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The PokerStars.net North American Poker Tour has had its share of difficulties getting off the ground. Though the first season was short, the stops were successful, and even starting Season 2 strong in 2011 with the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the NAPT Los Angeles stop had its issues with branding and California laws, and the only other announced stop was Mohegan Sun. A solid field turned out, but it didn’t come close to last year’s numbers.

The $5K buy-in Main Event at the 2010 NAPT Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, brought 716 players into the mix for a prize pool of nearly $3.3 million, and Vanessa Selbst took the title and $750K cash. This year?

Players: 387
Prize pool: $1,736,330
First place prize: $450,000
Paid finishers: 56

There won’t be an editorial here about how there are too many tournaments these days, but there just might be too many tournaments these days.

Main Event action kicked off on April 9 with a star-studded crowd. Some of those who didn’t make it through the day included Kathy Liebert, Chau Giang, Erick Lindgren, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Moneymaker. But on the brighter side of things, there were 230 players who *did* advance to the second day of play, and some of those names were Vanessa Rousso, Vanessa Selbst, Joe Cada, Jonathan Duhamel, Victor Ramdin, Carlos Mortensen, Nenad Medic, Jason Mercier, John D’Agostino, Cliff Josephy, Matt Matros, and Olivier Busquet. But the Day 1 chip leader was Chris Tryba (pictured above) with a bag of 173,400 chips.

The final table is scheduled for Wednesday, April 13.

Information courtesy of PokerStars blog, and photo credit to © Joe Giron.