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It didn’t take long for an ultra-high-stakes cash game to break out at the 2011 World Series of Poker according to Bluff Europe Magazine. Following several Tweets, and some on the scene updates, it appears that a number of poker’s high-stake regulars started up a $1,000/$2,000 PLO game with a mandatory $4,000 straddle –effectively making the stakes $2,000/$4,000. Later reports put other games taking place as high as $2k/$4k/$8k!!!

Players in the game include a few of the usual suspects including Patrik Antonius, Ashton Griffin, David Benefield, and Justin Smith (who was tweeting the stakes being played and most of the information was coming from his Twitter feed). There are definitely some people on Twitter worth following if you are interested in the behind the scenes action taking place at the WSOP, and Justin “BoostedJ” Smith is one of them!

Smith wouldn’t name the other two players in the game, but Bluff Europe listed them as South African PLO specialist Darren Kramer and the Whale in the game according to Bluff Europe is Robert Willis, a multi-millionaire highway magnate.

Undoubtedly the action will only pick up even more as the WSOP wears on, so it looks as if Black Friday is having very little effect on the tournament attendances for the WSOP or the stakes being played in the side games, an excellent sign that poker is still alive and well after Black Friday.