I'm standing in the midst of the Rio's Amazon Room, and i am occupied with dead people. I'm considering a dead couple in a pink Cadillac. I'm considering a body falling out of the back of a trash truck. I'm considering a frozen corpse in a meat truck.

What I'm thinking of, to position a finer point on it, is a cull.

It's QUARTER-HOUR before the start of Day 6 of the WSOP Main Event, and the coda to "Layla" is playing over the loud speakers. It's amazing that the song exists because it does in any respect (Eric Clapton saw the Allman Brothers while he was recording in Miami, invited Duane Allman to the studio to record some electric slide, and boom, probably the most famous recording sessions ever), but it's much more amazing that those four minutes of electrical slide and piano make me call to mind dead people.

But here we are.

It's Martin Scorsese's fault. If you've seen Goodfellas, you realize the scene (er...spoiler alert...) where all the Lufthansa robbers start showing up dead because Jimmy desired to keep all of the money for himself. That scene became one among film's greatest and most gruesome montages while the "Layla" coda plays dreamily within the background. There's some cognitive dissonance focused on the almost-stoned pace of the song and the horror playing out at the screen, but on repeated viewings, it's pretty clear what we will draw from it: if what we're hearing and what we're seeing doesn't appear to fit, it is because that's exactly how life is. Nothing really fits. At any point through the time of Goodfella's "Layla" could have been playing at the radio, and at any point, a host of individuals could've ended up culled from the herd on account of one man's greed. It is the perfect soundtrack because, like most of life, it just doesn't fit how we feel things should be.

As it's said of Jimmy in the course of the montage, "He had the money. It was his...It made him sick to must turn money over to the blokes who stole it. He'd rather whack'em."

And that is what I'm fascinated about as I stand by the enormous television stage where ESPN will film, among others, Daniel Negreanu within the quest to make the general table of poker's biggest event.

Much just like the mafia, we're here for a cull of such epic proportions that folks within the square world do not get it. When this event began greater than every week ago, 6,420 people had submit $10,000 apiece for the risk to stroll away with millions. Today, only 69 of these people remain, and for every one that's culled from the herd, the remainder players get richer. The winner gets $7.68 million dollars, which (not accounting for inflation) is greater than the mafia boys stole from Lufthansa nearly 40 years ago.

Before we even consider the largest money, however, we need to re-start this game and play through two more full days, or even then, there'll be nine people left.

Pierre Neuville cuts around the carpet together with his eyes geared toward his table. ESPN's Kara Scott trails him, shooting questions that go largely unanswered. For all of the talk of this being a tender man's game, Neuville leads all of them at age 74.

He grabs my palm with a sweaty hand. "Bonjour!" he says.

I tell him good luck, and he mimes taking my wish in his palms as he walks away.

Outside the room, yellow-shirted security officers are keeping the crowds at bay until the players find their seats. Negreanu cuts through them and darts around the carpet with a dealer and floorman flanking him like consiglieres. Security gives chase.

"Hey!" certainly one of them yells.

"It's okay," the floorman says. "We're good."

The security guy stops his tracks and appears frustrated. "Fine," he said. "But how am I alleged to know we're good?!"

And that's after I bring to mind Goodfellas' Jimmy again. Because the cops tried in vain to trace the robbers, Jimmy went about his business, knocking off his fellow robbers, and getting richer with every person he culled. Negreanu, already rich and famous, gets more rich and more famous each time someone is eliminated.

The real Jimmy Burke never went to prison for the robbery, but his young protege did eventually activate him, and Burke went to prison for murder. It was the results of leaving too many of us alive.

There are lots of people left here who learned a large number of their game by watching Negreanu play, and anybody of them could finally end up spelling his end. That is, if we're to believe Goodfellas, leaving any proteges behind is a foul idea in a game where the one objective is to do away with everybody else.

But hey...what do I DO KNOW? After all, Negreanu is keen on the Rocky movies, so he isn't hearing the similar song I am, and his coda may fade out in some way Clapton, Allman, or Scorsese could never write.

Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging. Photography by PokerPhotoArchive.com

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