First, some belated congratulations to the winners of the tournaments that started on Monday. The media tournament was won by Brett Collson of pocketfiveslive.com (he donated his $5,000 prize to the Wounded Warrior Project. The casino employees winner was Jonathan Kotula, who works at the O’Sheas casino on the LV Strip.

Day 2b of the Main Event started with almost 2,400 players looking to play again tomorrow for day 3. The dinner break started a few minutes ago, and about 1,400 players are still in action today as they finally got everyone into the Amazon Room at the Rio. The current leader appears to be Steve Lade, who has about 380,000 in chips. Notables near the top: Day 1c leader Hennig Granstad, Victor Ramdin, David Singer, a much slimmer Thomas “Thunder” Keller, Nenad Medic, Evelyn Ng and Chip Jett. You can follow all the action when they return around 8:45pm Vegas time at the WSOP website here.

More updates later…

With the slower structure at the 2008 WSOP main event, the number of players still in the field after all of the Day 1’s were completed is massive – 3,929 to be exact. Luckily, the second days are divided into two, with Day 1A and 1B finishers playing on Day 2A on Tuesday, and Day 1C and 1D finishers playing on Day 2B on Wednesday. Are ya with me?

There will be 1251 players on Day 2A, with the top ten as follows:

Mark Garner – 194,900
Ben Sarnoff – 177,500
Brandon Adams – 176,450
Brian Schaedlich – 160,725
Kellen Hunter – 155,200
Stefan Mattsson – 154,275
Patrick Fortin – 145,275
Robert Mizrachi – 142,400
Jeff Frerichs – 138,025
Soren Peterson – 135,475

And there will be a whopping 2678 players on Day 2B, with the ten chip leaders as follows:

Henning Granstad – 242,950
Curt Kohlberg – 173,050
David Baker – 163,450
Howard Berchowitz – 160,075
Arnaud Mattern – 157,650
Steve Austin – 149,000
Mohamad Kowssarie – 146,000
David Stucke – 140,525
Sami Rustom – 140,450
Dylan Linde – 138,425

We’ll be at the Rio tomorrow to bring you any interesting info and gossip as the field plays down over the coming days.