We spent a good amount of time searching for David “Doc_Sands” Sands (pictured right) after his table broke during the past level in the $2.5K NLHE event. You see, he was sitting on a stack of about 130K when we had last seen him, more than twice the average, so he had to be somewhere right?

Unfortunately we were wrong.

Sands found us across the room and explained a bizarre hand that went down between him and the new chip leader of the tournament. Sands, seated at the same table as Garrett “GBecks” Beckman, raised to 3.1K with blinds at 600/1200 and Alan Keating (not to be confused with P5er Alex “Kadabra” Keating) reraised to 8.5K. Sands four-bet to 15.4K and Keating then five-bet to 37.5K, having 73K behind. Sands called and they saw a flop of A-J-9 with two hearts. Keating moved all in and Sands called with a set of jacks, which were way ahead of Keating’s A-Q.

CAUTION: Material may be inappropriate for young children.

The turn brought a Queen and amazingly enough an Ace hit the river, giving Keating a higher full house and crippling Sands to 20K. He moved tables and busted shortly after.

Lee “acumen53″ Childs and Cory “UGOTPZD” Carroll (pictured left) were sent to the rail just before the money bubble. Carroll knows just how Sands is feeling, as he got his chips in with trip nines on the flop against pocket queens only to watch the Q hit the river.

Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman and Garrett Beckman have been moving in the opposite direction. We caught up with Freeman in the big blind just before the break. The player on the button had raised to 4.2K and Freeman reraised to 12.6K, leaving around 34K behind. His opponent then shipped it all in, having Freeman covered, and Scott called immediately with AJ. He had the lead against QT and was able to double up to 95K when the board ran out A728T.

Beckman won a pot worth 85K when he and another player got it in preflop. Beckman held a pair of nines and it stayed good against pocket eights. The massive pot increased his stack to 130K, one of the larger stacks in the room.

The average stack is 67K with 121 of the original 1,088 remaining. The top 117 receive a minimum payday of $ 4,929. Here’s a look at the rest of the P5ers still alive as players went on their 20 minute break:

Jon “therookieQQ9″ Plens – 113K
Carter “ckingusc” King – 105K
Keven “Stammdogg” Stammen – 84K
Justin “jurollo” Rollo – 75K (”meh”)
Justin “looshle” Pechie – 62K
Alex Jacob – 45K
Joe Sebok – 21K

WSOP 2009 Event #15: $5K NLHE

 
We’ve seen some big stacks in the $5K NLHE event so far.  Several players like Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaubaugh (36.5K) , Eric “Rizen” Lynch (35K), Full Tilt Pro Scott “r_a_y” Montgomery (30.5K), Tyler “Tydean” Smith (32K), and Mark “markysals11″ Salinaro (35K) have all more than doubled their starting stacks, but they are still trailing the P5er chipleader of the moment Faraz “The-Toliet0″ Jaka (pictured right)  who is already up to a fast 52K.  We missed the hand, but he filled us in on how he took the entirety of Greg “FBT” Mueller’s stack early in Level One:

First, he explained that Mueller arrived at the table, which also features Greg “DuckU” Hobson and Ben “bfineman” Fineman, midway through the first level.  With thee blinds at 25/50 a player raised in early position and Jaka and two other players called.  Then Mueller 3-bet from the big blind and everyone but Jaka folded.  The flop came down 10-8-2, Mueller bet out 1.7K and Jaka raised enough to essentially commit them both all-in.  They proceeded to get it the rest of the way in with Mueller holding J8 for middle pair and a flush draw to Jaka’s flopped set of deuces.  The board bricked out for Mueller and he was gone in a flash while Jaka jumped to an early chip lead.

Hanks told us that his run-in with the man went a little something like this:  Brent was sitting with 11K when he isolated two limpers with 89 at the 75/150 blind level.  The “crazy Russian” may have been on to Hanks’ antics and he reraised to 1.625K total, the limpers folded, and Hanks called.  The flop came 9-6-5 with one club giving Brent top pair, a gut shot straight draw, and a back door flush draw (you know, the nuts).  Brent checked, the other player bet 2.2K and Brent moved all-in for his remaining 8K or so.  The Russian called with his pocket jacks, which held to eliminate Brent early in the day.

Alright, now that we’ve got a good theme going, here is one more quick story about a pair and a draw involving Slaubaugh.  He told us he flopped a flush holding QJ before the first break and proceeded to get it all-in against Jacobo Fernandez, who held A 9 for a pair of nines and the nut flush draw.  Slaubaugh expalined he and Jacobo have bumped heads at the table before and thought his aggressive image played a part in getting so many chips in so early on to double him up.

Faraz “The-Toliet0″ Jaka - 52K
Eric “Rizen” Lynch (pictured right)- 35K
Mark “markysals11″ Salinaro - 35K
Tyler “Tydean” Smith - 32K
Scott “r_a_y” Montgomery - 30.5K
Thayer Rasmussen - 30K
Steve “gboro780″ Gross - 28.5K
Jason “JCarver” Somerville - 27.7K
Billy “Patrolman35″ Kopp - 26.6K
Joe “ender555″ Ebanks - 25K
Ben Fineman - 23K
Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah - 22.5K
Tom “titantom32″ Braband - 22K
Amit “amak316″ Makhija - 20.8K
Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers - 20.5K
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 17K
Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodnicki - 15K
Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 15K
Aditya “intervention” Agarwal - 14K
Michael “worldsgrtest” Banducci - 14K
Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby - 13.5K
Justin “lockdownpokah” Allen - 13K
Nick “fu_15″ Maimone - 13K
Dan “Wretchy” Martin - 12.9K
Christian “charder30″ Charder - 10.5K
Jordan “scarface_79″ Smith - 10K
Hunter “The_Hunt_D” Frey - 10K
Greg “DuckU” Hobson - 9K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 6K

WSOP Event #11: $2K NLHE

Play has flown over in the $2K event and they are now down to the final table. Scott “stpauli11″ Hall is the lone P5er we are aware of still in the event and he is currently the short stack of the nine remaining players. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on his progress.

• June 6, 2009 -- Freeman, King Chipping up in $2.5K
• June 6, 2009 -- Approaching the Final Table
• June 7, 2009 -- Switzer Cripples Ivey, Mercier Learning Fast
• June 6, 2009 -- Big Pots and Big Stacks for Hall and Gentry