The remaining 1700 players are currently playing the fourth and final level of play today for day 2b, which will join the survivors from yesterday to return Friday at noon as the field will be together for the first time. Troy Weber remains the chip leader with 475,000 in chips. Other notables with chips: Brian Lemke (275,500), Phil Ivey (265,500), Kenny Tran (220,000), Hevad Khan (177,000), Antonio Esfandiari (173,000), Tony Hachem (155,000), Phil Hellmuth (139,000), Ville Wahlbeck (109,000), Kirill Gerasimov (105,000) and Tuan Le (102,000).

Notable eliminations: Bernard Lee, Robert Williamson III, Phil Tom, David Sklansky, Gavin Griffin, Howard Lederer, Scotty Nguyen, Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles (who was at the ESPN feature table with Hellmuth), Shannon Shorr and Erick Lindgren.

Check out the updates and chip counts at wsop.com here and more stuff from Pokerati during the late hours. WSOP Media tournament and media briefing tomorrow, I’ll be with Team Pokerati in spirit in the tournament. The Commish has quite a few announcements tomorrow, including the Poker Hall of Fame nominees so come back tomorrow.

Mystery indeed … we’ll see what we discover today (as I finally make it back to the Rio) … but while Kevin is on top of the relevant seat assignments, at least one plausibly reliable source informs us:

Those tables mentioned on your site, green 146 and such, dont exist. The only tables in green all series were 150-155. Those other tables were ghost tables. Those players were given different seats, empty seats.

Ahh, see, this is why some people can’t handle seeing us dig in semi-real time … the business of gathering (and assembling) facts while reporting news can be messy. But hey, thanks for helping us understand.

Regardless of whether or not any shenanigans were in play, one thing for certain is that there will be a lot of hubbub and cries for asterisks should Joe Reitman, Kirk Morrison, Sully Erna, Tony Hachem, or Kevin O’Donnell go super-deep. That much we definitely know.