Touring the World Series of Poker – Part II

Posted by James on September 5, 2008

Now let’s enter the Players Entrance doors of the Amazon Room. When you walk into the room, you will see a sea of poker tables. The Amazon Room is setup with over 200 poker tables in four sections. The sections are color coded green, red, orange, and blue. Color coding the sections allows multiple events to be played in the same room without a lot of confusion. If you look to your immediate right upon entering, this is the red section.

The red section is the section where the cash games are held. Cash games start as low as $4-$8 Limit to the highest NL Holdem game that they can get interest for. All games are spread as long as there is an interest. High limit stud and mixed game players are known to be staples of the cash games. In the middle of the red section, you will notice some tables that are sectioned off. This is the high limit cash game section. The high limit section features the highest limits of various games played. During one late night event, a NL cash game was being played with around $8 Million on the table between the players involved.

To your left is the orange section. At the back of the section is the Media Tower. The Media Tower is a new addition at the World Series of Poker that was installed to give the media a place to convene and work inside the Amazon Room without getting in the way of players and staff. It’s also raised off the ground so you get a great view of the room. The orange section is used in a lot of the larger No-Limit tournaments and also is the starting area for most of the 5 pm mixed bracelet events.

If you walk further into the room you will notice the blue and green sections. The blue section is almost exclusively used for No-Limit tournaments. Any tournament that starts in the Amazon room at noon will eventually break down to the blue section. If you come to the Amazon room after 4pm to watch your friend that is still in an event, this is the section you will want to come to first.

The green section is used primarily for day two restarts early in the World Series. Larger No-Limit tournaments can be found here as well. The final table sections can be found at the back of the green section. The Milwaukee’s Best No Limit Lounge is the home of the televised final tables on ESPN and ESPN360. Inside the lounge is a specialized final table complete with pocket cams. It is surrounded by a makeshift studio including stands and cameras. High profile final tables will be played here. Other final tables will be played typically at green 15. These final tables are typically non-televised events and most of the mixed events wind up here. Next time, I will wrap up the tour with the satellite areas and a few other points of interest inside the World Series of Poker.