*WSOP and World Series of Poker (referred to from now on as the Main Event and/or World Series)

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Report by Brad Willis and Mad Harper

Shuffle up and deal

The lobby was thick with smoke. The room was as packed as it's been in weeks leading up to the Main Event. And World Series Tournament Director Johnny Grooms announced, "The f-bomb rule is in effect. Do not use that naughty word."

Then, the words echoed through this cavernous warehouse of poker.

Shuffle up and deal. The Main Event is live and running!

Within seconds, the room's cacophony collapsed into near silence, save the riffling of chips and steady hum of nervous energy. The field looked to crest 5600 players vying for the 2005 Main Event title, a third of them playing on Day 1A.

All around the room, PokerStars players are tasted their first blind levels: $25/$50, with $10,000 chips to start.

Within eight minutes, a noise erupted from the back of the room. Clapping began. It was evident. The first player down.

Grooms said, "One down, 5800 to go." He was overestimating a bit, but it would be close.

As the day began, the featured table started with two PokerStars players under the television lights.

To walk through the room required a steady mind, a quick foot, and an electric cattle prod. Thousands of people (this must be a fire hazard of some sort...) played, peered, prodded, and prayed.

I found myself thinking of thermometers.

You ever break a thermometer and watch the mercury bounce and scoot its way across the floor? You ever break a thousand thermometers and watch everything you see move so fast that you're sure you must be dreaming? Well, here, the chips are made of mercury and keeping track of their movement would be easier accomplished in a dream.

At the beginning of level three, ESPN has made PokerStars Greg Raymer's table the featured Main Event table. He and I had a chance to chat while the table was getting set up. He'd had a rough go of it so far. Perhaps the worst was getting a free flop in the big blind with an eight in his hand, flopping trip eights, and his opponent, holding a pair of threes, betting into the pot before the river card was even flipped up. The river...a threee.

While I lamented Raymer's luck, PokerStars blog correspondent Madeline "The Mad Salmon" Harper came in with a report:

You've got to feel sorry for Michael Cooper, Kurt Skimmeland and Brian Rast. Not because they've got short stacks, or are getting poor cards, but because they've found themselves on a table where absolutely everyone else is a PokerStars Main Event qualifier. Jay "donttap" Canowitz, an Ohio headhunter, said there was a ripple of laughter as the players at Table 26 took their seats this morning. "All of us PokerStars players started chatting and saying we should just try and knock the other three out, make it an all-PokerStars table. We've been swapping screen-names, and talking about how we qualified and so forth through World Series satellites and tournaments."

For 39-year-old Jay, this is the second time he's qualified for the Main Event on PokerStars - he made it last year as well, going out in 370th place. The Table 26 seven are: construction company owner Clemente "mydenise" Castacucco from New York; cowboy James "thewinner" Copeland from Oklahoma; Grant "zqxjk" Sbrocco from New York; equities trader James "deek2122" from New Jersey; businessman Roy "aawwnutz" Carter from Dallas; Rodrigo Fludigo, from Rio, Brazil.

I've been known to call myself a jinx. On the European Poker Tour, I had dinner with three people on three consecutive nights who busted out just after our meal. Today, I re-thought the concept.

I happened first up Shirley "Siren" Rosario. Down to just 2000 in chips, she said, "Get a picture of the biggest comeback in poker history. So, I snapped the picture, just as she raised and got no callers. "Come on," she said to her tablemates. "It's not that big a hand."

As we entered the break, she wandered over and said, "There's my good luck charm." In less than 30 minutes, she'd built her stack back up to 8500 in chips.

Maybe, I thought, I'm not a jinx after all.

Greg "Fossilman" Raymer offered further evidence. He hit the featured table with 3500 in chips. In one level, sitting just thirty feet from me, Raymer went to work and turned his stack into 43,000 in 100 minutes.

If, in fact, I am good luck, I wish I'd spent more time around Wil Wheaton. After five hours of second-best hands and getting no action on his big hands, Wheaton's time here has expired. He said, "I'm happy that I didn't play scared. I wouldn't change anything."

"Siren" Rosario's luck soon departed as well, flopping two pair against a set.

Elsewhere in the room, I found a few other familiar faces. Dustin "Neverwin" Woolf is held court in the back of the room. He was surrounded by PokerStars players, including Steve "kruzer" Fetterman, a man who for a time ran over his table and has amassed about $40,000 in chips himself.

Then I met the lovely Adrienne "talonchick" Rowsome, a cult poker figure in Canada.

Finally, the man I'd wanted to meet for so long, Jim "downtheline" Hamburger. Back in May, Jim won PokerStars Sunday $500,000 Guaranteed Tournament, and his story brought more traffic to the Official PokerStars blog than any story before. Visit PokerStars blog for his bio and, below that, the story of his win.

Just after 8:30pm in Vegas, the room took on a comfortable air. Just nine hours before, the room fell nearly silent when the cards went in the air. When the first runner busted out, a rowdy exuberance took over. Now, the players are comfortable. Now, it again sounds like a poker room with real money flying around. The chips riffle. The room buzzes. It's standard tournament poker on a non-too standard scale that being such a huge cash prize at the World Series.

At the dinner break, I ran into Patrick Morrison, a PokerStars player from the Gulf Coast. He had a wild look in his eye. I figured him for a player who had just spent the past eight hours in the trenches of this poker warehouse.

