Carter “ckingusc” King (pictured left) has been hanging on by a thread all day; in fact, the patience he’s continually exhibited has been admirable. However, this patience was wearing thin as his stack was shrinking - when PocketFives caught up to Carter halfway through the last level of the evening, he had less than 15K in front of him. Finally, he saw his chance to make a move and from the button, he shoved all in when it folded to him. After thinking awhile, a player in early position called his all-in and the dealer waved his paddle in the air. When both players flipped their cards, it was a classic coin flip situation: Carter held QJ versus his opponent’s TT. The board ran out K386 and Carter was feeling pretty good, but while the J on the river gave Carter a better pair, it gave his opponent the flush and he was sent to the rail.

Todd “koolkeith13″ Lewis also recently busted when he lost an 80K pot when he got it in with A-K while his opponent held A-9. A nine on the turn spelled disaster for Lewis and he was eliminated with an hour left in play.

Adam “Roothlus” Levy had some good news to share with his friend Ray Henson, who was sitting a few tables over. Levy had much to be happy about after he won a three-way all-in preflop hand where his kings held up against pocket queens and pocket jacks. Levy started the hand with about 75k and after his flopped set of kings held, his stack catapulted to over 200k. Henson has been enjoying some good fortune as well as his 20k stack at the start of the day has ballooned over 230k.

Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy increased his stack to 250K following a blind vs. blind confrontation. The player in the small blind raised to 3,600 and Josephy (pictured right) raised enough to put the player all in (nearly 30K). The player called instantly with pocket kings and Cliff flipped over pocket nines. As the dealer prepared to reveal the flop, Josephy yelled “king!” and naturally the dealer dealt the 9 on the flop, putting him in the lead. His hand held and he climbed back toward the top of the leaderboard.

Russell “rdcrsn” Carson’s stack took a big hit in a blind vs blind battle. In a limped pot, Carson and his opponent played for stacks on an A-4-5 flop. Carson’s opponent flopped aces and fours and managed to dodge Carson’s gut-shot straight draw and flush draw, scooping a 90k pot, leaving Carson with 18k.

Both Michael “Benvo123″ Benvonuti and Daniel “voff” Deveau took also big hits this past hour. Benvenuti got all-in on the flop with a set versus a flopped flush which knocked him down under 30K. Deveau got it all-in preflop with aces versus his opponent’s pocket jacks and looked to be in good shape to pick up a big pot, but a jack on the river shipped it the other direction and he was left with 50K.

With an hour left in the final level of the night, here are some unofficial chip counts of P5ers still alive:
 
Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy - 250K
Tom “titantom32″ Braband - 212K
Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson - 190K
Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 190K
Garrett “GBecks” Beckman - 180K
Mike “RunScreamin” Herder - 180K
David “Raptor517″ Benefield - 180K
David “DavidP18″ Peters - 166K
Brandon Schaefer - 165K
David “HosniMubarak” Tazbaz - 150K
Aditya “intervention” Agarwal - 136K
Dag Martin Mikkelsen - 136K
David “Bakes” Baker - 120K
Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter - 120K
Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 120K
Brian “Like7″ Lamanna - 120K
Allen “abari” Bari - 111K
Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert -110K
Thayer Rasmussen - 109K
Nachman “thelandlord” Berlin - 107K
Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 100K
Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg - 100K
Dylan “ImALucSac” Linde - 100K
Jason “strassa2″ Strasser - 100K
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 90K
Scott “BigRiskky” Clements - 88K
“BodogAri” Engel - 85K
Justin “truesyalose” Truesdell - 77K
Brian “snagglepuss” Powell - 75K
Brian “tsarrast” Rast - 75K
Darren Elias - 65K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 60K
Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 55K
Tracey “xtrACEy” Nguyen - 50K
Daniel “voff” Deveau - 50K
Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania - 45K
Chris “cmoney3″ Kline - 40K
Michael “martine23″ Martin - 38K
Hevad Khan - 37K
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 29K
Michael “benvo123″ Benvenuti - 28K
Clayton “clayton27″ Newman - 20K
Russell “rdcrsn” Carson - 19K

• July 10, 2008 -- Porter Picks Up Pot with Pocket Rockets
• July 9, 2008 -- Divine Intervention
• June 28, 2008 -- CrazyMarco, Roothlus Chip Up
• June 6, 2008 -- Levy Advances; Wolpert, Sebok Heads up in Event #11

