With just thirty minutes left before the final table of the 50K Horse event begins, the hallways here at the Rio are filling up even more than usual.

There is pretty much one entrance for players to come through, and I happened to be standing near it about fifteen minutes ago, when Andy Bloch came in. I kind of know Andy, and I wished him luck, and congratulated him on making the final table. Andy was friendly and gracious, but I can also tell that he is one hundred percent focused on his game.

Shortly after Andy walked in, Chip Reese came up the walkway, and ran into two women who were lurking around the doors. One of them stopped him, and told him a story about Puggy Pearson that was essentially a personal bad beat story that involved leaving cold french fries on a room service cart.

Are you fucking serious? Chip Reese is on his way into the final table of the largest buy-in WSOP event in history, and you think it's cool to stop him and tell him a story about cold french fries? Chip handled it with grace and quickly continued into the Rio.

Aside: I'm writing this from the PokerStars hospitality suite, where I can get on the wireless network, and all day long top pros have been in and out of the room. David Sklansky just wandered in, wearing a PokerStars shirt, no less, looked around, and headed out. Weird.

I haven't seen any of the other final table players, but here's how they stack up, from Poker Wire:

1. Chip Reese 1,756,000
2. Doyle Brunson 1,227,000
3. Andy Bloch 934,000
4. Phil Ivey 885,000
5. Jim Bechtel 841,000
6. David Singer 745,000
7. Dewey Tomko 438,000
8. T.J. Cloutier 351,000
9. Patrik Antonius 13,000

Though they played HORSE to get this far, the final table will be entirely no-limit hold'em. Some people like this, some people think it's lame, but one thing is certain: this is the bracelet that the serious pros care the most about. This field was only 143 players, but the competition was so fierce, each table looked like poker's all-star game.

Once play is underway, you can track live updates at Cardplayer and Poker Wire.