The $10,000 bricks of cash.

The heads-up award ceremony that concludes every major poker where usually, some eye-popping models strut out in costumes that emulate the theme of the casino/event always contains those beautiful $10,000 bricks of cash.

Along with a nifty trophy or in the case of the World Series of Poker, a bracelet, the award ceremony marks the end of several grueling days of high stakes poker battle with the heads-up match for the top two prizes. Likely there were deals made behind the scene, but for the cameras and gawkers on the rails, the last two are playing for all that money currently resting between the two seats on opposite ends of the table.

FlipChip has been around poker tournaments longer then I could spell p-o-k-e-r and has been capturing the essence of these tourneys through his photo lens for years. Now, he debunks one of the mysteries of those bundles of Franklins...

... are they real?

Head on over to LasVegasVegas.com for the complete story along with the tell tale photo of one of the hundreds peeled back to reveal the true nature of the "$10,000 bricks".

Years ago when Benny Binion was running the World Series of Poker the prize money for the winner of the $10,000 Championship Event would arrive at the final table in a cardboard box carried by a burly gun toting Guardzilla. No fanfare, no blaring trumpets, just a box or two of bricks of hundreds. It was the actual prize pool in cash and the winner could gather it up and walk out the door.

Benny was a master promoter and didn't put much stock into using anything less than the real thing when he had plenty of the real things. Benny's unceremonious presentation of the prize was by design an understated bit of marketing magic. Ol' Benny knew such casual treatment of so much cash would be another of the 'wow' factors that keep them talking and playing.

Fast forward to the present. The 2007 WSOP Main Event winner received $8.25 million which was delivered to the TV final table by a parade of suits carrying shiny metal cases ala "Deal or No Deal." The cash being dumped then carefully stacked and arranged according to the television script and in true Hollywood fashion why use the real thing? The magic of television has been fooling them for decades.

Does anyone really care if it is actually an $8.5 million pile of cash or a pile of cash symbolic of $8.5 million? Probably not; but then again, Benny Binion probably would. The real thing was the stuff that made the WSOP so great. Check it out at LasVegasVegas.