Cocktailed and ready

They call it The Dig and it's not a place for the claustrophobic. Or the fish-ophobic. It's an underground tunnel, through which you walk, facing everything from colorful sea fish, to mean looking eels, to glowing jellyfish. It's inspiring and spooky enough to give a tired blogger the willies.

But tonight, anyone who walked through it emerged to the sound of music and PokerStars winners' cocktail reception.

It was a fine afair, with fried pot stickers, crab cakes, jumbo shrimp, and some sort of gooey lambchop that I may never be able to fully erase from my memory. Bless the epicures of the world.

More than that though, it was a chance for the old online friends to finally see each other face to face, and for the old school pros to josh with each other before the big event starts tomorrow.

Rather than over-romanticize the event and the lamby-lamby-lambchops, I thought it might just be better to throw a few pictures up. We're just a few minutes from the beginning of the first tournament action of the week. I should probably concern myself with that and not lambchops and the prettier of the pro players.



PokerStars' Dan Goldman addresses the crowd



The crowd receives its address


Tournament director, Mike Ward, reviews the crowd



Beauty and poker



Robin Hood arrives


Pete Giordano and the Moneymaker men

***

One thing I'd like to do as much as possible this week is introduce you to the people who won their way in and are taking a shot at the big time.



This is B.J. (aka bjbad1) from Alamogordo, NM on the left. He won his entry earlier in the year and was pretty happy about that. Then, on Christmas, he won another entry and promptly transfered it over to his uncle (pictured right), the man who taught him to play poker.

That's a pretty good holiday gift. Not to mention a pretty good nephew.

The Super-Sat starts soon. No telling how many Main Entry events we'll pay out tonight, but 3am should be pretty interesting.