The plan at the beginning of the day today -- day two, in case anyone was wondering -- was to play six levels or reduce the field to 40 players, whichever came soonest.

The media room usually nods appreciatively when such decisions are announced, silently certain that it'll mean the full six levels before they can fold up their laptops and head off for the day. Play tends to slow, short stacks double up, and it's another seven hours at the coal face.

But, and I'm hoping not to hex proceedings here, this might be different. We're already down to 62 players on a compact seven tables and not many are showing any signs of putting on the brakes.

Unfortunately, the cull around the dinner break included Katja Thater, the Team PokerStars Pro, who had been sliding towards short-stack status earlier in the day and wasn't able to arrest the decline. That leaves RaiNKhan as the lone surviving Team PokerStars Pro. The New Yorker has charmed his table and railbirds alike on the way to his current 40,000-odd stack.

RaiNKhan
(c) Neil Stoddart

That's around about the average, currently 46,000.

RainKhan is on today's unofficial PokerStars table, which also features Sebastian Ruthenberg, from Germany, and qualifier Gunnar Rabe. John Shipley and Matt Tyler, both English PokerStars qualifiers, were also on the same table as one another, before the former was seen heading to the door, his 50,000 stack from minutes before having vanished.


Matt Tyler

Meanwhile, here are a few others still battling:

Alan Smurfit - Ireland - 40,000
Thor Hansen - Denmark - 38,000
David Sonelin - Sweden - PokerStars qualifier - 58,000
Richard Ashby - England - 24,000
Janne Juutilainen - Finland - PokerStars player - 33,000


Ram Vaswani - England - 32,000
(c) Neil Stoddart
Philip Yeh - Sweden - 18,000
Daniel Mangas - Spain - 105,000
Roman Yitzhaki - USA - PokerStars player - 80,000


Julian Thew - England - 120,000
(c) Neil Stoddart
Thierry van den Berg - Holland - PokerStars player - 26,000
Surindar Sunar - England - 39,000
Age Spets - Norway - 91,000
Sebastian Ruthenberg - PokerStars player - Germany - 85,000

Gunnar Rabe - PokerStars qualifier - Sweden - 52,000
Matt Tyler - PokerStars qualifier - England - 14,000
Acar Mazlum - Switzerland - 134,000
Michael Durrer - PokerStars qualifier - Germany - 38,000
Pascal Perrault - France - 115,000
Andreas Hoivold - Norway - 88,000
Alexander Kravchenko - Russia - 22,000
Anton Allemann - Switzerland - 96,000

They're playing with blinds of 600-1,200 and a 100 ante.