The Amazon Room opens its doors again today with the start of the 2008 World Series of poker and will remain that way for the next six weeks, fifty-five events are scheduled with thousands of players expected to battle it out for millions of dollars.

Typically reserved for extraordinarily large conventions, the Amazon Room of the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is said to be the size of a football field with a space for more than 200 poker tables that run tournaments, cash games, and satellite events around the clock.

An elaborate stage is also reportedly prepared for all the televised final tables complete with a full ESPN crew and seating for spectators.

“Never in a million years would I have thought poker would ever come to this,” poker legend Doyle Brunson said.

So many changes are scheduled to happen to this year’s World Series, reports said.

The highlights of the event will start from July 3 to 14, however, the final nine players that will make the final table will have to wait until Nov. 9 so the ESPN cameras can catch the action and have a live broadcast.

According to reports there is also an overwhelming increase in the number of large buy-in tournaments.

During the past years, the World Series flooded with lower $1,500 buy-in tournaments that made the events accessible to a larger percentage of poker players, but were criticized for their repetitiveness.

The $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event was the largest found in poker but now the 2008 World Series has now made it possible to schedule eight $10,000 buy-in in various games and formats with the first tournament, the World Championship of Pot Limit holdem, scheduled to begin Friday.

If playing an event is not in your plans, there are still two ways to follow all the tournament action.

Better if you happen to be in Vegas since you can just walk over to the Rio and check out the tournaments free of charge.

Throughout the World Series, you can pick any random day and chances are you will bump into dozens of the famous faces seen on television that will be more than willing to sign an autograph — provided they do not desperately need to take their scheduled bathroom break.

June 25 is the start day for the World Series’ richest event-the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E tournament, which informally crowns best “all-around” player- where there’s a poker legend at every table, and some tables may have a millionaire sitting in every seat.

The championship chase is one of the most interesting angle in writing a news story.

In 2007 after winning his 11th, Phil Hellmuth scored a higher record than Brunson and Johnny Chan.

Another angle which people should follow is size of the field for the Main Event.

After setting a record in 2006 with 8,773 players, the field thinned down nearly 2,500 players to 6,358 in 2007; this devaluation in field was a result of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which handcuffed the Online Poker sites from buying players into the tournament via satellites.

Full Tilt’s David Singer, who has been
playing poker for a living since 1996,
won the most challenging poker game
ever assembled and collected $560K for
winning the prestigious title.

Singer captures $25,000 heads-up
championship on Full Tilt and claimed
his sweet victory after he took down
Emil “whitelime” Patel to win the
$560,000 first-place prize.

Before becoming the famous and
wealthy Poker player he is now, Singer
had a brief career working as an
environmental lawyer– yes he was a
lawyer– who specialized in cleaning up
Long Island Sound for a non-profit organization.

Although Singer used to be a lawyer, he was earning less than the secretaries he worked with. He studied to become a lawyer purely so that he could work on environmental issues and his main focus when he gained employment was with water issues, especially concerning the Long Island Sound.

When his hours at work began to be cut back he looked for another job and that is when he came across the reality of playing apoker game.

Remembering his youthful days, playing poker had been a big part of Singer’s life as he played with friends and family from a school age. Aside from playing poker Singer worked on sport-fishing and commercial boats and amazingly, at one time, he even managed to hold two fishing world records which shows that even during his younger days, he was already a record setter who continues to bring in more success up to the present day.

For the first five years venturing into the poker community, Singer focused on his favorite cash game7 card stud exclusively, studying and honing his poker skills at Foxwoods and at a private club in New York.

What really attracted Singer to play poker even more seriously in the last few years, was the big prize pools for No-Limit tournaments.

He knew poker is really for him when he finished ninth at the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003, and has had numerous large cashes and high finishes since then.

In 2006, this Brooklyn born guy won $435,000 as a third-place finisher at the Word Poker Tournament Caribbean Adventure. After which, he then went on to win the Mirage Heads-Up Poker Showdown for $232,000, and took the sixth place in the $50K HORSE event at the 2006 World Series Online Poker Tourney, where he won another $411,000.

Yes, i know what you are thinking. Money will never be an issue to this guy especially when you found out that he collected $1 million, his biggest ever payday, for winning the Caesars Palace Classic in Las Vegas, added to the $337K for another sixth-place finish when he returned to the $50K HORSE final table in 2007. His career tournament winnings is reportedly in excess of $3.83 million. Whew.

Playing Poker is a game wherein the more information you know about your opponent, the more advantageous your position is. Holding on to more pieces of information will make you most likely beat your opponent. While luck is a big factor in Poker, it is still the struggle for information that is the most important since it enables people to play Poker professionally.

Often times you, as a Poker player, resort into concealing information about yourself, but you also have to be vigilant of what information you want your opponents to see, either intentionally or unintentionally. There will be times when you will wish to let your opponents have some information, as you want to compel your opponents to take certain actions. If your opponents are falling to the information you leaked, you can lead them straight into a disastrous game, or simply cause them to make the wrong turn.

An example of this happened in a nine player sit and go. A good looking player was playing on Poker Stars. He had been getting horrible cards, and went almost an entire level without seeing a single face card. After a long period of folding, He finally picked up a hand, pocket queens. He was on the button, so he had a good hand with good position. However, the second player to act pushed all-in, and at this time his stack was only slightly decreased from his starting stack. Another player called, so he made the proper move for this stage in the tournament: The player threw his hand away. As it turns out, he would have won the hand, as the raiser had Q-8 and the caller held A-K with unremarkable community cards. One player revealed that they had folded A-Q, and after careful deliberation, the good looking player revealed that he had held pocket queens.

Why did he do this? First of all, the other players were starting to realize that he was playing tightly, so by revealing that he had not given in to the temptation to play a big hand in a bad situation, they would come to the conclusion that he truly do only play good cards, and he wouldn’t be making any dumb plays when he held good cards. He wanted to instill fear in them, fear that would cause them to fold when he did raise, as his style relies on aggressively forcing other players out of the pot when he enter a hand.

Just shortly after revealing that he had pocket queens, he started to pick up hands and he was willing to play with in good position. He used these hands to his advantage, raising when he came into the hand, either winning the pot outright or isolating himself against one or two opponents. If he did get callers before the flop, he was always able to make them fold after the flop. His stack was growing, and he became a powerful force at the table without winning a truly big pot.

At one point he, apparently, looked at his stats, and saw that he had seen eleven flops, and had won ten pots. A couple of those wins came preflop, so that slightly skews the numbers, but the only time he saw the flop and didn’t win the hand was when he was playing for cheap from the blinds. Every time he raised before the flop, he won the hand. He had accomplished his goal of getting the other players to fear him. it is also during this time that he had only made it to one showdown, this occurring when he was in the big blind and called the short stack’s all-in, as they only had five more chips than his big blind. He won that pot for the very small win and an elimination.

This is, in reality, a perfect example of what can happen if you take time to analyze carefully all the information that is available and use them to your advantage. Being able to carefully control information is essential if you want to win in Poker and sometimes it is a good idea to leak some information to your benefits.