In total, 6,358 players entered
the 2007 championship, well below the record field of 8,773 players a
year ago but topping the 2005 field of 5,619 players.

The winner
will collect $8.25 million from the prize pool of more than $59.8
million. Last year, Jamie Gold won $12 million in winning the world
poker championship, while Joe Hachem won $7.5 million in 2005.

This year’s World Series of Poker drew 54,288 entries to 55 events and had a total prize pool of almost $159.8 million.

Last
year, Internet poker players who won seats in the main event through
online tournaments accounted for more than half of the entire
championship field, according to poker sources. If online poker players
could have gained entry into this year’s event, the field could have
topped 10,000, said Michael Bolcerek, president of the Poker Players
Alliance, a nonprofit organization of almost 600,000 that is lobbying
for changes in the Internet gambling ban.

D’Amato, a former Republican senator from New York, is chairman of the Poker Players Alliance.

“We
appreciate being able to bring more light to this issue,” Bolcerek
said. “The World Series of Poker was on the path to almost double in
size every year. What Congress didn’t realize was the size of the
American public that played poker online. Our organization hopes to be
a million strong shortly.”

Bolcerek said the organization is
supporting efforts by Wexler, who introduced legislation in June that
would designate poker as a game of skill, thus exempting it from
legislation passed last year that effectively banned Americans from
wagering online. Almost all of the major Internet poker gambling sites
quit accepting wagers from U.S. players.

The bill calls for a
distinction between gambling games, such as blackjack and roulette, and
poker, where Wexler said success is determined by the skill of the
players.

“Poker is an American national pastime as much as
baseball and it needs to be permitted to enter the 21st century, which
is playing online,” Wexler said. “We’re trying to create a momentum and
an awareness and we’re hoping the poker players will contact their
local representatives and demand a change.”

Wexler, who was
witnessing the World Series of Poker for the first time, said the
tournament room constituted a “hometown audience.”

Bolcerek said the World Series of Poker gave Wexler a receptive audience to promote the legislation.

“We’re letting poker players know what they need to do to get involved in the process,” Bolcerek said.

On
Monday, 1,783 players competed in the final day of the four-day opening
round, including, Gold, last year’s world poker champion, and 11-time
World Series of Poker event winner Phil Hellmuth, who won the world
championship in 1989.

By the early afternoon, Gold had doubled up
his chips to more than $20,000. Hellmuth, however, in keeping with
tradition, arrived two hours after play began.

Hellmuth was
supposed to show up at the Rio in a race car sponsored by an Internet
poker Web site, but he reportedly crashed the car Sunday afternoon in
the Rio parking lot. Instead, he arrived via a limousine, wearing a
racing suit and carrying a helmet.

Other popular professional
poker players taking part in Monday’s championship event included
Daniel Negreanu, Hall of Fame poker standout Chip Reese, Gus Hansen and
Leif Force, who made the final table of nine players in last year’s
world championship event.

The survivors over the four days of
play will compete again today. The elimination will take place through
Sunday until the final nine players are determined. After an off-day
next Monday, the final table of nine will begin July 17.