Liv Boeree says she hasn't been playing much this summer in Las Vegas, favouring instead to "do her thing" (her words), which means heading out in the desert a lot, climbing mountains and trekking down streams. Or, to use her words again, "Gandalfing up a river." Click the link to see what she means.

Since returning to the Rio over the past week or so, the break appears to have done her good. She is doing her thing very well at the poker tables. She won a satellite to get into the $111,111 buy-in One Drop High Roller ("It didn't go so well, but it was a great experience") and is now sitting behind 188,000 chips heading to the second break of Day 2.

Boeree started her day in the Pavilion Room and remains there still. However, players are busting at quite a clip and her starting table was recently swept away in the tsunami. "Good luck everyone, nice playing with you," she said, as she skittered off to start again somewhere else.

She passed by Celina Lin on her way to her new seat assignment. A glance at Lin's stack reveals that she now has 105,000. "This is the best I've ever done in three tries," Lin said, referring to the fact that she is still above water into Day 2. As documented earlier in the week, Lin's World Series last year lasted all of 70 minutes, while her first attempt eight years previously did not get too far either.

Lin knows, however, that there's still another two days' play until the money is reached and today, in particular, is a long one. They are playing for 11 hours today, with a 20-minute break after each of five levels, in addition to a 90-minute dinner break.

"I'm used to playing eight hour days in Asia," Lin said. "And in Seoul, I think there was a six-hour day." They get things done far more quickly on the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, where Lin cut her teeth.

Lin's fellow Team Asia member, Yaxi Zhu, is now out of the big one. Zhu made the final table of the Ladies Event earlier in the week, but has perished in the early stages of Day 2. The same fate has befallen Barry Greenstein, who followed the Brazilian duo, Felipe Ramos and Andre Akkari out of the door. George Danzer is also no more.

Jake Cody battles on. Cody is so often an action player that it must be a strange hell for him to be sitting with a short stack. But with 60,000 at the moment, it must feel like he doesn't have much room for manoeuvre. Blinds are still only 500-1,000 (100) in Level 8, so there's no need to press the panic button.

We're also claiming Victor Saumont as our own in this World Series Main Event. And why not? When he is not directing documentary films, Saumont writes the French version of PokerStars Blog, so he is one of us. He won a satellite at the Rio on the night of Day 1A, finishing at around 1:30am.

He opted to play on Day 1C, when he was seated on one of the television tables opposite Martin Jacobson, the 2014 World Champion. The cameras were not on, but it was a neat inversion of Saumont's norm. He last spent a long period at the World Series on the other side of the camera, shooting and producing his brilliant film Nosebleed.

Read all about Nosebleed here.

WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

Chris Moneymaker sits in the middle of the Amazon Room looking like he could at any minute jump into a stock car and drive in the Daytona 500. He is a man of many logos. He is wearing a Team Pro badge, a PokerStars sticker, and a Blue Shark Optics logo. On his head sits an EPT Live "Everyone loves a chop pot!" hat. His shirt stands out the most of all. It's black with various shades of chartreuse that advertise a Memphis martial arts dojo. On the back, it reads, "It pays to be a winner."

Doesn't Moneymaker know it.

Thirteen years ago at this time, Moneymaker became an overnight sensation after--as an amateur accountant from Tennessee--winning the WSOP Main Event. It made him a world champion, and it also made him who he is today.

What exactly is that?

It's a man with the ability to keep coming back, looking like a NASCAR driver, and playing the game he loves. That's what being a winner means.

This is a much different era of poker. Thirteen years ago when Moneymaker won his championship, the NASCAR era of poker wasn't even a twinkle in poker players eyes. Within a couple years, poker events were trying to figure out how to keep players from flooding the TV screens with logos. Tournament organizers started measuring patches, prohibiting hats, and finding any way to try to control the endorsement messaging.

Since then, poker has seen the endorsement game go through its own evolution. Gone are the days when the halls of the Rio were packed with agents looking to scoop up the next featured table player. Gone are a majority of the big money online poker sponsorships. Nevertheless, Moneymaker abides.

