The field at the World Series of Poker Main Event is so large that not only were four day ones needed in order to thin the field down, but two day twos will be needed on top of the four day ones to get the field down to a size that could fit into the same room. Almost 1,500 people were in the field for day 2A, including several big names that were intent on surging through to the day 3 single room bonanza.

Unfortunately, things did not go well for many of the top professionals in today’s play. Johnny Chan, a former two-time WSOP Main Event champion, was ejected from his seat before dinner after losing an all-in bet. The same was true of Phil Laak, known affectionately to many as the Unabomber. Barry Greenstein, Barry Shulman, Brian Townsend, Tony Guoga and John Hennigan were all eliminated in today’s day of play as well.

There are many players with household poker names that are still left in the hunt however, including the man that is the favourite this year to take home player of the year honours. Vitaly Lunkin from Russia has a very healthy 120,000 chip stack at the moment and is certainly looking like he will last to the end of day 2A. It also looks as though Greg Raymer, Joe Sebok, Andy Black and Chris Ferguson will be coming along for the ride as well.

At the current moment in time, the chip leader is Samer Rahman. He was in the top five at the end of his day one, but he has managed to win some huge pots and add some impressive chips to his stack. He is over 300,000 chips at the moment and nobody else has even come close to 200,000. This is not necessarily a good thing however, as early chip leaders often tend to get felled well before the actual end of the tournament.

It was certainly an exciting day. With more big name professionals getting ready to game tomorrow, stay tuned to see how things turn out.