Feeling like a fish out of water, Kathy Liebert was doing her best to pry information out of whoever was around, poker reporters included, as to who the notable online players were at her table in the $3K No-Limit Hold’em WSOP Event #29.

Given the amount of attention spent observing the table, her instincts about there being notable online players at her table was correct. Matt “All in At 420″ Stout, Joshua “pbdrunks” VanDuyn (pictured at left), Jason “JCarver” Somerville, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier were all battling it out at her table.

“So are any of these guys ranked in the top 20?” she asked, trying to gauge her competition. Liebert continued to talk it up with her newly-found online friends. Their conversation usually consisted of talk about players from both the live and online realms.

When the conversation turned to the final two players in the $10K No-Limit Hold’em heads-up championship, Liebert stated that she liked Kenny Tran’s chances. Stout chimed in that it’s a lot closer of a contest than she thinks and explained to her that Alec “traheho” Torelli is one of the more respected online heads-up players online. Somerville added that he figured Tran as a slight favorite.

VanDuyn got eliminated in Level 7 when his opponent opened with QJ and he raised all-in with AT, losing when his opponent turned three jacks. Liebert’s table wasn’t the only stacked table deep in the 3K NL as a handful of online pros were scattered throughout the remaining 126 players of the 716 player field.

PocketFives caught up with Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers as he was all in on the button. Shaun Deeb (pictured at right) called him down, flipping over his QA to Sowers’ bluffed K3. The board came 69AA2, giving Sowers the flush and crippling Deeb’s already-short stack. Deeb ended the hand with 4K in chips, while Sowers doubled his stack back up to 25K after being down for a good part of the level.

Craig “MrCasino” Gray drew a table with some familiar foes; Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert and Noah “fouruhaters” Schwartz also sat at his table. Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke’s chip stack went from 50k to 110k when he busted three players at his table in five hands right after the dinner break. He is one of the top stacks in the tournament with the average chip stack at 29k.

Here were other notable stacks in the event:

Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin - 93k
Stuart “The Donator” Patterson - 51k
Kathy Liebert - 37k
Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers - 33k
Eric “Rizen” Lynch - 32k
Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert - 31k
Craig “MrCasino” Gray - 20k
Jason “JCarver” Somerville - 17k
Shaun Deeb - 15k
Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier - 6k

Many of the online players who busted out of the $3K No-Limit Hold’em tournament earlier jumped into the $10K Limit Hold’em World Championship Event #30, which started at 5pm. When we caught up with the play there, Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi (pictured at left) claimed to have Eric “EFro” Froehlich’s number. Mizzi pulled down a sizeable pot when he hit trip kings on the turn; his stack increasing to 30K. However, Minh Ly thought he would get in on the action as well soon after; when Mizzi bet at the pot preflop, both Minh and Marco Traniello called. The flop came 3TJ and Sorel min-raised to get two callers. The turn was the Q, Sorel checked, Minh bet, Traniello called, and Sorel laid down in a good spot — Minh had turned a king-high straight to win more chips at the table. “You’ve got his number?,” Minh asked Mizzi. “Well, I’ve got your number now!”

Here are some chip counts of key players left with the average stack at 23k:

Justin Bonomo - 47k
Brock “t_soprano” Parker - 27k
Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko - 20k
Chris “sooooted” Vaughn - 23k
Darrell “Gigabet” Dicken - 10k
Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson - 5k
Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar - 3k

• June 16, 2008 -- Get Your Fricke On
• June 16, 2008 -- Pop Goes the Bubble
• July 3, 2009 -- Mighty Thor Doubles Up
• February 24, 2009 -- Sowers Busts Antonio, Fricke Sidelined