The 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Day 2a got off to a running start today with players wasting no time making moves to try to build on their chip stacks.

Just an hour in, more than 100 players were already eliminated, and the poker room was a chorus of all-ins as short-stacked players tried their best to double up quickly and get back in the mix.

Among the dearly departed from the Main Event today are Bill Edler, Svetlana Gromenkova, Jimmy Fricke, Anna Wroblewski, Perry Friedman, Susie Isaacs, Scotty Nguyen and Harry Demetriu.

Svetlana Gromenkova is a surprise early out today as she was sitting pretty well with USD 94,125 to start the day. Unfortunately the luck of the draw put her in the seat to the right of Canada’s Marc Karam who ended up adding a lot of Gromenkova’s chips to his more than USD 80,000 starting stack today.

On one hand Gromenkova and Karam saw a flop of A-J-5, and Gromenkova check-calls Karam’s USD 5,000 bet. The turn is another five, and this time Gromenkova check-raises Karam’s USD 10,000 bet to make it USD 25,000.

The river is a six and Gromenkova check-folds after Karam’s USD 30,000 river bet. This left her hurting for chips and a few hands later she put the rest of them in the middle with A-7 and Karam called with a dominant A-Q. The board held no miracle cards for Gromenkova and she was done.

Some of the players who’ve had better luck and are still in it so far today are Robert Mizrachi, Brandon Adams, Mark Vos, Kido Pham, Billy Baxter, Tony Hachem, Julian Gardner, Toto Leonidas, Erick Lindgren, Hoyt Corkins, Kathy Liebert, John Duthie, Chris Bell and more.

Ray Romano and Shane Warne are both still in it, either proving once again that anything can happen or that celebrities can become good poker players too.

Patrik Antonius has taken a hit to his chip stack, but he’s still hanging in with about USD 24,000, while his wife continues to best him in chips even though her starting stack for the day has dipped from about USD 70,000 to the mid USD 60k range.