At 5:27 into the fifth hour of play, the tables were narrowed down to the final 10 players – all winners with prizes of at least 100,000 bonus miles.

The 11th player was out to a thunderous round of applause lead primarily by those 10 remaining players with an exhaustive grin on their faces.

If you’ve never watched live, the final round and hands of a tournament like this, it is very, very dramatic with spectators all jockeying for the closest possible look at the cards when the river card is dealt.

The ante for the start of the final table is 10,000, the two blinds are 60,000 and 120,000.

And in case you want to know:

• 2 players wearing baseball caps.
• 5 players wearing sunglasses.
• 1 player listening to his iPod.

Of those OnePass members who have entered the poker tournament, probably not one of them has given any thought to what 21 million frequent flyer miles would get them. I’m sure they are more focused on “pocket aces” than the miles at this point. So, I’ll do the math for them.

21 Million OnePass miles could be redeemed for:

• 35,000 years of a subscription to Conde Nast Traveler magazine (to the year 37008).
• 13,125 years of a subscription to Business Week magazine (to the year 15133).
• 6,363 years of a subscription to The Wall Street Journal (to the year 8371).
• 840 cross country train rides in business class on Amtrak.
• 518 Loge box seats (MVP section) to see the New York Yankees play the Boston Red Sox in August at Yankee Stadium (the last year for this renowned baseball park). P.S. there really aren’t that many of these loge box seats in the stadium .
• 840 domestic coach class tickets at the current 25,000-mile SaverPass level (that is 1,680 times you’ll have to take off your shoes by request of the TSA).
• 420 domestic first class tickets at the current 50,000-mile EasyPass level.
• 280 first class tickets to Hawaii.
• 95 Around-the-World tickets in first class.

As well, if the winner is thinking of his/her poker friends and family, they would be able to redeem miles (4,225,000 miles) to take everyone along for a trip domestically, that is, redeem a whole plane – 14 friends would be able to fly in first class while the other 141 friends or family, would be able to fly in coach. This would reserve Continental’s most popular aircraft (737-800) for a flight.

As well, if more exotic destinations are in mind to celebrate the poker win, using 11,825,000 miles (they could do this trip twice!) would get you an entire 777-200 Continental airplane to fly the friends and family to Hawaii and back, 48 of them in BusinessFirst (first class) and 235 more in coach.

So you see, winning the miles just might be the easy part. Picking which of their friends or famly members to go along on any of these trips is likely to be much more difficult.

Upgrades? Why upgrade when you can buy the whole plane with miles!!!

(caveat: it’s likely that not all the seats this winner will seek will be available at the SaverPass award level, but we can hope can’t we – straight flush comes to mind, which beats the all in and all gone scenario)