32 Remain
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It's been a high-speed two rounds of heads-up hold'em in the Empire, and from 103 hopefuls we are down to just 32.
Some lucky folks arrived to discover that their scheduled opponent was the elusive "BYE" - among those who progressed straight to Round 2 were Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and John Juanda - of those three, though, only Lederer progressed to Day 2.
Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Michael Mizrachi and Phil Hellmuth were among the other big names who won't be seeing their £10,000 again. Among the famous faces who did get through their one or two matches and will be looking to turn their £10,000 into £288,409, though, are Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Neil Channing.
Only 16 places pay out, meaning that half the remaining field will have to return tomorrow only to leave with nothing. The stacks are going to be bigger, and the blind levels longer, at 30 minutes. Tomorrow we'll also be playing three rounds instead of the two we played today, meaning that we're in for a late one - but it's shaping up to be a very interesting tournament so far.
Join us back here from 3pm local time when we'll be playing down to a semi-final.