New Orleans Day 2: Tournament action begins.

We got to Harrah's around 10a CST to get set up and ready for the tournament. Players began piling into the room right around start time of the tournament at 12 noon. Here's a list of a few notable names that made it to the event:

TJ Cloutier
Gavin Smith
Josh Arieh
Alan 'BodogAri' Engel
Jimmy Tran
Steve Dannenmann
Young Phan
Doug 'Rico' Carli
Lou Esposito
Bill Edler
Kimberly Lansing
Ted Lawson
Jonathan Little
Chris Bell

I was doing both field reporting and blogging for the tournament throughout the day so I was able to witness a lot of the action. I was really impressed by the play of Jeff Tims (upper picture) and Timothy 'TK' Miles (lower picture). Both of them accumulated a good amount of chips early on and played really well throughout the day. Miles played a lot of pots, but played them so well that his opponent just couldn't seem to ever slow him down.

Tims made some really solid, strong plays in key pots to get a good stack. Tims won an earlier preliminary event here at Harrah's, the $500 NLHE for over $58,000. I did witness him getting lucky in a key hand when he ran AK into AQ on a board of AQx. The money went in on the flop, but when the turn spiked a K Tims took back the lead and ended up winning the hand.

Lou Esposito won December's version of this event and was down to 5,000 chips late in the day. He ended the day tied for the chip lead and looks poised to make another big splash here at Harrah's. If I had to pick, one of these three players is going to take this event down. Miles is just playing so well in every hand and making amazing decision that I can't really see him missing the final table.

I hope everyone can follow along on PokerNews.com and stay up with the action.

Don't forget to give me a shout on the live updates page.