Many card players say time flies during the annual World Series of Poker.
The world's best poker minds wait all year for the 62-event, 48-day series only to feel like it ends right after the first "shuffle up and deal" command.
This summer's WSOP is no different, running as fast as an electronic shuffle machine through three-and-a-half weeks. More than half of the championship bracelets have already been handed out, and today marks the official midway point with 24 sessions officially completed.
Three-and-a-half short weeks from now, a new Main Event final table of nine players will be the talk of the poker world. There's still plenty to figure out before then, and a lot is already settled, at the Rio.
Read below for the five biggest takeaways so far at the World Series of Poker.
O Canada
Anyone who's spent their whole summer playing tournaments at the World Series of Poker could probably hum along to Canada's national anthem intrinsically by now.
Our northern neighbors' song is in as heavy a rotation over the PA system in the Rio's Pavilion Room as a Taylor Swift ballad on top-40 radio airwaves. Canadian players just keep earning bracelet ceremonies by winning events.
Canada already has set a record for most WSOP tournaments won in a single year by a country outside of the United States. The WSOP has awarded seven bracelets to Canadians, which snaps the record of six in 2010.
Canadians have won 25 percent of the tournaments staged despite accounting for only 5 percent of total entries.
Included in the champions club are close friends from Montreal Charles Sylvestre and Jason Duval, who scored a combined prize $1,022,562 for a total buy-in of $2,500. Millionaire Maker titlist Benny Chen, from Prince Edward Island, is the biggest single winner of the summer with a $1,199,104 payout.
Canada's most famous professional, Daniel Negreanu, continues to lead the Player of the Year race stemming from his WSOP Asia Pacific Main Event victory earlier this year.
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