokerStars likes to give them the best chance they can. That's why some of the top Team PokerStars Pros have started hosting Poker Camps around the world.

We've just learned the next poker camp will be held in the world's most beautiful classroom. PokerStars and its pros are opening up class at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January 2009. Scheduled to be led by 2004 World Series Champion Greg Raymer, the PokerStars Poker Camp will feature instruction on how to make it to the final table in deep-stack multi-table tournaments. Not only that, the two-day camp will give its participants a chance to play in a live tournament with a $30,000 prize pool.

PokerStars is running satellite qualifiers for the 60 available packages, each worth $4,500 apiece.

To see how you can qualify, visit the PokerStars PCA Poker Camp page.

See you in the Bahamas!

Just last week we told you about a PokerStars player who managed to turn 1,000 Frequent Player Points into a $13,300 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure prize package. Modfan might have been the first to do it, but he certainly wouldn't be the last.

Since Modfan's accomplishment, we have been flooded with stories of people turning a relatively small amount of FPPs into a massive tournament packages.

PokerStars player Phoelex has been playing on the site nearly as long as it has been operating.

"The effective rakeback of the Pokerstars VIP program basically makes it so that it makes the most sense for me put the majority of my play there," he said.

Turns out, that was a smart move, because he turned his FPPs right into a PCA package.

Twenty-nine year-old Sander "snazje" Smits from the Netherlands had been playing on PokerStars for about a year when he won his PCA seat for a 1,000 FPP entry.

"The 2009 PCA is my first major event and I'm very excited," Smits said. "To me the Bahamas seem to be a perfect environment for such an event. I'm really looking forward to it."

The same goes for PokerStars player oilslinger who is a longtime player on the site.

"I have been playing on PokerStars from the time that the peak number of players was 7,000," he said.

After winning a seat with his 1,000 Frequent Player Points, oilslinger will be making his second trip to the PCA.

"I played in 2007 as a VIP seat winner also," he said.

The stay-at-home father to two kids is already planning his golf outing at the PCA,

"I am grateful to Pokerstars for offering me this opportunity," he said. "I plan to make the most of it, win or lose."

At this hour, more than 260 people have qualified for PCA seats on PokerStars. That number is bound to grow significantly over the next two months of qualifying.

We've also recently learned that PokerStars is now allowing players to buy the big prize packages in a variety of different ways, including through PokerStars accounts fund, W$, and with Frequent Player Points. For full details, check out the PCA Frequently Asked Questions page.

It's not been too many weeks ago that PokerStars sent out word it was kicking off satellites to the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

With the announcement came the news the event would once again be held on Paradise Island in the Bahamas (January 5-10 of 2009). This time, however, the event would have a bigger buy-in, this year ringing in at $10,000 buy-in.

Since that time, we've started to hear word about players who are winning their seat for no more than Frequent Player Points. Among those players is PokerStars' modfan.

Modfan started playing on PokerStars in 2006. That year, he won his seat to the World Series on PokerStars.

"I didn't cash," he said, "but it was great and PokerStars treats their players so well."

With that in mind, he started trying to win his next seat. This one was a 1,000 FPP qualifier on PokerStars. Modfan won his seat after a tournament bubble that lasted for 111 hands.

"I can't tell you how thrilling it was to win in the first FPP PCA satellite event and how great it is that PokerStars gives back to the players through the VIP program," he said.

Now, modfan will be headed off to the PCA for hundred of other qualifiers. Nearly 200 people have already won their seat with more than two months to go before the event.

Last year, the PCA became an event on the European Poker Tour and Team PokerStars Pro Betrand "ElkY" Grospellier won the title for $2 million (see the whole episode below).

The 2009 PCA prize package is worth a whopping $14,300. Everybody who wins one will get a buy-in to the main event, a sweet hotel room, and some cash for travel expenses. You can win your seat for as little as $7.50 or 500 FPP credits.

To check out the whole array of satellites, look under the EVENTS and PCA tabs in the PokerStars lobby.

For more information on the PCA, visit the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure page.