By Sean Callander

Poker tournaments are unique beasts. Players will do anything to survive the opening day of play – “hey mom, I made it through” – then return on the second day and bust out in the opening minutes.

That’s been the case early on day 2 of the PokerStars.net APPT Grand Final, where the field of 116 starters has already been reduced by four.

The players with short stacks have obviously had a good think about what to do with their chips in the early going, and shoved like mad in the first 30 minutes.

Over the past three days, 561 players have participated in the three flights of day one. Their goal? The $1 million winner’s prize and a slice of the $3.366 million pool.

Everyone’s chasing Henrik Gwinner, who finished day 1B on 390,000. Others in action today are Team PokerStars Pros Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson, PokerStars players Terrence Chan and Guillaume Patry, Scotty Nguyen, and APPT Seoul champion Ziv Bachar and runner-up Sid Kim.

By the end of day 2, we’ll be down to the last nine players who’ll return on Sunday for the final table. Should be an enthralling day.