As reported by: The Age
IT IS going on 10.30pm in the city without clocks, and after nearly 12 hours of poker, Paul Azinger is a deep-down, someone's-just-starched-my-hamstrings tired. His eyes are glassier than a mounted marlin's.

"It's like playing 36 holes," said the 46-year-old winner of 12 PGA Tour events, including the 1993 US PGA Championship. "My lower back is sore. My legs ache. I've got a little fatigue now."

If the trials that come with sitting in one place for long periods of time qualified as a sporting challenge, this would be an Olympic event. That is the great grey area of big-time poker.

The main event of the World Series of Poker, which began here at the Rio casino this weekend, is many things.

It is a scene of unparalleled strangeness. A newcomer enters the huge hall where 206 tables of 10 players each are in high-risk heat and immediately is met by a clatter that is hard to place. It is like a great field of crickets on steroids, playing castanets. It is the sound of a couple thousand poker players shuffling their chips, the constant, mindless energy of nervous hands.

To this event, like the collection at the scene of a house fire, a distinct blend of humanity is drawn. Next to a truly super model named Joanna Krupa is a Florida car dealer named Jim Hill, playing only the third round of no-limit Texas hold 'em poker of his life here in the biggest game ever. "I tell everybody I've got the best seat in the house," he jokes. "A nearby player said he'd buy it for $10,000. But I wouldn't sell."

This poker World Series is a phenomenon, the numbers it is doing now taunting all reason. As of Monday, the final day of the first round of the main event, the estimates were reaching toward 8600 players, which would push the first place pay-off to about $11.8 million. The top 12 finishers stand to win more than $1 million. That would far outdistance last year's total of 5600 players, with the winner earning $7.5 million.
Article By: The Age