Play Money Poker has changed.

For the first ten years of PokerStars it provided new and inexperienced players with training wheels to get used to the look and feel of online poker before committing themselves to real money. However, in the last few years things have dramatically changed. The standard of play has increased, as have the average game stakes. The poker room has evolved along with the players, with the introduction of the Billionaire Club, the World Cup of Poker, and special play money tournament series. We also have some big tournaments like the daily Big Stacks and of course the weekly flagship Sunday Billion.

Our biggest and best players are taking their game very seriously, and nowhere is this more evident than in our daily high stakes tournaments. These daily nosebleed tournaments are reminiscent of a private high-stakes room; a select few players sit down at tournaments with an eye-watering buy-in, and play down to a single winner. While these tournaments are for play money, the poker is real and the competition is fierce.

To provide an added incentive for these players, we are creating the Big Leagues leaderboard. This leaderboard will recognise the best high-stakes tournament players in the world. But it is not just about the bragging rights; each month from March to December 2016 we will give the player at the top of the leaderboard one billion play chips, and the players in 2nd through 9th place will also receive a substantial prize.

The tournaments that qualify for this leaderboard are the four daily 50M Super High Rollers and the three daily Centurions. That's close to two hundred tournaments every month, so it will require both skill, stamina, and a baller bankroll, to get your name in lights.

List of daily tournaments that contribute leaderboard ranking points:

You can visit our website for more information on the Big Leagues leaderboard, and check out the leaderboard when it kicks off on 1st March.

* CLICK TO REFRESH FOR LATEST UPDATES
* Day 1 runs for eight one-hour levels
* Registration open until start of Day 2

11.45pm: Preparing for the start of the EPT

Although the UKIPT is already well under way, it's today that the big boys of the EPT amble into town. They kick off with the €25,000 High Roller event--the biggest buy in event of the festival.

Play begins at 12.30pm and, if previous experience tells us anything, the field will begin small. But it should grow considerably and they'll contest a mighty prize pool. We'll have blow-by-blow action from the outset. -- HS

Take a look at the official website of the EPT, with tournament schedule, news, results and accommodation details for the rest of the season.

Also all the schedule information is on the EPT App, which is available on both Android or IOS.

PokerStars Blog reporting team on the EPT12 Dublin Main Event: Stephen Bartley, Martin Harris, Jack Stanton and Howard Swains. Photography by Neil Stoddart. Follow the PokerStars Blog on Twitter: @PokerStarsBlog.

* CLICK TO REFRESH FOR LATEST UPDATES
* CLICK HERE FOR LATEST CHIP COUNTS
* Day 2 of the UKIPT Main Event
* Day 2 consists of ten 60-minute levels - currently playing level 13
* Players remaining: 273 of 1,002
* Top 151 players get paid, payout structure here

12:10pm: The start time doesn't matter players will still be late
Level 13, Blinds 1,200, 2,400, ante 300

There's been a lot of grumbling this week over the 10am start time, that's late in the normal world but early in the poker world.

If today has proven anything though whatever the start time is players will always show up late. There were plenty of empty chairs at the start of play and not just from the big stacks who could absorb the hits. We won't name and shame but we saw an empty seat for a player with a sub 55,000 stack as well as some with a 130,000+ stack. --NW

12:02pm: Shuffle up and deal!
Level 13, Blinds 1,200-2,400, ante 300

Cards are in the are for day 2.

11:45am: Get ready for moving day
Level 13, Blinds 1,200 - 2,400, ante 300

Day 2 on the UKIPT is often referred to as moving day and the reason is simple. By the time the day ends we'll have lost around 90% of the players who started the day. We've got 273 players returning today and we guesstimate that by the time level 22 is done, at around 00.15 GMT they'll be somewhere around 30-35 players left in their seats. If that is the case then the average stack will be 800,000 and the chip leader will have about 2,000,000.

So that makes the 352,000 that Stefan Schillhabel has seem quite paltry in comparison, but he's got the most of the players who advanced from Day 1. There's a strong chasing pack though with the likes of: Vladimir Velikov (301,500), Adam Owen (252,900), Marc Foggin (246,900), Thomas Finneran (216,900), Dan Carter (186,600), James Akenhead (182,500), Padraig O'Neil (181,700), Charlie Carrel (157,200), Casey Kastle (140,500) and Jeff Madsen (138,900) lurking.

Whilst all of the EPT champions in the field, and most of the Red Spades, were eliminated on Day 1 Felipe Ramos (78,200) and Chris Gordon (88,700) are back today.

Cards are in the air at noon.