With a much smaller crop of internet players playing on Day 1B, it was somewhat surprising for Tom “sbrounder” West to arrive almost an hour late to the tournament and discover Shaun Deeb (pictured at right) sitting on his left.  However, the two joked to each other that in some ways, it seemed kind of inevitable.  The two have been bantering back and forth ever since Tom’s arrival.  For a while, they were joined by railbird and aspiring poker commentator Carter “ckingusc” King.  King provided PocketFives with his own comments and insights when the two got involved in small pots together and keeping Shaun entertained when he was not involved in a hand.  At one point, King even heckled Deeb until he persuaded his friend to order a drink for him and save him a trip to the bar.  We think Carter has gone off to find more patriotic ways to spend his 4th of July, but if we spot him wandering around the Amazon Room again, we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

We checked back in on Shaun and Tom after the break and found both sitting with their 20K starting stacks engaged in conversation.  Deeb claims West has raised every single pot since coming back from break, but the hand we stuck around for Tom conspicuously folded.

Nick “gbmantis” Niergarthrecently lost a big pot when he and another player got it all in on a flop of K-8-5 with two spades with Nick holding top set of kings to the other player’s 67 for the open-ended straight flush draw.  Nick led out at the flop, the other player raised, Nick moved all-in, and the other player made the call.  A 4 fell on the turn and Niergarth’s chips fell from almost 20K to just over 8K.  He has since worked his way back up to 10.5K, but he still has a lot of ground to make up.

Here are some chip counts we spotted an hour into Level 2:
Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim - 34K
Todd “DanDruff” Witteles - 31.5K
Paul “Come On Phish” Lieu - 31K
Mike “SirWatts” Watson - 30K
Derek “arodss3″ Buonano - 25.5K
Peter “Nordberg” Feldman - 25K
Stu “thedonator” Paterson - 24.5K
Blair Rodman - 23K
Todd “nsxt2″ Arnold - 23K
Mark “sideshowgil” Gilbert - 21K
Matt “SamENole” Smith - 18K
Steve “gboro780″ Gross - 16K
Scott “emptyseat88″ Fischman - 13.5K
Theo “pitrounder” Tran - 12K
Tim “EightLarge” Vansant - 11.5K
Jeff “jeffboski” Sluzinski - 9K
Brian “Wing-n-prayer” Reingold - 5.5K
Micah “mordan” Hendrix - 4K

• July 5, 2008 -- Beep, Beep: Who’s Got The Keys for the Deeb?
• July 5, 2008 -- Post-Dinner Coma?
• July 10, 2008 -- King is Dead
• July 4, 2008 -- Good Deeb

Players recently returned from their dinner break in the $2K No-Limit Hold’em event, ready for action. The original field of 2,317 has been reduced to 480 in the last level, condensing play to one section of the Amazon Room. The average chip stack sat at 18K.

Several PocketFivers made moves to chip up, including Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson, who has built a fortress of chips and is near the top of the official chip counts with 73K. Adam “Roothlus” Levy (pictured at left) also made small moves to increase his stack. In one example of position play that we witnessed, Levy min-raised on the button and got two callers. After the flop, he bet out to take down the pot uncontested. As we watched, his strategy of taking down small and medium-sized pots was working - he moved up to 27K in chips.

Meanwhile, PocketFives caught up to Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade’s table as he went all in for 13K on a board of 9K2 against one other player. His opponent, sporting an Intellipoker patch, asked him, “What? Do you have a king? A flush draw? You can’t have a flush draw!” before folding his hand. Tristan looked up and grinned as he took down the pot. Carter “ckingusc” King sat across from Tristan at the table, nursing a short stack of 10K. He accosted two PocketFives staff members in his quest to find out who Tristan was. He succeeded as Tristan finally introduced himself and crisis was averted. Settle down, boys - we’re covering you both.

Other recent drama included the elimination of Stu “thedonator” Patterson, who sat in the big blind with 7K in chips behind. He jammed all his chips in the middle and was instantly called by the small blind. When Stu flipped over AJ, he sighed and found he was behind the other player’s A-K. The board was no help and Stu made his way to the rail.

Brett “gank’ Jungblutt was recently eliminated from the $1.5K Stud Hi/Lo event in 54th place. His finish was enough to garner him $2,450. Craig “MrCasino” Gray is one of 38 players remaining in the event. When we last saw him, he was scooping a pot and increasing his chip stack to 40K.

Meanwhile, the $50K HORSE event continues on with Day 3 of play and Barry “barryg1″ Greenstein is still towards the top of the leaderboard. Several notable young players saw their bracelet dreams come to an end today including Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Steve Sung, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

• June 27, 2008 -- A Player Makes a “FatalError”
• June 27, 2008 -- Stud Players Wanting Tang
• June 29, 2008 -- To Reload or Not to Reload?
• June 28, 2008 -- Katz’s “Moment of Truth”

The drinks arrived at Eric “Peachy K33N” Liu’s side and the high stakes cash game specialist asked Shannon Shorr (pictured left) to pay for the tip.

