Play began at 12:20pm with the blinds at $400-$800 and $100 antes, and despite the average chip stack being well over $50,000 there were some heavy clashes within minutes of the start of play.

Joe Hachem was involved in one of the first big pots, doubling up when his full house trounced David Oppenheim’s queen high flush, allowing the former WSOP chanp to build his stack back up to the $100,000 mark.

David Oppenheim survived that set back, but a number of big name pros were not so fortunate, with Daniel Negreanu the highest profile casualty of the day. He was also joined on the rail by defending champion Joe Bartholdi, Todd Brunson, Gsvin Smith, Todd Brunson, David Benyamine, and many more.

But while some big names struck out, others struck for the top of the leaderboard, and none more spectacularly than Phil Hellmuth Jnr. The ten-time WSOP bracelet winner has struggled to impose himself on the World Poker Tour since its inception in 2001 and besides a second WSOP main-event win there is nothing the ‘poker brat’ would like more than to win a WPT title.

Well it is unlikely Phil Hellmuth will have a better chance than this. Two key hands put him in this position, the first when he made a nut straight to beat his opponents two pair, and the second when he flopped a set of queens to take over $60,000 from Dave Rheem. The wins pushed Hellmuth’s stack over the $500,000 mark, meaning he will start Day Three at the top of the leaderboard, a position Hellmuth has not been in for a long time. Given his skill at playing from the front you’d have to count the poker brat as a serious contender for the title, even at this early stage.

Another player busy moving up the leaderboard yesterday was Roland De Wolfe, the British poker playing phenomenon, who finished third in this event last year, and already has a WPT title and an EPT title to his name. He scored his biggest pot when he flopped two pair with KQ on a Kd-Qd-2c board and it held up against J.C. Alvarado’s 5d-2d flush draw.

In fact by the end of the day the top of the leaderbaord was simply crammed with top class professionals, making the likelihood of a star-ridden final table a real possibility. And outside of the top ten the  likes of Phil Ivey and J.C. Tran are still alive, low on  chips, but far from out of it.

Here’s how the top of the leaderboard looks going into tomorrow:

1 – Phil Hellmtuh - $528,000

2 – Roland de Wolfe - $526,500

3 – Sorel Mizzi - $499,300

4 – Steve Wong - $475,000

5 – Patrik Antonius - $470,000

6 – Paul Wasicka - $440,000

7 – Lee Markholt - $350,000

8 – Anna Wroblewski - $350,000

9 – Sam Farha - $345,000

10 – Marcello Del Grosso - $325,000

Selected:

11 – Daniel Alaei - $310,000

16 – David Oppenheim - $265,000

20 – David “Chip” Reese - $250,000

23 – Freddy Deeb - $240,000

23 – Amir  Vahedi - $240,000

29 – Barny Boatman - $220,000

31 – Ram Vaswani - $215,000