I made a post earlier saying that all the high-rollers are out to play today - and I mean it.
Having just walked over to the far end of the PokerStars LIVE room to catch-up on the action, 147 had registered by the end of Level 7 (including 17 re-entries) to play the *sharp-intake of breath* PokerStars Championship High Roller Single Re-Entry Shot Clock.
Now 111 remain, but with the rest of the day to play and to register, it's likely that number will go up even further to see the current prizepool of HK$14,259,000 swell even more. And there's a tough field out in force today, with the likes of John Juanda, Mustafa Kanit, Dario Sammartino and Michael Addamo on the felt (and that's just on one table).
Back at the start of play, just 30 shuffled their way to the tables to find 50,000 chips laid out in front of them. But this is a tournament, and the bust-outs came quickly. It was Nan Hong who was first to hit the rail when his [Ac][Qs] wasn't enough on a [Qd][9c][7d][A][3s] board against Nariman Yagmai's [As][Ad] for a set of aces.
On the other end of the spectrum, it's Yang Wang who sits on the biggest stack. He won a load of chips from Sai Wu shortly before Level 6. It involved hitting an ace on the river against Wu, whose pair of Queens were winning up until that point - and Wu wasn't pleased when it hit. So titled was she that she launched into a verbal outburst at Wang before refusing to leave the table for a good 10 minutes while typing away angrily at her phone. She eventually skuttled off as play continued.
Wang is followed closely by Nick Pertrangilo and Adrian Attenborough, and a whole host of other notable names. They include Sofia Lovgren, Nick Pertrangilo, David Peters (who entered after busting the main event earlier today) and Vladimir Troyanovskiy who are all sitting on large stacks at the mid-way point.
Pop back later for a full update on the day's results and to see how the likes of Ike Haxton, ElkY, Maria Ho, Randy 'nanonoko' Lew get on. If you can't wait until then, be sure to check out the live coverage from our friends over at PokerNews.