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Day two. No free jerky now. This is serious. Close to 3,000 players meaning every last table, every last inch of space, every dealer pulled out of retirement, is in the employ of the main event.

The sign outside the Rio pool reads “No Lifeguard on duty. No Diving.” This afternoon that pool, complete with waterfalls and towels, is no more than a couple of first downs away from the dozen or so tables currently packed full of main event players in an area designated “Buzio’s”, after the seafood restaurant nearby. There are few benefits to this exposed playing area that straddles the main route from the casino to the Amazon Room, so the opportunity to run towards the pool and dive headlong into the deep end after a last fatal shortage of luck, seemed the only ready perk. But a lifeguard shortage put end to that.

But it’s a seat, and that means you’re still in contention, which on day 2b is good enough. Among the most notable players here is Team PokerStars Germany’s Ben Kang, who becomes even more noticeable when he stands up. The six-foot-plus ShootingStar sits at a table of the anonymous kind ready to start the day with a stack measuring 91,850 which should prove sturdy to last until that coveted table change.

Benjamin Kang – photo taken on day 1d

Like the kids table at Christmas, put together from old garden furniture, a chair from the attic and a makeshift bench created from garage boxes lugged inside by Dad, players seated in the Rio card room today are the forgotten bunch, set away from where the main action is and told not to get ketchup on their shirts. Kids may be seen and not heard but these guys aren’t even seen. Not unless you take a ten minute walk (time doesn’t include rests) back up the Rio corridors, past Buzios, past the Sports book and into the far corner of the casino.

These players truly are the frontiersmen, cast out to find new World Series territory and plant the Main Event flag armed with nothing more than the chips they have with them from day one. Isolated and alone they’ve been left to fend for themselves. But what doesn’t eliminate them only makes them stronger.

There are benefits of course. You’re guaranteed front place in the buffet queue and a “get me out of here” taxi is just around the corner, as is, as one player quipped, a taxi back to the Amazon Room. It’s by no means a lawless frontier, but three feet away, across the temporary barricade, is a place you can smoke.

This is where Team PokerStars Pro Noah Boeken starts his day, ready for a run on day three with 94,175. There’s only half a rail, no clock, a permanent tingle-ding-aling noise from the one cent Diamond Supreme slot machines, and a few people on the rail waiting for a cash table to open.

Noah Boeken on day 1d – he wears the same hoodie today though

Boeken took the first pot uncontested when play finally began and a couple more before I had to call time and set off back to the Amazon Room before it got dark.

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QUOTE OF THE HOUR

“I’m going to get blinded down. Every hand takes 15 minutes.” –Maria Mayrinck on a very slow secondary ESPN feature table.

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SPONSORSHIP OF THE HOUR

Kids seem to be getting sponsorship earlier and earlier. Spotted in the hallways of the Rio–a very pregnant woman with an online poker patch firmly affixed to her baby bump.

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JFK ASSASSINATION, MAN-ON-THE-MOON, REMEMBER WHERE YOU WERE WHEN IT HAPPENED MOMENT OF THE HOUR

“It will be one of the largest green-chip colour-ups in history!” — Tournament director Jack Effel in his introductory speech to day 2b.

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JOHNNY LODDEN OF THE HOUR

“I was all in on the flop, drawing dead. As usual.”

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NON-ELIMINATIONS OF THE HOUR

Despite vulturing* Vanessa Rousso and Victor Ramdin for the first two orbits, there was no carcass to pick over. Rousso doubled up with tens against eights on the third hand, and Ramdin ground his short stack up to about 15,000, before losing a big chunk on the following hand. The player in the cut off opened to 1,500, Ramdin reraised to 4,650 on the button. Call. The flop came [3c][8c][ah] which both players checked. The turn was [5h] and after his opponent checked, Ramdin bet 4,200. Call. The river was [2d] and Ramdin’s opponent tossed in four orange 5,000 chips, asking Ramdin to call all in. Ramdin declined after a long dwell and was left with about 5,000. (Note: until that last hand, this segment was due to be called “SHORT-STACK MANAGEMENT MASTERCLASS OF THE HOUR”

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*DEFINITION OF THE HOUR

vulture (vb) — practice adopted by poker reporters of standing beside short-stacked players in the hope that their elimination generates copy for blogs. (Example usage: “I vultured him for eight hands and he never once got his chips in.”)

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ELIMINATIONS OF THE HOUR

The German Team Pro Sebastian Ruthenberg is no more. Isabelle Mercier joins him on the rail, her pocket jacks beaten by kings.

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JOE GIRON’S PHOTO HOUR

There’s a massive field in the Rio today, and some massive names gracing it. At PokerStars blog, we tend to follow a lot of them, owing to the presence on Team PokerStars Pro of some of the games brightest stars. But the World Series also frequently gives previously unheralded qualifiers the chance to shine and print their own names in the history books.

To be contrary seemingly simply for the sake of it, there are also some players who fit into neither of these categories. There are a few players in the Main Event today who are already notable names in their own right, and yet decided to chance their arm in a PokerStars satellite and won their seat to the Big Dance online. Among them are James Van Alstyne, Alexander Kostritsin and Nasr El Nasr, each of whom has been tearing through major tournament fields with little remorse over the past couple of years, and are today on our master list of PokerStars qualifiers here.

Van Alstyne has had the most recent glittering success, with this World Series already providing one bracelet, one runner-up spot and another sixth place. He took down the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. event, outlasting 769 others to win close to a quarter of a million bucks, a few days after he narrowly missed out on first place in the $3,000 incarnation of the H.O.R.S.E. championship, picking up $200,000 and change.

Those two successes swelled Van Alstyne’s career purse past the $3m mark, all the more reason to scrimp on the $10,000 entry fee to the Main Event and qualify via the PokerStars steps system.

Alexander Kostritsyn burst onto the poker scene in Australia, when he won the Aussie Millions main event in January 2008, earning the Australian equivalent of approximately $1.5m US. He came to Vegas that summer and cashed six times in the World Series, including a final table in the stud world championship, and then then he went back to Australia the following January and won a $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event. Not bad, especially when you factor in things like jet-lag. As his name suggests Kostritsyn is from one of poker’s newest hotbeds, Russia.

Today Kostritsyn is out in the Brasilia Room, where he has more than 100,000 in chips, and has his radar working very soundly. Passing by moments ago, he called a 10,000 river bet staring at a board of [kd][qc][5d][4c][3d], showing pockets sevens, which were good.

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JOHNNY LODDEN OF THE HOUR

PokerStars Nordic blogger Lina Olofsson on Lodden’s first level: “He lost with flush against flush, down to 19,000. Then he raised with queen-eight, got one caller. Flop queen, seven, deuce. He checked, the other guy pushed and he called. Other guy turns over eights. Look who’s almost drawing dead now, huh? And he says that he has an easy table.” [CELLPHONE RINGS] “Ja Lina. Bra, bra, sex, bra. Ja, hurdy gurdy. Ja. Aaaah, Crum, crum. Puss, puss. Jaa………” Etc., etc., Swedish, etc.

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INJURY OF THE HOUR

Dan Harrington sitting in the Blue section of the Amazon Room in a neck brace.

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SURPRISE OF THE HOUR

Facing a raise to 1,600 from the hijack, Thierry van den Berg made the call. So did the button. The flop came down [9s][Jc][As]. The original raiser checked, Van den Berg bet 2,000, and both opponents folded.

“Pick one,” said Van den Berg to the man on his right.

The raiser fingered the card closest to him and flipped it over. It was the [2d].

“Oh!” said Van den Berg, “It’s a deuce!”

He raked in his pot.

“I was hoping he would pick that one.”

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QUOTE OF THE HOUR

“Humberto never bluffs!” –Humberto Brenes, speaking in the third person, after betting an opponent off a hand on the river

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FIGURE THIS ONE OUT TWEET OF THE HOUR

billchenpoker: Raised with Oedipus Rex 3 off to 1400 bb defends. Flop

q82 3 hearts I bet 2250 he jams for 15k. I call he shows as3h he hits
a heart.

billchenpoker: I am out O Rex is QJ I learned yesterday…

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POKERSTARS QUALIFIER OF THE HOUR

In terms of timing the World Series Main Event couldn’t come at a worse moment for Connecticut native Alfonso Cammarota. He won his seat on PokerStars but his journey here was not an easy one. Cammarota headed to Las Vegas just three hours after bringing his wife home from the maternity ward 3am last Saturday with their new son Luca. Mother’s always deserve a shout out, so for the folks back in Fairfield, including daughter Marissa and son Giancarlo, Dad us up on the day, with about 42,000.

