WTP Inaugural Event

"Unless something drastic happens, China is going to win," said my colleague GeorgiaPeach. China is certainly making a run up the counts, with team captain David Chiu raking in another pot recently. This big stacks of China and Brazil, combined with their slightly more aggressive play, definitely make Greece a decided underdog.

The financial picture isn't so great back home in Greece right now, and it's not looking so hot here at the World Team Poker final. The Greek team had the chip lead about an hour ago but now find itself in a distant third place and at risk of bubbling the tournament. That would be a crushing blow for a Greek team that has worked very, very hard to make it this far.

Team Brazil is the far and away chip leader now, with Team China and Team Greece looking like they're roughly tied for second place. With the game at PLO now, the swings could be very huge. One bad pot is all it could take to send either China or Greece into the Great Beyond as the bubble team of this tournament.

It's PLO time. Blinds are 2,500/5,000.

We don't know exactly what happened (again) because the action isn't being announced anymore. On the turn of a board, we saw Team China call a bet from Team Greece. On the river, Team Greece made a small lead that China raised all in. Team Greece called but couldn't beat Team China's two pair, aces up. David Chiu gave a fist pump as he collected the double-up on behalf of Team China.

Tags: David Chiu

The players took an extended break but they're back in action again. Team China is definitely riding the short stack. Their current jockey is David Chiu. As between Brazil and Greece, the chips seem evenly split.

It's definitely way, way, waaaaaaaaaay past midnight now. The gallery is about as still as you'd expect for 3:30am from people who have been watching poker all day. The air is out of the balloon. Everyone is just looking for two more eliminations so we can wrap this up and go home. Even the host, Robert Williamson III, seems to have lost interest in announcing the action.

Greece: a lot
Brazil: not as many as Greece
China: not many

That's about as good as we can do on the counts right now. The average stack is 133,000, which at the current blinds of 1,500 and 3,000 in the NLHE round is roughly 45 big blinds. China definitely has far fewer than the average.

The spirited comeback of the Australian side has come up just a bit short. Still in the PLO round, Tony G, playing for Team Australia, took a raised flop with Team Greece. "Me and the Greek," remarked the G.

Greece checked and called a bet on a flop of . Greece also checked the turn. The G seemed to way his options before moving all of Australia's chips into the pot. Greece beat him in with a call, tabling for a flopped full house, nines full of sixes. Tony G showed down for three sixes.

It was a disaster for Team Australia, leaving them looking for either the case 6 or one of the last two aces. The river was neither -- it was a jack, to send the passionate Aussie side to the rail in 4th place.

All that time that was wasted in the beginning of the day with repeated breaks is now coming back to haunt this tournament. We're approaching 2:30am local time and there's no sign that this final table is going to end any time soon.

At the very least, it seems that the live-stream is no longer showing any camera shots from the hole-card cams. That means that the only way to get any information on a hand is going to be via showdown.

There's been a webcast of the feature table of this event that's been running all day on a 10-minute delay. It was widely promoted by the WTP in their press materials and on their website, but it seems that Team Australia only recently learned about the possible implications of the webcast -- namely, that some of the other teams might watch the webcast to collect information about hands that weren't shown down. (The webcast includes the use of hole-card cams.) Presumably the teams would then use that information to alter their final-table strategy against certain opponents.

We don't know if there is any truth to those allegations. What we do know is that Team Australia has requested that the webcast be shut down so that no team has access to any information it would not otherwise have access to. For the moment the webcast is still running, but the tournament is also now on a break. We'll see if the webcast continues once the tournament resumes.