Adam “Roothlus” Levy’s (pictured left) resurrection from a short stack last night to 230k at the start of Day 3 of the Main Event has continued escalate. Levy scooped a 280k in the last level in a cutoff vs blind battle when Levy raised in late position and got reraised by his opponent out of the blind. Levy put in another raise, resulting in the massive all-in pot with his AK trailing his opponents pocket jacks. Levy clipped a pair and currently sits with 400k.

Matthew “Burton1080″ Jensen has also been on an enormous tear today, starting with the second hand of the day.  A player opened for 4K and Jensen raised to 14K out of the big blind with A-K with the king of clubs.  The flop came out {ac]72 and Matt led for 20K.  The other player raised to 55K and Jensen moved all-in.  The other player then folded and Matt picked up a nice sized pot. 

Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert has been treading water all day but has managed to keep his 160k starting stack intact. Increasing that stack will be much more difficult after Wolpert drew an extremely tough table with Owen “ocrowe” Crowe (300k) and “Bodog” Ari Engel (130k).

Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury continues to ride the roller coaster he boarded last night as his stack continues to fluctuate in six-figure swings. Steury started the Day 3 with 121k after getting up to 250k late in Day 2. Steury ran his starting stack up to 250k again but got back down to 185k after losing a big pot post-flop with pocket jacks.

Senovio “DorsalFin” Ramirez continues to build a big stack and recently just busted a player in an all-in preflop confrontation. Ramirez re-raised a 10k open to 25k out of the blind with blinds at 1k-2k-300. Ramirez’s opponent went all-in for an additional 40k and Ramirez called with his AK way ahead of his opponents A-10. The board ran true for Ramirez, who has 225k.

Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania was fighting the deck most of the day and eventually hit the exit when his kings ran into pocket aces on a ten high flop. Charania started the day with 65k and was able to get up to 125k before his bustout.  Others eliminated recently include Bobby “gettindeep” Hodson, Mike “RunScreamin” Herder, Kevin “kice32″ Iacofano, Mark “sideshowgil” Gilbert, and Darren Elias.

• July 10, 2008 -- Strasser vs. Nguyen
• July 11, 2008 -- Crowe Pecking Away
• July 10, 2008 -- Crowe’s Chips Riding a Roller Coaster
• July 11, 2008 -- Double Double (or Toil and Trouble)

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

Several notable online players returned for Day 2 of the $1.5K NLHE event only to make an early exit shortly after play began.  One such player was Phil “USCPhildo” Collins (pictured at right) who found himself in a race situation pre-flop with pocket jacks versus another player’s A-Q.  The A-Q ended up victorious and Phil busted in 131st place.  Here is a list of notable players who were recently eliminated:

Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 163rd for $3,340
Kevin “ImaLuckSac” Macphee - 140th for $3,340
Phil “USCPhildo” COllins - 131st for $3,340
Daniel “voff” Deveau - 130th for $3,340
Dag Martin “dmikkel” Mikkelson - 128th for $3,340
Justin “jurollo” Rollo - 117th for $4,008
Gary “GB2005″ Bogdanski - 114th for $4,008
Jordan “scarface79″ Smith - 112th for $4,008

While those players are now free to roam the halls, as we saw Annette “Annette_15″ Obrestad doing earlier today, several other players remain in contention for the bracelet and are continuing to build their already large chip stacks.  Owen “ocrowe” Crowe is still the chip leader with 170K, but Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodniki (100K) and Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaughbaugh (95K) are towards the top of the leaderboard as well.

Over in the Amazon Room, Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul (pictured at left) was among the casualties in Level 3 of today’s $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em event.  First, Saul lost the majority of his stack to Dario Minieri.  With the blinds at 75/150, Minieri raised to 700 in a limped pot from middle position and Saul re-raised to 2200 on the button. Action folded around to Minieri, who asked Saul, “You always think I have nothing?,” before moving in for his last 4000.  Saul made the call with JJ, which was way behind the QQ of Dario. The board ran out AK66A and Minieri added “This is the same hand I won my bracelet with” as he raked in a pot worth over 9K.
 
Saul was left with close to 800 chips following the hand and got the rest of it in two hands later. He raised to 450 preflop and got calls from Eli Elezra and another player.  Saul pushed in his last 350 on a flop of 983 and both players called.  By the river, he was holding his cards directly above the muck, waiting for Elezra to turn over his straight, and Saul was eliminated.
 
Others exiting Event #38 during the past level were Jon “FieryJustice” Little, Chris “moorman1″ Moorman and Justin Bonomo.

• June 21, 2008 -- Back from the Break
• June 20, 2008 -- Gary vs. Gray
• June 19, 2008 -- Bowker Goes Busto
• July 10, 2008 -- Levy’s Ruthless Pursuit of Chips

In the $1.5k PLO w/Rebuys tourney only six players have been eliminated in the first hour of play. Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby, Dan “Stainley88″ Adams, and Kyle “kwob20″ Bowker are amongst the early casualties who weren’t able to cash in this event.

Bowker’s elimination came when he got it all preflop with a great drawing hand, the AKQT against his opponents 9877. The flop of 872 gave Bowker a flush draw and his opponent two pair. Unfortunately for Bowker, the 8 came on the turn giving his opponent a full house and left Bowker drawing dead.

Jeff “yellowsub” Williams raised preflop only to have a short stack push all in. Jeff made the call with the AKQ9 which was behind to the all-in’s KK54. The board ran out KJ6Q7 and William’s stack dropped to around 60k.

In the $1.5K No Limit Hold Em event, several P5ers are already running up their stacks.  With the average chip count currently at 4,476, these guys are starting to themselves apart from the large field:

Gary “GB2005″ Bogdanski (pictured at left) - 13K
Noah “fouruhaters” Schwartz - 11.5K
Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 11K
Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg - 10K
Richard “Lee Nickel” Fohrenbach - 9K
Craig “MrCasino” Gray - 9K
Brent “bhanks11″ Hanks - 8K

• June 24, 2008 -- “You Know You Have a Good Table When…”
• June 20, 2008 -- Rough Day at the Office
• June 20, 2008 -- Tusk Love for the Wahlroos
• June 19, 2008 -- Chip and a Chair