"The Worst Day of the Year"

"The worst day of the year," Doyle Brunson has said, "is the day you get knocked out of the Main Event."

We won't know who the game's new champion is for another few days, but for most players the worst day of the year has already come and gone. A grand total of 6,358 players took their seats during the past week dreaming of fame and fortune...and most of them saw those hopes dashed by a bad beat. Or a cold deck. Or, maybe they just played lousy. Nah, couldn't be that.

Already there's a big change in the Amazon Room as the Main Event moves along. There's just one poker tournament going on and as the field plays down and tables break, those tables remain empty. There isn't an Omaha Hi-Lo tournament starting at 5pm. There aren't satellites running 24/7. Those empty tables are a melancholy reminder that the World Series is almost over.

Almost, but not quite. Somewhere among the players still riffling chips is a poker legend in the making. It's impossible to guess who it might be. Winning the Main Event these days is such a daunting task that trying to pick a favorite is a fool's errand. You can play flawless, inspired poker, win a dozen coin flips in a row...and still get crippled when you run Kings into Aces. Or when some lunatic calls off all his chips with top pair/no kicker and makes trips on the river. Or when you think you're making a great call that proves to be a totally donkified play.

The players who actually have a chance to win the Main Event are those who can survive those hits. Because every player gets hit. Multiple times. It takes 11 days to become World Champion, and not every hand will go your way (unless, maybe, you're Jamie Gold circa 2006). The players who can keep both hands on the steering wheel and their eyes on the road for 11 days are the ones who have a chance to win the most coveted title in poker.

But sometimes not even that is enough. Phil Hellmuth is at the top of his game. He won a bracelet this year and cashed six times. He was so confident about making a deep run in the Main Event that he planned on driving up to the Rio in a race car and marching into the Amazon Room wearing a racing jumpsuit. And then, as you may have heard, he had a little accident in the parking lot. He was driving the car around, lost control, and slammed into a concrete light fixture. Phil was lucky that he wasn't seriously injured, and the car was too badly damaged to use the following day.

No matter - Phil showed up in a limousine the next day (fashionably late, as always) and emerged wearing his custom-made racing suit. He was escorted down the long hallway to the Amazon Room by 11 beautiful women (one for each bracelet) wearing fetching black leotards. There were hundreds of spectators gawking at the procession and every camera in the house was pointed Phil's way as he strode to his table.

But once there, everything went wrong. Or, nothing went right. Phil's stack started slipping from the start and never recovered. He lost a big hand that left him with just 1,400 in chips and he went out after using the last of his chips to pay a final big blind. When Hellmuth was eliminated the cameras again followed him, this time out of the room, but play continued inside without him.

Just as the game went on when Doyle Brunson was eliminated early on the very first day of the Main Event. He moved in when he flopped top two pair holding A-Q, only to run into a player who flopped a set with pocket Queens. The Main Event continued without Johnny Chan, who also made an early exit. And it continued without thousands of other players who walked into the Amazon Room giddy about the Main Event's endless possibilities and left muttering about how cruel the game can be. But on Thursday we'll reach the money, and those savvy and fortunate few will try to maneuver their way around other savvy, fortunate players toward poker's Holy Grail, the World Championship bracelet. Somewhere in the Amazon Room is poker's next superstar. A lot of hard work lies ahead for that special somebody.