It's my last night in Las Vegas, and there's one place I haven't been to yet.

Back in the day, Binion's Horseshoe was known as the mecca of poker because of the WSOP and all the high-stakes games Benny Binion would host. But now the WSOP isn't even played at Binion's, so the place lost its luster as America's No. 1 poker destination.

That moniker now belongs to Bellagio.

Bellagio is Las Vegas' most luxurious (and expensive) hotel and casino. From the minute you walk in the front door and see the glass-blown flowers hanging from the ceiling with a live piano playing in the lobby, you know you're somewhere special. The casino floor is clean, and always busy. Their craps pit is one of the most infamous in Las Vegas and always have lots of chips on the felt.

But mosey through the casino, and you'll eventually find the poker room -- a walled-off section of tables chock full of current, future and hopeful poker stars. And the limits aren't what you'll find at all the other rooms -- the lowest level of no limit poker you can play starts with $5 blinds and a minimum buy-in of $200. And there's usually a waiting list a mile long for it.

But if you happen to have, say, $500,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you could always try your luck at Bobby's Room.

If you're a veteran poker gawker, you already know about Bobby's Room, a one-table section separated by glass panels and walls inside the Bellagio poker room. It's where all the high-stakes action is played, mostly by professionals.

And on this day, who is facing out to the public but none other than a hunched over Phil Ivey in a light blue Polo. And he's got a monster stack of chips next to him. Eli Elezra is in there, as is David Oppenheim. There are two other guys, too, but neither one looks familiar.

They're playing a mixed game with $4,000-$8,000 blinds. No typos there. They play a mix of no-limit and fixed limit Hold 'Em, pot-limit Omaha (both high and low), deuce-to-seven triple-draw Lowball (don't ask if you don't know), seven-card Stud, and anything else that may tickle their fancy.

As I stare inside, wishing that I was somehow a bazillionaire who could sit in with them, an unfriendly poker host at Bellagio taps me on the shoulder.

"May I help you?" he sneers.

Quickly, I morph back into Everyday Joe and ask, "Um, yes. My cousin and I would like a souvenir poker chip from the Bellagio."

The host points us to the cashier (next to Bobby's Room -- sweet!) and we get our chips and slowly walk out from the sea of no-limit cash games fluttering around us.

If you're a poker player, and you make it to Las Vegas, you just have to play at the Bellagio. Even if you can't afford it, even if it's for 10 hands. Just to say you did it.

It's on my agenda for my next trip to Sin City.

I came out to Las Vegas to play cards as well as cover the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship. But after two days of watching the pros do what they do, it was time for me to do the same.

Word around the campfire was that the best "amateur" tournament was at Caesar's Palace, where they run an $80 no-limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament daily with a $50 add-on that gives you a total of 4,500 starting chips. So it's a $130 tournament. The competition was fair, not great, and the best part was the 40-minute blinds, which gave players plenty of time to play.

At first, my cousin, Evan, who was with me on the trip was not into it. "$80 is too much," he whined. I can't blame him. He's 21 -- $130 is like a week and a half's worth of White Castles. But after I explained the blinds and how we could win some serious cash ($4,000 went to first place), he was in.

We arrived at Caesar's and found their poker room right next to the sports book. Unbeknownst to us, they were hosting the National Poker League's Vegas Open, a competitive tournament opposite the Mandalay Bay event. The buy-in was $1,000 for the day's tournament, too hot for us. But I got to thinking -- if a player busted out of that tourney, he could be on tilt and join our cheap little tournament.

After buying into the Noon tournament (which started at 2 p.m. on this day because of the NPL tournament), we waddled to the back of Caesar's roomy poker room to check out the $1,000 tourney.

I figured some lesser-known pros would be in the $1,000 tournament, and I was right. As I walked up, an angry Al Krux (with a longer mullet than you may remember him having) whizzed past me. I saw Andy Bloch, a one-time WPT participant and part of the MIT Blackjack team, sitting and talking but not in the tournament.

And then I saw a table that had 10 players -- nine with heads and one with a gigantic black cowboy hat.

"Oh, Jesus," I said to my cousin, "it's 'Jesus.'"

Indeed, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson -- arguably one of the most well-known poker pros -- was playing. He had his trademark hat, long brown hair and sunglasses on.

