A friendly bloke said, "You know everything, you're a journalist!"

He said it in a hopeful kind of way, so I knew a question was coming. I expected him to ask the name and poker background of the Norwegian in seat 4. Instead he asked, a little desperately, "How do I get downstairs?"

I was happy to be able to answer this question. To get from the tournament tables to the press room I go downstairs, across the gaming floor, up more stairs, through some long winding corridor in the backrooms of the casino, then over dales and valleys and rivers, to finally reach the press room, and my computer where I can tell you about that Norwegian in seat 4 with all the chips.

If the friendly guy with a question had waited just five minutes he'd have seen a crowd of players heading downstairs and could have followed. Day 1A play ended at 3.15am today, a little over 12 hours after the tournament began. None of the players remaining would mind that their day had been so long, they'd simply be glad they could climb the stairs to play again on Saturday.

Of the 198 players who started today 58 remain, Johnny Lodden still holds the chiplead, here are the interesting counts:

Johnny Lodden 126,000
Jan Sjavik 31,000
Phil Ivey 40,000
Shannon Shorr 72,000
Barny Boatman 87,100
Simon Zach 42,000
Ram Vaswani 14,000
Ross Boatman 35,000
Mickey Wernick 12,000
Isabelle Mercier 38,000
Neil Channing 34,000
Stuart Ratter 62,000
Michael Moldoon 35,000
John Kabbaj 31,000
Victor Ramdin 18,000
Alan Betson 25,000
A. Bradshaw 65,000
Sam Rack 72,000
Tom Parker-Bowles 52,000

Day 1B begins at 3pm GMT tomorrow with notable names Joe Hachem, Vanessa Rousso, Gus Hansen, Andy Black, Jeff Williams, John Gale, ElkY, Katja Thater and many more that I would type out, but it's nearly 4am... I think I'll do a better job of writing about them if I go down those stairs, over those dales and valleys and rivers, to bed, to dream of Norwegian players with chips and stories to tell.

The tournament floor at the end of the day, 200 players will fill these tables at 3pm sharp tomorrow.