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LUNCH OF THE HOUR

What does Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier eat for lunch? Today it’s a one-pound chicken burrito.

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OUTBURST OF THE HOUR

“Show me ace-queen. Shoooooooooooooow me ace-queeeeeeeeeeeeeen.” –said Humberto Brenes, to his opponent who, in fact, showed him ace-queen, a loser against Humberto’s aces.

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(IS THE BEST) JOE GIRON’S PICTURE HOUR (OF THE SERIES SO FAR?)

On day one of last year’s World Series Main Event, Daniel Negreanu was positioned on the secondary feature table with three unknown PokerStars qualifiers. This table draw was responsible for one of the most criminally-laboured blog post analogies ever seen on PokerStars blog — I thank you — but it also yielded the introduction to the poker world of Darus Suharto, who would become increasingly well known over the coming weeks.

Negreanu busted from the table before that dead-horse metaphor had even been fully flogged, but Suharto wouldn’t finish his Main Event until November. He flew under all radars, navigated all choppy waters, dodged all bullets, and sidestepped all further analogies (until now) and emerged blinking at the Penn and Teller Theater to play the final table, winning a magnificent $2,418,562 for sixth place. Then he went back to his job as an accountant in Toronto.

Suharto did not give up entirely on poker, however. Far from it. He became an official “Friend of PokerStars” in the past year and has continued to appear at the major events around the world, cropping up at the PCA in January, where he took 13th in a side event, then the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, and then back to Las Vegas this summer, where he recorded his third career WSOP cash. Today in the Amazon Room, Suharto also became a friend of an NBA champion, the LA Laker Jordan Farmar, who continues his fine run at the poker table.

Suharto and Farmar couldn’t be more dissimilar. One is the unassuming accountant, the other the talkative basketball player who writes a blog for Playboy. But poker is a great leveller, and having been sat next to one another for much of today, they’re finding common ground. Suharto has been happily welcoming Farmar to the PokerStars stable — the point guard is a sponsored player here — and offering advice such as not to bet 30,000 into an 8,000 pot. “Yeah, but how’s your lay-up Darus?” Farmer did not retort.

It was all particularly friendly over there in the red section, until their table was broken and the new friends were scattered across the Amazon Room. See you at the final table? Well, statistics would say possibly not. But maybe a drink in the bar isn’t out of the question sometime later in the week.

PokerStars’ other sponsored celebrities are also alive and battling well. Marlon Wayans continues to entertain another very laid back table, and has also been hogging the ESPN television crew circling in that area of the green section.

Lou Diamond Phillips, most recently the winner of “I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” is also proving his durability to the jungle again. He is still in the thick of it as we return from the day 2b dinner break. A nice snack of locust and kangaroo testicle parfait, no doubt.

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DRAWLED AND GROWLED INSTRUCTION TO POKERSTARS BLOGGER OF THE HOUR

“Tell ‘um ole’ Jack still here, pal. Ole’ man still goin’” — There you go, folks. ‘Ole Jack still here.

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SQUEAKY WHEEL TWEET OF THE HOUR

“27k. They just moved paul mcgriel to the table. The poker Gods really want me to do well. No more mistakes.” — Maridu

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STATISTIC OF THE HOUR

Time taken between return of players from dinner break and first bust out: 9 seconds

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BILLBOARD BAD BEAT OF THE HOUR

Above Velvet Lion strip club: “What happens in Vegas, GOD KNOWS, for the WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!”

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TREAT OF THE HOUR

What does Marcel Luske do when he busts out of the Main Event? He hangs around the Rio and has a good time. Moments ago, the was heeard to exclaim in the hallways of the Rio, “Let’s get ice cream.” Moments later, he was doing just that, where he described his Main Event performances as…quoting here…”smelly.” Since then, though, “Everything has been good,” he said.

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JOE GIRON’S PICTURE HOUR