A total of 564 players entered the $5,000 buy-in Card Player Poker Tour Venetian DeepStack Championship Poker Series main event, creating a total prize pool of $2,608,500 and easily surpassing the $2 million guarantee. This is up slightly from the 547 players that participated last summer, when Anthony Zinno earned the title and the $466,670 first-place prize.

This year’s champion will take home $547,777. The top 63 players will finish in the money, with a min-cash worth $9,912. Everyone at the final table will be guaranteed at least $49,562.

Despite the flurry of day 2 entries, the field still managed to shed most of it’s participants by the end of the seventh level of the day, leaving just 68.

Those players will return Friday to the Strip to battle down to the final table. But first, they will have to deal with the money bubble.

Day 3 begins at 1 p.m. on Friday. Leading the way will be Chris Klodnicki, who bagged 743,000 after a relatively easy day at the tables. At one point during play, Klodnicki scored a double knockout when his pocket tens held up against the pocket nines of Antonii Zyrin and the A-K of Thomas Boivin.

There are a number of high roller regulars still in contention, including 2016 Card Player Player of the Year winner David Peters, Manig Loeser, Elio Fox, and Stephen Chidwick. Other notables in the hunt include POY contenders Jeremy Ausmus and Shannon Shorr, as well as Andrey Pateychuk, JC Tran, Joe Kuether, Brian Yoon, John Phan, Adam Owen, Aaron Mermelstein, Eddy Sabat, and inaugural World Poker Tour Venetian main event winner Ben Palmer.

The average stack is currently 207,000, with blinds starting Friday at 2,500-5,000 with a 5,000 big blind ante.

There is still plenty of action remaining on the schedule for this Venetian DeepStack Championship Poker Series, which runs through July 28. For more information about the CPPT, visit the Card Player Poker Tour homepage.

Here is a look at the remaining players.