2009 PokerStars.net APPT Cebu

Day 1b completed

Posted 11-12-2009 21:02 GMT+8

That's It For Day 1b

Today was a whirlwind day for poker in the Philippines. APPT Cebu managed to pass even the wildest of expectations with 213 players coming to felt for day 1b.

That gave us a total of 319 players, 19 more than the cap for the event, creating a prize pool of around US$600,000 and setting a new record for biggest tournament held in the Philippines.

A lot of the big names fell early including Eric Assadourian, Aaron Benton, Dennis Huntly, and Neil Arce.

The play was slow from about the middle of the day, but at the end we had three huge stacks emerge in Brian Bumpas (143,000), Jerry Delisle (135,000), and Mike Gaertner (128,100).

Day two action gets underway from noon. Be sure to join us for all the action.

Kurita Gets Involved

Yu Kurita has been a very quite presence in the tournament room today, but she finally showed some emotion as we approach the bagging process. She attempted to take out another player with her against that player's pocket tens. Kurita kneeled on her chair and leaned forward across the felt as the board came out. The flop was no help, nor was the . But on the river, Kurita hit a glorious jack to drag the $70,000 haul form the ship back to town.

Tags: Yu Kurita.

Vladimir Geshkenbein Eliminated Late

It all went downhill in the last level for Vladimir Geshkenbein.

Coming into the final phase of the night Geshkenbein lost a monster pot after his flush draw failed to complete against an opponent's . Geshkenbein dropped another string of pots before going out holding against .

The board ran out and Geshkenbein was out of the poker room quicker than most people noticed.

Tags: Vladimir Geshkenbein.

Six More hands

Miss Earth, Priscilla Meirelles, had the honor of drawing the lucky card tonight. She drew a six, meaning there are six more hands to play.

Tags: Priscilla Meirelles.

End-to-End Action

Play has really opened up here as we approach the end of the day, eschewing the "tighten up to make it to the next day" line of play that is the norm in such situations. On Table 2 we had one player eliminated holding pocket tens against ace-king, with the board running out .

One table over Stefan Hjorthall tanked for three minutes after opening preflop to 3,000 and having the big blind re-raise all in for 23,000. Hjorthall evenutally called all in for about 15,000, promping the big blind to slam the table in frustraton. He seemed reluctant to show his cards but show them he did, turning up . That was racing against Hjorthall's . The board ran out to end Hjorthall's day.

"You move all in with that?" he muttered. "Good luck in the tournamet." Another player, perhaps thinking that Hjorthal's opponent's sarcasm detector wasn't working, translated. "He doesn't really mean that," he said.

Tags: Stefan Hjorthall.

Finally, Some Stack Movement!

We have several players that have amassed more than 100,000 chips now. Leading the charge is Germany's Mike Gaertner, with roughly 127,000 chips. Just off the pace is Yong-Suk Chang, who has about 100,000 of his own Gaertner's feat is all the more impressive when you consider that the dangerouus Nam Le is sitting two to his right.

Tags: Mike Gaertner.

Tony Dunst's Firey Flashbacks

When tournaments attract so many poker players to the one spot, parties will naturally emerge. Some a little more wild than others. Last month while in Auckland, Tony Dunst celebrated his birthday with a party that was, quite literally, "on fire"...

Tags: Tony Dunst.

Nathaniel Seet Eliminates An Opponent

Nathaniel Seet recently added another 15,000 chips to his stack after an opponent open pushed, and Seet made the preflop call.

Seet:
Opponent:

The flop gave both players a piece, falling . The turn and river were not the cards needed to complete the opponent's flush draw, so he hit the rail.

Seet has 50,000.

Tags: Nathaniel Seet.

Dealer Error Almost Results in Elimination

It's easy to see where the mistake came from. Two players were all in, one with and one with . Neither player improved on a board of , and the pot was awarded to the player with ace-jack. The only problem is that it should have been a split pot. The player with (who would have been eliminated on the hand) finally realized the error after the hands and board cards had all been mucked and the shuffle had been completed for the next hand.

A floor was summoned to the table, who listened to the action and ruled that the pot should have been chopped. The winning player was required to disgorge half of his winnings from that pot after the dealer was able to reconstruct the action.

Dealer errors are unavoidable in poker, especially when the dealers have been working as hard as they have here in Cebu and for as long hours as they have been in Cebu. In the end there were no hard feelings. The pot was properly split as it should heen ad play continued.