On Friday, PocketFives’ co-founder Cal Spearswas playing cash games in the mammoth Pavilion Room at the Rio in Las Vegas, one day before the start of the World Series of Poker Main Event. Out of the hundreds of tables set up in the room on the US Independence Day, only a few were in use. Finding Cal when this author woke up was easy; he was the only one there.

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Let’s fast-forward one day to the beginning of the Main Event on Saturday. Poker players from across the world will pony up a buy-in of $10,000 with the hopes of winning this year’s tournament, which has a top prize of $10 million guaranteed. Members of the media and community at large genuinely seem pretty excited about the prospects of one poker player being awarded an eight-figure top prize.

The booths lining the convention center hallway were a ghost town on Friday, as was the Voodoo Zipline on top of the Rio (which is awesome, by the way), but by Saturday morning, a buzz was in the air. Booths were staffed with people hawking goods and services and the hallway was jam-packed with life. It was a bright, sunny, windless morning with just a few clouds in the sky.

Last year, the Main Event attracted 6,352 entrants, the eighth largest Main Event in history. With a $10 million guaranteed winner’s take, we fully expect this year’s contest to surpass that number by several hundred. Our guess is around 7,000 players and it remains to be seen how close to the record-breaking turnout of nearly 9,000 that came in 2006 we can get.

On Twitter, members of the poker community were pumped to play on Saturday. Poker pro Bernard Lee was celebrating a milestone of sorts this year: “The @WSOP Main Event begins today, Will be my 10th.” 2003 WSOP Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker (pictured) added, “Just had a Main Event breakfast. Cooked 6 eggs and 8 pieces of bacon. Yum.”

Andrew Feldman of ESPN, who may have hustled this author while betting on the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Friday, was humming a tune 24 hours later, Tweeting, “A sign? Our @WSOP theme song playing @RioVegas right now, hours before the start of the Main.” We’d like to send a special shout out to Feldman’s partner in crime, Bluff’s Lance Bradley.

We’ll keep you posted on the latest as the Main Event begins. The cards hit the air at Noon PT on Saturday for Day 1A.

Don’t forget that if you’re in Las Vegas, come bowl with PocketFives on Sunday, July 6 at the Gold Coast Bowling Center from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. We’ll have free bowling, free food, and free drinks. No RSVP is necessary; just show up and bring a friend if you’d like.

In other WSOP news, Bryn BrynKenneyKenney (pictured) won a $1,500 Ten-Game Six-Handed event for his first gold bracelet. Kenney has logged four cashes at this year’s WSOP, three of which have been for final tables. He told WSOP officials, “It feels great. I would have been really upset if I didn’t take this tournament home. I’m happy I could win it for me, my family, and all my friends.”

Kenney started the final day of play, when nine players were left, in second place to New Zealand’s Jan Suchanek, who ultimately finished as the runner-up. Kenney’s victory was worth $153,000, which helped push his career WSOP cash total to $1.2 million:

1st Place: Bryn BrynKenneyKenney – $153,200
2nd Place: Jan Suchanek – $94,618
3rd Place: Fabio Coppola – $61,396
4th Place: Dan Zack – $40,550
5th Place: Andrey Zaya Zaichenko – $27,033
6th Place: Randy mavsrule3 Ohel – $18,923

We’ll have the latest WSOP newsfor you right here on PocketFives, brought to you by Real Gaming, a regulated online poker site in Nevada.

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