Welcome the Day 2a
![[user68268]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
Welcome to the first Day 2 of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. Returning for Day 2a are 2,031 runners still with the hopes of claiming their piece of the nearly $65 million prize pool leading up to the lion's share of $8,711,956. Leading the field into Day 2a is the overall chip leader Fred Berger, who emerged after Day 1a with a whopping 209,500.
Berger built his stack to nearly a 600% increase over the starting stack and is the only player to finish the Day 1s with over 200,000. He's trailed today by Shane Sigsbee with 182,600, Kevin Song with 163,325 and Christopher McClung with 162,375.
Berger's biggest claim to fame in poker comes from a WSOP gold bracelet win in 2002. That year, Berger defeated Chris Ferguson heads up in the $3,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em event to win the bracelet and $197,400. Also at the final table were Tom Schneider, An Tran, Tony Cousineau and Dennis Waterman. That gold bracelet isn't his only piece of WSOP jewelry. In May 2010, Berger won the $5,000 Championship Event at the WSOP Circuit Harrah's New Orleans stop. For that win, Berger earned a Circuit gold ring and the largest payday of his career worth $197,584.
Other notables returning today are Sebastian Ruthenberg, Ted Forrest, Olivier Busquet, Soi Nguyen, JP Kelly and Humberto Brenes. We've also got the captain of the Boston Celtics, #34 and The Truth Paul Pierce in the field today. It's going to be a great day of poker to say the least.
You can view the Day 2a table and seat draw in the post below in order to get a feel for who's seated where and with whom. One note on our coverage is that we will be culling the chip count page down to just the notables that we'll be tracking throughout the day. As the day progresses through the allotted five levels scheduled, more and more names will be added as we pick them up.
Play is scheduled again for a 12:00 PM PT start and things should begin promptly then. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews as our Live Reporting Team provides all of the live coverage from the floor. Also be sure to check out the July 11th update below.