"How in the world could he be in this tournament?" Evan asked.

He had a point. Ferguson is a multiple-bracelet winner at the World Series of Poker, and a millionaire based on his tournament winnings alone. Why is he tooling around in such a cheap-o tourney? Could the first prize even be enough to make him stop for a second?

Before we could even answer that, our measly $130 tourney got cooking. Sadly, it had only four tables (the regulars there say they usually get six or more), but I'm not going to turn my nose up at a chance to win some big bucks.

And as I sat down at my table, I see Andy Bloch -- the Andy Bloch -- sit in an adjoining seat. My premonition that a player who busted from the $1,000 tournament would play with us was right. And oh man, was it right.

Bloch is no Phil Ivey. You won't mistake him for Daniel Negreanu. He may not even be on the same level as a Phil Gordon or David Oppenheim. But he's still a professional.

I started out the tournament just fine, getting short stacked but doubling up with Ace/King vs. Ace/3 of clubs.

I take my rebuy soon thereafter, and with around 3,000 in chips, I find pocket Aces on the button -- it doesn't get any better than that.

With two limpers and the blinds at 50/100, I make it 400 to go. Nobody folds, including the big blind, so obviously they think I am trying to buy their blinds.

Focused intently on my opponents, I don't even see the flop. Just their actions. The big blind, an older man who I knew consciously hadn't played many hands in the tournament, led out for 400, a bet that stunk since the pot was so big. The two players after him folded and the action was on me.

I looked at the board: King/4/King. Two diamonds.

(Expletive).

The 400 chip bet reeked of someone who had a King. I immediately thought about folding -- and doing so face up. Boy, how cool would that look to my opponents? Except what if my opponent turned over Queen/Jack? Then I'd be a total idiot and bummed to boot. But I decided that I could get away from this hand if I had to. For the good of my tournament.

If he had a King, what would the kicker be? I raised, so maybe he has King/Queen or King/Jack. And, what are the odds he would have a King since two came out on the flop. He could have pocket 4s. Would he call that cold from the big blind?

After asking the old man how much he had left (he had 1,500 after his bet), I asked him, "If I show you my hand, will you show me your hand?"

Immediately, the man leans back and says in some sort of old-school accent, "What is this? 'If I show you my pee-pee will you show me your pee-pee?'" Hopefully he was speaking figuratively.

The table uproared with laughter, myself included. It was a nice tension breaker. But as the laughs went on, my opponent quit laughing. In fact, he started to look a little nervous. He looked uncomfortable, and if there was one thing I learned while watching the pros play at Mandalay Bay, it was to attack the uncomfortable ones.

I eliminated folding. Calling entered my mind, but instead I decided to attack the player, not fear the cards.

"All in," I announced, moving my chip stack forward, then glaring at the old man.

It took him like five seconds -- the longest five seconds in the history of tournament poker -- but he called.

And turned over King/10 of hearts.

Despite my yelling for an Ace, the turn and river brought no help, and the old man doubled through me and left me with like 1,500 chips. I felt like someone shot a cannonball into my gut. I didn't feel much like playing cards anymore. And what made it worse was that I could have just called and seen the turn or even folded -- I knew I could have -- on the flop. I was disgusted with myself.

I later doubled up with pocket deuces when I made a set on the flop, then lost an all-in with pocket Queens to Ace/King, and I was out with like 20 people left.

I sort of wandered out of the poker room and took a seat in Caesar's ridiculously lavish sports book. I watched a little baseball, but mostly thought about my tournament and how I wish that old man didn't have King/Ten. I know 1,000 poker players who would muck that hand in the big blind like it was brown trout.

Then I got a text on my cell. It was from Evan, who was still alive in the tournament.

It read: "Come see this"

I went back into the room, and Andy friggin' Bloch was two seats to the left of my cousin. My cousin, all of 21 and a novice at best at poker, was playing against Andy Bloch.

A few minutes later, the break came and Evan met me outside.

"I cannot believe you're playing with Andy Bloch," I said.

"Dude," he mellowed, "he's the easiest player in the world to read."

?!?!?!???!!?!?!

Evan apparently not only caught a tell on Bloch, but used it. And at the break, he was in the middle of the pack at chips.

Fast forward to the end of the tournament, where Evan outlasted Bloch and finished in 10th place. Prize: $0 and a pat on the back from his cousin.

