On the Rail
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As we expected, the rail has filled in nicely as the night has progressed. The entire bottom bowl is filled in with fans, and there are a couple dozen in the standing-room-only top tier. Even better, maybe 50 people are stacked up along the far rail that's open to the Amazon Room, with security keeping a wide perimeter around the table. A few minutes ago, T.D. Robbie Thompson spotted a familiar face up on the perch.
"Well, they must have lifted the prohibition, because I see Gavin Smith is here."
The reference was to a new rule banning drinks and food from the ESPN featured table area. Smith appears to be holding a frosty beverage of some sort.
We've seen a number of pros come and go including Chino Rheem, Tom McEvoy, and Allen Kessler. It's actually a bit sparse on pro railbirds, now that we think about it, as most of the faces in the crowd are unknowns, as far as we're aware. Randos, if you will. The entirety of the poker media is camped out here, though, and most of the senior members of the WSOP staff are also here watching history unfold.
A few of them were here back when Hellmuth won bracelet number one. That's quite an achievement on both sides of that equation, and it's doing this 2011 Series good to have a marquee heads-up matchup on the main stage tonight.