Day 2B was a record-breaking day as well as a day of professional interest at the World Series of Poker.

It was a record-breaking day for the simple reason that when day 2B started, there were 2,924 players that needed to be seated. That is record-breaking by a gigantic margin, enough so that the Rio needed every single poker table in their possession to accommodate all the players. Unfortunately for their logistics personnel, it was decided beforehand that days 1A and 1B would feed into 2A with 1C and 1D feeding into 2B. 1C and 1D were the two largest remaining fields, resulting in the record day 2B.

As of the dinner break, the leader in the room was Troy Weber. He was over 350,000 chips and very comfortable as a result with a 75,000 chip lead on the second person on the chip leader board.

There are many big names still in the tournament at the current level. Josh Arieh (made the 2004 final table), Jeff Lisandro, Antonio Esfandiari and David Benyamine all have six-figure chip stacks and should be able to make it through the day and onto the next provided nothing untoward happens between now and the end of the day’s play. They might be joined there by the always entertaining Humberto Brenes, a poker professional that was able to call his opponent’s Ace-Queen hand while doubling up with pocket rockets to remain in the game.

At the same time that some poker professionals are thriving, there are other poker professionals that have left the room in hopes of being able to do better in 2010. Howard Lederer was one of those professionals and he was joined by last year’s player of the year Erick Lindgren in that respect. Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi was also on the list of professionals that didn’t survive the day. Scotty Nguyen, who won the WSOP Main Event in 1998 and won the WSOP HORSE event last year in a controversial display of poor sportsmanship, was also knocked out of the running on day 2B.

If things stay as they are, we will be able to follow some of the biggest names in poker into the deeper stages of the tournament where the entire remaining field is together in the same room and dashes towards the money.