Play started about 12:20 this afternoon for day 1a of the $10,000 NL Holdem Main Event, with the UNLV Marching Band and Wayne Newton kicking things off. I’m sure those who’ve chosen days 1b-1d are thankful that they didn’t have to experience that for their start as it will probably be a bit more low-key for them when play starts. It appears that the day 1a numbers will be around 1,297, which is very slightly above the day 1a figure from last year. The mysterious figure so far appears to be in the 4500-4900 range for now, as there are 468 spots currently showing for the prize pool (of course no $ figures as of yet) if you take a look at the picture on Pauly’s site.

Among those that won’t have to worry about making the November Nine: Raymond Rahme, Tuan Lam, Roy Winston, Tom “Durrr” Dwan, Vanessa Selbst, Eli Elezra, Katja Thater, Phil Galfond, Bob and Maureen Feduniak, Chad Brown, Lyle Berman, Dan Harrington, Jason Alexander, and plenty of other names (known and unknown). The current chip leader going into the dinner break is David “Chino” Rheem, who is currently at 103,000 in chips. Other recognizable names: Blair Hinkle, Svetlana Gromenkova, Kido Pham, Noah Boeken, Anna Wroblewski, Mekhi Phifer, Maya Antonius and plenty of others. Follow the updates during the evening at the WSOP.com site here. Play starts again shortly, as they play two more 2-hour levels, then the survivors get to return on July 8 for day 2a.

More updates during the rest of the evening…

Teddy “The Iceman” Munroe: Watch out for this guy. Tough to play against.

Tom is was the chip leader in the $2k Omaha Hi-Lo. That’s pretty cool.

UPDATE: Tom is out. Not cool.

And that limit event he busted out of yesterday … Erick Lindgren just missed the final table, which is now set with some interesting players, including Teddy Munroe, Ali Eslami, and Vinny Vinh. (Teddy and I go way back — last year I’d be typing outside and “The Iceman” would fill me in on the $100-$200 cash action while taking a piss on the tournament tent air conditioners. “Makin’ money, baby!” he’d say before shaking himself dry and heading back to the table.)

Even the $10k 7-Stud World Championship is getting interesting … with Doyle still alive and both Bob and Maureen Feduniak with the potential to become the first ever husband-wife presumably non-collusive team at the final table. Never mind. Since typing this, all the above-mentioned have been eliminated.

I learned about this 7-Stud shape-up from the a WSOP-TV vid. And though I tend to detest any lack of imbeddability, I gotta say I like a lot of what this ESPN/WSOP/Bluff (?) crew has got going here. For example, Harmonie Krieger does a basic feature video interview set on the different jobs people come to the WSOP from. Nice enough, right? — but very real when one of the guys she talks with is Jay Columbo, who ran the legendary Mayfair and Playstation poker clubs in New York City, legally questionable status notwithstanding.

And then, perhaps most shocking to me, I enjoyed Jean-Robert Bellande’s “Surviving the WSOP” — where the young, aspiring Eskimo Clark chronicles his ups and downs at the World Series while his video-podcast editors comment Pop-up Video-style — follow along as he hustles high-rollers for buy-ins.

Even learned something from Phil Ivey’s less exciting V-log … and that is that he’s playing so many big-field, low-buy-in donkfests because he has a lot of side action pending on whether or not he’ll win a bracelet this year. We’ll see if we can’t find out more about this.

Speaking of donkfests, the Ladies Event has already lost 2/3 of its starting field, and of those still remaining, at least three of them are Pokerati MySpace friends: Lacey Jones, Kathy Liebert, and Mandy Baker are looking strong and pretty much representing the spectrum of all that is good about women. Go girls! I mean chicks … er babes .. uh bitches?

UPDATE: Lacey is nursing a short stack. Poker Roadie Amanda Leatherman has come on strong, however, and picked up the aggressive pace. Michele Lewis, Tiffany Michele, and PokerNews editrix Haley Hintze are all out.

In the meantime, primarily because it is awesomely embeddable, check out the debut episode of The Degenerate Report, from Neverwin Poker: