"I was doing really well, and then I made the worst decision I've made all Series."
So said Andy Black from his seat here in the Pavilion Room to a passerby, referring to an earlier event. Players are still finding their seats during the first few minutes of play, with many tables playing two-, three-, or four-handed at present.
"The worst decision all Series?" came the answer to Black. Black took the invitation to explain further, but was quickly cut off.
There are a myriad of friendly faces already seated in the Pavilion Room. We've already spotted Zach Gruneberg, Matt Graham, Jeffrey Papola, Eric Baldwin, Andy Seth, Billy Kopp, Simon Watt, Jeff Hakim, Isaac Haxton, and Yevgeniy Timoshenko.
Welcome to one of the more highly anticipated events on this year's WSOP schedule, Event No. 40, the $5,000 buy-in Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em event. In recent years this event has invariably attracted many of the top players from the online world where short-handed games reign supreme, in addition to many of the game's leading live pros.
Given the recent shakeup of the online poker landscape, it will be interesting to see not only who comes out for Event No. 40, but how many of them do as well.
Two years ago this event saw one of the bigger prize pools for any preliminary event when a whopping 928 players entered, with Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko winning the top prize of just over $1 million after outlasting Josh "brikdog24" Brikis (second) and Faraz "The-Toilet 0" Jaka (third). Last year 568 runners came out for the $5K short-handed NLHE event, with Jeffrey "jpapola" Papola outlasting Men Nguyen heads up to take the bracelet and $667,433 for the win.
The first hands are scheduled to be dealt at high noon Vegas time. Come back then for reports of all the action from the first level to the final river.