Just a Drop in the Bucket
With the 2012 Big One for One Drop rating as a rousing success, generating nearly $6 million in charitable contributions for water-related causes around the developing world, the connection between the poker community and concern over worldwide water shortages would appear to be cut and dry.
Today's Little One for One Drop is being played under the same premise, with a portion of every buy-in and reentry being devoted to the One Drop's assortment of charities, but many of the players in attendance today seem to have forgotten what they are really playing for.
Hundreds of tiny water bottles litter the Brasilia Room's floor, as players try to stay hydrated during the intense heat wave overwhelming Las Vegas during this especially brutal summer season. Despite the drought-like conditions afflicting the American southwest, the most precious fluid on Earth is flowing freely here at the Rio, with many players guzzling down the pint-sized disposable bottles in a single gulp.
Poker is a game defined by irony, with close friends taking one another's money in remorseless fashion, and deception prized as a valued skill, but the discordance between this tournament's ostensible objective and the unquenchable thirst of this two thousand runner field is inescapable.