PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Day 2: The Bubble Bursts
Today saw 196 players return to the beautiful Grand Lisboa Casino for continuation of the 2009 PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Main Event. It was the first time all the remaining players were in the room at the same time, and it was Norwegian Kristoffer Myhre who was the man in front that everyone wanted to catch.
However, catching him proved difficult in the early goings as Myhre extended his chip lead while the short stacks were looking to gamble for a quick double-up. PokerStars Team Australia Pro Grant Levy was quick to join the list of casualties, but he wasn’t the only one as the PokerStars team experienced a rough day on the felt. Celina Lin, Bertrand "ElKy" Grospellier, Eric Assadourian, Tony and Joe Hachem, Jonathan Lin and Raymond Wu all hit the rail during the day, short of reaching the money.
The hour-long bubble was finally broken in spectacularly brutal fashion. David Paananen thought he was assured of a double-up when he called all-in with 3♥3♦ on a 3♣10♦8♣ board against chip leader Preetinder Bhayana, who had stepped a touch out of line with his A♥5♣. But imagine the roar from the 48 other players in the room who had by this time engulfed the table to watch in utter shock at the 2♠ turn and the 4♥ river, giving Bhayana a running straight to leave Paananen as an incredibly disappointed bubble boy and the remaining players $6,244 happier.
Play would continue until the level ended, about another 35 minutes that would see the elimination of six more players, leaving 42 survivors heading into Day 3 tomorrow. While Bhayana was still giddy after the bubble bust-out, he was pipped at the post for the end-of-day chip lead as Kyle Cheong busted Aaron Lerner on the final hand of the day to claim the lead with 575,500 in chips.
Here’s the top ten chip counts at the end of Day 2:
Suen Kit (Kyle) Cheong – 577,500
Preetinder Bhayana – 507,000
Tom Hall – 424,000
Tom Rafferty – 395,500
David Chiu – 391,000
Wally Sombero – 361,000
Daniel Hansson – 324,000
Wing Leung (Andrew) Chung – 309,000
Joshua Ang – 301,000
Tony Makasovski – 278,500
Day 3 action kicks off once again at 12:15 p.m. local time with play set to continue until a final table is set. We’ll also have the first day of the highly anticipated HK $88,800 High Rollers Event, with live coverage of both events found on our Live Reporting page
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