Day 2 Dawns
All's quiet inside the Casino at the Empire this afternoon. It's eerily dim and calm in here right now, and the staff is scurrying around silently in the shadows, passing out the chip bags and double-checking the table draw in preparation for play.
Just 31 players have survived to return for Day 2 of Event #1 here, that number down enormously from the overflow 244 runners that began the tournament yesterday. Twenty-four places pay out GBP this afternoon, so seven unlucky players will have to make the trip back to the Casino before ultimately leaving again empty handed.
Andrew Pantling isn't in much danger of going home with nothing today. The Canadian pro is putting on another good show here in London, amassing a chip-leading stack of 106,100 chips by night's end yesterday. There are two others above the 100,000-chip mark, one of them being Swedish Londoner Chris Bjorin. He begins the day in second place with 103,800 chips, and he's in the hunt for his fifth WSOPE cash. That would break the first-place tie he currently has with Daniel Negreanu (four cashes apiece), and it would come along with another addition to his $4.6 million in career cashes.
Apart from the big stacks (Chris Moorman is up there too, lest we forget), we've got plenty more notables like Phil Laak, Liv Boeree, Jeffrey Lisandro, and Praz Bansi still in contention for the bracelet. By the end of the day today, the final table will be set, and just six players will be standing between each other and the first bracelet of the 2010 WSOPE.
The players are just starting to file into the perimeter of the tournament area, and we're about T-minus 30 minutes from our start time. Go stretch your legs and grab yourself an English tea; we'll be back shortly.