It takes 1’37” to wander stride purposefully back from the press room to the PokerStars blogging desk on the tournament floor after picking up a free, tepid coffee doing some important research. During that small walk you can really see how much action there is the PCA. It is truly a festival of poker.
On your left as you turn out of the press room you can glance into the high stakes room, in which Shaun Deeb and someone else – who I’d probably recognise if 85% of their face wasn’t obscured – were watching the New York Giants-Atlanta Falcons game, before walking past a busy looking Courtney Wu, handler of the Team PokerStars Pro, who no doubt was off to shepherd another patched up player to a media meet and greet – possibly the pro who was trying hide themselves away alongside Deeb.
Further on in the ‘We are poker’ rotunda a broken stream of players scurried from the tournament to the bathroom and back, trying to miss as few hands as possible. Others skirted off to the right towards the poker dining area (pizza, conch chowder are our usual picks).
Then onto the beating heart of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure the Coral Tower bar tournament room. It’s got a life of its own: a heartbeat of of riffling chips and the in-out muffled breathing of PA announcements calling fresh meat to the ring games. Those cash tables sit to your left as you enter, the $5,000 turbo tournament on your right, while the $10,000 main event beast holds sway over the rest of the floor.
The jewel atop the tournament crown is the plush TV feature table that sits at the far end of the room, the scene of Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom’s $100,000 Super High Roller victory late last night. It’s now host to the usual PCA main event theatre with Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst, fellow sponsored sports star Boris Becker and UFC heavyweight Heath Herring the key performers. Stay with us as the drama unfolds.
