Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury’s (pictured left) perch near the top of the chip throne was short lived as he got tangled up in a massive pot after the dinner break. Steury defended his blind in a raised pot and flopped trips on a baby board and check-raised his opponent, who called. The turn brought another small card that completed the flush draw on the flop and Steury’s turn bet got raised. Steury ended up having his opponent all-in on the turn but his opponent turned the flush and Steury didn’t improve to a boat, shipping over a 200k pot away from Steury, who still has over 100K after the carnage.

Senovio “DorsalFin” Ramirez pulled PocketFives aside to report on the hand which allowed him to double up to 120K in the last level. Ramirez said that a player in middle position raised 3K preflop and the hijack called, so he felt compelled to call with his 98. The board came 922 and the player in middle position fired out an 8.4K bet which was called down by the hijack. Taking advantage of his pot odds, Ramirez decided to push all in for his remaining 20K. The player in middle position tanked for quite awhile before folding and then the hijack called, showing 53 for the flush draw. The turn and river brought the 69 and Ramirez’ full house pulled down the entire 110K pot. When asked what he did to get so lucky on his dinner break, he replied, “I got to talk to my daughters! That’s what it was!”

Brian “Like7″ Lamanna (pictured right) was able to double up upon returning from dinner break when a player raised in the hijack and Brian flat called in the cut off. The other player checked in the dark before the flop came out 8-6-5 rainbow. Lamanna bet out 10K and his opponent reraised all-in for 30K more. Brian made the call with pocket tens and the other player showed A-5. The turn and river were no help to the other player and Brian doubled up to 90K.

Chris “cdbr3799″ Dowbrowski was sent to the rail after reshoving a raise from the button for his last 20K and running his A6 into TT. The board ran out Q65K3 and Chris was eliminated.

Here are a whole heap of chip counts heading into the last break of the day:

Garrett “GBecks” Beckman - 230K

Mike “RunScreamin” Herder - 191K

Tom “titantom32″ Braband - 183K

Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy - 170K

Brandon Schaefer - 162K

Allen “abari” Bari - 150K

Tony “tongni” Rivera - 150K

Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis - 145K

Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson - 145K

David “DavidP18″ Peters - 138K

Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg - 125K

David “Raptor517″ Benefield - 123K

Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert -120K

Spencer “spankybabes” Lawrence - 120K

Senovio “DorsalFin” Ramirez - 120K

David “Bakes” Baker - 120K

Aditya “intervention” Agarwal - 104K

Brian “snagglepuss” Powell - 101K

Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 100K

David “HosniMubarak” Tazbaz - 100K

Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter - 96K

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier - 95K

Russell “rdcrsn” Carson - 93K

Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 90K

Brian “Like7″ Lamanna - 90K

Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 89K

Thayer Rasmussen - 85K

“BodogAri” Engel - 80K

Daniel “voff” Deveau - 78K

Dag Martin Mikkelsen - 76K

Darren Elias - 75K

Michael “benvo123″ Benvenuti - 73K

Brett “Gank” Jungblut - 67K

Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania - 67K

Tracey “xtrACEy” Nguyen - 66K

Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 65K

Nachman “thelandlord” Berlin - 60K

Chris “cmoney3″ Kline - 60K

Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 53K

Justin “truesyalose” Truesdell - 51K

Jason “Mkind16″ Laso - 47K

Scott “BigRiskky” Clements - 45K

Michael “martine23″ Martin - 40.5K

Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 33K

Brian “tsarrast” Rast - 21K

Carter “ckingusc” King - 20K

Recent eliminations include Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin, Scott “mindwise” Pendergrast and Aaron “gotcha55″ Kanter.

• July 11, 2008 -- Olly Olly Oxen Free!
• July 10, 2008 -- Strasser vs. Nguyen
• July 10, 2008 -- Levy’s Ruthless Pursuit of Chips
• July 10, 2008 -- Beckman Moves Up Leaderboard

After battling through sickness to get through Day 1 of the Main Event, Garrett “GBecks” Beckman (pictured left) is feeling way better on Day 2b
Beckman’s change of mood isn’t necessarily because the remnants of what he suspected was food poisoning is gone, although that definitely helps, but that his stack has gone from 54k to start the day to over 220k by the dinner break.

Beckman won a 160k pot earlier in the day when he opened for 2k and got re-raised to 7k. Beckman re-raised to 27k and his opponent called. First to act, Beckman checked a 10-10-7 flop and his opponent checked. Beckman checked when another 7 peeled on the turn and his opponent went all-in for 60k. Beckman called with queens and his opponents’ AK didn’t improve.
“It was pretty hard to check twice,” Beckman said.

Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania was pleased to make the dinner break after going through what he described as maybe the worst level of his life. Charania started with 108k and went down to 12k only to rebound to 63k by the break. Playing alongside Charania was Aditya “intervention” Agarwal, who hit the break with 150k. Despite having a healthy stack, Agarwal is still remembering the 85k pot he lost when his pocket sevens connected to the 8-7-2 board and his opponents pocket nines turned a set to trump Agarwal’s set of sevens in a hand where his opponent was all-in on the flop.

Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury has been steadily building his stack all day long, but he made a huge jump up the chip counts before the break when he got it all-in in a blind versus blind confrontation holding pocket queens to his opponent’s A-K. Steury managed to win the classic race situation when the board came ten high and Aaron increased his chip stack to 250K.