PokerStars Blog Reporting Team at UKIPT5 Dublin: Marc Convey and Nick Wright. Photos by Mickey May. Follow the PokerStars Blog on Twitter: @PokerStarsBlog

We love breaking records on the UKIPT and we smashed two of them out of the park today. A massive 788 players turned up to play Day 1B of this event, eclipsing the previous single day attendance record for a UKIPT Main Event of 736 (set at UKIPT4 London 2).

Add them to the 214 who put their faces above the parapet on Day 1A and it meant the total number of runners in this huge UKIPT Main Event was 1,002, some 142 more than pitched up at UKIPT4 Galway, our previous best on Irish soil.

All told those 1,002 players created a prize pool totalling € 971,940. Over the next four days that'll be split 151 ways with the winner collect €176,900. You can see the full payout structure here.

There was actually a third record broken today, but we didn't break it, Stefan Schillhabel
did. His gargantuan end of day stack of 352,000 is a UKIPT Day 1 record, just eclipsing the 351,200 tht Neil Van Der Merwe bagged up in Bristol earlier this year. The 28-year-old German, who finished fourth in the EPT11 Malta Main Event hails from Dusseldorf and started playing poker in 2006 with friends and is still a recreational player. He is currently studying for a Masters in sociology and also has a part-time job in sales.

Other players who turned 25,000 into substantially more today include:

Thomas Boivin, 342,400
Olivier Ferrero, 315,500
Adam Owen, 252,900
Adam Milewski, 232,900
Thomas Finneran, 216,000
James Akenhead, 182,500
Padraig O'Neill, 181,700

If you searched hard enough in the huge Day 1B field you'd have found half a dozen players sporting various versions of the famous PokerStars Red Spade.

Representing Team Pro were ElkY and Eugene Katchalov. Neither will be back for Day 2 though. The Frenchman ran kings into aces to bust #sosick.

Team Pro Online's sole representative proved he can cut it in the live arena too. That should come as no surprise given his name's Mickey Petersen. EPT champion Mickey Petersen. The Danish online tournament beast looked like he was going to reach Day 2 but busted on the final hand of the night.

Still going strong though is Felipe Ramos. It was easy to miss people in this hectic day, the Friend of PokerStars flew under the radar but flew he did as he'd turned his 25,000 starting stack into 78,200 by the time play ended.

We saw a new type of patch on the tour today, one that read, 'PokerStars Live at The Hippodrome Casino Team Pro'. The Hippodrome Casino in London's West End is PokerStars home in the UK and they recently sponsored two players to reprensent them at poker tournaments.

Both are tour regulars but it was a case of contrasting fortunes for the pair as Chris Gordon navigated the choppy UKIPT waters to finish on 88,700, whilst Kelly Saxby, who had a deep run at UKIPT Bristol earlier in the season, busted during level eight.

With so many well known players in the field today - there were 10 EPT champions just for starters - it's no surprise that plenty of them will be back for Day 2. Among the sharks hungry for UKIPT cash on Day 2 will be:

Charlie Carrel, 157,200
Andrew Chen, 149,900
Jeff Madsen, 138,900
Nick Newport, 125,400
Patrick Leonard, 83,000
Jamie Sykes, 76,400
Dara Davey, 71,200
Dara O'Kearney, 57,000
Surinder Sunar, 53,000
Gareth Chantler, 44,700
Keith Johnson, 24,600

Of course for some their tournaments went the other way. EPT11 Malta champion Niall Farrell was pretty vocal about the early 10am start time not being to his liking (not the only dissenter to be fair) and he was even more vocal about the bar not opening until 3pm. He busted out shortly after midday and tweeted - in jest - the reason for his quick exit.

Was forced to bust the UKIPT immediately in protest of the late bar opening. Stand with me brothers.

— Niall Farrell (@Firaldo87poker) February 11, 2016

He wasn't the only EPT champion who found the UKIPT a tougher nut to crack. Sebastian Pauli, Kevin MacPhee, Jannick Wrang, Ognyan Dimov, Dominik Panka, David Vamplew and Anton Wigg all busted out.

You could also set fire to the tournament slips of Chris Moorman, Ben Heath, Chance Kornuth, Max Silver, Matthias De Meulder, Jude Ainsworth and Fergal Nealon. As the day progressed, they did not.

Around 222 players made it through the day, add them to the 52 who advanced from Day 1A and somewhere in the region of 275 players will be back to play Day 2 from noon tomorrow. The march to the money begins in earnest then. We'll be back as we burst the bubble and move towards the final table during 10 one-hour levels.

Join us then, you can catch up on all today's action via the links below, and overnight chip counts and the seat draw will be posted shortly. Keep an eye on the widget to the right (or at the bottom if you're on mobile) and the @PokerStarsBlog and @UKIPT accounts for that information.

Until tomorrow good night from Dublin.

Levels 1-7
Levels 8-12

All photos are copyright of Mickey May