On Saturday, 195 survivors from Day 1a and Day 1b played down to a field of 66 players, so as to make it first into the money and then to the last 27 players. Each of the last 36 players in the tournament will be guaranteed a sum of £21,106 payday with a first prize of £830,401.

Ivey and Viktor Blom became the faces of day 2 of the tournament. Ivey had made a mark in the game for the initial two to three hours of the game. While Viktor stood focus and finished the day by being three antes ahead of Bojan Gledovic.

Ivey first boosted himself into the top three chip counts by check-raising the nut flush and getting paid off by Nicolas Levi; shortly after that, he won the largest pot of the tournament with T-T versus K-Q on a K-T-X board.

However, there was another rail getting packed out and it wasn’t for a famous TV face. Mop-haired, lanky, 19-year-old Swedish player Viktor Blom is known as Blom90 on the iPoker network where he reputedly built a $1.5m bankroll from $2,000 in just five weeks; Blom is better known to the online poker world as the all-but-confirmed face behind Isildur1, who won and lost $5.5m on Full Tilt Poker last year.

Blom was intently focused, with no Isildur1-esque signs of tilt. He built his stack up largely without showdown before sucking out with 7-7 v. A-A and propelling himself into the chip lead. He finished up the day with 443,200; just three antes ahead of Bojan Gledovic’s 442,300.

Daniel Negreanu is another person who played very well and kept his starting stack for Day 1b and almost all the stacks of Day 2 before going on a last minute surge to finish with more than 150,000.