Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman’s meotoric rise through the 1k NL rebuy WSOP Event #44 continues to shoot skyward as his 860k stack is tops with 25 players left. Freeman had one third of the average stack late in Day 1 before going on a rush to end the day.

Not too far behind Freeman is Jamie “TheChronic420″ Rosen, whose 550k is in the top three stacks. Rosen’s life will be much easier after they just went down to three tables as he no longer has to deal with Freeman, who got the better of him earlier:

Rosen raised 64 preflop and Freeman called. Rosen bet 15k on a 9-9-7 flop and Freeman called. He then bet 30k on the turn when the 8 peeled and Freeman called. Both players checked the king on the river and Freeman won with A-Q high.

“This table is going to be a lot easier without Scott,” Rosen said. “He soul read me earlier.”

Although Rosen won’t have to contend with the overwhelming chip leader in Freeman, he will have to bang heads with two tough tournament players in Joe Tehan and Peter “Nordberg” Feldman, (pictured right)  whose 300k stack is to his immediate left. Tehan’s 260k stack is right at the average stack with blinds at 3k-6k-500.

Randy “Randers” Haddox was recently eliminated as was Faraz “The Toilet-0″ Jaka, who was busted by Mark Seif when his straight and flush draw failed to improve against Seif’s top pair of aces.

Despite almost having the market cornered on orange 5k chips, Freeman’s table is perhaps the toughest one left with Mark Seif (400k), Alex Bolotin (150k) and Alan Sass (100k) — although Bolotin and Sass are short.

With his back nearly five feet in front of the rail, Freeman’s online posse was able to converse with him about his position in the tournament.

When Freeman was asked by a crew that included Adam “akat11″ Katz and Adam “Roothlus” Levy if he was ”pooping” on the table to get his stack, Freeman said quite the contrary.

“I’m running good,” Freeman said. “I’m real good at getting kings to ace-king.”

J.C. Tran (210k) and Eric “E-Fro” Froehlich (330k) highlight the third table.

The $5K Short Handed NLHE Event is back from break and Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar essentially doubled his stack shortly after play resumed.  With the blinds at 300/600 ante 75 Vivek raised to 1,600 and the player in the big blind reraised to 4,200.  Rajkumar told Pocket Fives that he and the player had been butting heads ever since they were moved to the same table. 

Vivek made the call and the duo saw a flop of AT3.  The player in the big blind bet out 5K and Rajkumar called.  After the 7 came on the turn, his opponent led out again, this time for 8.5K and Vivek called once again.  The river was the 5 and the big blind thought some time before moving all-in for 21.3K.  Vivek just barely had the other player covered and began to contemplate making the call.

After his opponent said, “I told you we’d play a big pot together,” Vivek thought some more and announced, “man, I just got these chips too.” 

Another minute or two passed and the other player asked Rajkumar, “do you have K-10 or something?”

“Pretty much,” Vivek responded.  Then, Jason “JCarver” Somerville, who was playing at the next table over, craned his neck to see what was going on and Vivek called out, “Jason–every hand”, referring to the number of big decisions he had been put to the past couple of levels.

After 4-5 minutes passed, the other player called the clock on Vivek and, as time wound down, Rajkumar asked if the other player would show if he folded.  His opponent said nothing and the floor person began to count down the final ten seconds.  With two seconds remaining, Vivek announced “call” and turned over J-10.  The other player said “good”, mucked his hand, and walked away from the table and Rajkumar increased his stack to 75K.

Here are some updated chip counts coming back from the dinner break: 
Jason Somerville (pictured at right) - 63K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 58K
Shannon Shorr - 36K
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 32K
Glen “choron” Chorny - 30K
Jason Gray - 28K
Alex “AJKHoosier1″ Kamberis - 21.5K
Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer - 20K
Andy “BKice” Seth - 16K
Aditya “Intervention” Agarwal - 12.5K
Thayer Rasmussen - 11.5K

• June 26, 2008 -- “Whoa! Who Won that Pot?”
• June 27, 2008 -- Short-Handed Event Calls It a Night
• June 25, 2008 -- “The Toilet” Makes Flush
• June 25, 2008 -- Diamonds-A-Plenty for Rosen