For the past five days, we have been drowning in numbers. There are numbered lists of PokerStars Team Pros, lists of PokerStars qualifiers, lists of sponsored players, and lists featuring the rest of the field. There all have a seat number and, often, a number in their PokerStars screen name. Once play got started, they all had a chip count, which is many cases is a lot of numbers next to one another. Sometime during day 1D, once the final numbers were known, we got a list that represented the prize payouts for the tournament. There were more numbers on that than are painted on the walls of all elementary school classrooms across America.

Between you and me, I don't like numbers very much. But I know when I'm beat and all I can do is make it as easy as possible for all of us. With that in mind, here's the numerical run down of the 2008 World Series of Poker main event. Print it out and keep it. Pin it to your wall. There'll be a load more numbers coming your way over the coming few days, but here we have the basics.

Year: 2008
Buy-in: $10,000
Number of players: 6,844
Number of PokerStars qualifiers: 2,008
Number of PokerStars qualifiers playing: 1,063
Number of Team PokerStars Pros: 27

Today is day 2B. It breaks down as follows:

Players starting day: 2,378
Player remaining at day end: ?
PokerStars Team Pros: 7 (Bill Chen, Chris Moneymaker, ElkY, Hevad Khan, Joe Hachem, Isabelle Mercier, Victor Ramdin)
PokerStars qualifiers: 316 (at least)

Yesterday was day 2A. It ended as follows:

Players starting day: 1,251
Players remaining at day end: 466
Number of Team PokerStars Pros surviving: 3 (John Duthie, Noah Boeken, Vanessa Rousso)
Number of PokerStars qualifiers surviving: 69 (at least)

Here's what they are all playing for:

Total prize pool: $64,333,600
Places paid: 666

Prize structure

Final table (to be played in November)

1st--$9,119,517
2nd--$5,790,024
3rd--$4,503,352
4th--$3,763,515
5th--$3,088,012
6th--$2,412,510
7th--$1,769,174
8th--$1,286,672
9th--$900,670

Remaining payouts (to be paid by Monday)
10th-12th--$591,869
13th-15th--$463,201
16th-18th--$334,534
19-27--$257,334
28-36--$193,000
37-45 --$154,400
46-54--$135,100
55-63 --$115,800
64-72--$96,500
73-81--$77,200
82-90--$64,333
91-99 --$51,466
100-162--$41,816
163-225--$38,600
226-288 --$35,383
289-351--$32,166
352-414--$28,950
415-477--$27,020
478-540 --$25,090
541-603--$23,160
604-666--$21,230

In the time it took me to type that up (or, more accurately, do some of my best copy-pasting), the cards were tossed in the air and day 2B began. The familiar cries of "All in! Call!" are already filling the air, so the numbers are out of date and will continue to tick downward until we have those final nine, sometime next Monday. As ever, we will be providing all the coverage in text, pictures and video until that day comes.

If you need to refresh your memory on those stats, visit our prize money and statistics page.

If you want us to follow a particular PokerStars qualifier, email us a blog@pokerstars.com. Put "URGENT WSOP Main Event" in the subject line and tell us as much as you can about the player.

Check out vide from the World Series, plus an archive of former PokerStars events, at the pristine PokerStars.tv.