2010 PCA Main Event Day 1a | 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure

PokerNews is thrilled to welcome you to the seventh installment of the largest winter poker event in the world, the PokerStars.net Caribbean Adventure. This new decade is just a few days young, and the first major poker tournament of 2010 is already upon us.

In 2004, PokerStars and the World Poker Tour took to the high seas on board Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas. The $7,500 tournament afloat drew a population of 221 players looking to satisfy their cold-weather poker bug. Gus Hansen bested all who came against him that week to claim a WPT title and launch the Caribbean Adventure into instant respectability.

The event moved indoors to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island the following year, and it’s been right here ever since. Live cash games were added in 2005, and John Gale became the second PCA champion that January. If you’re familiar with Battleship Poker (heads-up online matches where the players sit face-to-face), that is an invention of the third PCA in 2006. Steve Paul-Ambrose won the Main Event that year, and he would be followed by Ryan Daut in 2007. The WPT branding was dropped the following year in favor of PokerStars own EPT logos, and Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier won the 2008 edition of the PCA. Last year, a record 1,347 players turned up for the event, and Poorya Nazari emerged as the champion. The buy-in was raised to $9,700, and Nazari collected an impressive $3,000,000 in loot.

Fast forward one year, and you’ll find us once again in the luxurious confines of the Atlantis Grand Ballroom. And once again, all signs point to a record-breaking PCA. This year’s schedule will see fifty events crammed into eleven days; that’s like condensing the seven weeks of the WSOP into less than two. There is a soft cap at 1,600 players for the Main Event, and despite the buy-in being increased to $10,300, the staff is optimistic of breaching that cap number.

The Day 1a flight is set to roll at high noon local time, just about a half hour from now. Players are just beginning to make their way back from breakfast and beach, and somewhere around 700 of them will begin to file into the room shortly.

Sit tight, we'll be right back with the shuffle up and deal!