He walked out of the room and felt like, well, a cannonball nailed him in the gut. "I was sooo close," he said.

As we walked out, we crossed the path of Ferguson, who was on his cell phone, pacing outside the poker room. I sort of nodded at him and he nodded back. As it turned out, he had just busted out of the $1,000 tournament and was nursing a cannonball-to-the-gut of his own.

Losing with Aces. Finishing just short of the money. Blowing an expensive tournament buy-in. Don't complain when it happens to you, because it happens to everyone. Even schlubs like me and my cousin, and superstars like Jesus.

It's Day 3 of the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship, hosted by the World Poker Tour. On Day 2, poker pro Brad Booth gave the tournament director fits with his unique tell-giving chip trick. On this day, he'd wow the entire tournament.

Here's the hand: A veteran pro in Seat 6 who will go nameless called preflop along with an early position caller. Booth in Seat 8 with a skyscraper of chips called right along in position.

The flop comes A/7/3, and all three players hung around to see the turn, which was another 3. "Seat 6" bet out 8,500, which Booth called but the other player did not.

The river was an offsuit 9, and "Seat 6" leads out for 18,000 chips. It's a nice-sized bet, but Booth has the firepower to call and lose if he wanted to just see "Seat 6's" cards. He thinks for a second, almost does the aforementioned chip trick, and calls.

With King high.

And wins.

"Seat 6" turns over his hand -- Jack/10 offsuit -- and says the obligatory "nice call."

The room turns upside down. Players at this table, and others when they hear about it, are in total shock. It's normal to see someone pick someone off with Ace-high, but with King/Deuce?! Definitely not run-of-the-mill.

"I guess it's a bit of an advanced play," Booth said after it happened. "When he called preflop, for whatever reason I put him on a hand like Queen/Jack or Jack/10. And I could tell through the early player's body language that he was going to fold, so I called to see the river. He bet out 18,000 and I just stuck with my read. It was a fairly big bet, but I know that the best players are creative, so I decided to look him up (call his bet)."

Did having a big stack play a role in calling?

"I guess that does play a role," Booth said, "but in all honesty, once I put a read on somebody, I follow through with it. I guess if I had a shorter stack, I might have had to really consider calling. But I probably still would have gone with it."

Reading players, making gutsy calls (or two, or three), playing the players and not the cards. Welcome to the World Poker Tour.

Now that's poker.

There are 56 players left when Day 3 of the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship begins, and most eyes are on the remaining pros.

This includes my eyes, who are on John Juanda and Tuan Le, two pros who not only happen to have big chip stacks and aggressive reputations to go along with them, but also two pros that are sitting right next to each other. Juanda is in Seat 5, Le in Seat 6.

Eager to learn at the feet of these poker stars, I pull up a chair facing them and pull out my notepad.

Hand 1: Le is under the gun (first to act before the flop), and he raises to 15k (blinds are 1,500/3,000 with 400 antes). Everyone folds until it's Juanda's turn in the big blind. He looks at his cards, plays with his chips, and calls Le.

Meanwhile, everyone at the table begins praying silently that one of these behemoths knocks out the other.

The flop comes 2/10/3 with two spades. Juanda checks, Le thinks for a bit (or at least acts like he's thinking), then also checks.

The turn is a non-spade 4 and Juanda fires out a 17,000 chip bet. It appears that Le studies Juanda's hands for a while, fiddling with his chips in the process. After an eternity (actually around 40 seconds), Le folds.

No more than five seconds later, both players are smiling and talking to each other, but very quietly. I'm five feet from them and I can't hear anything. No word if they reached a peace agreement or told each other what they had.

Hand 2: Le is in the big blind, Juanda in the small. Folded to the button, an amateur player raises before the flop. Now when you normally play and you raise from that spot (last to act before the blinds), the blinds will get suspicious and you'll have to have a decent hand. Keep in mind that for this hand, the blinds are Juanda and Le! So either the amateur has some serious cojones, or he's got a serious hand.

Juanda studies the raiser for about 30 seconds, then finally mucks his hand. Le, on the other hand, throws his hand away immediately without studying the opponent, and the amateur has scored a small victory over two name pros.