"What table are you at?" I asked, sure that he was big-stacked and wild on $10,000 adrenaline.

"I don't play until tomorrow," he said.

I thought that would be the end of it, that I would wait until Friday to prod him for stories and tales. Instead, I heard the best story of the day.

Just a few days ago, Morrison was hundred of miles offshore on an oil platform. He knew that in just a few days he would be sitting at a ten-seat table in Las Vegas, vying for a world championship at the World Series. He'd won a $33 satellite on PokerStars and was bound and determined to win the whole thing.

Only one thing stood in his way. Her name was Cindy. And Morrison's wife, a beautiful lady, is not named Cindy.

Cindy was a bit of a tropical storm that built and built and rolled into the Gulf of Mexico. Her ferocity wasn't as frightening as many of the big storms that have rolled in to that part of the country. Regardless, she caused a problem.

The original plan was for a helicopter to fly in, land on the deck of the oil platform, and fly Morrison inland. Instead, Cindy grounded the chopper and Morrison was stuck. He waited and waited and finally stowed away on a supply boat that made it to the platform.

That should've done the trick. Instead, Cindy trapped the boat offshore, then blew a bunch of shrimp boats into a bridge Morrison needed to cross.

Undeterred, Morrison pressed on, finally made it shore, where his father drove him home, to his beautiful wife, and eventually to an airport where Morrison finally flew to Las Vegas for the World Series Main Event.

Tonight, he had that wild look in his eye and he had yet to play a hand in the main event.

"After what I've been through," he said, "if somebody tries to check-raise me..." He trailed off and looked toward the casino.

"I'm here to play some poker," he said.

If there's a survivor's story in this room, it belongs to Patrick Morrison.

Not everyone could survive, however.

In the jungle, when the food runs out, when a band of lost travelers is looking for any nutrition it can find, the members sometimes turn to each other in a none-too-appetizing way. I'm not saying it's a pretty concept, but I'm saying it can happen.

In the poker jungle, road gamblers of the same band may sometimes turn on each other, as well. I'm not saying it's a pretty concept, but I'm saying it can happen. And I'm saying it happened today.

As it happened, Team PokerStars Pro members John Gale and Isabelle Mercier found themselves at the same table. They further found themselves heads-up in a poker pot. Gale came in for a raise, Mercier pushed all in, and Gale, finding himself with the odds to call, did so. He held A8s. Mercier held 77. The board gave Gale a straight and sent Mercier to the rail. When it was over, Gale said he felt bad, but admitted, "she would've knocked me out if she could."

Indeed, in a dog-eat-dog world where the entire Main Event field is wearing milkbone underwear (my thanks to Cheers' Norm for that one), it is kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. The evidence is everywhere. It's in the smoky corridors where husbands phone in their bad beat stories to their wives. It's in the bathrooms, where people feel slightly more comfortable crying. It's at the bar, where people go when the smoking, phone calls, and crying won't help.

It's perhaps most evident in the empty poker tables left in the far quadrant of the room. Once full of chip-hungry card players, it's now nothing more than a wide expanse of green felt and tired railbirds.

In other less gruesome news, blog correspondent Madeline "The Mad Salmon" Harper happened upon a couple of PokerStars satellite winners who were drawing a lot of attention. She brought us this report:

At the Main Event, Only Their Mother Can Tell Them Apart

They look completely identical - same PokerStars shirts, same PokerStars caps, same silver frame sunglasses and exactly the same deadpan expression playing here at the 2005 Main Event. They're even chewing gum at exactly the same speed. All day people have been walking past Table 151 and doing a double take. Is that twins there? Really? That's wierd - and how come they got to sit next to each other?

As it happens, Carmen "dolfan" Marino and Allen "thebookie" McLean were just about the only people in the room who hadn't noticed that they're dead ringers for each other. "I saw people were taking a lot of pictures of us", said Carmen, a 38-year-old researcher for General Motors, "but I thought it was just because Allen has got such a big stack. I didn't even realise I was in the pictures until just now." The pair had never met before this morning, but after more than ten hours sitting next to each other, the two PokerStars World Series satellite winners are even finishing each others' sentences.... "Well, we did go to the restroom earlier," said Allen, 47, a bookie from Dublin , "and it seems it's true, we're identical in every way", finished Carmen. Right now, the only real difference between them is the size of their stacks... "I've got about 3,000 in chips," said Carmen, "and Allen's got 25,000".

Finally, as this first flight of Main Event Day 1 wound toward midnight, PokerStars star Neverwin played games with his poker table. After amassing a very nice stack all day, he's tried to convince his fellow players he loves to play hands blind.

An opponent asked, "So, how do you do that when you play on PokerStars?"

"I put a piece of tape over the monitor," he said, then raked another poker pot.

Indeed, it was late when Main Event Day 1A put itself to bed. Forced to thin the field to under 700 poker players, the first flight played late into the night. The survivors went to bed knowing two things. First, unlike hundreds of others, they have made it to the Main Event Day 2 (Sunday). Second, they have two days to recover from a day full of overdosing on poker adrenaline.

Main Event Day 1B begins Friday.

Be sure to check out all the Main Event reports on the Official PokerStars Blog.

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