Down to the wire

We are really getting down to the wire in Season 5 of Wall Street Poker. Alceste, due in large part to his stellar performance in Tuesday's tournaments, is leading the league. Bacini Mary and W are in striking distance, but they're more Dark Horses now than anything else.

Bacini Mary, specifically, has taken some horrific beats at the table or she'd be in much better position. I saw her turn over Aces to an underpair on Tuesday and then start getting packed up, sure that the underpair would hit their set! She won that one, but in her defense it's not been the norm for her to win the 80/20 races.

W has played her consistent game, where she averages around the bubble for every tourney. She is the all-time Wall Street Poker bubble leader and if she could tweak her game just a little bit, her consistency would propel her into the money a frightening number of times.

The real story here this season has been Stephen Porcelli, who came on strong late in the season and won a few crucial tourneys to propel himself to the front of the pack. He's been a monstrous force to compete with and is playing solid poker. BUT, he doesn't have enough tourneys to qualify as of yet. Wed. night is the last night of tourneys for the season and he's going to have to do really well in both of his tourneys to overcome Alceste.

The other big story of the season has been LJ and Thomas Gillespie. LJ started off the season with the best start of any WSP player. She cashed in her first four tourneys, winning two of them and getting runner up in the other two. This was during the phase wher she was winning online tourneys at a fast pace too and cashing BIG. So it seemed like she had just catapulted to another level. But it's hard to play that good for that long and her next few tourneys were real crash and burn affairs, putting her far out of the running the WSP championship.

The story with Thomas was that no one noticed him doing so well! He was the quiet guy who kept cashing until, before you knew it, he was in front of the pack with a month to go! His reputation as a beginning player was helping him get big money in with the best of it and he was taking the insults to the bank. But a few bad tourney placements the last few weeks have similarly knocked him out of the running.

The next week should be a real doozy. Including, and this is no small thing, the return of Dawn Summers after a self-imposed religious exile from poker. I, for one, will be very very happy to see her again. Mayhap a game of stud/8 in her honor?