While six players are battling for this year's WSOP Main Event Championship, a former WSOP ME Champ is looking to add to his resume in Macau. Joe Hachem took his seat not too long ago right next to Andy Andrejevic.
Hachem joins a table with Yuguang Li, who is 4th in the APOY rankings this year and won two events the last time he was in Macau. Naoya Kihara and Vladimir Troyanovskiy are also at the table.
Ryan Yum has just become the chip leader after winning a three-way all in and a pot of more than 40,000.
Four players saw the flop of . To say that this was an action flop would be an understatement. Three players got all their chips in, while the fourth player, Dimitar Danchev, folded a set of eights face up leaving himself with 18,600 behind.
Juicy Li held a set of jacks , Ryan Yum flopped the nut straight with and the third player all in held . The turn and the river were blanks and Yum's flopped straight held. He eliminated one player and left Li with 17,500.
Mustapha Kanit has had an amazing year on the felt. The Italian pro has cashed for over USD$2.3m already, a figure helped a lot by winning two High Roller titles on the EPT.
He's not finding it that easy on the APPT so far today though. He just tank folded in a big hand to drop to 19,575.
Peiran Liu opened to 700 from early position preflop and was called by Yang Zhang, Kanit and the small blind. The flop fanned and the action checked to Zhang who bet 2,700. Kanit and Liu called but the small blind folded. The turn was the and the action checked to Kanit who bey 5,400.
Liu took his time and then moved all in after he asked to look at Kanit's stack. Zhang folded and Kanit had a tough decision by the look of it. He slowly shook his head before resting it on his hand and took a couple of minutes before he folded.
"Queen-jack?" asked Zhang. Kanit pointed his thumb downwards to suggest it wasn't that good and then tapped the table while nodding his head when he saw Liu looking his way.
Andy Andrejevic recently eliminated two players, one was Gabriel Le Jessoc, the ACOP Main Event defending champion.
Andrejevic flopped a straight against Jessoc's top pair and nut flush draw. He also took out a second player with a set of twos against pocket queens on a board.
Andrejevic is over 50,000 with about 15 minutes left in level 4. This will be the final one-hour level of the day. The remaining levels will be 90 minutes.
Fedor Holz and Jason Gray are the two latest players to join the fray. The former is relatively new to the live poker scene whereas the latter has been around for over 20 years.
Holz felt a bit aggrieved at the manner he busted the High Roller final table earlier so went and had a massage before entering. He told PokerNews he feels very relaxed now. Gray beat yours truly in the ACOP Darts tournament last night so is already in good competitive form.
(Edit: Gray is actually playing a Main Event satellite, so hopefully we'll see him tomorrow).
"Juicy" Sixiao Li is getting some chips back. Li was left with 17,500 after a huge pot where she got all in with a set of jacks against the nut straight of Ryan Yum.
On this hand, Li checked to her opponent with the board reading . Her opponent bet 3,000. Li took about a minute to make her decision, barely moving until she reached for her 3,000 chips and called. Her opponent had . Li showed and outkicked her opponent to win the pot.
There is an empty void where larger than life Mustapha Kanit used to sit.
Jonathan Karamalikis informed PokerNews that he busted to his last level nemesis Peiran Liu in a hand that went into the break. He didn't catch the action.