The second day of the WPT Tournament of Champions was completed on Saturday at Aria Resort & Casino. It started with 29 players but just five of them survived through the very end of the day and are still in contention for the title and the $463,375 first-place prize.

Day 2 of the tournament kicked off with Dennis Blieden leading the pack of 29 hopefuls from Day 1. The player had a solid run during the first day of the WPT Tournament of Champions and methodically built a massive stack into Day 2. However, it appeared he had lost some of his momentum when he returned to the tables yesterday to eventually lose his chip advantage. The player was eliminated in 11th later on Day 2 to become the unfortunate bubble boy.

The original field of the prestigious tournament comprised 80 entries. The prize pool totaled $1.365 million and included the $15,000 buy-in fees paid by the participants and an additional $150,000 contributed by the WPT. The money was split into payouts for the top ten finishers.

The five finalists are set to resume play today at 4 pm local time. Unlike the previous two days when they played at the poker tables of Aria Resort & Casino, the final tablists will take to the felt of the brand-new Esports Arena Las Vegas at the Luxor Hotel and Casino to battle it out until there is just one player left.

Darren Elias came into the WPT Tournament of Champions fresh off the inaugural WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic, which he took down to win a record-breaking fourth title from the series. And if Day 1 of the Tournament of Champions belonged to Blieden, it can be said that Day 2 belonged namely to Elias.

The player eventually bagged and tagged 1.4 million to top the chip counts chart. It is also important to note that he has quite some advantage over the rest of his remaining opponents.

Commenting on his run over the past several days, Elias said that “wins […] come in bunches in poker” and that when a player wins in a tournament, they become more confident and maybe play better in their next tournaments.

While Elias might have secured the chip lead, he will have a different task today as the rest of the finalists are seasoned players themselves. Matas Cimbolas collected a stack of 1.159 million last night to rank second in the chip counts chart. Matthew Waxman finished third in chips, good for 554,000. Nick Schulman, a player who boasts $3,534,047 in live tournament earnings, and David Benyamine, who has collected more than $1.8 million from different live tournaments, were the other two players to make it through Day 2 with and collect almost even stacks at the end of the day with 447,000 and 440,000, respectively.

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