It's always great to see more women taking up poker, and it appears that many of them have found their niche with Razz. Thus far, we've counted 20 women in this field, which has yet to reach 300 players. That's an unusually large percentage, given that women typically make up around 2.5% of any given tournament field.
Among the ladies in the field are Clonie Gowen, Shirley Rosario, Linda Johnson, Annie Duke, Jan Fisher, Shannon Elizabeth, and Barbara Lewis.
We just caught sight of Annie Duke taking her seat, along with Brett Richey, Dario Minieri, David Levi, Dutch Boyd, Joe Tehan, Matt Glantz and Kiril Robstov.
Also playing today are a few of our own here at PokerNews, including Tournament Reporting Manager Garry Gates, blogger Dave "F-Train" Behr, and crack field reporters Marc Hodge and Mickey Doft.
Naturally, players are still trickling in and there are still a slew of empty seats at the tables, many of which started off play four-handed.
That said, we've already spotted Razz aficionados Kenna James, Sergey Rybachenko, Daniel Negreanu, Archie Karas, Jeff "yellowsub86" Williams, Matt Hawrilenko, Billy Baxter, Scott Seiver, Thor Hansen, Shannon Elizabeth, Amnon Filippi, Van Marcus, David Bach, Perry Friedman, Chad Brown, Justin Smith, Richard Brodie, Chip Jett, Jani Sointula, Linda Johnson, Barbara Lewis, Nikolay Evdakov, Shirley Rosario, Jan Fisher, Bryan Micon, Marco Traniello, Dennis Phillips, Bill Chen, Dan Shak, Darus Suharto, Jeff Lisandro, Mike Sexton, Justin Bonomo, Frank Kassela, Gavin Griffin, Ted Lawson and Eskimo Clark.
For some (masochists) it's their favorite game. For others, it's a stomach-churning roller coaster. Yes, it's time for the WSOP's annual Razz event, this year sporting a super-sized $2,500 buy-in, up from $1,500 in past years.
A slew of familiar faces and many of poker's elite will be taking their seats in the Brasilia Room in the next few minutes and we're looking at a 5:15 p.m. start. Stay tuned for all the bricks, wheels, groans, lucky catches, and cries of "one time!" you can handle.