The second of two first days at the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic went off inside the Bellagio Hotel & Casino today with some of the best in the game taking to the Fontana Room felt.

A total of 294 put down the $15k for a shot at Five Diamond riches, bringing the grand total of entrants to a respectable 497.

What that means is they're all playing for a piece of a $7,231,350 prize pool and a sweet-sounding $1,538,730 first-place prize. The top 100 get paid, starting with $21,620 for the first 29 in the money.

With a more robust (yet equally deep-stacked) field than Day 1a getting things going just after 12 p.m. PST today, play started a little slowly for some.

But online nosebleed god David Benyamine and WSOP Main Event and WPT title holder Carlos Mortensen were not among them.

Hey ladies!

After showing up a few minutes late, Benyamine pushed around some chips before shoving Antonio Esfandiari off a rather large pot in the first level on his way to a spot near the top of the early leader board. Then Mortensen did everything in his power to grab the chip lead, snatching up every bit of dead money on his table to become the first player up and over the $100k mark.

Benyamine ended the day reportedly on a respectabl $100,000-plus, while it looked like Mortensen went to bed with close to $140k, keeping him among the leaders headed into Day 2.

Although stars like Full Tilt's Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Scott Clements, Erik Seidel and WPT Season 6 Player of the Year Jonathan Little did little more than tread water today and are happy to come into Day 2 still having some play, a few lesser-knowns rose to the top of the heap.

Las Vegas resident Paul Niemela has about $119k in career tournament earnings consisting of a series of deep finishes at smaller preliminary events, but he made a big splash at Bellagio today, raking in pot after pot to build a $260k+ stack and grab the end-of-Day-1b and overall Day 1 chip lead.

Get funky now.

Team PokerStars Pro's Daniel Negreanu played the usual small-ball style, grinding it up to a high-water mark of $70k telling everyone how he was doing it the whole way.

But Negreanu couldn't match the kind of day players like the rarely heard-from Evan McNiff, Scott Bohlman, Kevin Schaffel and Lex Veldhuis had, taking them near the top of the leaderboard.

Howard Lederer, Team PokerStars Pro's Victor Ramdin and Gavin Griffin, WSOPC Tahoe king Michael Binger and the Godfather of Norwegian poker, Thor Hansen, all had decent days, setting them up for a deep run here at the Five Diamond as well.

Annie Duke spent part of the afternoon letting Benyamine and Esfandiari bet on an innocent bystander's opinion regarding how many notches are on her belt on the way to reserving her seat in the Day 2 fun, and some of poker's loveliest ladies had decent enough days to join her.

Erica Schoenberg busted, but Beth Shak, Evelyn Ng and Team PokerStars Pro Isabelle Mercier are definitely a part of that group. Plus, PokerListings fans will be happy to see killer pro blogger Liz Lieu topped them all.

The Poker Diva looked good, played good and ran good all the way to a place among the big stacks. After sucking out huge on Chad Batista in the late stages, Liz will strut into Day 2 with around $115k in her lady-baller Fendi bag.

Bow-chicka-wow-wow.

But while Ms. Chilipoker and the like were all making hay, Mark Seif, Gavin Smith, Scotty Nguyen, Sammy Farha and whiny run-bad king Allen Kessler found themselves among the 60-plus making for the door, the latter in typical Kessler-like fashion, getting sadly crushed again holding big slick.

In all, some 225 survived the day and they will join the 150 left from Day 1a when Day 2 starts just after 12 p.m. PST Monday.

Outside of Niemela, the entire group will still be looking up at Day 1a chip leader Phil Hellmuth as he pompously looks down on everyone else.

But as deep stacked as the group remains, it's far from over yet and things should be exciting right from the time the gun goes off on Day 2. As always, you can catch all the action live on PL.com starting at noon, just by clicking right here.