Today, however, has been harder. He's folded the nut straight. He's gone 0-2 with kings and been down as low as 10,000 in chips.

"It's been a boxing match," he said just before the last break.

Still, he's battled his way back to 40,000. That's 40 big blinds and out of the danger zone for the moment. It's no small relief for Moneymaker as he tries to survive another day in an event that partly owes its colossal size to him.

"Thank God it's the Main Event. It's a good structure," he said. "I'd have been busted out of any other tournament."

It's a mature patience that's keeping him alive today. More than a decade after turning the poker world on its head, Moneymaker is still here and patched up.

Win or lose today, Moneymaker--with 13 years as a pro in the game--knows one thing for sure: It pays to be a winner.

By the end of Day 2AB, there was no doubting which member of the PokerStars Red Spade Brigade was on top. By the time the chips went in their bag just after 1am this morning, Team Online's Marc-Andre Ladouceur had amassed a Top 25 stack worth 410,500.

Now, it's just a matter of whether anyone playing on Day 2C can catch him.

When play ended this morning, Victor Ramdin, Fatima Moreira de Melo, and Barry Greenstein had all been eliminated from play, leaving the PokerStars team looking like this.

Marc-Andre Ladouceur: 410,500
ElkY: 278,200
Jennifer Shahade: 264,500
Aditya Agarwal: 151,100
Jason Somerville: 62,000
Vanessa Selbst: 55,600

All of those players will return tomorrow to play Day 3 of the WSOP Main Event.

Before we get to that point, however, we will turn our attention today to the massive Day 2C field. What remains here is what's left of the biggest single day flight in WSOP history. There are more than a few members of Team Pro left among them.

Here's how they stack up as play begins this morning.

Liv Boeree: 134,800
Chris Moneymaker: 61,700
Celina Lin: 48,700
Yaxi Zhu: 42,200
Jake Cody: 41,000
Andre Akkari: 36,800
George Danzer: 29,400
Felipe Ramos: 20,300
Daniel Negreanu: 18,600

Each of these players will hope to survive three two-hour levels, a dinner break, and then two and half more levels to bag chips after midnight tomorrow. If so, they will have their shot at Day 3, a campaign that will get all the remaining players tantalizingly close to Friday's money bubble.

For now, good luck to all of PokerStars' Day 2C players. May you all be writing on bags before bedtime.

They rank as the most exciting moments in poker. Those times when you sit watching, in open-mouthed astonishment and marvel at the sheer bravery (or recklessness, depending on how things turn out) of a play attempting an almighty bluff.

For the neutral, whose chips are not in the middle and whose tournament is not on the line, there's nothing like it. For the players involved however, well, it's a different story. There's also more to it than a speculative "hope for the best" Hail Mary play. It takes skill, timing, and courage. A poker face helps too.

You can imagine how over the course of thousands of hours of PokerStars.tv footage we might have seen a good few bluffs play out. And you'd be right. But which would you consider to be among the best?

We spent a bit of time putting together what we think of the Top Five Bluffs ever shown on PokerStars.tv. Careful deliberation whittled down a list containing hands involving the likes of Vanessa Selbst, Antonio Esfandiari, Johnny Lodden, Benny Spindler, Daniel Negreanu and of course Sara Chafek. But which one would you put at number one?

Now you can find out.

The video is available on PokerStars.tv and our YouTube channel, or you can watch the video below.

Actually, poring through the archive highlighted quite a few great hands, gems that are worth another look. So next week we'll have another Top Five video: including the top five bad beats, blow-ups, or the top five moments in poker.

Not that you have to agree with our selections? If you think we've missed one then let us know by tweeting where we went wrong to us at: @PokerStarsBlog. We'll mention the best of the rest next week.

It is quiet in the Amazon Room as the clock ticks towards Level 10. That will be the last full level of play on Day 2 as the stresses and strains of two days at the felt begin to take their toll.

The only exception to the rule of silence comes from the dealers, who are finding themselves required to shout "Seat open!" with far more regularity than at any previous time.

One dealer had to do that earlier when Fatima Moreira de Melo breathed her last. And shortly after dinner, the same refrain followed Victor Ramdin and he made his trudge to the rail.

