With only 5 levels of play scheduled for day 1 action, players are now at the halfway point of day 1B. Today’s larger field was expected to result in larger stacks, and the flurry of bust outs in the first level all at the same table seemed to make it even more likely a huge stack would emerge early.

So far at least it has not happened. Barry Greenstein is leading the way at the halfway mark with around 70k and a few other players are in the 50k - 60k range, but no stacks significantly larger than the leaders from day 1A were at this point yesterday. In fact, a large portion of the field is hanging right around the 30k starting stack.

Jason “JDN” Newitt was hanging on with around 5,500 but is now sitting in the staging area just outside the tournament room talking with WPT video interview host Amanda Leatherman after his elimination. Shane “Schaniac” Schleger is also outside the poker room, but he still has chips. The zero tolerance policy at the Bike earned Shane a penalty when one of his cards went off the table when he was mucking his hand. He will be back in the action shortly.

Here are some counts from around the room:
Barry Greenstein - 70k
Chad “M8kingmoves” Batista (right) - 42k
Jordan “iMsoLucky0″ Morgan - 32k
Mark Newhouse - 30k
Ari Engel - 29k
Matt “Mattg1983″ Graham - 28k
Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo - 28k
Josh “pbdrunks” VanDuyn - 27k
Scott “BigRiskky” Clements - 24k
Peter “Nordberg” Feldman - 23k
Peter “#1Pen” Neff - 21k
Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby - 19k
Shane “Schaniac” Schleger - 19k

• August 25, 2008 -- Legends of Poker Day 1B Complete
• August 24, 2008 -- Volleyball Gold
• June 30, 2008 -- Little and Jaka Moving Up
• June 21, 2008 -- He’s a Shaniac!

Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista has a reputation for speaking his mind, as hasn’t held back so far on Day 1c. Batista got involved in a pot with a player at his table, raising to 275 preflop with blinds at 50/100. A player in middle position called and the cutoff moved all in for almost 3K. Batista made the call and the other player folded:

Batista: A9
Cutoff: 88

The 8 in the door spelled disaster for Batista and he was unable to catch a miracle to drop his stack to 19K. Then came the comments, as Batista began calling the player a “fish” based on previous plays he had made and wasn’t afraid of using expletives to get his point across. The floor was called over and Chad was given a warning, but no penalty — to the dismay of his opponent.

Back to the poker side of things, Ladbrokes pros Jon Kalmar and Steve Davis are off to fast starts. Both cracked the 30K mark before the end of the first level. Kalmar has around 32K while Davis is up to 36K. Here’s a look at some other notable chip counts at the end of Level 1:

Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania - 36K
Bryan “badbeatninja” Devonshire - 33K
Jordan “Octavian_C” Rich - 32.5K
Gary “GB2005″ Bogdanski - 31K
Jon Wein - 25K
Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi - 25K
Eric “Rizen” Lynch - 24K
Felipe “Improved” Montenegro - 22K
James “tobiasjosias” Johnson - 21.8K
Mark “PokerHo” Kroon - 21.5K
Jason “mkind0516″ Laso - 21K
Justin Bonomo - 20K
Amit “amak316″ Makhija - 18.5K
Court Harrington - 18K
Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby - 16.7K
Jason “JCarver” Somerville - 16.5K
Micahel “benvo123″ Benvenuti - 16.5K
Jordan “scarface_79″ Smith - 15.5K
Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 13K
Jamie “pokerjamers” Armstrong - 12K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 10K

• July 6, 2008 -- Finally Friedberg’s Time
• July 6, 2008 -- Last Chance to Dance
• July 6, 2008 -- Chip Count Chocula
• July 6, 2008 -- BadBeatNinja Disappears Into the Night

Chips are flying in the early levels of the 1.5k NL WSOP Event #52 and many P5er’s are reaping the benefits in the 2700 player capped field.

Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka (pictured at right) won a 7.5k pot when his all-in 1500 bet on the river was called by his opponent on a 99A37 board. Jaka tabled the J9 and scooped the pot.

Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little busted an opponent when he raised to 300 in the 50-100 level and got re-raised to 900 by an opponent in late position. Little effectively put his opponent all-in for his remaining 2k stack and his opponent called with QQ, way behind Little’s KK. The board ran true for Little, whose stack sits around 5.5k.

Nick “gbmantis” Niergarth got shortstacked early but won a race early in an all-in preflop confrontation with his KQ running down his opponents 99, increasing Niergarth’s stack increased to 1700.

Shane “shaniac” Schleger and Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista will have to battle back from rough starts as Schleger sits with 1k and Batista at 2k. Jeff “jeffboski” Sluzinski’s stack has been reduced to three green 25 chips but is in way better shape than Adam “Roothlus” Levy, who busted out early.

Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaubaugh and Matt “All In At 420″ Stout have chipped up a little in the first few levels with Slaubaugh at 3300 and Stout at 3600.

• June 21, 2008 -- He’s a Shaniac!
• June 26, 2008 -- Six-Handed Players Making Moves
• June 26, 2008 -- Treacherous Tables in Rebuy
• June 22, 2008 -- Slaubaugh Takes 2nd

Players in the $5k NLHE six-handed tournament are all carefully watching the tournament clock as the player count slowly drops. Play started with 96 players and they are now down to 79 players, just 1 shy of the money.

Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista was involved in a couple big hands. First a player raised to 4.2k and Chad (pictured left) re-raised to 18k total. After contemplating for quite awhile the other player moved all in and Chad made the call with his A2. His opponent held the 44 and Chad commented that he was baffled as to how the other player could make such a big move with that hand after facing a re-raise. The board ran out KTT53 and the pocket fours held and Chad’s stack was reduced to around 30k.

On the very next hand, Chad open-shoved all in only to have a player behind him with more chips move all in as well. Chad held the 88 against the other players AK so it was off to the races as the board came down KT953 and Chad was eliminated just 11 places shy of the money.

Mike “inissint” Glasser had been short stacked since the beginning of play today and he got all the money in preflop with QT but was way behind his opponents AT. The flop came 832 and Glasser called for another club to come on the turn which could give him outs to a chop, but instead the Q fell putting him in the lead. The river was the J and Glasser doubled to around 75k.

Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar was trying to double up at his table as well. After another player raised Jon pushed all in for a total of 38k. His opponent decided to fold so Jon lived to see another hand and told PocketFives to put “Choo Choo” in the update with a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine. We’re not quite sure what that means, but we figured we would post it for him anyway.

The bubble will burst soon and we still have quite a few players left looking to make the money including Glen “choron” Chorny, Chris “cdbr3799″ Dombrowski, Ryan Daut, Shannon Shorr, Jason Gray, Steve “Cornell Fiji” Ware, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Jason “tresfull21″ Mercier, and Alex Jacob.

• June 27, 2008 -- Stud Players in the Money
• June 27, 2008 -- Feelin’ Good
• June 26, 2008 -- Six-Handed Players Making Moves
• June 27, 2008 -- Short-Handed Event Calls It a Night

There are many players making moves in event #46, the $5k NLHE six-handed event. Glen “choron” Chorny was trying to get his short stack moving in the right direction when he raised to 600 preflop with the blinds at 100/200 until an opponent re-raised to 2.4k. Chorny (pictured left) looked disgusted and after thinking for a minute he mucked his cards, showing the A. His opponent said “That’s why I didn’t want to see the flop” as he flipped over his pocket kings and raked in the pot. Chorny is sitting with half his original stack so we expect to see him making more moves as the blinds increase.

Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer bet out with the board showing T53 and his opponent raised. After thinking for a minute O’Dwyer reraised enough to put him all in and the other player did indeed make the call with the KT only to find that O’Dwyer held the AA and was ahead in the hand. The turn and river came with the Q and 6 and O’Dwyer added to his stack as the other player exited the tournament.

Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert’s luck wasn’t quite as good. We caught up with the action on the river with the board reading T73TK and Wolpert making a bet of 850 into the small pot. He was called by his opponent and Wolpert appeared reluctant to flip over his hand. When he did he showed the AJ for ace high which had been good until the river, as his opponent held the KQ for a pair of kings which was enough to scoop the pot.

Players are just coming back from their second break of the day and the blinds will be 150/300 with a 25 ante when they return. Some unoffical chip counts of notable players left in the field are listed below.

Hevad “RainKhan” Khan - 35k
Blair “blur5f6″ Hinkle - 32k
Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar - 32k
Alex Jacob - 25k
Shannon Shorr - 19k
Gavin Griffin - 19k
Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis -19k
Amit “amak316″ Makhija -17k
Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista (pictured right)- 13k
Danny “THE_D_RY” Ryan - 12k
Anna Wroblewski - 12k
Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi - 11k

Players that have been eliminated from the tournament so far include Joe Sebok, Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby, Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little, Carter “devinr12″ Gill, Rolf Slotboom, Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet, and Issac Haxton.

• June 13, 2008 -- Harrington on Helium
• June 13, 2008 -- Wolpert and Gray Get Coolered in 10k Heads-Up
• June 12, 2008 -- Greenstein Cracks Competition, Somerville Sinking
• June 27, 2008 -- Sweating the Bubble