Good morning and welcome back to Las Vegas for the first of two Day 2 flights that will inch us nearer the money at the 2016 World Series of Poker Main Event (WSOP).

This is a difficult time for players: the cash bubble is still at least two real days, and one poker day, in the future but the adrenalin of Day 1 may have drained away. Players are going to need to dip into their stores of mental strength and focus as five-and-a-half two-hour levels are scheduled for the day. They'll need to play them all, and more, for any chance of success.

The survivors from Days 1A and 1B comprise today's field. That's 545 players from the opening flight and 1,301 from the next. It means that 1,846 will take their seats at 11am, but only about 1,000 (at the roughest of guesses) will still be there past midnight.

The size of this event--at 6,737 total runners, it's the biggest for five years--means that tournament organisers have already had to amend the structure. Originally only five levels were scheduled today, with a 90-minute dinner break. But they have tacked on an additional half level, while trimming the dinner break to 60 minutes, in a bid to stay on the right track.

Our particular focus here will be on the following players bearing the PokerStars patch:

Vanessa Selbst: 133,900
Marc-Andre Ladouceur: 103,700
ElkY: 102,300
Jennifer Shahade: 62,800
Fatima Moreira de Melo: 60,000
Victor Ramdin: 60,000
Aditya Agarwal: 57,100
Jason Somerville: 45,600

All of them has enough to stick around through this day. Even Somerville's stack is 76 big blinds deep at this stage. There's no need for panic anywhere. (That said, today's tournament chip leader, Gary Sewell, has 312,500. So there's still room for improvement.)

Stand by as play is about to begin.