There are just a few tables throughout the Amazon and Brasilia rooms where Round One tables of the $1.5K NLHE Shootout event are taking place. We watched as several P5ers either flourished or floundered in their heads-up match.  Here are some of the big hands from the past hour of play:
Play had been relatively mild [...]

The official number of players for Day 1A came in at 161, making the field a little smaller than the organizers had hoped for but not too far out of line for the expected total field of around 400. Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar is one of the recent eliminations, falling to Alvin “alsmooth” Zeidenfeld. [...]

Shannon Shorr has been short stacked during this last level of the night but that hasn’t deterred him from getting involved in pots. When Shannon (pictured left) had 7.3k in chips remaining a player raised to 1.1k and Shannon pushed all in. The other player folded and Shannon added a bit more to his stack.
Soon after [...]

The energy jolting through all paths leading to the Amazon Room is palpable.
The halls are packed with people, security guards are influx, and camera crews are around nearly every corner.
This must be the unveiling of the biggest spectacle in poker, the WSOP Main Event.
With four starting days to accomodate what will be the largest field in this year’s WSOP, the 10k NL [...]

The grind continued in Event #48, the $2K No-Limit Hold’em tournament. Several PocketFivers continued to chip up over the last level and build their stacks to surpass the current average stack of 34K.
Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade (pictured at left) continued to win small pots and build his stack ever higher; he was up to 48K [...]