The boards are now showing 234 entries (including 24 re-entries). With the 275 entries from Day 1A (yesterday), the guaranteed prize pool has officially been exceeded. There are still 45 minutes left in the late registration, and also two more Day 1’s left. This promises to be a huge turnout for the Playground 200.

After four levels, the players took a break, and it was the perfect time to survey where the chips lay.

With the chip average at 29,000, Malm has taken an impressive early lead and is sitting on a decent 118,200 stack; that’s four times the average! What a huge lead, this early in the tournament, furthermore, he is the only player above 100,000 chips . More than 30,000 behind him, are Ernest Kelly (87,600) and Nghi Van Tran (80,700) who are hot on his trail.

It’s still very early, and with 5,775,000 chips in play, anything can happen between now and the end of level 14 when the bags come out, which should be around 2:45am.