The closing stages of the World Cup of Poker started this morning. No cards were dealt but team uniforms and patience were required for the pre-tournament photo shoot, each team marching on stage in turn with the table draped in the relevant national colours, flashing their best smile before an afternoon off ahead of the real action tomorrow.

After weeks of international online poker, played out between each nation's tournament leader board finest, the action now switches to the live poker world for the fifth incarnation of the PokerStars World Cup of Poker, here in the Bahamas, with a one day marathon slog that will leave just one team - our new champions.

Barcelona has been the home of the World Cup in all of its previous four years, but if you're looking to make an upgrade then only the Bahamas fits the bill. That's not the only change. This year there'll be a few more twists in the plot. Not only will the final table structure, copied from notes originally written by Franz Kafka, provide a dose of mind bending originality to keep your attention all the way through, but every hand will be shown, hole cards and all, during the live broadcast on EPTLive, which will see one team walk away with $100,000.

So who are the players flying the flags of home?

Poland - Jerzy Slaby, Pawel Chmiel, Patryk Slusarek and Leszek Krawcynski.
USA - Shaun Deeb, Benjamin Zamani, Jarred Gabin and Bruce Armstrong.
Canada - Blair Maltby, Dennis Hamlyn, Wanda Whitlock and Tammy Bailey.
Latvia - Vjaceslavs Ivanovs, Juris Saicans, Ance Laganovska and Dmitrijs Kurchins.
Mexico - David Harold Huber, José Francisco Muñoz Osuna, Antoine Barriere and Jorge Lozano.
Italy - Michele Migliore, Pennisi Omar, Valeriano Bilancetti and Villa Gerardo Fabrizio.
Great Britain - Steven Devlin, Laurence Houghton, Derek Morris and Sean Joseph Flaherty.
New Zealand - Nicholas Webb, Richard Grace, Wayne Lo and Jordan Bryant
Germany - Georg Geissler, Bastian Wulff, Peter Schmidt and Malte Strothmann.

Just 24 hours ago these guys and gals were just usernames, bundles of letters, numbers and those things you need to press SHIFT to find, and each unknown to the other. Today they're names, people who are now busy forming new friendships and plotting a ruthless assault on team poker's greatest prize.

So with the photos done there was only one more thing to do, the matter of introducing the Team PokerStars Pros tasked with helping steer their nation to victory.

For Team USA that job goes to World Cup regular Greg Raymer who, like team mate shaundeeb, knows what it's like to hold aloft team poker's greatest prize, doing so last year. Vicky Coren does the same job for the British team, Luca Pagano for Italy, Lee Nelson for New Zealand, Daniel Negreanu for Canada, Jan Heitmann for Germany and Marcin Horecki for Poland.

If you're wondering who steps in for Latvia well, you were in good company...

When we bloggers begin to finish up our work for the night, we put our biggest efforts into what we oh-so-creatively call The Wrap. Now, as we finish up the fifth level of the day and go to dinner, it's time for a brief snack.

Here's a quick breakdown of where things stand at the 90-minute dinner break. Of the 668 starters, somewhere around 440 remain. When dinner is finished, we'll see three more levels before breaking for the evening. Below is a quick look at how the day got started.

Watch PCA 09: Day 1a Intro on PokerStars.tv

The apparent chip leader at the moment is Ryan Young. In just five levels of play, Young has managed to turn his 20,000 starting stack into 145,000. That's good for the chip lead and likely a very relaxing post-dinner evening.

Other big stacks at the break include Ludovic Lacay (114,000) Team PokerStars Pro Greg Raymer (76,000), Ylon Schwartz (70,000), and Jeff Madsen (75,000). Courtland Twyman likewise has rocketed his way up to 85,000 after coming out on the good end of a J-J vs. A-K vs. A-K battle.

For a quick look at some selected dinner break chip counts, see the 2009 PCA Chip Counts page.

Not faring as well in the early going today have been a few members of Team PokerStars Pro. Early eliminations include Chad Brown, Gavin Griffin, an2006 PCA champion Steve Paul-Ambrose. WSOP final table player and member of the PokerStars Six Dennis Phillips also hit the rail early and is already fooling around in the Sit & Go events on the other side of the room. Mike "Timex" McDonald and Terrence Chan will also be finding another way to spend the night. As reported by fellow blogger Paul McGuire:

I caught the hand in progress. The player from the button raised. Terrence Chan went all in from the small blind for his last 2,250. A player at the cutoff tanked for several minutes before he called. Chan was all in and had a chance to triple up. The flop was Qd-8s-2c. The player from the cutoff tossed out a blue 5,000 chip. The button player smirked and then folded. Chan tabled pocket Aces. His opponent flipped over pocket eights for a flopped a set. Before the dealer could deal the turn card, Chan stood up and grabbed his things. The turn was the Jh and the river was the 10d. Chan's hand did not improve and he was eliminated.

