It was a bittersweet and heartbreaking end of the day for Joe “LatestLines2″ Ward as he was the final elimination of the day in 28th place. Ward and fellow P5er Jamie “The New” Robbins got their virtually identical chip stacks in the middle preflop with Robbins’ AQ in bad shape against Joe’s AK. The flop looked good for Ward as it fell AT8 and neither player picked up a flush draw when the 2 fell on the turn. The river, however, was not kind to Ward as it fell Q to give Robbins aces up and the hand. It was unclear who had the bigger stack, but after counting down both players’ chips it was determined that Jamie had Joe outchipped by 200K (or two big blinds) and Ward was officially eliminated. He earned $253,941 for his finish.

With Ward’s elimination the final three tables are set and the end of day chip leader is one Darvin Moon, who surpassed Billy “Patrolman35″ Kopp to end the day with with almost 20.2 million chips. Kopp is second overall in chips with just shy of 16 million. Phil Ivey, Antonio Esfandiari, and the P5ers listed below will all be returning at 12PM tomorrow to play down from 27 players to the November Nine:

Jordan “Scarface_79″ Smith was one of many players battling with a short stack near the end of the night and benefited greatly by the many short stacks that managed to fight off elimination. Here’s a sequence we saw that allowed Smith to boost his stack to 4.5 million by the end of the night:

1. Smith moves all in from the button for 1.25 million with the blinds at 50K/100K ante 10K. Ben “benba” Lamb calls from from the small blind. Smith has pocket aces against the A7 of Lamb and doubles up to 2.6 million after the board rolls out J-9-4-7-9

2. On the next hand Smith calls an all-in from a short stack with AK and is up against 44. The 653TJ is no help to Smith and his stack dips back down to 1.5 million.

3. Smith moves all in on the next hand and the blinds fold. Back up to 1.75 million.

4. A few hands later Phil Ivey opens for a raise and Smith moves all in over the top. A frustrated Ivey makes the call and his A-8 is way behind Smith’s A-9. The board holds true for Jordan and he’s up to around 4.3 million, and wins another small pot at the end of the night to finish with 4.5.

Here’s a look at the nine P5ers still alive with the average stack at 7.2 million:

Billy “Patrolman35″ Kopp - 15.97 million
Jamie “The New” Robbins - 9.5 million
Ben “benba” Lamb - 9.41 million
Joe “jcada99″ Cada - 6.565 million
Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger - 5.623 million
Ludovic “Cutsss” Lacay - 5.6 million
Jordan “scarface_79″ Smith - 4.5 million
Jonathan “driverseati” Tamayo - 3.3 million
Jesse “thor” Haabak - 2.75 million

• July 15, 2009 -- TheNew Short Stack
• July 15, 2009 -- Lichtenberger Out in 18th Place
• July 15, 2009 -- Maimone Gives FU to Smith
• July 14, 2009 -- “It Was Just a Setup”