Players have just taken their first break of the night, and are now returning back to their seats to continue this Day 2 of the WPT500. Mukul Pahuja has a stranglehold lead on the field with his 1,790,000 chip stack, which nearly doubles any other player. Oroson Howard is the only other player currently sitting on a 7-figure stack.

Below are the top 10 stacks entering level 20:

Mukul Pahuja came into Day 2 with a less-than-average chip stack, bagging 109,000 in an online starting flight. In less than two levels of play, he managed to increase his holding to over 1,500,000, putting him far ahead of anyone else in the field.

We just saw him pick off two short stacks from his table in back-to-back hands. In the first hand, he open-shoved from the small blind and eliminated the big blind with over on a board.

On the very next hand, he was on the button facing an all-in of roughly 100,000. He isolated by raising all-in himself, and tabled . He was racing against , however took a massive lead in the hand after catching a set on the window card of a board.

“Congratulations, you are now in the money!” – these are the words players love to hear, and our tournament director has just spoken then as the WPT500 field was reduced to 323 runners, officially entering the payouts.

With the event split across 2 poker halls, the tournament director started hand-for-hand when the field reached 325 players. It only took one hand to find the 2 required eliminations, with Mark A and Stephane Edme as the unfortunate two eliminated prior to the payouts.

Action is back underway now with all 323 players having secured a payout of at least $920.

Congratulations!

Day 2 of the WPT500 has seen 2 levels pass already, and we are now nearing the money bubble as only 331 players remain. Hand-for-hand play will begin shortly, once we see 7 more eliminations.

Photographs from level 18:

The WPT500 is into the second level of Day 2, and a slew of eliminations has reduced the field down to 369 entries. At this pace we will be approaching the money bubble rather soon, as the top 323 players will be collecting a cash prize, with a cool $200,000 reserved for the eventual champion.

Photographs from levels 16-17: