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.