It was a very eventful day in the PokerStars LIVE room within the City of Dreams here in Manila. The APPT Main Event saw a mass of players leave, a bubble occur, all PokerStars Team Pros bust before the money and 39 happy souls make it through to the penultimate day tomorrow.
Eight levels were played today with Alex Lee and (amazingly) Seongsu Kong both bagging up 673,000 to share the lead. The chip lead changed several times during the day. Jen-Yen Chien entered the day as clear chip leader with 100,000 more than anyone else but Ang Li came storming past him and surged clear of the field himself. He took a big pot off the busy Patty Pei Yu Lai before handing more than half his stack to Kong over the course of two very big hands. One a flip and one where we didn’t get to see his hand. Gab Yong Kim took over and maintained it for most of the rest of the day, before being pipped at the death by Lee and Kong. Other notables to make Day 3 were Sam Razavi, Alex Lau and Markus Garberg.
The bubble was reached near the end of level 15 and burst just into level 16, and what a dramatic hand it was. It occurred on the sixth hand of hand for play and involved Thomas Larsen and Ying Lin Chua. The latter opened from the cutoff with Aâ™ 8â™ and then called after the former three-bet all-in for just over 11 big blind with A♣ A♦ . The board was read out slowly by floor person Jane so all the poker room could soak up the atmosphere of the bad beat that was about to occur. You see, it ran 8♦ 7♣ 5♣ 10♣ 8♥ . That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the good old river one-outer. On the bubble!
So, what happened to all those representing the red spade? We already told you that none of them made the money, but Bryan Huang got extremely close – just two off in fact. He looked safe to cash after doubling with pocket kings, but then he ran into kings himself (with queens) to find a cruel way of leaving the arena. Kosei Ichinose came back short and was the first to go. He was followed by Yaxi Zhu and Chen-An Lin who ran A-K into Kong’s queens and couldn’t hit.
The plan for tomorrow is to play down to a final table of nine players, however long that may take. We’re expecting it to be quicker than today though, and just like today, proceedings will kick off at 2pm local time. So make sure join Team PokerStars Blog back here then where an exciting day on poker is anticipated.
To catch up on all the day’s action, click here, and to see who finished where in the money, click here. Goodnight from Manila!
PokerStars Blog reporting team in Manila: Brad Kain and Marc Convey. Photos by Kenneth Lim Photography.
The APPT Manila festival at PokerStars LIVE at the City of Dreams runs until Monday, August 8. Full details are available on the official APPT website or via the PokerStars Manila page.
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