Hand 3: Now Le is the small blind and Juanda is on the button. The table folds to Juanda, who folds. Almost without hesitation, Le takes his hand, fills it with a tall stack of white 5,000 chips, and drops it on the table. The poor woman in the big blind has no choice but to fold her hand, shrugging to her friends watching from the rail as if to say, 'What could I do?'

Hand 4: Le's on the button. A middle position bettor puts out 8,500. Not too much of a raise since the big blind is 3,000. Juanda folds, but Le protects his position and re-raises to 15,000. The first bettor calls.

The flop is K/7/2 with two spades. Le has the advantage here since he's last to act, and he knows it. The opponent checks, and almost immediately, Le fires out a massive 33,000 chip bet. It's automatic for him; he knows that if his amateur opponent had a King, he'd bet it (wouldn't he?). Or maybe Le isn't even thinking about his opponent's hand and instead tests him with chips.

It doesn't matter. The amateur folded in disgust.

I learned two things from these four hands: One, play your position to the fullest. When Juanda was in the big blind, he took a risk by calling Le with whatever he had. Le, of course, had the guts to lead out from first position to begin with, so maybe he had a strong hand. Even if Juanda's hand wasn't too good, if he out-flopped Le, maybe he could have taken all of Le's chips. It just didn't work out that way there. Le also gave a gleaming example of how to steal the big blind from the small blind by just being reckless. Yeah, if the lady in the big blind had aces, he would have lost around like 65,000 chips. But maybe he picked up something on her when she saw her cards or something.

The other thing I learned: Don't play tournament poker with John Juanda or Tuan Le

Chaos has erupted on Day 2 of the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship.

At a table including Josh Arieh in Seat 1 and David Williams in Seat 7, promising young Canadian pro Brad Booth has drawn the ire of the table and paralyzed the tournament.

Here's what happened: Booth and Williams were involved in a hand where Booth bet around 10,000 chips after the flop. Williams called. Both players checked the turn.

On the river, Booth checked and Williams bet 20,000 chips. Booth then started playing with his chips, including taking a huge chunk of chips in his hand, reaching them towards the pot like he's going to bet them, then flicking them back towards his stack. Williams is clearly annoyed.

Eventually, Booth goes all in and Williams mucks, saying "You better stop doing that (stuff)." Booth shows his 8/4 offsuit for fourth pair and says, "Why? It's not illegal."

Arieh steps in and essentially calls Booth a cheater for acting like he's going to bet chips, then not doing so. In the poker world, this is called 'angle shooting.' Booth stands his ground and voices are raised. Williams ultimately calls the tournament director to ask him for a ruling on Booth's move.

After explaining the rules, the director, who is keeping his cool the whole time, points out the yellow line that is in front of every player and forms an oval around the inside of the table.

"Any chips that cross this line and touch the felt are live. If they don't, then they are not in play."

Arieh is livid.

"That's crazy! So I can hold my chips over the halo like this," he says incredulously as he hovers his chip-filled hand over the middle of the table, "and as long as I don't drop the chips, they're not in play?!"

"Correct, Josh," the director says.

"But they crossed the line," Arieh argues, motioning like they crossed the line but through the air, like the goal line in an NFL game.

"Doesn't matter," says the director, "they didn't touch the table."

"So you're saying I can move all of my chips right up to the line, but that doesn't constitute action?" Arieh asks as he moves his chips like he's going all in, except stopping short of the yellow line.

"That's right."

"That is horrible !" blurts Arieh.

By now, the whole room is looking over at the table.

"Let's just play, let's not argue," someone from the table shouts.

"No! Let's argue! Let's argue!"

Who said that? Who else but Mike "The Mouth" Matusow, who was checking out the scene from his adjoining table. The crowd watching the tournament broke into laughter.

Arieh was still very upset.

"This line right here," he said as he pointed to the yellow line, "is the biggest joke in the history of poker." The tournament director chose not to respond to that.

Arieh left the tournament later on, and Williams followed him out the door when Booth caught a runner-runner full house to crack Williams' pocket Kings.

I cornered Booth the next day.

"That chip trick is one of my most reliable tells," Booth said. "I've been doing it for years, and it'll show me every time when someone is either strong or weak."

As for whether or not he thinks it will affect his relationship with fellow pros Arieh or Williams, Booth says, "Nah. Those guys are good guys who just tried to get me on tilt. I can't blame them."

