Whoa, the Main Event!  Wait a minute, how’d we get here already?  I could swear that it was just last week that I was stepping out of the international arrivals gate at McCarran International Airport.  In late May the Main Event was inconceivably far away.  The grind (but fun grind) of reporting on all the preliminary events didn’t make it seem any closer.

However, much like summer camp, the days are long but the weeks go fast.  All of a sudden it’s Canada Day/Fourth of July weekend.  I stepped into the Rio on July 2 for my last pre-Main Event day of work and was bombarded by a sea of people signing up to play the big show, as well as dozens of media people who I haven’t seen around until now.  There were suddenly more booths set up in the hallways outside the Amazon Room and the Pavilion selling ridiculous looking sunglasses (like the ones Jonathan Little wears) and more terribly designed t-shirts than you can shake a stick at.

The Series so far has been a wild ride.  Getting an up close look at the poker community has been more revealing and in some ways disappointing than I thought it would be.  On one hand, the poker community is great because it allows people to get up close to the game’s biggest players.  Sure, you can buy in to any event if your bankroll permits (even the ladies’ event, cough-Deeb-cough), but during the World Series it goes further than that.  Away from the poker tables you can run into famous players eating dangerously bad food at the Poker Kitchen or the Rio’s other restaurants.  You can sit next to them as they rail their buddies and you rail yours, should you be so fortunate.  Not only will I never play football for the Patriots, but it’s also very unlikely that I am going to find myself standing behind Randy Moss in the lunch line. 

But the poker world isn’t necessarily the happiest one.  There are people so deep in make-up that anything other than a win is a disappointment.  There are people who grind through every event hoping to just cash, and come up short time and time again.  There’s an incredible disregard for the value of a dollar.  I’ve had players drop $10,000 in cash on my desk, inches away from my computer, while I think, “Dude, those are my student loan payments for the year!”  Some players who I had a lot of respect for going into the WSOP have left me thinking extremely low of them.

But of course, there’s the good.  Seeing Gavin Smith win his bracelet was a heart-warming experience.  It’s also been great to see Chainsaw run deep in so many events and actually put a scare on in the Player of the Year race.

Of course, the Main Event is just moments away. I’m sure when it hits it’s going to wipe out any kind of “what a drag” thoughts that may have been going through my mind. Until then!