Yorky Pud

The World Poker Tour has quite literally dropped anchor in the beautiful and historical city of Venice for the WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event, where the 155 entrants have been whittled down to the last 27.

Those 27 players will return to the Casino Di Venezia, the oldest fully functioning casino in the entire world, today knowing that only 18 of them will make it through to the money places. One man who looks nailed on to make it there is British pro James Akenhead.

Akenhead starts the day fourth in chips with a very healthy looking stack of 336,000. Throughout yesterday's Day 2 Akenhead made a complete nuisance of himself by constantly three and four-betting his opponents in a relentless fashion and looked like he was in the zone. When asked about this step up in aggression he simply said,

"I went for it all day long,"

The 28-year old former train driver is full of confidence after winning the Sunday Million a couple of weeks ago and he is certainly one to watch when the cards are back in the air.

Another player who is going to be impossible to ignore is the current chip leader (pictured) Marcel Bjerkmann who starts the day with 436,300 chips. Bjerkmann has almost $950,000 in live tournament winnings thanks in large to two wins in consecutive months back in 2010. First he took down the €1,500 Belgian Open Poker Championship for €200,030 in October 2010 then followed that up by winning the €6,000 Amsterdam Masters Classic of Poker for a career-best €403,380 in November of the same year.

But despite these results he is still better-known for his online poker prowess where he terrorises players under the moniker "p3rc4." On various sites Bjerkmann has racked up more than $1,000,000 in cashes thanks to his crazy style of play, a style of play he is trying to apply in the live arena.

Other notable players still in the field include American pro Jason Wheeler (348,200), Gianluca Speranza (134,000), Simon Ravnsbaek (78,100) and Kara Scott (60,100).

The plan of action for Day 3 is to first burst through the bubble and then play down to around 16 players, but the tournament director has said his plans may change depending on how long it takes for the money to be reached.

Tune in tomorrow to find out who makes it into the money and who has gone home with their dreams of becoming a WPT champion in tatters.