For the whole story, see our Made Hand Poker blog with Mark Scalia.

The day didn’t start well for Ivey. Entering the final table as the chip leader with a little over 4 million in chips, he lost almost half of his stack on the very first hand of the evening. Action was folded to Ivey, who was the small blind, and he raised 240,000 and Woody Moore pushed all in for 1.5 million. Ivey thought for approximately five minutes before calling with A-9. Unfortunately for Ivey, Moore had A-Q and doubled up.

From our Made Hand Poker blog by Mark Scalia.

As the $10,000 WSOP Main Event is well underway, many big name stars remain.

Jamie Gold was eliminated Monday, and as we entered Day 3, Gus Hansen was on top with over $600,000 in chips. Six former champions remained,

Chris Ferguson, one of the former champions, busted early in the day leaving five.

At the end of Day 3, the money bubble has burst and 337 players remain in contention for poker’s greatest prize. Atop the leader board is a familiar face to the online world, Italian sensation Dario Minieri with 2,398,000 in chips. Dario plays in the highest games on Pokerstars and recently purchased an Aston Martin using his Pokerstars Frequent Player Points…

Remarkably, five former champions made it through the day and are still left in the field: Huck Seed (544,000), Robert Varkonyi (424,00), Scotty Nguyen (321,000), Carlos Mortensen (284,000), and Berry Johnston (203,000).

Actor Tobey Maguire has survived the money bubble and is still in the hunt with 131,000 in chips, and numerous pros are also still left including Gus Hansen (currently 11th), Lee Watkinson, Chad Brown, Jason Lester, Daniel Alaei, Humberto Brenes and Mimi Tran among others.

Daniel Negreanu started out big in the tourney, winning pot after pot with his aggressive play, but he fell hard and busted late Wednesday.

With so many pros and former champions left, this Main Event is looking like a good one.

Television coverage of the smaller events started this week on ESPN. Tune in at 8 p.m.

WWE Raw vs. Smackdown 2007 is the best wrestling video game to come out in the past year.

It is also one of the only wrestling titles to come out this past year.

This isn’t bad for wrestling fans, but it’s not that great either. While Raw vs Smackdown 2007 is an excellent game, it’s very similar to last year’s version, and indeed, the whole "Smackdown" series itself.

Since THQ has the licensing for WWE games, and WWE is by far the most watched wrestling organization, there is little reason to change what has been working because there is not really any competition in wrestling games. Hence, the world has Madden NFL games,

The game does have some upgrades compared to last years version of Raw vs Smackdown. The General Manager mode puts players in charge of the show. Players can now send their wrestlers to Heat and Velocity to work on their techniques and gain popularity (much like sending a player to the minors in baseball) There is also the ability to hire writers for better storylines.

Other improvements to the game include:

• More than 40 original storylines for the season mode, where users pick a wrestler and try to bring him to the top, facing a number of obstacles on the way.
• “Money in the Bank" Match
• Some new wrestlers (and more that can be unlocked)

One thing that Raw vs Smackdown didn’t do very well was the roster accuracy in the game. Some of the gimmics are not up-to-date, like Booker T not being King Booker, which he has been for quite a bit of time now. The whole ECW brand that is on WWE programming now, isn’t in the game and many of the game’s superstars are branded on the wrong show. The game also includes a number of wrestlers like Mark Henry, Joey Mercury, Kid Kash and the game’s most dominant wrestler, Kurt Angle, who are no longer with the company, while it omits Jeff Hardy, Spirit Squad, Charlie Haas, among others who are prominently on WWE television. This may seem like a minor thing but wrestling fanatics love to choose from a large selection of wrestlers and in Raw vs Smackdown 2007 there really isn’t one.

The negatives and the feeling of a being a little bit outdated aside, WWE Raw vs Smackdown 2007 is still a fun game that players will enjoy. The season mode is very addicting and with all the new storylines it will keep the players entertained for awhile. I’ll be anxious to see what THQ does with Raw vs Smackdown 2008, however, as I feel wrestling fans may start to get sick of the same game with a new year.

The Sopranos license seems to be a sinking ship lately. The show has gone very much downhill the past few seasons. And then this game is produced, hoping to appeal and make a little bit more money of of the following still left, before the final episodes of the series air later this year.

In the Sopranos: Road to Respect, you are Joey LaRocca, the son of the late Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero. The opening cut-scene shows you breaking into a car and stealing a purse. You run down the street looking like you are home free when Tony Soprano trips you and brings you in to talk. After yelling at you for your actions, he says that he will help you out and put you to work and have a chance to work your way up. This is where the game begins.

Your first mission, like most of the missions in the game, is to beat someone up. In this case, the unlucky man is a patron of Tony’s strip club, the Bada Bing. He apparently wasn’t treating one of the dancers properly and needed to be taken care of. While walking around beating people up seems like it would be fun, in Road to Respect, it is basically all you do, which quickly becomes repetitive and dull. Even the controls to fight aren’t very well done. There is a button for “quick attack,” which is the button that you will find yourself using the most when in combat. When you aren’t fighting you can steal things like drugs, wallets, cell phones and money, but even that is pointless because you can’t really do anything with the money in the game other than buy a lap dance.

It was great to see the actors from the show, providing the voices for their respective characters. The cut scenes are also pretty well done and include a number of funny one-liners. However, that’s about it for positives in the game. Overall, the game isn’t very well made. The graphics aren’t that great and have a number of glitches in them, (in one instance I was able to completely walk right through a table) and as mentioned before the game gets old very quickly. This game is really only worth trying if you are a die-hard Sopranos fan, and even after that one go-around should fade you away from it pretty quickly. Mafia games seem to be a current trend lately, with The Godfather and Scarface also recently being released. You might be better off trying out one of those titles if you want to break into this genre.