Anyone who's been following the World Series updates on the PokerStars blog will have noticed the build up in tension as June turns to July. For those new to poker you're about to feel its full force for the first time. There's nothing like it.

While World Championship events have crowned new winners in the Amazon Room of the Rio hotel in Las Vegas, and events like the $50,000 HORSE event thunder towards a conclusion, the main event is about to loom over the horizon - the $10,000 buy in tournament that has shaped the poker calendar in all its 30 years of incarnations.

Thousand will play it - a number never accurate until every last name has been counted and the order to shuffle up and deal yelled across the tournament floor - but we know it's big and that means large amounts of money at stake.

If you can't play it then you're looking for the next best thing - the best place to follow the action online. That's where the PokerStars.net blog comes in - the place for daily reports on all the events taking place with the best writing and the best pictures from the business end of the world's greatest poker tournament.

It all starts on Friday with the first of four "day ones." It's about to get serious. See you there.