Greg Mueller's WSOP path from 'I don't even know i...

Walking from the Paris Casino ballrooms, where the World Series of Poker played out through June and July, Greg Mueller and Shawn Buchanan were going over some of their hands from the day. Passing by a packed Nobu, where diners were enjoying black cod with miso, yellowtail jalapeno sashimi and spicy tuna crispy rice, Mueller wondered aloud if maybe he shouldn't bother playing the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker main event that was starting in a few days. "'I don't even know if I want to be there. I don't know if I want to sit there. How can I sit there for eight days?," Buchanan remembered Mueller asking. Rather than let the comment drift off into the evening desert heat, Buchanan called him out. Things got heated between the longtime friends. "Honestly, just don't even register. If you don't want to be there, you can't win. If you don't want to be there, f---ing fly home," Buchanan said. "It was a bit of tough love," Mueller recalled. The comment struck a nerve with Mueller, and he got fired up. The conversation quickly became less of a pep talk and more of two friends having the kind of discussion where feelings could get hurt, and friendly dynamics built up by traveling the world to play poker together could get altered forever. Buchanan has known Mueller for more than 20 years and quietly grew frustrated watching Mueller go through the motions this summer; showing up to tournaments late and then seemingly being more excited for what he had the freedom to do after quickly busting the event instead of playing the tournament itself. "He just doesn't like to grind quite as much anymore for tournaments," Buchanan said. "He loves the end, but the boring parts are hard for him to get through nowadays." On Monday, Mueller will sit at the final table of the main event as arguably the most decorated of the nine remaining players. The 55-year-old Canadian poker pro has three WSOP bracelets, $4.5 million in lifetime tournament earnings and -- thanks to a pair of deep main event runs on ESPN -- is a familiar face to poker fans. He's the "known pro" at this final table, a role filled in previous years by Joe Serock, Toby Lewis and last year's champion, Michael Mizrachi. Had Buchanan not spoken up, Mueller would be back home in White Rock, British Columbia, this week, hitting the links with his golf buddies or lacing up the skates at the hockey rink. Instead, he's preparing for the final table and the chance to win $10 million ... and to become poker's next world champion. "Shawn and I are very different players. Shawn gets there at 10 a.m., puts the hoodie on, plays a $600 tournament, lasts until 5 p.m, 6 p.m. ... He's played eight hours, takes a brutal beat, jumps into another one, same thing, puts the work boots on," Mueller said. "I show up with one minute left in late registration, get my eight blinds, can't wait for a five, seven of spades [and] jam it in. Beautiful. I busted. OK, what am I going to do? Do I have time to go golfing? Am I going to go for dinner? Cash games? I don't care." That night outside of Nobu, Buchanan told Mueller he would be lighting $10,000 on fire by playing in the main event. Mueller felt Buchanan was starting to push a little too hard, -- and getting a little too personal -- and he suggested maybe Buchanan back off a little bit. "Yeah, it got a little bit heated. 'You play your style, I'll play my style. Don't worry about my game,'" Mueller said. "But one thing about me is I'm pretty self-aware. I might get fired up, but I'm pretty self-aware and realized that it was coming from a really good place in his heart, and he has always had the best interest for me in mind. "Regardless if he has a piece or no piece [of the buy-in], he has always, always, always had my back, and he was giving me some tough love, and I, quite frankly, did not want to hear it. But after reflecting and having a few pops on back-to-back nights, I was like, 'OK, well, I guess it's not just [to] myself that I got to prove I can take this seriously and do something'." The first two days of the tournament went by with Mueller bagging up chips at the end of each night. Only 3,294 players remained after starting with 9,208, and Mueller was one of them. It was late on Day 3 when Mueller went from being one of hundreds of players hoping to make Day 4 to a one-percenter. "I kind of had a tough Day 3 table, and I tripled my starting stack with about an hour and a half left at a pretty tough table. Then I moved tables and it was a lot different. I was able to turn 600,000 into 1.1 million in the last hour of the day, and I went, 'I might make a run here,'" Mueller said. Mueller finished Day 3 with 1,100,000 chips and was 13th out of 1,386 players remaining. He started to have flashbacks to 2013 and 2017, when he made Day 5 each year before busting out. "I knew Day 5 was not going to be the final stop this time," Mueller said. "It just started to get more and more real every day." On each of the following three days of play, Mueller built a bigger and bigger stack. When Day 8 began, he was one of the three shortest stacks. After patiently grinding for the first 2½ hours of play, Mueller found a spot most poker players have dreams (and nightmares) of, holding pocket aces against Romain Lewis' pocket kings. That hand eliminated Lewis and gave Mueller a 30 million chip stack with 16 players remaining. Almost two hours later, Mueller doubled through fellow Canadian Rami Hammoud with pocket jacks against pocket nines. That put him at 43 million in chips with 14 players remaining. Mueller then doubled up through Michael Gagliano with pocket queens against Gagliano's ace-king to sit behind a stack of 56 million in chips with 11 players left. When Traynor busted in 10th place, Mueller had a stack of 48.5 million that he'll work with when the final table resumes Monday. Back home for the past two weeks in White Rock, a city about 40 minutes outside of Vancouver, Mueller has been golfing with his buddies and even been to the hockey rink to film a segment for the final table broadcast. A one-time professional hockey player who plays with the Vancouver Canucks alumni team in charity events, he admits to having had dreams about hockey since he was kid, but making the final table has left him doing something he has never done before. "I wake up and it's like I'm dreaming of the final table, and I've timed out or, 'No, no, no, no, no, I've only got one time bank left.' All kinds of weird scenarios I'm dreaming about. I never dreamed [about] poker, ever, but it's such a big thing," Mueller joked. Mueller is getting as much rest as possible while also doing some prep work for the final table, including time with Buchanan to talk through hands, strategy and, of course, making sure he's focused. He knows some of what happens when play resumes comes down to the cards, but he wants to do everything he can to be able to look back and know he didn't light this opportunity on fire. "There's a lot of things that have to go right. Did I think I would be in the final nine of 9,208 players? Probably not," Mueller said. "So, the dream is alive, and I'm going to try to put myself in the best position to win. And, at the end of the day, regardless of what happens, I might not be happy, but I'll definitely be proud of myself."