by Simon Young

As the players shuffled out for their dinner break, they had some rather interesting news to digest. Finally, on this the last of four first-day flights, the entries and prize money have been totted up.

The field is officially 6,358, down from more than 8,700 last year, but the prize pool is still a mouth-watering $59,784,954. 621 players are going to get paid, the lowest being $20,320, just over twice the buy-in.

And the big one, the title that all our PokerStars players are dreaming of, comes in at a tasty $8,250,000. Although down on last year, the field and the winning cash are bigger than when Joe Hachem triumphed in 2005. Team PokerStars has one representative in today's field looking to pocket that huge prize - Daniel Negreanu. After losing a chunk of his chips early, he's gone up to nearly 30,000 thanks to flopping a set of eights to crack his opponent's aces. Latest news puts him at over 50,000.

Dealers waiting for the players to return
While the players enjoy their dinner, the Amazon Room falls into silence in stark contrast to the cacophony of noise when the tournament is in session. Spare a thought for the dealers - there's no dinner for them, as they have to sit patiently at their tables, watching over the players' chips like a guard dogs. I'm sure they enjoy the rest but, boy, it must be boring.

As I followed the last of the players out of the room, I noticed this poor chap, who seems to have come to a sticky(tape) end on the track used by one of the cameras at the feature table...