Just another day at the office for Booth.

Another difference between watching a poker tournament on television and watching it live is that there are tons of hands being dealt, and the professionals don't play all that often. While watching young pro Michael Gracz, for example, I noted that I didn't catch him playing a single hand.

But his focus was unlike anything I had ever seen in my years of playing poker.

Normally when you're playing, your mind might wander or you could watch TV. Maybe have a chat with someone next to you.

Not Gracz. Wearing a tight-brimmed World Poker Tour cap, he never ever takes his eyes off the action. Folding? He sees it. Raising with a twitching right hand? He knows.

You'd think it would be commonplace for a poker professional risking $10,000 on a tournament to be spending every ounce of energy on staying in the moment and focusing on doing whatever it takes to give him an edge -- any edge -- in defeating his opponents.

But this is not always the case.

During this tournament, it's not uncommon for a player to be in a hand when he gets a cell phone call. He'll take the call, "hold on a second," he (or she) will say, fold the hand and then get up and talk. Ultimately, the following phrase will be uttered: "Hey, can I call you back? I'm in this poker tournament in Vegas ..." That call could mean as many as two hands missed. Tsk tsk.

Other players like to get up and check out other tables when they're not involved in a hand. Proof that advanced scouting goes beyond football and baseball.

Juan Carlos Mortensen, a former World Series of Poker Main Event champion, has a PSP with him on this day. And on it, he has a sudoku puzzle he's trying to solve. In his defense, he does have a mountain of chips and can appear to coast into the money, but he's still looking at his cards, mucking them in turn, then trying to figure out if that 7 fits into the top-left corner.

The lovely Cyndy Violette has these rocks that surround her when she's sitting down. Not rocks ... pebbles. With inspiring words on them. Along the same lines, "Gentle" Joe Awada has photos of his kids near him, something other players do. Whatever keeps you smiling is the idea behind those accompaniments.

An iPod is another favorite amongst poker pros. Several of them, including aged veteran Chau Giang, have one. At one point, my cousin and partner-in-crime Evan asked me to start asking pros what songs they had on their iPods, but I didn't want to bother them while in play.

But young poker pro David Williams trumps them all. Not only does Williams have an iPod, but he's also got a Sidekick -- which is a cell phone/game player/text messager. So while Williams isn't in a hand, he's bopping his head listening to a tune while texting one of his famous pals.

Definitely hipper than Dewey Tomko, who has two tiny, brown items he brings with him every time he sits down:

Ear plugs.

Over my three days of covering the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship, I noticed there were some tables where you just wouldn't want to have a seat at.

Close your eyes (well, don't really close them) and imagine sitting down in a tournament where the winner gets a smidge over a million bucks, and your table has Cindy Violette in Seat 2, Chad Brown (the player, not the linebacker) in Seat 3, Evelyn Ng in Seat 4, Max 'The Italian Pirate' Pescatori in Seat 5, Erick Lindgren in Seat 7 and rookie poker babe Vanessa Rousso in Seat 8. True, you'd have plenty of eye candy, but you'd probably be out of chips faster than you can say "Do you want me to call?"

Or try this table on for size: Former WSOP Main Event runner-up Dewey Tomko in Seat 2, high-stakes poker player Chau Giang in Seat 3, former WPT champion Martin De Kniff in Seat 7 and long-time player "Miami" John Cernuto in Seat 9. Definitely not as attractive as the first table.

And then there's the crew right in front of us: Joe Awada in Seat 1, T.J. Cloutier in Seat 9 and Mike "The Mouth" Matusow in Seat 6 -- directly across from the veteran Cloutier, and directly in front of where we're sitting.

Matusow is not dressed to impress. For instance, most of the men here are wearing button-down shirts or a sports jersey. "The Mouth" is in a Full Tilt t-shirt with a ragged hat, jeans shorts, crooked glasses and sneakers that could use a garbage can.

And interestingly enough, he's not very charismatic. He sits, he plays poker. Once in a while he gets into a conversation with Cloutier spouting their vast knowledge of the game since they're pros (a move made to make the amateurs feel more like people sitting in on a tour than a tournament).

I'm interested to talk to him, but it's my cousin, Evan, who befriends him first. Evan actually checked out other tables, then reported back to Matusow what he saw. No word if Matusow gave the kid some tip money.

Matusow's back is to the rail, and with us sandwiched in between, we hear a lot from what the people watching are saying. There's always a crowd at the rail, sometimes three people deep, with husbands pointing and whispering to their uninterested wives, "There's that guy we've seen on TV -- the one who trash-talked Fossilman!" It's a neat attraction for passers-by who have watched even just a couple of hours of poker on TV and recognize a couple of these guys.

At an adjoining table, there's much tension as a massive three-way pot develops. The details are sketchy, but it looks like an amateur pushed young European pro Patrik Antonius out of the hand and got his pair of Fours up against a short stack with King/Jack of hearts. After Antonius mucked his hand and saw the live hands, he turned in disgust.

I watch the King/Jack guy get eliminated and turn around, only to have Matusow in my grill.

"What just happened?" he asked me as he came over from his seat, his crooked glasses and slightly crossed

"Oh, uh, um ..." I stammered. On one hand, Matusow looked like an everyday guy, but on the other, this is somebody I have tons of respect for after he mauled the competition at the 2005 WSOP.

I finally pushed the details of the hand out of my mouth. Shaking his head, Matusow says, "I guarantee you Patrik folded the best hand. I guarantee it."

Matusow turns around to go back to his seat, but quickly turns back to me and says, "Thanks, buddy." I smile back as he settles in next to his chips and plays poker. Quietly.

So there you have it. I survived my first and only encounter with Mike "The Mouth" Matusow. And he didn't even drop an F-bomb or “blow up” like he’s known to do.

1:55 p.m. PT on June 5, 2006: Tuan Le is a young poker star that isn't quite the everyday, household name like Phil Hellmuth or Johnny Chan, but it doesn't mean he doesn't play hard and get loads of respect.

Le, a short, soft-spoken youngster with diamond earrings, was saddled at a table that included John Juanda in Seat 1 and Erik Seidel in Seat 3 (and a poor soul who looked like Brian Billick in between them). Known as one of the more aggressive and gutsy players on the World Poker Tour, Le raises a raiser before the flop on Day 2. What does it mean? Well, Le's got some well-documented chutzpah, so he might have a hand like 10/4 offsuit and is just trying to pick up the first raiser's chips. Or he might have pocket Aces and is playing them the way he should. The problem for the initial raiser is that he has no idea -- Le plays so many hands and plays them all with the same level of aggression that it's virtually impossible to have a gauge on what he's got.

The raiser, faced with this dilemma, decides to push back. After all, if Le does have total junk under his chip protector, he'll toss his hand away. "All in," says the amateur, and it took Le took about 0.5 seconds to call and turn over pocket Queens, decimating the Ace/10 of his opponent. Le even pulls a Hellmuth and pushes his chips forward as fast as he can. The amateur's hand doesn't improve, and Le collects a nice pot. On the next hand, he raises (who knows if he even really looked at his cards) and wins the blinds, as if to say, "Just because I won a big pot last hand doesn't mean I can't keep bullying." And by the way, he now has a mountain of chips.

Juanda and Seidel sort of nod, and look at each other, and then sit back. They know they have work to do if they want to bust him.

Later, Le calls a pre-flop raise and is heads-up with a confident-looking older player. The flop comes 10/4/7. The older gentleman checks, figuring that Le is so aggressive that he'll bet no matter what the flop is. He's right, and Le bets out and gives a glare before diverting his eyes to the felt, expressionless. The old man checks his hole cards, agonizes a little bit, stares down Le, and pushes in his chips -- a bunch of them. Le takes two seconds to call the bet, without even asking how much, and the older guy has to be loving this because he's got Le right where he wants him as he turns over a pair of Jacks. He even makes a face that says "Gotcha!"

Le nods, then smiles as he turns over 10/7 offsuit. 10/7 offsuit! Le flopped two pair in a stroke of luck and it's good enough to win all of the chips and send the old man muttering and stammering. Le's mountain of chips has become a skyline.

"That's the way I am," Le told me about being overly aggressive. "If I'm going to play, I'm not going to play it halfway. I'm going to play it to the best of my ability. I'm not going to not execute."

After winning his WPT Championship, Le admitted that he can't play the way he used to. "I can't get away with the things I used to get away with. If you're a great player, you have to adjust and roll with the punches."

