No sign of a runaway lead yet, however - the day is still young and playing no hands at all would probably have left your stack by this point with barely a dent.
I didn't see how it happened, but on the feature table, Daniel Negreanu has lost over two thirds of his stack and is down to 9,275 as a result. Glancing at the other stacks at the table, it would appear as though Ray Dehkharghani was the man responsible.
William Thorson, white-sunglass-sporting Swedish maverick had dropped to less than a third of his starting stack before this hand against Eric Liu kicked off...
Jesper Hougaard made the initial preflop raise, called by Liu and Thorson. On the flop, Liu bet 850 and only Thorson check-called.
They both checked the turn and on the river Thorson checked again. When Liu bet 2,550, he swiftly moved all in for around 6k, and Liu gave it up just as swiftly. Back to nearly 12k now...
Yesterday, the central table upstairs was awash with onlookers, the hustle and bustle of the rail swamping the likes of Hellmuth, Cunningham and Seed. Today, however, is a much more somber affair. This isn't a slight on their replacements - it is, after all, Sunday - but it does create an easier passage for chip counts:
John Tabatabai - 36,000
Peter Wood - 29,000
Josh Gould - 36,000
Nenad Medic - 27,000
Neil Channing - 29,000
Matt Stout - 29,000
A talkative table has emerged with Antonio Esfandiari attempting to get bets on flop colour and stats guessing and pretty much anything that pops into his head, from the sounds of it.
Just now he called a Nik Persaud preflop raise from the blinds and checked the flop.
"You're gonna bet about 850, and I'm gonna instacall," predicted Esfandiari.
Proving him wrong, Persaud checked - and again on the turn before giving it up without a fight to Esfandiari's 1,025 bet on the river.
Carlos Mortensen, who's scaled the heights of prestigious, tough-field, high buy-in, deepstack events in the past, including winning the WPT $25k Final, isn't running so well this time round, down to just 8,800 in level two.
Mortensen called a raise preflop to see a flop, on which he check-called another bet, bringing the on the turn. Now once more, check-call 2,500, and then a final opportunity arose to check the river. He did so, then went into the tank as his opponent bet 6k. This was a fairly big chunk of his remaining chips, and he really gave it some time before making a fourth and final call.
His opponent showed for the flush, which turned out to be a similar though obviously superior hand to Mortensen's which he flashed the table before shaking his head and throwing them away.
I suppose when you've won $3.5 million in tournament winnings and played on High Stakes Poker, you need a little side action to keep yourself entertained during the opening levels.
With both Brandon Adams and Antonio Esfandiari receiving massages across opposite ends of the table - a rubdown symmetry of sorts -, they decided to place various wagers based on the answers of the masseuses.
"How many times," started Esfandiari after confirming with the masseuses that they didn't mind playing along, "do you think she has given out her telephone number to an interested party? And it can't be business related."
It could have been a blocker bet, perhaps, but when John Magill - 12th in WSOP 2006 - bet 2,000 on the river of an board, he must have been delighted to see opponent Justin Smith not insta-call. But despite the dwell, he did call, and indeed had the better hand with against the Irishman's . Consequently, Magill drops to 6,000.
Mr. Vaklinov, currently at 10,000, just shooed off both Annette Obrestad and small blind Daniel Negreanu, who'd called her raise but also backed off when he made it 2,700 to go preflop. No easy chips on TV this time round...