After the second full day of action and nine levels of play at the WPT World Championship at The Bellagio it is WSOP and WPT title holder Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi who leads the way with 428,000 chips.
The original field of 103 entrants from Day 1 (down to 98 at the end of Day 1) was boosted by a further 32 entrants during day two (registration is in fact still open until 5pm on Day 3) and by the end of the days play we still have 95 players in contention.
Also well in contention is online phenom Isaac "philivey2694" Haxton who currently sits in 5th place with 313k chips.
There were however a few more bust outs today (only five players fell total during Day 1) as a further 35 players hit the rail, including the most recent WPT Champ, Shawn Cunix, who won his $25k seat at the Championship courtesy of his win less than a month ago at WPT Jacksonville. Luck wasn't on Cunix's side today however as he lost a three way all in pot with 99 as one of his opponents (Viacheslav Igin) rivered a four flush to take Cunix last 20,000 chips towards the end of level 8.
Another big name to crash and burn during level 8 was Daniel "KidPoker" Negreanu - and once again he got the last of his chips in during a three way all in pot. His AK was unable to best either of his opponents who both flopped sets on a QJ2 rainbow flop (QQ for Lance Steinberg and JJ for Guillaume Darcourt). Despite losing this pot and dropping to around 150k chips, Darcourt made a great run towards the end of play to finish in third spot with around 356k chips.
Another WPT Champ from last month also fell today as WPT Vienna Champ Morten Christensen was cruelly eliminated by English pro Sam Trickett as Mortensens wired Aces were cracked as Trickett's pocket fives flopped a set during level 6.
Other big names to go home empty handed today include Vanessa Selbst (who lost the vast majority of her chips to Martin Hanowski is a 225k pot when Selbst mucked her hand on the turn apparently "drawing dead" to Hanowski's nut straight), Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy, Hasan Habib, James Dempsey and Tony Dunst.
Play resumes at 12pm PT.