So it was that two PokerStars players departed--one from Team Pro and the other a SportStar. But there's a silver lining for some of the other red spades.

Jennifer Shahade is leading the pack. As we found out earlier, Shahade doubled in the first level of the day and has consolidated that big stack. She has around 275,000 with which to play, and will be confident of riding that into Day 3.

Our other closely-pursued player, Aditya Agarwal, has approximately 150,000 at this stage, which is also his high point for the tournament. As stated in our level-by-level reports on the Indian pro's progress, he has largely avoided the fireworks exploding around him. His tournament experience against the toughest competition has allowed him to move steadily in the right direction, and will hope to make it through.

Speaking of tournament experience, Vanessa Selbst also fights the good fight. Without exception, every time I pass her table, she has cards in front of her and chips spilt in front of that. She doesn't always rake them back, but Selbst is still healthy with about 135,000 at this stage. She will continue to play hard until there's no more play in her.

Jason Somerville may have not quite been himself today--at least if you're used to following him on Twitch--but he can still speak for himself. Here's how his day has gone so far:

We're not done yet. Marc-Andre Ladouceur is bobbing along with 110,000, while ElkY may have been on the ropes today but still sits with 89,000. He has the aptitude to make that a lot bigger by the end of the day.

The chip leaders at present are Valentin Vornicu and Alvaro Lopez, who have become the first players through half a million chips. They are neck and neck with slightly more than 500,000 going into the last level.

Tomorrow is Day 2C, which will feature a glut of PokerStars players. They are:

Liv Boeree - 134,800
Chris Moneymaker - 61,700
Barry Greenstein - 51,900
Celina Lin - 48,700
Jake Cody - 41,000
Andre Akkari - 36,800
George Danzer - 29,400
Felipe Ramos - 20,300
Daniel Negreanu - 18,600

WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

The World Series of Poker Main Event draws to Las Vegas not only the best poker players in the world, but also anybody with any kind of interest in the game: supporters, spectators and businessmen alike. People from all walks of life mingle in the corridors, cultivate friendships and exchange their new ideas.

Wes Sime has a whole bag of them.

"Wouldn't you like to get just a little bit better?" he says. "Isn't there just a little higher level you can get to? There's always a new game, there's always a new opponent, there's always a higher level."

Sime is a 72-year-old sports psychologist from Lincoln, Nebraska, who specialises in psychophysiology. That means that in addition to a clinic where he treats patients with anxiety and depression, among other things, he has spent a long career examining the relationship between mental and physiological processes. He offers seminars to business leaders, and has worked with the US Olympic athletics team.

He is also a self-confessed "poker nut", who has, in recent years, been working on strategies for poker players to improve their performance with the help of what he has learned from the world of sports psychology.

For example, Sime carries in one hand a small silver box with a flashing strip of light that measures heart rate and encourages optimum respiration. And in the backpack slung over his shoulder, he has other gadgets ranging from performance sunglasses that black out everything except a narrow field of vision, reducing distractions, to personal massage packs to increase comfort levels wherever a player might be sitting.

"How can you make good decisions when you're really uncomfortable?" Sime says. "Players have got to take care of themselves in whatever way they need to."

It has long been acknowledged that successful poker requires a mind and body in its optimum shape. There are plenty of books that focus on mental conditioning, while the top players these days also work out to keep their bodies fit for the long slog.

Sime is interested in the world of marginal gains, the apparently small modifications a player can make to give him or her a slight edge over opponents. Coaches in sports such as cycling and golf have produced startling results by focusing on apparently small aspects of performance.

The heart rate monitor is a case in point. According to Sime, optimal decision-making demands the body to be in a particular state, where a person is breathing at approximately one breath per 10 seconds. The small, unobtrusive box has a pulse sensor on it, which can measure heart rate through a player's thumb.

A red light means the optimal state has not yet been reached and it can offer a reminder to a player to focus on their breathing. A blue/green light appears when the respiration rate is getting toward optimal, and decision making should also be its best. (It can also be wired to a phone to offer a sonic reminder via headphones.)

