It's almost here — the "Super Bowl" of poker, the World Series of Poker Main Event.
Indeed, the history of the WSOP Main Event stretches back nearly as far as does football's big game, with Super Bowl I taking place in early 1967 and the first WSOP happening three years later.
Both featured relatively modest debuts. The first Super Bowl wasn't even called the "Super Bowl" yet. The game didn't even sell out, and it wasn't until recently tapes were recovered and restored piecing together a mostly full record of the action.
So, too, did the first World Series of Poker begin inauspiciously, with only a small group of players involved playing cash games with no climactic tournament on the schedule and relatively little about it reported at the time.