The final two tables have been determined in the World Series of Poker Asia/Pacific (WSOP APAC) Championship Event and a name familiar to poker fans from last year’s Las Vegas Championship Event, Russell Thomas, has emerged as the leader of the pack heading to Sunday’s action.
94 players resumed the hostilities on Saturday at the Crown Casino in Melbourne with Winfred Yu at the helm of the ship, but not all of them were pleased about it. Instead of what had been the “normal” start time of 2PM, the players were requested to return at noon (presumably to play as close to two tables as possible). There was some grumbling but, with the money bubble on the horizon, the players weren’t too angry overall.
In the early going, another member of last year’s “November Nine,” Steven Gee, was able to get a double up and then some to get his stack back to a healthy level. Joining him in doubling up was Mike Watson, who utilized an A-J on a Jack flop to defeat Gautam Dhingra’s pocket fours. It was Thomas, however, who garnered some chips early to set off for his good day, knocking out a player with A-3 when Thomas’ A-K hit an unnecessary King on the flop.
As the afternoon wore on, several notable pros would come up a bit short in pursuit of a cash at the WSOP APAC. Tony Hachem (the brother of former World Champion Joe) was one of the first to go, soon followed by Jonathan Duhamel, Jim Collopy and Ben Wilinofsky. It was another knockout that covered the room’s attention as it involved a new player heading to the top of the table.
Oleksii Kovalchuk and George Tsatsis, two of the top chip counts coming into action on Saturday, decided to clash in what, for one player, was a bit of a surprise hand. The chips went into the center on a 2-5-6-4 flop and turn, with Kovalchuk showed only a 7-6 for top pair. Tsatsis plopped a pocket pair of sevens on the felt for the edge in the hand and, when all the straight draws failed to come on the Jack river, Kovalchuk was out and Tsatsis was over 550K in chips.
With the money bubble rapidly approaching, other men began to put their names in the race for the WSOP APAC championship. Benny Spindler would eliminate Sam Holden to crack the 600K mark, but Kahle Burns would top him. By knocking out former Aussie Millions champion David Gorr, Burns pushed his stack just under the million chip mark. Spindler continued the march upwards, however, sitting on the chip lead with 1.26 million in chips as the money bubble was reached.
Hand-for-hand play would take almost an hour as players in danger of elimination found double ups to keep them around. Over a span of two hands, however, Rupert Elder would earn the unfortunate distinction of “bubble boy.” First, Elder ran pocket Queens into Antonio Esfandiari’s cooler of pocket Kings to lose most of his stack to Esfandiari then, on the next hand, the same duo clashed again. This time, Esfandiari’s pocket threes held up over Elder’s K-10 off suit, bringing the field down to 40 players who were all a bit richer.
The bust outs would come frenetically as the play worked into the night. Erik Seidel (39th), Jeffrey Lisandro (35th), Minh Nguyen (31st) and Kevin Song (30th) would be some of the casualties, while Thomas and Esfandiari moved into the upper echelons of the leaderboard. By the time the final hand was dealt for the evening, Thomas had moved into the lead with 15 players remaining.
1. Russell Thomas, 1.677 million
2. Benny Spindler, 1.505 million
3. Kahle Burns, 1,469 million
4. Daniel Marton, 1.325 million
5. George Tsatsis, 1.161 million
6. Antonio Esfandiari, 1.050 million
7. Daniel Negreanu, 827,000
8. Tino Lechich, 654,000
9. Raj Ramakrishnan, 644,000
10. Mikel Habb, 439,000
11. Yasar Gueden, 385,000
12. Winfred Yu, 354,000
13. Jordan Westmorland, 321,000
14. Michael Pedley, 310,000
15. Joel Feldman, 187,000
It should be a short day around the Crown on Sunday as the players work their way down to the final table for the Championship Event. Although everyone is guaranteed a $39,245 payday, all eyes are set on the $1.038 million – and the first ever World Series of Poker Asia/Pacific Championship Event bracelet – that will be awarded on Monday.
