Team Safdar: Live from the WSOP

Welcome to Team Safdar, Live from the Rio at the World Series of Poker 2006. We are Shabbir’s local support staff, and will be updating you throughout the day on Shabbir’s progress in Event #40, $1000 buyin NL Hold’em. For those of you who have somehow managed to secure secret video of the event, he is at table 51, seat 7. It is not too far from the rail, which makes him easier to spot.

Thus far he has played brilliantly. It’s hard for us to see much, primarily because we are trying to avoid alarming him. Our strategy is to sneak in every thirty minutes or so, and peer through the hordes of people who are watching the event with breathless excitement. We have snapped a few photos with a special World Series of Poker camera, designed not to get us "taken into a back room" for using flash photography.

We will try to update every 30 to 45 minutes, and the future champ himself may live blog from his cell phone.