Let the Bubble Bubble Begin

With just 640 runners left holding chip stacks at the moment, and payouts beginning at 441st place, the Seniors Championship is actually miles away from reaching the money bubble, but that fact hasn't stopped several hundred seniors from starting the sweat.

To the untrained eye, it would appear that the television screens displaying a running count of total players, along with the full prizepool information, have been switched to a rerun of Matlock. Every minute or so a new player wanders over to the screen, anxiously staring upward while scanning to see how close they are to that coveted WSOP cash. For the largely amateur field here on Day 1, this is likely the longest many have lasted in a Texas Hold'em tournament, and that inexperience has been evident by these repeated trips to check the monitors.

We expect play to slow down considerably as the surviving seniors try to fold their way to the money, even though we are a couple hundred bustouts from the bubble actually being reached. In this Seniors Championship, which stands in as the Main Event for several thousand amateurs every year, the pre-bubble bubble has become a tradition of sorts, and with so many players on the verge of accomplishing a lifelong dream, we can certainly understand why.