This is part II in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I here.

For me, the 2010 WSOP Main Event started early. My trip wasn’t until July 14th (Day 5) but Paul would be out there for the start of the 4 Day 1’s beginning on July 5th. We had been planning a redesign for the Twitter Poker Tour website and ramped up our efforts to be sure it launched prior to the start of the Main. We had seen significant traffic increases when Paul was out on his two previous trips to the WSOP this summer so why not have the redesign complete in preparation for the biggest poker event of the year?

We were able to get the site launched and added a tweet timelime to the sidebar so that people coming to the TPT site would see Paul’s WSOP coverage tweets. On top of that we added a photo gallery so that Paul and I could showcase the pictures we took during the Main Event.

Paul did a spectacular job covering the Main and I was able to stay up to date from his twitter feed and the updates he ran on the TPT site. Here is a recap of the days leading up to my arrival at the WSOP:

• Day 1A Recap | Pictures
• Day 1B Recap | Pictures
• Day 1C Recap | Pictures
• Day 1D Recap | Pictures and More Pictures
• Day 2A Recap | Pictures
• Day 2B Recap | Pictures
• Day 3 Recap | Pictures
• Day 4 Recap | Pictures

I flew out of Boston’s Logan International Airport on a direct flight to Las Vegas. When we pulled back fro the gate I opened up to page one of Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker by Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire.  During the 5+ hour flight I would put the book down sparingly to drink beer (and when my headache started from reading in flight, Rum and Coke). This was the longest continuous reading session since I plowed through The Stand when I had mono back in highschool. I have read Dr. Pauly’s blog for years so I expected it to be a funny book. But I was amazed at how raw the book was. He pulls no punches and tells a tale of his poker reporting life through the last several World Series. This is a must read book for fans of poker and the WSOP.

The flight was due to arrive at about 9PM local time and this was right around the end of the dinner break for Day 5. The WSOP tournament staff had imposed the same media restrictions thee had used during the “money-bubble” the previous day where they restricted table access to ESPN/441 Productions and PokerNews staff only. Prior to this you could walk between the tables to get pictures, chip counts, and hand by hand action. Now you were in the “Media Moat” as Dr. Pauly describes it; an inner rail that allows media to roam just inside the spectator rail but restricted from the poker tables.

With these restrictions in place, Paul decided to take a breather from the WSOP and come to Mccarran Airport to scoop me up. Even though we run the Twitter Poker Tour together and broadcast the TPT Live show every week for the last year, this would be the first time that Paul and I would meet in person. The great thing about “knowing” someone through all the conversations, tweets and emails is that it wasn’t like we were meeting for the 1st time. I got in the car and we bitched about the WSOP media access and cracked jokes about god knows what. We just shot the breeze and drove back to the Rio.

We parked in the back of the Rio right behind the convention center which houses the Amazon and Pavilion rooms, the two rooms that are home to the WSOP for the summer. By the time the Main Event rolls into Day 3, the Pavilion Room is emptied out and for the first time all summer, all the action in in the Amazon Room. Paul gave me the tour into the building and down the main hallway to the media room. The main hallway housed a beer concession (mental note taken), the On-Tilt clothing booth as well as PreventCancer.org and a publishing company displaying poker books.

The media room would be my new home for the WSOP while not walking the floor. It had several long banquet/press table with power strips for all our gadgets. There were roughly 6 or 7 other media outlets in this particular room, the rest were on media row in the front left and far left corners of the Amazon Room. There were two large screen TV’s in the media room that showed an overhead of the feature table as well as the flop cam. There was also a tournament clock and the WSOP Communications Staff. I met the aforementioned Seth Palansky and he hooked me up with my credentials. He said that I was the latest arrival he’s ever seen come to claim credentials! Oh well.

With credentials in hand (errr….around my neck) I made my first entrance into the Amazon Room where 300 or so players still remained from the just under 600 that began the day. Part jetlag and part disbelief, I was just a quiet participant following Paul around the Amazon room; skirting under the ropes and into the Media Moat. We moved from table to table to see all the notables still in the event. Scotty Nguyen, Johnny “F*cking” Chan, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi and his brother Robert, Scott Clements, Tristan Wade, Phil Galfond, Jean-Robert Bellande, David Baker, Adam Levy, and Eric Baldwin.

I was there to see Scotty go bust and watch him head off into the night with a proper send off from fans and media alike. Scotty would finish in 209th place for just under $49K shortly before play finished for the night. Play would end shortly after and we retreated to the media room so Paul could write the Day 5 Recap post and we could close up shop for the night.

Paul had been staying with friends up until this point but with the late hours at the Rio he was waking up the dog when he would get home. This would in turn wake up his friends baby. So Paul would share a room with me at the Hard Rock until his family came in on Saturday and they settled into a time share. After a late night dinner and drinks in the Hard Rock lobby it was time to crash. I had been up for nearly 24 hours and needed a rest. I was either way too tired or it was the rum and cokes at dinner, but I had a tough time getting to sleep that first night.

So that’s it for Part II, stay tuned for Part III. If you made it this far then I thank you!!