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July 9  |  9 p.m. ET

The day's roundup (from The Associated Press)

DAY: 6 (Officially known as Day 2B).

BIG NEWS: Tournament officials said registration for World Series of Poker was up 8 percent from last year, driven mostly by international growth of the game.

Tournament spokesman Seth Palansky said Wednesday that the series attracted more players from other countries than ever before this year, giving it a boost despite a weak U.S. economy.

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Scattered in the 6,844 total participants in the $10,000 buy-in main event were players from 72 different countries, each hoping to win the $9.12 million top prize in the no-limit Texas Hold ’em tournament to be awarded Nov. 11.

STUD OF THE DAY: Brian Schaedlich, a 22-year-old special education teacher from Cleveland, who will start play Thursday with 801,000 in chips, more than 400,000 ahead of the next closest player from Tuesday. With the possibility of play reaching the money round Thursday, Schaedlich conceivably could have enough chips to cover minimum bets and antes even if he folded every hand without playing.

BUSTED OUT: Defending champion Jerry Yang, actress and poker player Shannon Elizabeth, H.O.R.S.E. runner-up Michael DeMichele, poker pro John Juanda.

UP NEXT: Thursday, the 466 players who made it through Tuesday will join the players remaining from Wednesday, putting all entrants at the tables at the same time for the first time since the main event started.

POKER TALK: Overbet: Betting more than the size of the pot, in hopes of enticing other players to fold. Defending champion Jerry Yang bet 10,500 into a pot with a jack, four and five on the board. When all other players folded, he turned over pocket threes and told the table that the next time he overbet, he would be holding a big hand.

HE SAID WHAT?: “As far as quitting the job to do the poker life, I think I’d miss teaching too much.” — Brian Schaedlich, who ended play Tuesday with a huge stack of 801,000 chips, more than twice his next closest competitor.

July 9  |  3 a.m. ET

Master of disguise
Some poker players think it’s bush league to wear sunglasses at the table.

No tricks. No disguises. It’s not fair as it neutralizes the ability of players to read their opponents, they might say.

Annie Duke is in that group, and has actually said that sunglasses should be banned.

Well how would Duke feel about the stunt Phil Laak pulled on his first day of the main event? Laak, who developed his "Unabomber" moniker with his hooded sweatshirt-and-sunglasses look, and is also known as the boyfriend of buxom acress Jennifer Tilly, went over the top with his disguise.

Laak had a movie-makeup artist go to work on his face, turning him into an old man. In theory, Laak did it so he wouldn't be recognized at the table, but one suspects his actually did it to draw attention from the ESPN cameras. (Gasp, really?!!?)

Either way, it was an amusing stunt. Here, Laak talks to the folks at CardPlayerTV about his ruse.

And to see a great photo of "Old Man" Laak, check out Michelle Lewis' blog.

Is poker too violent? Ahh what's a few cuts and bruises!
UFC fighter Forrest Griffin upset Rampage Jackson for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship the other night. Then, after a trip to the hospital and a couple hours' sleep, he played in the main event sporting a face looking far worse than Phil Laak's, complete with stitches and bruises.

Griffin wasn't looking so good when he spoke to RawVegas.tv before the tournament, and even said, "there was a fight last night and I don't really remember what happened. I'm told I won, which is excellent."

You think that was bad, he then has to sit down at the same table as two-time main event champ Johnny Chan. Needless to say, he didn't last long. But that's OK, it's possible his heart wasn't in it.

Some good clicks ...

July 8  |  11:30 p.m. ET

The day's roundup (from The Associated Press)

DAY: 5 (Officially known as Day 2A).

BIG NEWS: Part of the marathon that is the World Series of Poker involves players waiting to get back to the tables after going as many as four days without playing.

The 1,251 players who began Tuesday were competing in only their second session and had not played at the main event since last week. When they sat down they faced a new table that had been randomly drawn.

To win money, they still needed to top nearly 3,000 other players to be one of the final 666 playing no-limit Texas Hold ’em. Few, if any, were thinking about the crown and top prize of $9.12 million.

“It’s a long grind fixing to come,” said Mark Garner, a 44-year-old investment broker from Little Rock, Ark., who began the day with 194,900 chips, most in the Tuesday group.

“All that was was a good start. It wasn’t a finish, it was a start,” he said.

STUD OF THE DAY: Hal Lubarsky, who started Tuesday in the top 50 in chips despite being legally blind. Lubarsky uses an assistant, Michelle Murrell, to describe play and read him his hole cards. Under tournament rules, Murrell cannot make any decisions or advise Lubarsky, but she can describe whatever she sees around the table. Last year, Lubarsky became the first blind player to cash at the main event when he finished 197th and won $51,398.

BUSTED OUT: 1998 main event champion Scotty Nguyen, 1996 and 1997 ladies champion Susie Isaacs, poker pros Paul Wasicka and David Grey.

UP NEXT: A second group of 2,378 players will play for 10 hours Wednesday to determine who makes it to Thursday, when all surviving entrants will play together for the first time since the tournament started.

POKER TALK: Coin flip. Also known as a “race,” when two players go all-in before the flop and square off with roughly a 50 percent chance to win. At a table of unknowns, one player went all-in with an ace and a queen and another called with a pair of eights. The pair of eights was ahead, but because so many cards could come that would turn the ace-queen into the better hand, each player had nearly the same chance of winning the pot. The eights held, however, and the player with the ace-queen was eliminated.

SHE SAID WHAT?: “Massage is the bomb-biggity.” — Marcie Thomas, a massage therapist giving poker professional John Duthie a full-body massage as he played in his second session of action. A handful of massage artists moved from table to table, working the kinks and knots out of players’ bodies in hopes of relieving some of the stress of play.

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