One hundred and twenty-eight players signed up for the $25,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em Championship, the first open event of the 2011 World Series of Poker held at the Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada. They created a prizepool of over $3 million. The event is considered the most prestigious event of the early 2011 WSOP schedule.

The first two rounds were played on Tuesday, cutting the field to 32 players. Some interesting first round matches included Tom Dwan defeating close friend Peter Jetten, Daniel Negreanu defeating Alex Kostritsyn, Isaac Haxton defeating Robert Mizrachi and Jason Mercier losing to Gus Hansen. Uber-hot high-roller Erik Seidel fell to Dani Stern in Round 1 when his A,K couldn't beat Stern's Q,10.

Some interesting second round matches included Daniel Alaei defeating Justin Bonomo, Yevgeniy Timonshenko beat Dan "Jungleman12" Cates, Kenny Tran lost to John Juanda, and John Duthie beat Jonathan Duhamel.

Wednesday, the remaining players will play down to the final 8, with the top 16 reaching the money of $67,436.

Changes in the event from last year included moving it up to the beginning of the series, raising the buy-in from $10,000 to $25,000, giving players a triple starting stack of 75,000 chips and giving each player two clear add-on buttons.

The 32 remaining players who will play on Wednesday:

Chris Moorman
Daniel Stern
Tom Dwan
Steve Billirakis
Maxim Lykov
Darren Elias
Amritraj Singh
Olivier Busquet
Kunimaro Kojo
John Juanda
Eric Froehlich
Matt Marafioti
John Duthie
Anthony Guetti
Richard Lyndaker
Jake Cody
Isaac Haxton
Jonathan Jaffe
Ashton Griffin
Gus Hansen
Steve Zolotow
Carlos Mortensen
Mikhail Smirnov
Nikolay Evdakov
Nick Schulman
David Paredes
David Benyamine
Trevor Pope
Erik Cajelais
Andrew Robl
Yevgeniy Timoshenko
Daniel Alaei

The prizes for the final eight:

1. $851,192
2. $525,980
3. $283,966
4. $283,966
5. $138,852
6. $138,852
7. $138,852
8. $138,852

32 Remain at $25k HU NLHE WSOP Event #2