After a nearly disastrous start, Dong Il Kim has completely turned things around now.
He joined one caller of a Ching Wei Chen opening raise on the button and the small blind came along for the ride going four-handed to a flop. The small blind checked and Chen c-bet, making it 5,000. The fourth player in the hand folded before Kim raised it up to 16,000.
The small blind folded and Chen called, going heads-up with Kim to the turn. Chen checked and when Kim bet 23,000 he found a fold.
With that hand, Kim became the second player over 300,000, joining chip leader Aaron Lim at the top of the leader board.
Manila's own Jessie Leonarez had pushed all in on a board with about 60,000 chips in the pot already, heads-up with Bryan Huang.
He had Huang covered and waited patiently while Huang pondered a call that would be for his tournament life. Not so patiently, a third player not in the hand called the clock.
As the floor turned up and began a one-minute countdown, Huang folded. Leonarez showed for bottom set and while Huang was left with under 90,000 in chips, he moved up to the top of the counts.
While another hand from one table over also had time called, the action on table 29 had reached the river of a board. A pot of about 50,000 chips had emerged and Dennis Wilke bet 16,500 with around 35,000 chips behind. Terry Fan took a long time to make a decision and the time was called on him.
After half a minute of consideration, Fan then moved all in and Wilke was in the think tank. Now the German got called time upon and ended up calling the shove to leave the table gutted once he was shown the by Fan. He didn't even show the cards either, so we can only guess what he had been calling with.
What a drama for the PokerStars Team Pro Celina Lin. After a flop of , Tsuyoshi Ishibashi check-called a bet of 3,600 out of the small blind and then led the turn for 12,000, which was called by Lin. On the river, the Japanese fired 18,000 and the Team Pro moved all in with pocket deuces only to see Ishibashi snap her off with pocket nines for the higher set.
After two starting days of nine levels each, the impressive field of 585 entries in the PHP 50,000 PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Manila stop in Season 9 has been whittled down to only 175 survivors. The top 72 spots will get paid and the money will be definitely reached today when 10 one-hour levels are expected to be played. Whether the final table for tomorrow will already be reached is another story though.
The action restarts in half an hour from now at 14:00 local time with level 10 and blinds at 700-1,400 and a running ante of 200. Leading the field is Day 1b top dog Dong Il Kim with 242,700 followed by Douglas Olsson (207,500) and Rolf Galasen (203,800), who were in charge of Day 1a. Australia's Aaron Lim (201,800) and PokerStars Team Pro Bryan Huang (172,900) are in the overall top 10 as well with Huang's team mates Vivian Im (132,900) and Celina Lin (74,900) also made it through.
Other notables include defending APPT Manila champion Thanh Ha Duong (99,500), Manuel Blaschke (90,500), APPT8 Seoul winner Chane Kampanatsanyakorn (83,200), Lester Edoc (81,000), KC Wong (59,300) and UK's Sam Razavi (50,500). Yaxi Zhu (36,100), Thomas Ward (20,600) and Winfred Yu (19,800) are among the short stacks.
Follow along with the PokerNews live reporting team to see who makes the money and comes one step closer to the first-place payout of PHP 6,016,250.
![[user127999]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
flop. The small blind checked and Chen c-bet, making it 5,000. The fourth player in the hand folded before Kim raised it up to 16,000.
turn. Chen checked and when Kim bet 23,000 he found a fold.
board with about 60,000 chips in the pot already, heads-up with Bryan Huang.
for bottom set and while Huang was left with under 90,000 in chips, he moved up to the top of the counts.
board. A pot of about 50,000 chips had emerged and Dennis Wilke bet 16,500 with around 35,000 chips behind. Terry Fan took a long time to make a decision and the time was called on him.
by Fan. He didn't even show the cards either, so we can only guess what he had been calling with.
, Tsuyoshi Ishibashi check-called a bet of 3,600 out of the small blind and then led the 
