Players are getting knocked out at a rapid-fire pace in the $2K NLHE event. At 2PM we started with 220 players and still had a little ways to go before someone went out on the money bubble in 172nd place. In just two hours the field has shrunk to 139 runners and several P5ers like Scott “BigRiskky” Clements, Phil “USCPhildo” Collins, and Jeff “yellowsub” Williams have fallen by the wayside.

While some have faltered, others have flourished. Luke “IWEARGOGGLES” Staudenmaier has spent his day joking and laughing with his tablemates while he worked his way past the 150K mark. Peter “Nordberg” Feldman is holding steady at 125K and both Brett “threatnasty” Switzer and Eric “whItE mAmbA” Ladny are hot on his heels hovering around 100K apiece. We took a swoop through the tournament area before the first break of the day and found the following chip counts for you:

Luke “IWEARGOGGLES” Staudenmaier
Peter “Nordberg” Feldman - 125K
Eric “whItE mAmbA” Ladny (pictured right) - 102K
Brett “threatnasty” Switzer - 100K
Jack “doctor_fun” Powell - 95K
Clark Hamagami - 93K
Matt “mlagoo” LaGarde - 80K
David “DavidP18″ Peters - 70K
Carter “ckingusc” King - 70K
Christian “charder30″ Harder - 70K
Jon “PearlJammer” Turner - 50K
Faraz “The-Toliet0″ Jaka - 45K
Bryan “BParis” Paris - 30K
Noah “fouruhaters” Schwartz - 30K
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 30K
Jason Gray - 22K

WSOP 2009 Event #29: $10K Heads-Up NLHE

After a long first match that was taken down by John Duthie, Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert quickly retaliated in Match #2 to take it down and even it up. They are now midway through their third match and Wolpert holds around a 3 to 1 chip advantage over his opponent. The two players are currently on a short break, but we’ll keep you posted on their progress.

WSOP 2009 Event #34: $1.5K NLHE

As we predicted, the 2,085 person field has essentially been cut in half to 1,060 players in the span of four levels. One player who is hanging around is Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaubaugh. We watched him call a min raise out of the big blind at the 100/200 blind level with two other players in the pot. Cody checked to the initial raiser on the A74 flop and the initial raiser and flat called checked as well. It checked to the third player in the hand again after the 2 fell on the turn and the third player bet out 600. Cody then check-raised 1K on top and both of his opponents elected to fold. After the hand Slaubaugh was up to around 18K.

Here are some other chip counts we saw around the Amazon Room before players went on their second break of the day:

Adam “csimmsux” Geyer (pictured right) - 32K
Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodnicki -20K
Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaubaugh - 18K
Eric “highlite11″ Nagel - 15K
Chris “moorman1″ Moorman - 13.5K
David “The Maven” Chicotsky - 11K
Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 10.5K
Brent “bhanks11″ Hanks - 9.5K
Ari Engel - 8.3K
Brett “gank” Jungblut - 7.5K
Jon “sketchy1″ Eaton - 5.5K
Jon “FieryJustice” Little - 5K
Jared “The Waco Kidd” Hamby - 4.5K
Joe “Dyzalot” Morneau - 4K
Matt “mattster24″ Sterling - 2.5K

WSOP 2009 Event #33 $10K LHE

Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers is MIA from the $10K Limit Hold’em World Championship Event, and David “Bakes” Baker (pictured left) was close to the rail too. Baker had only 21K in front of him with the blinds at 1.3K/2.5K when action folded to the small blind who completed and Baker checked in the big blind. The flop was A52 and his opponent bet. Baker called, and the 9 came on the turn. Again the small blind bet and David called. The river was the 4, and Baker’s opponent slowed down with a check. David checked behind and the small blind tabled K2 for a pair of deuces. Baker showed 88 and scooped the pot. He now has 39K in chips, but still has work to do seeing that he is below the 70K chip average.

Lex “RaSZi” Veldhuis and Annie Duke are floating around 100K, and Barry Greenstein is about average with 65K.

• June 16, 2009 -- Rami Busts at Final Table
• June 16, 2009 -- Waking Up in Vegas
• June 17, 2009 -- Super Man
• June 17, 2009 -- Wolpert Wins!