So you'd figure that Le had to ramp up his wild style to get to this point in his life, right? Nope. "Actually, I had to ease up and back off and make better judgments. I can't have that recklessness anymore because I can't get away with it anymore. Everybody knows me."

Given that he's only 28, you'll have plenty of time to get to know him too.

10:35 a.m. PT on June 5, 2006: Karen Trachtenberg is a doll.

She's not a professional poker player, but she works for a professional poker player's television show. Check that. The professional poker player's television show. A young veteran of public relation jobs including stints in the NFL and Arena Football, Karen takes something as unglamourous and masculine-ridden as poker and puts a big, perky smile on it.

It's kind of funny, but behind the WPT shows we see on TV, dominated by male players and broadcasters, here's a brunette Elle Woods

"We are SO glad you're here!" Karen said to Evan and I as she handed us our credentials. "Anything you guys need, please just ask." Seriously, I've known her three minutes and she could teach some NFL PR people some things. Trachtenberg offers us anything and everything we want.

"How about a freeroll into the tournament?" I quip. Heh heh.

"I would, but the tournament started yesterday, and it wouldn't be fair to the other players," she winked. Of course, I had better odds of morphing into the Jack of Spades than even winning a hand against the best poker players in the world.

Karen left us to set up our connections and again reminded us that we can talk to any players we want so long as they're agreeable (read: not if they're playing and not if they just lost all their chips). She even got me in touch with WPT host Mike Sexton, who wasn't participating in this tournament and was at home getting ready to call the final table.

After meeting some members of the poker media (including the well-seen Richard Belski of Card Player video fame and long-time poker blogger Mike Paulle), Evan and I settled in. Except, the same sea of empty green-felt tables we had seen the day before was unchanged. It was like 11:45 a.m. with the tournament set to start at Noon, and nobody was here! OK, maybe a couple of excited amateur players ready to attempt another day at surviving the sharks, but otherwise the room was thin.

"Where the hell is everybody?" I asked Evan, sitting no less than two feet from one of the tables.

"Maybe they're all at the pool," he replied, citing Mandalay Bay's incredible resort pool.

But before we could run out and see if Gavin Smith was kicked back in the lazy river, in walked T.J. Cloutier, bigger than life. Cloutier has been playing poker for longer than most of you have been born. Then Erik Seidel, another poker legend, took his seat at his table. Then we saw John Juanda and Carlos Mortensen. Erick Lindgren and Josh Arieh. David Williams and Tuan Le. Cindy Violette and Vanessa Rousso (both of which are impeccable in person). The room went from a library to happy hour in literally 120 seconds.

All of the poker professionals came in refreshed and ready, and before any of them took their seats, they all caught up with at least two other professionals and shared good wishes. Mike "The Mouth" Matusow took a tour of the room and wished luck to several friends. "Miami" John Cernuto, who had lost about 1,000 pounds and was thinner than even Evelyn Ng, was all smiles.

This was at Noon.

By 12:04, you could hear a pin drop (if the players weren't shuffling their chips non-stop). Nobody was making jokes. Nobody was talking unless they were trying to get information about the hand. Nobody's asking about yesterday's baseball scores or how a certain stock is doing. It's the sound of 168 people click-clacking their stacks of checks, and nothing else.

This is when I start to realize that poker-player perception does not equal poker-player reality. A lot of people hear that someone is a professional card player and immediately thinks that the person is living on easy street without a care in the world. Well, that may be true of some, but these guys take their work as seriously as a surgeon. They study each and every move and even go as far as to try and peek at the underside of their opponents' cards as they muck them.

After all, each of them invested $10,000 (which isn't exactly pocket change to these folks, either), and at this moment it's their only source of income. They could have stock portfolios or could be selling a car, but one of them will play well and make all the right moves and leave with $1,033,440. That's first prize, and it's a hell of a return on a $10,000 investment. That's why it's silent.

Naturally, Evan and I were out-of-our-minds excited to be here and watch this. But we were keeping it on the inside.