Tony “Bond18″ Dunst remained on life-support before the dinner break, which he planned to spend at the Rio’s Indian restaurant. PocketFives caught up with Tony in the big blind, checking on a flop of AK9. When the small blind raised to 5.5K, Tony folded and called the table a “total fiasco” - he was barely treading water as Jean-Robert Bellande a few seats to his left kept chipping up. He couldn’t manage to catch any action on his small blind either; he completed and folded to a late raise. However, on the button, he shoved all in for his remaining 8.5K and the table folded to him. Bellande joked, “You’re the survivor here, kid. You’re the survivor.” He chipped up to a whopping 10.5K before dinner break.

Senovio “Dorsal Fin” Ramirez doubled up to 58K when he and another player got all of their chips in on a king-high flop — Ramirez with pocket aces and his opponent with ace-king. Here’s a look at some other chip counts as players went into the dinner break:

Tom “titantom32″ Braband - 224K
Brandon Schaefer - 140K
Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg - 110k
David “davidp18″ Peters - 109k
“BodogAri” Engel - 70K
Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin - 50k
Tracey “xtrACEy” Nguyen - 46K
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 41k
Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 30k
Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter - 37K

• July 10, 2008 -- Levy’s Ruthless Pursuit of Chips
• July 9, 2008 -- Divine Intervention
• July 12, 2008 -- Double Trouble
• July 6, 2008 -- BadBeatNinja Disappears Into the Night

Senovio “Dorsal Fin” Ramirez, Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke, Adam “adam_mc” McGreggor and Jeff “yellowsub” Williams have just been eliminated from today’s $1,500 No-Limit Hold ‘em event — and all literally at the same time. Ramirez (pictured right) was crippled when he and another player got it all in on a flop of T62. Ramirez held Q8 and needed help against KK. The turn and river brought the 6 and J and Ramirez, who was left with 125 chips after losing the 16K pot, was knocked out of the tournament two hands later.

We caught McGreggor and Fricke’s eliminations as the two were seated at nearby tables in the Brasilia room. McGreggor was sitting with 1300 at 150/300 and finally found a spot to open shove, which he did without looking at his cards. The button called him with AJ, which was a favorite against Adam’s 58. The QJJ flop sent Adam out of his seat and toward the rail, where we also saw Fricke headed after his TT ran into AA after all the money had gone in preflop. Williams was seen walking out of the Amazon room shortly after.

A slew of online players are still scattered around the Amazon Room, however. Just under 1,000 of the original 2,158 players are battling to reach Day 2. With the average stack at 7K, here are some unofficial chip counts in Level 5 (150/300):

Michael “worldsgrtest” Banducci - 27K
Anna “VietCutie” Wroblewski - 19K
Court Harrington - 19K
Cody “thugmoneymakr” Slaughbaugh - 18K
Cal Spears - 16K (pictured right)
Scott “ssitron” Sitron - 14K
Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers - 13K
“BodogAri” Engel - 13K
Eugene Todd - 13K
Ben “bfineman” Fineman - 10K
JC “PrtyPSux” Alvarado - 10K
Jon Wein - 9K
Andy “tiltyjoker” Lee - 5.5K
Theo “pittrounder” Tran - 4.5K

Meanwhile, Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin has just been taken out by Johnny Neckar in third place of the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. Vengrin, who had an enormous chip lead earlier in the day, got his last 125K in with A9 against John Phan’s AQ. The board revealed AK728 and Vengrin exited with $167,973. Phan and Johnny Neckar are about to begin heads-up play with almost identical chp stacks.

• July 10, 2008 -- Steury’s Stack Slips
• July 10, 2008 -- Beckman Moves Up Leaderboard
• July 9, 2008 -- Hustle and Heartbreak
• July 8, 2008 -- Jeff Hakim Reigns Supreme

No one likes a cold deck and John “jdawg0913″ O’Brien certainly didn’t like one as the $1.5k LHE event was nearing the final table. We reported earlier a couple of big hands that hurt his stack and when O’Brien returned from the break the coolers continued. In one hand O’Brien’s pocket tens ran into another players pocket queens knocking his chip stack down pretty low. He then got all his chips in on the turn of a board showing 9444 while holding the AK only to find he was drawing dead to his opponents AA. He gracefully shook the hands of his tablemates and left saying that he was very happy with how well he did and he’ll be back tomorrow to play in the $1.5k Shootout which he cashed in last year.

The $5k Shootout final table is now down to 4 players all thanks to Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert. Thomas Roupe bet his last 31k and Wolpert raised over the top to isolate. Leo was way ahead holding the AK to Roupe’s T7. The board ran out 94259 and Roupe was eliminated in 6th place. Only 5 hands later, Tim “tmay420″ West put all his chips in preflop with the 99 only to find he was dominated by Wolpert’s KK. The board of 742JT was no help to West and he was eliminated in 5th place. West will take home $63,450 for his efforts today. Wolpert is now up to 2.4 million in chips and is the current chip leader.

Across the room, the $2k O8 event #16 began a little while ago and while the action has been rather slow (as is in the beginning of most limit tournaments) we’re keeping our eyes on some P5ers in the field including Chris “SKOAL” Falconer, Jeff “gnsd22″ Higgins, Senovio “Dorsal Fin” Ramirez, and Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury.

• June 8, 2008 -- Babes in Pokerland
• June 7, 2008 -- Porter Hopes for Tranquil Final Table
• July 10, 2008 -- Levy’s Ruthless Pursuit of Chips
• June 20, 2008 -- “Crzysavage” Beat

• June 8, 2008 -- O’Brien Feels the Chill
• July 10, 2008 -- Beckman Moves Up Leaderboard
• June 25, 2008 -- Ryan hits a D_RY Spell
• June 25, 2008 -- Shorr Thing