Shorr gave a grin and obliged, tipping the waitress for Liu’s double shot order of rum and coke.

After drawing out on Liu’s KK with AQ minutes earlier in an all-in preflop hand where Shorr’s stack rose from 20k to over 40k, the couple bucks for drinks seemed like a bargain to Shorr.

John Racener was also at the table with a 19k stack, making it one of the more star-studded 6-max tables left in the 2.5k 6-max WSOP Event #31.

P5er Brent “bhanks11″ Hanks was exchanging smiles sitting directly to left of Scotty Nguyen, whose affable personality was generally dictating the conversation. Hanks had much to smile about with the biggest stack at his table at 57k.

Here are some other notable chip stacks with 120 of 1,012 left with the average stack at 42k.

Dario Minieri - 88k
Dave Ulliott - 60k
Kenna James - 48k
Mark Vos - 44k
Jeremiah “Believer82″ Visant - 30k
Brandon Cantu - 26k
Ben “bfineman” Fineman - 13k

Event #28, the $5K Pot-Limit Omaha w/ Rebuys tournament, was down to three-handed play, with Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond sporting a 2:1 chip advantage over both of the other two players. Galfond has managed to capture 3.3M in chips, while David Benyamine and Adam Hourani both hold 1.6M. The tournament is currently paused for dinner break; it will resume at 10PM PST. Galfond continued to play aggressively before the break, raising every button and slowly chipping away at each of his opponents’ stacks.

Meanwhile, Event #29’s $3K No-Limit Hold’em was reduced to two tables with the quick elimination of seven more players. Climbing the chip counts was Tony “Bond18″ Dunst (pictured at right), who managed to stop the chip acquisition of Carter “ckingusc” King for good. King’s pocket tens ran into Dunst’s A-Q and couldn’t hold on a K7Q89 board. Dunst eliminated King in 20th Place for a payout of $11,264. Other PocketFivers still holding on in the event included Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin, who increased his stack to 350K, while Matt “All In At 420″ Stout trended downward to 175K.

• June 17, 2008 -- OMGClay Wins!
• June 16, 2008 -- Superfluous Man Out, King on the Move
• June 16, 2008 -- Pop Goes the Bubble
• June 17, 2008 -- Stout All Out At 420, DanDruff Doubles

In Event #29’s $3,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament, several PocketFivers remained at the stop of the chip count list; only 24 remain in the contest for $434,789 and WSOP gold. Still in the race were Matt “All In At 420″ Stout, Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin, Tony “Bond18″ Dunst, and Carter “ckingusc” King, who was nursing a very short stack.

When PocketFives observed the action at the three remaining tables, we saw Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert (pictured at left) also guarding a stack in the danger zone; he managed to get it all in with Q7 against his opponent’s J7. The board hit neither player when it came 5T855, giving Wolpert the high kicker. He eliminated his opponent in 26th place. Wolpert’s luck didn’t hold, however. Shortly afterward, his K-Q could not catch up to an opponent’s pocket aces when he was trapped on the turn, and Wolpert was out in 25th place. He takes home $11,264 for the cash.

His chipstack moving in the opposite direction, Carter “ckingusc” King managed to pull down a nice-sized pot, increasing his stack to 157K, though he has been short-stacked nearly the whole tournament. Other healthier chip stacks in the tournament include Tony “Bond18″ Dunst with 280K, Matt “All In At 420″ Stout with 225K, and Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin with 210K.

Meanwhile, in Event #31, the 6-handed No-Limit Hold’em tournament, many online players remain. Of the original 1,012 players in the field, 180 remain with an average-sized stack of 28. PocketFives will continue to update on their progress after the dinner break; in the interim, here is a sample of some notable chipstacks:

David “DevilFish” Ulliout - 74K
Dario Minieri - 53K
Jeremiah “Believer28″ Vinsant - 40K
Brent “bhanks11″ Hanks - 40K
Phil “USCPhildo” Collins - 40K
Eric “Peachy K33n” Liu - 34K
Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko - 23K
Ben “bfineman” Fineman - 22K
Hevad Khan - 21K
John Racener - 16K

• June 17, 2008 -- Shorr Doubles, Dario Ascending
• June 16, 2008 -- Pop Goes the Bubble
• June 17, 2008 -- Stout All Out At 420, DanDruff Doubles
• June 16, 2008 -- Barry Good