"This helps me know when I'm anxious," Sime says. "I use it at the table. I can have it right on my phone and listen and tell when I'm not in the right state. It's like a wake-up call: 'Hey dummy, get your head back in the game.'"

The sunglasses also address the issue of focus, which is a key area for optimal performance. They resemble any regular pair of sports shades, but the field of vision is deliberately narrowed by means of blackout tint applied on all but a thin strip of the glass. They were initially designed for golfers, allowing players to focus only on the ball or the correct line of a club-stroke, but they work wonders in a setting such as the World Series of Poker.

Not only do players typically have their own cellphone offering a distraction, but there are close to 2,000 other people in the room--including some noisy builders putting together the television stage--that can wrestle a player's attention from the task at hand. Like blinkers on a horse, they keep a player seeing only what they really need to see.

The headphones Sime wears pipe classical music into his ears--nothing unusual in that--but the band across the top of his head contains a bone conductor that sends vibrations into the brain to quieten it. Even at the end of a full days' work in the clinic, Sime says that with the headphones, "Within 45 minutes to an hour I am so mellowed out and pain free."

Sime says, "It's wonderful to see how well the really experienced poker players do their job, and I wonder if we can discover what inherent qualities they have that the other players don't have that allow them to be as good as they are.

"For the rest of us out there, we need to train toward that, to become more aware toward it. My goal is to kind of test the really good players, find out what it is about their ability, their skill set and their background that really got them that good and that will help us know what we can train with the average guy who just wants to be able to beat his buddies."

WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

Aditya Agarwal is playing his 11th World Series of Poker and, having cashed in five of his previous outings, is in confident mood ahead of this year's tournament. It makes Agarwal, the 31-year-old Team PokerStars Pro from India, an obvious candidate for someone to follow closely through his tournament. We're going to attempt to give a close-up insight into a player's journey through the World Series Main Event.

The plan is to talk to Agarwal at every break for what we hope is many days.

DAY TWO, LEVEL SIX
Blinds: 300-600 (100 ANTE)

Aditya Agarwal came into Day 2 with a stack of 57,100 and a table that featured his Team PokerStars colleague Fatima Moreira de Melo and the three-time WSOP bracelet winner Dewey Tomko. Brad Willis passed by the table earlier and saw how Agarwal's match up against Moreira de Melo started off (it's safe for work, despite the promise of nudity in the title), and Tomko busted pretty early on.

Other than that, not much has been going on. "The table is playing pretty tight," Agarwal said. "No really big pots." Largely thanks to the set-over-set encounter against Moreira de Melo, Agarwal has built his stack to its high point of 85,000. That puts him in the top three stacks at his table but, obviously, with a long way still to go.

DAY ONE, LEVEL FIVE
Blinds: 250-500 (75 ANTE)

As Day 1B of the $10,000 World Series Main Event draws to its close, our hero for the day Aditya Agarwal sits with 57,000 chips. That's only marginally more than the amount he sat with at 11am today, when things began, and that's the way it goes sometimes. For all its manifold riches or horrific bad beats, very little says "That's poker!" more efficiently than playing 10 hours in the most prestigious tournament on the planet to bag up your starting stack.

That, of course, is the purpose of this experiment: to give a real-life view of a player's progress in an event like this. No one could win the tournament today, but plenty could lose their chance. Of the 1,733 who started Day 1B, about 550 are out. The full numbers will all be revealed first thing tomorrow, but the belief is that about 30 percent of the field will perish on Day 1.

Agarwal described his day as "exhausting" and "way swingy". He said that for obvious reasons he didn't much enjoy the period when he was short-stacked and staring at an early elimination. "It was much better when I got back to starting stack," he said.

Overall, he said he was "pretty happy". And he'll be back on Tuesday for more of the same.

DAY ONE, LEVEL FOUR
Blinds: 200-400 (50 ANTE)

A confession: I was worried about this concept. Aditya Agarwal agreed at the start of play to keep us updated on his tournament progression, but poker can be cruel. The last thing anybody wanted was for his Main Event challenge to fizzle out, particularly with its details being broadcast far and wide. It's very easy to feel responsible on the rail: not only a cooler, but someone prepared to amplify the despair.

