Tripodi Leads Returners for Day 2a/2b

Welcome back for the first of two Day 2 flights of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main event. Today survivors from Days 1a and 1b return to continue their tourney journeys — a total of 1,880 players — with each group segregated and playing separately in the different rooms here at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

From the 584 players making up the Day 1a crowd Evan Panesis, Nicholas Crisp, and Abdulasiz Almashal are returning to the biggest stacks as each was able to build more than 180,000 chips during the five two-hour levels they played during Saturday's first flight. Also coming back from that flight to above-average stacks are Farzad Bonyadi, Nick Maimone, Richard Lyndaker, Daniel Makowsky, and Jason DeWitt.

Meanwhile from the 1,296 in the Day 1b group Clement Tripodi was the only one managing to accumulate more than 200,000 by night's end, with Jevon Lam and Daniel Cates occupying the next two positions among that field with stacks of more than 180,000. Miguel Proulx, Sorel Mizzi, Adam Friedman, Raj Vohra, Annette Obrestad, and Eoghan O'Dea also have six-figure stacks to start the day.

The Day 1a group will all remain in the Amazon room today ("A" for Amazon) while the Day 1b survivors will reassemble in the Brasilia and Pavilion rooms, and all will play five more two-hour levels today. We're just minutes away from the call to "shuffle up and deal," so be sure to stick with PokerNews throughout the day to see who emerges today to play in Thursday's Day 3.

As we await the start of play, here's Sarah Grant with today's update from the WSOP: