The top 27 make the money here at the Festa al Lago Bellagio WPT tournament. After 13 total levels of play and 3 of the 5 levels slated for day 3 complete the field is down to only 56 players, just over double the amount that makes the money. Steve “gboro780″ Gross (right), Haffa “hafizzle” Khan, Glen “choron” Chorny and Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little were among the recent bustouts that brought the field down to 56 players.

Glen Chorny was eliminated when his pocket queens were outflopped by AQ with an ace hitting the board. When all was said and done Chorny was eliminated and Jason Lavallee was up to 850k chips and became the current leader of the tournament. Jason “JCarver” Somerville started the day as the chip leader and took off to a quick start jumping up to 800k but has stalled slightly since, though he is still second in chips with 750k.

Earlier today Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little was down to around 12k and made a monster comeback to over 150k and was on his way to a 300k stack in a hand that could have eliminated Chad “M8kingmoves” Batista. The two were all in preflop with Little’s pocket tens dominating the JT of Batista but a jack on the river saved Batista and left Little with less than 9k chips while Chad doubled to over 300k. After posting his ante Little had 8,500 chips left to put all in the next hand where his QJ made broadway against Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah who had called the 4,500 more from the big blind when the action folded to him with K7.

The next hand Freddy Deeb opened the pot for 11k and Little again moved all in, this time for a little over 20k. Leah put in a raise from the small blind making it over 100k to go and pushing Freddy out of the hand. Little had pocket eights but was in bad shape against Leah’s pocket jacks and there were no more comeback tricks left in Little’s playbook for this tournament.

Matt “All In At 420″ Stout has quietly been building chips, eliminating a player when his pocket tens held up against pocket fours all in preflop. Stout has Scott “BigRiskky” Clements (left) on his immediate left and Clements has been chipping up steadily since winning the big pot earlier with the straight flush.

Playing the shortstack has been the task for Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar so far today. He moved his stack all in over the top of an 11k opening raise to pick up a small pot and maintain his stack of around 90k. With the blinds going to 3k / 6k and a 500 ante Vivek’s chips will likely be in the middle again a few times during the next level.

• October 23, 2009 -- Festa al Lago 2009 Day 3 Gallery
• October 22, 2009 -- Five and Done
• October 23, 2009 -- Festa al Lago: End of Day 3
• October 23, 2009 -- Go Leafs Gone