9:00 p.m. PT on June 4, 2006: Anyone who has been to Las Vegas knows about the taxi line at McCarran International Airport. On any given night, especially Fridays, the line for a taxi wraps like something you'd see for Magic Mountain. But instead of kids jumping up and down giddy at the chance to test themselves against Mickey's most favorite ride, it's a slew of angst-ridden gamblers who can't stand waiting any more than two minutes for a 10-minute cab ride to the Strip so they can start whipping out the cash (that is, if they haven't done so already at McCarran's vast pool of slot machines).

But on this Sunday night, the line is nil, an absolute coup for a couple of reporters/poker players like my cousin, Evan, and myself. When you see more cabs than people waiting for a ride, you're in good shape.

After arriving at our hotel, checking in and cashing our travelers checks, we do what any two young, hyped-up kids from the east coast would do: Pick up media credentials.

Evan, 21, is all about the media credential. He has a gigantic pile of them in his dorm room, collected from events such as the NFL Draft and Major League Baseball games to concerts featuring both major attractions and New Jersey garage bands. But neither of us had ever covered a poker event before, much less a World Poker Tour event, and we were both very interested in climbing over the rail to watch someone win a million bucks (and land a credential in the process).

We did some math on our way over to Mandalay Bay: Let's see, the tournament started around Noon, and usually poker tournaments run 11-to-13-hour days to get as few people as possible into the next day's action. Well, the tournament must be in its ninth hour, so we should be able to see plenty of pros finish out Day 1.

On our way to the Mandalay Bay poker room, we saw our first "professional" -- Bob Stupak. Now I don't know if you know who Bob Stupak is, or if you'd recognize him looking dazed while puffing a cigarette while sitting on a nickel slot machine, but the man was the creator of former on-strip attraction Vegas World, and is a cross between an old Marilyn Manson and a facelift patient gone wrong thanks to a motorcycle accident he suffered in 1995. Judging by the stupor he appeared to be in, he must have busted out of the tournament recently. Probably not a good time for an interview.

That was OK with us anyway since we were both spooked out from his weird face and interested in chatting it up with some of the better-known pros. We walked briskly as we started to see huge signs for the WPT's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship. This was it! My eyes opened wide and I prepared to grin triumphantly. I couldn't believe I was about to see a sea of gamblers doing what they do best.

And I saw ... exactly zero poker players.

The day's action was over, and all that was left were a handful of dealers and sealed ziploc bags containing the chips of all the remaining players. Not a soul was gambling. Apparently poker players don't like to hang out after playing non-stop poker for a day. Big shock.

We knew they'd be back the next day at Noon, and that's when we'd return to cover this high-stakes poker tournament and get a glimpse at what they don't show you on television.

And, of course, pick up our credentials.

5:04 p.m. ET on June 1, 2006: Walking out of the CBS SportsLine.com building early to get home to my wife who had her school’s pre-kindergarten graduation (she’s gave diplomas, not received), I got a call from my cousin, Evan, who turned 21 last October.

“Dude,” he said in his always-mellow tone, “Vegas. 72 hours away.”

You would think it would be him, not me, excited about heading to Las Vegas to break his gambling chastity belt and to cover the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship, a $10,000 buy-in event that will feature nearly every major professional card player on the planet, but it's actually me, the five-time Vegas veteran, who can't wait to hob-nob with the sharks and cover my first poker event.

I learned how to play poker (five and seven card stud) through Intellivision, the video game system that dominated households that didn't already have Atari in the 1980s. Yes, it was that big-headed yellow dealer who was fuming when he lost and all smiley when he won that taught me that flushes beat straights and three pairs aren't any good. Nearly 25 years later, I'm still playing (albeit through the magic of Florida's state poker laws), and interested in improving my game as well as watching professionals do their thing.

It’s true that I’m far more excited about the trip than he, at least on the surface. For weeks, I’ve toiled on the Internet trying to hunt down Las Vegas' best restaurants, hotels and poker rooms. All the while, Evan has been low-key on his requests. The poor guy isn’t even interested in going to nightclubs or strip clubs -- hanging out with Doyle Brunson and Chau Giang suits him just fine.

He has insisted on leaving all of the plans in my hands. Except one. Evan’s lone request: “I want to eat at In & Out Burger.”

That’s right, folks, he’s 21, has some money and aspirations to be a journalist, convinced his mother to pop for a plane ticket to go to Vegas even though she hates gambling, and all he wants to do is chow on West-Coast fast food, animal style.

Could it be that Doyle Brunson is hipper than my cousin?