Jason Gray began today’s $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Day 2 with close to 30K chips — a below-average stack with a lot of room to make up on the chip leaders. That work has come quite easy to the Final Table Team member, as he’s chipped all the way up to 200K in only three levels to take over as one of the tournament’s chip leaders. Gray (pictured right) picked up a couple big pots early on with pocket nines — the second of which he called a short-stack’s all in blind and flopped top set.

Fellow P5ers haven’t had the same fortune thus far. Danny “THE_D_RY” Ryan, who began the day with almost 70K, was just eliminated when he got his last 23K in preflop with K2 but couldn’t oudraw AK on a board of KKQJ9.

Court Harrington and Felipe “Improved” Montenegro have also made recent exits as the field has thinned to 89 players. Montenegro’s K-K was unable to hold against A-4 all-in preflop for a 150K pot. With the average stack at 92K, here are the unoffical chip counts of remaining P5ers in Event #27:

Barry “BarryGS” Schultz - 140K
Justin “looshle” Pechie - 110K
Taylor “tdomeski” Douglas - 70K
Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim - 60K
Keven “stammdogg” Stammen - 60K

Brandon “BrandonPL” Leeds has been eliminated in 5th place of the $1,500 Razz event. Leeds earned $33,081 for his efforts. With three players remaining, Barry Greenstein is second in chips with 350K. Chip leader Chris Viox, who knocked Leeds out, has almost half the chips in play.

• June 15, 2008 -- Italian Pirate Wins a Ton of Booty
• June 14, 2008 -- Stacked!
• June 15, 2008 -- In the Waiting Line
• June 15, 2008 -- Yellowsub Refuses to Sink