Miscellaneous sights from the Rio

I did finally get around to playing some actual poker last night after my socializing and gawking. I headed back to the regular poker room rather than joining the cash games in progress in the Pavilion Room for two main reasons. First, it's not nearly so noisy and chaotic there. Second, assuming they run things as in the past, you can't get any comp credits or status points playing in the WSOP rooms. If the games were meaningfully softer or better there, I'd play there and skip the trivial bonuses, but I have no reason to believe that to be the case.

In any event, here's what the newly covered tables in the main poker room look like. The "felt" is a very slick material, even easier to slide cards and chips across than "speedcloth." I liked it a lot. I'm guessing, though, that these were printed up before Harrah's and Everest Poker had their falling out.




For one of the downs in my session, we had celebrity dealer Nelson. I recognized him immediately from his countless appearances on High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, NBC Heads Up Championship, etc. Strangely, though, it appeared that not a single other player at my table knew his face. He was, as might be expected, a consummate pro in every respect.




Finally, I was lucky enough to snap the Picture of the Day. I was standing outside the Rio convention area with my friend Shamus when Kara Scott, who had been hanging around a few feet away from us (she can't keep her eyes off of me--and, really, who can blame her?) suddenly jumped onto the back of a scooter with Maridu (Maria Mayrinck).



That's right: This blog now features hot poker-girl-on-poker-girl action!

You're welcome.