While we hope you've been hanging on every post here, we'll understand if you're just tuning in for the evening. Here's a quick look back at what we've reported so far today.

Five years on Paradise Island
Party on
As big as it gets
Team PokerStars Pros
A peek at paradise
early musings
The online invasion
Honorary members of the team

I glanced up at the clock. There were less than two minutes remaining in the level. I made a mad dash for the door and exited the tournament area. My intended destination was the toilet.

With well over 600 players still remaining in the tournament (and most of them of the male persuasion), the toilets swell to capacity and a line backs up around the corner. As a veteran reporter, there's one thing I learned after five years on the tournament trail and that's avoid the bathrooms and the hallways on a break, especially on Day 1A.

After a 75 minute period of calm, the area outside the Imperial Ballroom is a chaotic zoo for a total of fifteen minute. Some of them are in search of the toilets. The smokers venture outside to the designated smoking area to get their nicotine fix as a thick layer of second-hand smoke hangs slowly lingers.

Several players brought their families along with them to the Bahamas. They utilize their break time to gather with their loved ones. While other players whip out their cell phones and unleashed rapid fire updates to their friends and families back home.

Small groups of players gather in the congested hallways and recount the action and chip movements during the previous level, while others just moan and groan about the bad beats they endured.

Several Team PokerStars Pro members such as Greg Raymer and Daniel Negreanu are constantly accommodating picture requests from fans.

The hungry players patiently stand in line and wait to purchase a snack and hope to have enough time to gobble it down before their break ends. The more adventurous types make a beeline for the bar and knock back a couple of cold Kaliks.

And then there's the onslaught of bad beat stories which are told in various languages. One young player screamed into his cell phone in German. I didn't understand a single word until the end when he used a familiar phrase, "Sucked out! So sick."

Another young player was apparently speaking to his father back home in the States. He explained his elimination hand in painstaking detail how he had his Kings snapped off by pocket treys. "That donkey rivered a three on me and now I'm done," he explained.

Tournament director Mike Ward made an announcement on the PA system that there was less than one minute remaining in the break. Players abruptly ended their phonecalls and conversations and smokers took one final long puff before they sprinted back into the Imperial Ballroom.

The break was over as an eerie silence fell over the hallway.

There's one area of the Imperial Ballroom that features four tables of significance with three Team PokerStars Pros. If I stand in the aisle, I could catch the action on all four tables.

At the first table, Greg Raymer has an intimidating a big stack worth 80,000. Evelyn Ng is also seated there and sending text messages to her friends.

Daniel Negreanu is sitting at the table in front of Raymer. Negreanu's table always attracts a healthy amount of railbirds and a small crowd has gathered as they root on their hero.

Joe Hachem is seated at an adjacent table. The former champ is super short stacked but still takes time to pose for pictures for anyone who wanders up with a digital camera or an iPhone.

And at the fourth table is Ylon Schwartz. The always breezy member of the PokerStars Six has slowly been adding to his stack. He had fellow November Nine finalist sitting to his immediate left, but Scott Montgomery recently busted.

Here's some other random tid bits I noticed as I strolled through the room...

- Gavin Griffin is out. The Team PokerStars Pro had been shortstacked for most of the afternoon and finally hit the rail.

- Boris Becker is playing a series of heads up matches against online qualifiers in a special event called Battle Boris. If they beat Boris Becker, they get a seat into the PCA. If they lose? They go home with nothing. Thus far, Becker is 1-1. Stay tuned for a full event wrap up of Battle Boris by our very own Stephen Bartley.

- Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki slipped to under 18,000 in chips. Shirley "Poker Babe" Rosario is sitting to his right.

- Team PokerStars Pro Chad Brown and PokerStars Six player Dennis Phillips were both eliminated from Day 1A. They are currently playing an SNG on the other side of the Imperial Ballroom.

- Barry Greenstein was moved tables. He's now sitting at the same table as John Myung and bracelet winner Alan Smurfitt from Ireland.

- Greg Raymer is happily explaining the rules and intricacies of Badugi to the players at his table. PokerStars recently launched Badugi cash games much to the delight of Team PokerStars Pros Barry Greenstein and Greg Raymer.

I don't pretend to know what goes on inside Barry Greenstein's head on Day 1 of a tournament. The man can make it through Day 1 like nobody's business. It probably takes some effort, but Greenstein makes it look easy. He can kick back, read a paper, and do his thing.

Even though there is no way to know what he's thinking, you can almost always count on Greenstein to be honest, even brutally so.

The PokerStars video blog team caught up with Greenstein on a break and brought back this report.

Watch PCA 09: Barry Greenstein on Day 1a on PokerStars.tv