It was the beginning of the end, or maybe the end of the beginning, but either way it certainly wasn't the middle part, that's for sure.

Today, the real deal started with Event 54, the $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em World Championship tournament, won by Jerry Yang last year.

With Jamie Gold's deal-based troubles a couple of years ago and Yang's conspicuous absence from the poker circuit over the last year, poker really needs someone with Greg Raymer or Joe Hachem's clout to step forward and help out an industry hamstrung by the UIGEA and the state of the U.S. economy, among other things.

A lot of eyes, especially those of Harrah's, were on the number of runners for today's event, in the hope that there might possibly be a significant increase in runners that would provide some much-needed positive press for the Main Event.

More players signed up than for last year's Day 1a, but with a total of 1,297 runners starting today, it was only an increase of 10 heads, which means there will most likely be a similar number of runners to last year.

The day started with Wayne Newton opening the proceedings announcing "Shuffle up and deal" and Everest Poker cushions adorning each and every chair. Of course with so many players in the tournament, many of them fairly inexperienced, it was only a matter of time before someone managed to get their whole stack in incredibly early and depart just as fast.

It didn't take long. On a 6-3-2 two players got it all-in; their hands were, naturally, 6-6 and 5-4 ...

No; I'm kidding, it was never going to be anything that good. They held A-A and J-J, having quickly managed to put their whole stacks at risk with just one pair. The jacks, though, managed to spike a third knave, leaving the other player with nothing more than the shortest WSOP anecdote he'll ever be able to tell.

There were early bust-outs among the pros as well, Tom "durrrr" Dwan being one of them, which means he can go back to four-tabling online for around 200 times the buy-in spread over those tables. Newly braceleted David Beyamine was another early casualty (perhaps they had a high-stakes cash game planned online?). He was joined on the rail later on by his better half, Erica Schoenberg, who didn't have the best of days.

Chad Brown also didn't manage to make it through, and last year's runner-up Tuan Lam started off strongly, only to bust in the early evening.

With so many runners, you could be forgiven for wondering why some players had decided to enter this event. On a K♦ 7♥ 3♦ J♦ 7♦, Woody Deck called an all-in with A♦ A♣ and was shown A-7 by his opponent. The latter thought he had won and celebrated in delight, only to be booted from the table after being told that trips does not actually beat a flush.

In another crazy hand, Justin Phillips would not stop laughing and shouting for the two hours that followed him making a royal flush against quads. Yes, if anything was going to show how daft and silly poker could get, it would have to be this hand.

The day ended with Mark Garner as the chip lead with over $205,000 in chips, but Brandon Adams was close behind in second place with $170,000. Further down the list was Kido Pham and Mark Vos, both also sitting at over $100,000, as well as Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, who had also made it above that mark.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting it all over again with, we suspect, a similar amount of entries, with the numbers likely to increase during the weekend. Therefore join us once more when we battle through another 1,000-player field to bring your all the juiciest of news from this year's Main Event!