What a day we witnessed here in the Grand Lisboa poker room. It was Day 2 of the 2009 PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Main Event. 196 players showed up ready to move, shake and do whatever was necessary to make it to the Promised Land -- inside the money.
It was a rough day for Team PokerStars, with only one of the nine pros in the field making it into the money. That one player, Daniel Schreiber, will come back tomorrow with a roughly average chip stack. His compatriots -- Grant Levy, Celina Lin, Eric Assadourian, Joe and Tony Hachem, Bertrand Grospellier, Jonathan Lin and Raymonw Wu -- were left to wonder what might have been after crashing out of the tournament short of the money.
Thanks to an elimination at the end of the night, Kyle Cheong went charging past a half million in chips and will bring back the most chips tomorrow for Day 3. That's the day that will determine which of the remaining eight players will be vying for the more than HK$4 million that will be awarded to the winner of the tournament on Sunday.
Don't forget that tomorrow also marks Day 1 of the HK$88,000 High Rollers event. PokerNews will have continuing coverage of both tournaments starting at 12:15pm local time.
On the final hand of the day Aaron Lerner moved his final chips into the middle against the giant killing Kyle Cheong.
Lerner:
Cheong:
The first four community cards were safe for Lerner as he had one foot inside the doors of Day 3 action until the on the river fell and Lerner slammed his hands onto the table in disgust and disappointment.
Lerner departs as Cheong storms to the overnight chip lead with over 575,000 chips!
Catching the action with the board reading both Tony Makasovski and Roger Spets checking to Van Binh Pham in the cutoff.
Pham opted with a 30,000-chip bet into the 48,000-chip pot, only to have Makasovski check-raise to 75,000.
Spets took his time folding before Pham moved all in. Makasovski called and tabled his for runner-runner Quads while Pham flashed his while being left crippled with 3,500.
As Makasovski raked in the pot to climb to 280,000, Spets spoke up saying that he had folded a pair of Queens.
The next hand Pham would double when his would outdraw Tom Rafferty's and then again against Van Marcus' with his .
The result - Pham will bag 35,000 in chips for day three!
On one of the last hands of the night, Michael Kim opened to 12,500. Action passed to Charles Lam, who moved in for 57,500 total. Kim went for the kill with a call, but his was dominated by Lam's . Lam's hand held, , giving him twice as many chips to put in his chip bag.
The clock has been paused with eleven and a half minutes left in the level. Tournament staff instructed dealers to deal three more hands at each table. After those hands are completed the survivors will bag their chips.
"They're falling like flies now," said Andrew Scott as we passed by his table. He was referring to another elimination, with Justin Ostrowski opening for 12,500, then calling all in for about 100,000 after big blind Kyle Cheong re-raised all in.
"Time to win a flip," is apparently when Ostrowski said. He showed against Cheong's pocket eights, but couldn't win the flip on a nine-high board.
Mass commotion broke out over on Roel Pijpers' table after he'd moved all in for his last 54,000 from the big blind. Staring across the table at his opponent, he asked, "You call?"
Many watching the table heard what sounded like, "Yeah" come from Daoxing 'BaoBao' Chen's mouth, and as such, Pijpers began to table his cards before Chen yelled out, "No no no!!"
We later learned that Chen was actually asking "How much," rather than saying yes, I call. Chen was irate at the fact that he thought Pijpers had shown his cards to the players sitting on his end of the table and raised a massive fuss with the floor staff before a few of the dealers managed to get him calmed down.
After receiving an explanation he was finally satisfied with, Chen played out the rest of the hand, opting to call Pijpers' bet with . Pijpers found himself racing for his tournament life holding a pocket pair of fours.
The board ultimately panned out in favor of Chen, sending Pijpers home in 46th place.