For those of you who have not been bitten by the Poker bug:  WSOP means World Series of Poker.  It is an annual event that takes place, for a month, in Las Vegas.  This year in the Main Event, the grand prize was $12,000,000.  This is Texas Hold'em poker.  This year 8,773 people either were sponsored into or paid the $10,000.00 to enter this event.  This event is like the Baseball World Series in October.  It is the last event of the month long activities. 

After the WSOP is over, ESPN shows some of the different poker events.  Usually they start with the lesser events and work their way up to the Main Event, but this year ESPN has decided to start their coverage with the Main Event.  To give you some perspective on just how much this event has grown in the last few years I can tell you that that I started watching in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won $1,500,000.  I believe that year there were about 850 entrants into the Main Event.  Moneymaker won his entrance fee by playing poker online.  2004 Greg Raymer won $2,500,000 with just over 2200 entrants.  This was the final time that the winner played everyday of the tourneyment.  In 2005, 5,619 people entered the Main Event.  In the end, Joe Hachem from Australia walked away with the $5,000,000 prize.

In the first two episodes, two of the players that I dislike the most have already been eliminated.  They are Phil Hellmuth, who declared himself to be the best Hold'em player in the world,  and Mike "The Mouth" Matesow, who got his nickname by his reputation.  I already know that a new unknown player wins this years tourneyment, but I just love watching the professionals play.  There certainly is some luck to winning a tournement, but given that there are some professionals that make it past the first couple days every years, there is also a lot of skill to playing.