Of the 654 players to fork over the $10k buy-in to start the day, just 342 escaped with chips.
Alex Venovski leads the way for the Day 1b flight with 193,000, but 2008 November Niner Chino Rheem is a very close second at 182,900.
Rheem has to consider himself lucky to be there, however, as he scooped a huge pot at the end of the night despite a misread of his own hand.
According to the PokerStars blog, Rheem and Tyler Kenney got it all in for a 120k pot pre-flop with Kenney flipping up kings and Rheem calling out aces.
Only problem was Rheem actually had A-2. An ace on the river gave Rheem the right pair though and the big stack heading into Day 2.
Takechip Lurking
Third in the Day 1b chip counts is veteran pro Jonathan Jaffe with 182,000, and just behind him is high-stakes online poker notable Phil "takechip" D'Auteuil at 170,800.
D'Auteuil is fresh from a solid week online that saw him take home $92k in profit.
Combined with the 418 runners from Day 1a yesterday, the total field for the 2012 PCA main event topped out at 1,072 players.
That makes for a total prize pool of $10,398,400 which will be split among the top 160 finishers.
Top prize will be a sizable $2 million with $1.2 million reserved for second place and six figures guaranteed for the final 10 players.
Notables Returning, Busting
Among the other notable players from Day 1b to make it to Day 2 with a healthy stack were Arnaud Mattern (139,300), Luca Pagano (136,300), Ari Engel (118,700), 2010 PCA Main Event champ Harrison Gimbel (114,500), 2010 WSOP November Niner Matt Jarvis (110,300), poker legend Barry Greenstein (106,200) and Yevgeniy Timoshenko (105,800).
Russian Alexey Repik, who bagged up 220,000 to end Day 1a, will retain the overall chip lead when players return tomorrow for Day 2.
Notable players hitting the rail today included Pius Heinz, Daniel Negreanu, Viktor Blom, Jonathan Duhamel, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Rousso, Eugene Katchalov and Eli Elezra.
The remaining 545 players from the two Day 1 fields will combine and resume the hunt for the final table starting at noon (EST).
Catch all the action live in the PokerStars blog.
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