Unofficial figures from the World Series of Poker Main Event Day1 and 2 starting flights that have just completed suggest that 2,623 players still standing from a starting field of 7,221 will gather for Day 3 – the first time all the surviving players will be in action at once.
Day 2C completed in the early hours of Thursday morning Vegas time with 1,600 players left; these will join the 1,023 survivors of the other starting days when Day 3 cards hit the air midmorning Thursday local time.
A British player leads the Day 3 chip counts at present in the person of Artan Dedusha, a remarkable achievement for a player enjoying his first Main Event experience. He will start Day 3 with a stack of 680,000
More former Main Event winners crashed out during Day 2C, including Phil Hellmuth, Ryan Riess, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Joe McKeehen.
On the more positive side of the coin, Scotty Nguyen, Johnny Chan, Joe Cada, and Carlos Mortensen are all on the Day 3 roster.
Other high profile names who have fallen include Daniel Negreanu, Maria Ho, Bertrand Grospellier, Anthony Zinno, William Kassouf, Griffin Benger, Paul Volpe, JC Tran, Antonio Esfandiari, and Gus Hansen
However the quality and size of the field has left many formidable players still active and hungry for the cash bubble, including Brian Rast, Allen Cunningham, Gavin Smith, David Pham and Jason Mercier.