257 tables in one room

Throughout the course of one day at the WSOP the Pavilion room went from being lively to being a subdued place as more players are knockout out the tournament.

Not much has changed since the World Series of Poker began but there have been a few major changes, one of them is the introduction of the Pavilion which contains 257 tables in 55,488 square feet of space.

The Pavilion is 50% bigger than the next biggest room the Amazon Room which has 39,040 square feet of space. The tables are divided into four huge sections. The Amazon Room has a featured table with staging and stadium feed as well as a few secondary featured tables, however, the Pavilion contains just poker tables.
Over an average days play in the Pavilion many players are eliminated and many of them end up being sent to the Amazon Room where the entire tournament field was housed in the same room for the first time, this happened early on Day 4.

At the end of day 3 only 18 out of 166 tables were left in the Pavilion, there are an additional 120 tables being held in the Amazon Room. Over the course of just 8 hours play on day three, the largest room to feature in tournament poker went from being a completely packed house down to a very nearly empty room.

As you walked in to the Amazon Room at the end of day three the difference in atmosphere was almost physical. There was a huge buzz in the room originating from the movement of more than 1,000 players who knew that they had survived another day in one of the world’s toughest poker tournaments. However, in the Pavilion the atmosphere was very subdued, almost in mourning of the 1300 players who had been eliminated there throughout the day.

However, only a few days later the Amazon Room began to have the same atmosphere as the Pavilion. Players were being eliminated from their tournaments at an incredible rate. However, there was a major difference in atmosphere resulting from the fact that if you are bust out of the Pavilion you are going home with no money, any one left in the Amazon Room still had a chance of making a winning.

The final player who was eliminated from the Amazon had just missed out on a place at the final table in November, however, they will have been comforted by the fact that they were walking away with $635,011 which is not a bad compensation prize.