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Poker Tournaments Never Die, They Just Fade Away


2007-07-14 12:56:40
By: Gene Bromberg

Since June 1st the Amazon Room at the Rio served as the center of the poker universe. Thousands of players from around the world battled for chips at the hundreds of poker tables that packed this cavernous space.

And yesterday that all came to an end.

Oh no, the champion wasn't crowned five days early. We still have 112 players vying for the Main Event bracelet, and we won't know who the next champion is until Tuesday night (or if the Final Table runs extra-long, Wednesday morning). But there was a very different vibe in the Amazon Room yesterday as play moved along.

In a tournament, as players are eliminated, replacements must be found for those who have gone to the rail. You can't have nine players at one table and six players at another. Those empty seats are filled by "breaking" a table--the players at a pre-determined table are assigned to those now-abandoned chairs. The order that tables are broken are passed out before play so everyone can figure out if they're going to be sitting with the same group all day or if they'll go wandering. Mark "P0ker H0" Kroon, for example, had his table broken like FIVE TIMES the first day of the Main Event. It can be hard to get a line on your opponents when you're seeing new faces every ten minutes.

Yesterday a new meaning to the phrase "breaking a table" came into being. On Day Three, as the tables were broken, they were left sitting there, quiet and melancholy in their solitude:

poker tournament

But on Day Four, when the tables were broken, they were broken. Literally. The leather armrails were pulled free from the felt and carted away, and then a platoon of workmen tipped the tables on their sides (each time with a loud WHOOMP!) and folded up their collapsable legs. And then, one by one, the poker tables that had seen so much action the last seven weeks were carried out of the room, until what was left behind was...nothing:

poker games

All the action is now condensed to eleven tables hard against the ESPN Feature Table arena. When you watch it on TV it'll appear that the room is thronged with cheering fans. And, in that tiny corner, it will be. But the rest of the room will be quiet as a tomb. The cash games have dried up. There are no satellites running. There's enough empty space in the Amazon Room to hold a football game. All that remains is to award the most important title in poker. And when you think about it. that's more than enough.

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