After the much debated field of Pokers Tournament of Champions assembled on Sunday to take their places, a few notable faces were missing early doors. Phil Hellmuth failed to appear for nearly all of the first level and received short shrift from ‘the Mouth’ Matusow over his tardiness.

On the first day we lost five players, with the excellent Phil Ivey, Barry Shulman; John Juanda, Sammy Farha and Greg Raymer all succumbing to the rail. Ivey was most cruelly dumped out, when his pair of Kings were out-drawn by Chris Fergusons Queens making a set on the turn. An interesting development at Daniel Negreanus table, where his old foe Annie Duke has been seated to his left, sure to see some fireworks between these two, who to say don’t met eye to eye is an understatement.

Day two arrived and sadly we have seen the loss of legends Mike Sexton and Doyle Brunson early on. Also gone is the British online qualifier Andrew Barton, Joseph Cada and Dan Harrington seeing the field reduced to seventeen and a re-draw for table positions. ESPN are covering this event live, the censors will have their work cut out, as both Hellmuth and Matusow have been using their usual colourful language with regular warnings from the tournament director.

Current chip leader Huck Seed is playing a perfect game and sits on 94k at present, players looking to make some quick move will be Annie Duke, Hellmuth and Grospellier who are all relatively short-stacked as we reach level 8. One player having a busy day is Antonio Esfandiari, who is currently back and forth to the $1000 no-limit Hold ‘em event, where it is approaching the bubble and has been all-in once surviving the showdown with a shout of ‘You’ve doubled up’ from a player across the room.

The full line up of players is below, it makes quite a who’s who of poker and hopefully the event will once again gain its true champion status amongst the poker pros.

2010 41st Annual World Series of Poker

WSOP Tournament of Champions

ENTRANT LIST FOR DAY: 1

Sunday, June 27, 2010
Entries: 27 Places Paid: 9
Buy-in: $00 Prize Pool: $1,000,000

# PLAYER CITY / STATE

1 Andrew Barton UK
2 Doyle Brunson LAS VEGAS, NV, US
3 Joseph Cada MACOMB, MI, US
4 Jon Chan CERRITOS, CA, US
5 TJ Cloutier RICHARDSON, TX, US
6 Allen Cunningham LAS VEGAS, NV, US
7 Annie Duke LAS ANGELES, CA, US
8 Antonio Esfandiari LAS VEGAS, NV, US
9  Barry Shulman LAS VEGAS, NV, US
10 Sammy Farha HOUSTON, TX, US
11 Chris Ferguson LAS VEGAS, NV, US
12 Barry Greenstein RNCHO PLS VRD, CA, US
13 Bertrand Grospellier LONDON, GB
14 Joe Hachem MELBOURNE, AUS
15 Jennifer Harman Traniello LAS VEGAS, NV, US
16 Dan Harrington US
17 Phil Hellmuth PALO ALTO, CA, US
18 Phil Ivey LAS VEGAS, NV, US
19 John Juanda LAS VEGAS, NV, US
20 Howard Lederer LAS VEGAS, NV, US
21 Mike Matusow HENDERSON, NV, US
22 Daniel Negreanu LAS VEGAS, NV, US
23 Scotty Nguyen LAS VEGAS, NV, US
24 Greg Raymer RALEIGH, NC, US
25 Huck Seed LAS VEGAS, NV, US
26 Erik Seidel LAS VEGAS, NV, US
27 Mike Sexton LAS VEGAS, NV, US