Nachman “thelandlord” Berlin (pictured left) didn’t have the best start to his Day 3 of the Main Event. He’d lost half of his 125k starting stack in the first level when his middle set was trumped by top set. No matter how Berlin played the hand, he was doubling the other player up.

Shortly after that cooler, Berlin picked up a huge hand and re-raised Men “TheMaster” Nguyen’s wife 5k open from early position to 20k. An opponent behind Berlin re-raised him for his last 40k and Berlin mucked his pocket queens.

Rest assured, Berlin’s opponent tabled pocket aces.

Berlin has since went on rush at his table, scooping various small to medium size pots, many going without a showdown. After rising up from all the setup situations he encountered early, Berlin returned from first break with 140k, a 20k improvement from the start.

One Pocketfiver whose journey through Day 3 has been way less turbulent is Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy. After accumulating a 246k stack yesterday when Josephy was extremely active throughout, he’s admittedly been very quiet today.

“I haven’t seen one flop out of the blinds all day today,” said Josephy, who turned to the table for confirmation of what is an uncharacteristic pattern of behavior for him.

Allen “albari” Bari started the day with 117k and through the first level had chipped up to around 240k. He lost a little bit of that when a player went all in for around 30k and Allen made the call with his 99. It was a classic race as the all in player held the AK. The flop came KT6 to put the all in player in the lead and while the 2 on the turn gave Allen a flush draw, the A on the river couldn’t help him and Allen doubled the other player up and his stack dropped to a little over 200k.

Paul “comeonphish” Lieu began day 3 of play with an above average stack of 183K, but he has since nearly doubled the stack he started with today.  We weren’t there to catch the action, but Paul fessed up to PocketFives Live that he sucked out on a player in a 100K pot when the got it all-in preflop with Lieu holding pocket sevens while his opponent had pocket jacks.  The flop and turn left Paul drawing dead to a seven, but one of the two remaining in the deck came on the river and the other player was eliminated.
 
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham (pictured right) recently got a boost to his chip stacks after a hand he termed, “one of the sickest things you’ll ever see.”  Matt raised preflop, another player reraised out of the blinds, and Graham made the call.  The flop came J74 and the reraiser bet 16K.  Matt then did some reraising of his own, bumping it up 36K, which the other player called.  When the 2 fell on the turn the other player bet out 40K leaving 15K behind and Graham called.  When the 3 hit on the river the other player checked to Graham who moved all-in and the other player folded, leaving himself with less than ten big blinds.  Graham showed Q8 for queen high and now has over 200K.
 
Louis “MrBeeks” Werman was eliminated after a hand was raised and reraised preflop and he and his opponent got it all in on a flop of 9-8-6.  Werman’s pocket jacks were no match for the other player’s pocket aces and he was sent to the rail. 

Here are some updated and unofficial chip counts as players returned from their first break of the day:
Paul “comeonphish” Lieu - 340K
Owen “ocrowe” Crowe - 300K
Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 285K
Tim “Tmay420″ West - 240K
Aditya “intervention” Argawal - 240K
Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodnicki - 235K
Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy - 230K
Jamie “TheCronic420″ - 220K
Derek “arodss3″ Buonano - 201K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 200K
Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis - 200K
Garrett “GBecks” Beckman - 195K
Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson - 190K
Mike “RunScreamin” Herder - 175K
Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert - 174K
Tom “titantom32″ Braband - 170K
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 165K
Jason Gray - 160K
David “DavidP18″ Peters - 160K
Peter “number1pen” Neff - 155K
“Bodog” Ari Engel - 150K
Brian “Like7″ Lammana - 130K
Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter - 125K
Dylan “ImALucSack” Linde - 110K
David “Bakes” Baker - 100K
Doug “resilient” Smith - 100K
Ben “shankingyou” Palmer -95K
Clayton “clayton27″ Newman - 80K
Cody “CalBandGreat” Shedd - 80K
Mark “sideshowgil” Gilbert - 67K
Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania - 62K
Kevin “kice32″ Iacofano - 41K
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 38K

• July 11, 2008 -- Together They Fall
• July 10, 2008 -- King is Dead
• July 9, 2008 -- Divine Intervention
• July 11, 2008 -- Crowe Pecking Away