The biggest tournament in live poker history got off to a good start yesterday evening, as the $1 million BIG ONE For ONE DROP event began at the 2012 WSOP in Las Vegas.

The event saw 48 of the world's biggest star players line up for a shot at the record-breaking prize pool, including players like Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel and Gus Hansen.

The 48-player field also featured a string of amateurs and businessmen, who until now have done surprisingly well. While 11 players have been eliminated since the tournament's start, most of the eliminated players have so far been professionals.

These included Jens Kyllönen, Andrew Robl, Seidel, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Eugene Katchalov, and Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, who came fresh off a $1.24 million win in the $50,000 Players Championship.

In the other end of the chip counts, Brian Rast could bag more than 10 million chips in order to end the day as the overnight chip leader.

Rast claimed the scalp of among others Robl to catapult himself into the top of the counts, and managed to keep up his pace to take the lead.

Also doing well are Phil Hellmuth in second place with 8.3 million chips, Frederic Banjout in third with 7 million, Antonio Esfandiari in fourth with 6.8 million and Gus Hansen in fifth, also with 6.8 million.

Players like Sam Trickett, Guy Laliberté, Ben Lamb, Mike Sexton and Tom Dwan are also sitting on above average stacks. In the very bottom of the field, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Galfond are struggling as the short stacks with around 450,000 chips each.

Play will resume tonight, where the plan is to play all the way down to a nine-player final table.

Once that happens, the players will go on a break until Wednesday, where the winner of the historic $18,346,673 first prize is expected to be found.