But we now have better news than the previous update: Agarwal is back to 53,300, more than his starting stack, after the most eventful level of his day so far.

Returning to 18,000 after the dinner break, he dribbled down to 11,000 not long into Level 4. But he then found Q-J in the big blind and called a late-position raise. He then flopped the world when it came 9-10-K.

They checked the flop, Agarwal bet 2,000 on the turn and shoved the river, finding a willing caller with K-Q. And then not long later he found aces against queens and they got it in pre-flop, doubling him again to the high 40,000s.

"That was good," he said. His distinctive giggle when relating good news is also back.

Remember back in Level 1 when we were talking about his tough table draw? Well, every single one of those vaunted opponents is now out. According to Agarwal, Anton Astapau bluffed it off; Jeremy Ausmus lost less spectacularly, but also hit the rail. Agarwal was not responsible. "Unfortunately," he said.

There's one level left in the day after which the night-long audit can begin. Agarwal is not counting any chickens and said he would "hopefully" agree to continue the story on Day 2. Two more hours and then we'll be there.

DAY ONE, LEVEL THREE
Blinds: 150-300

There's no way to dress this up: Things have taken a downturn in the last level for Aditya Agarwal. He is heading to his dinner break and leaving only 18,000 chips behind. In truth, he might easily have been out. After finding J-9, you might have thought a board of 9-9-J (two spades) was boom-time, but Barry Schultz was sitting with pocket jacks.

That cost Agarwal a chunk of chips, but it was even worse for Carter Gill. Gill had two spades and made his flush by the river. He was all-in and sent home.

Agarwal is now heading back to Palms Place for his dinner break and to spend some time with his wife. "I'll talk through some hands with some friends," he said. Although how to escape a cooler like that is not really something anyone can do much about.

Schultz is now the table captain, with more than 100,000. Astapau and Ausmus remain, but Gill's seat is empty, meaning they are playing eight handed on that table. Blinds will be 200-400 when they return, which is still 45 big blinds for Agarwal. There will be two more levels after that.

DAY ONE, LEVEL TWO
Blinds: 100-200

Without question, the WSOP Main Event is one of the most eagerly anticipated tournaments of the year and players look forward to it for months. But it's also true that there will be long periods when very little happens. It is a long and often tedious grind exchanging nothing much more than the occasional ante.

At the end of the second level on Day 1B, Aditya Argawal has 45,000 chips. It means he has played the past two hours for the net loss of 7,000--a negligible shift. "Uneventful," he said, before upgrading to, "Very uneventful."

Despite (or maybe because of) the talent stacked at the table, there haven't been any significant swings. Jeremy Ausmus has 50,750 and Anton Astapau has 58,000. Only Carter Gill's stack has changed markedly. He is left with 17,500 at the moment, which is still 87 big blinds.

That said, Anthony Zinno is in sight on a neighbouring table. He has a stack of 125,000 already, so there's always the chance for matters to change very quickly.

DAY ONE, LEVEL ONE
Blinds: 75-150

Agarwal was in his seat ahead of play starting at 11am and watched all other seats at his table gradually fill. And it's a tough table: Jeremy Ausmus (a WSOP bracelet winner, with close to $5m in tournament earnings) is to Agarwal's immediate left, while the APPT and LAPT champion Carter Gill is in the four seat.

"I have had softer tables on Day 1," Agarwal said.

He added that he didn't recognise the player who came to sit at seat six, but immediately established that he was a decent opponent. "He seems really good," Agarwal said. "In the Main Event, you can just tell: who seems comfortable, who isn't. He seems really comfortable."

The player in question is Anton Astapau, the Belarussian high roller. One suspects the two have crossed swords many times online, where Agarwal plays as "intervention" or "Adi Agarwal" and is top of the all-time Indian money list.

As you would expect from the opening level, very little changed to Agarwal's starting stack of 50,000 here. He said he got it up to 57,000 at one point, then ran top pair into a turned flush to take it back to 52,000.

It is very early days, but every road starts somewhere.

We'll update this post throughout the day.

WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

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.