Osmar Rockenbach and Michael Stembera lead the way in the Main Event as Michael Mizrachi started the defence of his title

The $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event began today in Las Vegas on July 3, with Michael ”The Grinder” Mizrachi making an incredible entrance as he looks to defend the title he earned last year.

Mizrachi overcame a total of 9,734 poker players to secure the $10,000,000 first-place prize, and he will have to do similarly this year to be crowned champion once again.

Antonio Esfandiari and Nicholas Rigby were the other major names in action, as the Iranian aims to add a fourth bracelet in what has been a fine career to this point.

Football supporters will have been quick to notice that Gerard Pique was in action in the $10,000 Main Event; however, poker fans will have noticed that the former Spanish international kept tabs on the World Cup taking part in the background of the event.

At present there is no runaway chip leader on Day 1B with Brazil's Osmar Rockenbach likely finishing atop the leaderboard on a stack of 286,900, followed by Michael Stembera (270,300) and Damarjai Davenport (263,000).

The WSOP bracelet winners Ali Eslami (256,200) and Shota Nakanishi (242,000) advanced with very healthy stacks.

Defending champion Mizrachi was given his ninth WSOP gold bracelet during the first break and then got to work at the tables in his attempt for an unprecedented title defence in recent years.

In the $3,000 Freezeout NLH, Asi Moshe demonstrated exactly why he has now won five bracelets at the WSOP, with his winnings for this event being $683,830 as the Israeli managed to see off Qiao Du as the Chinese player pushed him close.

Meanwhile, Dzmitry Urbanovich captured his maiden bracelet by outlasting the 199-entry field of the $10,000 8-Game Championship.

This was a career-defining moment for the Polish poker star after two previous runner-up finishes, and the loud celebration by Urbanovich demonstrated this as he was awarded the coveted piece of poker hardware, along with $431,260 to pad his bankroll.

At the time of writing, Pete Chen is currently leading the $5,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em with only 15 players remaining; however, Yohwan Lim, Myles Mullaly, and Najeem Ajez are not far off the lead as the table went for a 15-minute interval.