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The third and final starting day of the first-ever 2026 African Poker Championship Tanzania $1,100 Main Event nearly doubled the overall field size thanks to 95 entries, which boosted the attendance to 193 entries. This puts the crown jewel of the festival at the Le Grande Casino in Dar Es Salaam on the verge of meeting and surpassing the $200,000 guarantee and another five levels of late registration and re-entries on Day 2 open the doors to increase the prize pool further.
Sami Matar may be the most unlucky player in the room for the flip satellites for a Main Event as he is now zero for 15, but he made up for that with the largest tally on Day 1c and second-largest overall after bagging up an impressive 631,000 in chips. Two players from South Africa follow behind in Tutu Russon (517,500) and Ryan James (483,000).
Likewise, the Springboks Benjamin "Guppie" Lingenfelder Jr (391,5090) and Gavin Sardini (386,000) made it through with very healthy stacks inside of the top ten for this flight as well.
Top 10 Chip Counts for Day 1c
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds Day 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sami Matar | Lebanon | 631,000 | 252 |
| 2 | Tutu Russon | South Africa | 517,500 | 207 |
| 3 | Ryan James | South Africa | 483,000 | 193 |
| 4 | Alfred Magani | Albania | 439,000 | 176 |
| 5 | Benjamin Lingenfelder Jr | South Africa | 391,500 | 157 |
| 6 | Gavin Sardini | South Africa | 386,000 | 154 |
| 7 | Abu Msuya | Tanzania | 353,500 | 141 |
| 8 | Jay Kamli | India | 321,000 | 128 |
| 9 | Thanh Dat Pham | Viet Nam | 318,500 | 127 |
| 10 | Fabian Deppe | South Africa | 302,500 | 121 |
Several other notables such as Steven Radloff (275,000), Harold Brooks (263,000), Muaaz Gan (249,000), Marko Nortje (222,000) and Cliton Taliwanth (157,500) all advanced, too. They are joined by South Africa's latest and youngest WSOP gold bracelet winner Aidan Jacobs whereas two time Poker Players Championship winner Dan "Jungleman" Cates appeared near the end of level seven in the tournament area. He lost his first stack on the live stream table and re-entered, then made quads and bagged up 139,500.
Among those who came and left without anything to show for were Panayiotis Giannakopoulos, Rajeev Poonhath, Divan Van Wyk, Kumi Pather, and Tim Feng to name all but a few. Ioannis Panagiopopoulos advanced with a short stack today and will carry over his larger tally from Day 1b as the only contender with multiple bags across the three flights.
That brings the figure of survivors from each of the three starting flights to 80 out of a field of 193 and they will return at noon local time on Saturday, October 3, 2026. Recommencing blinds in level nine will be 1,500-2,500 with a blind ante of 2,500 and another five levels of late registration and re-entry remain.
The action on the final starting day was more timid to begin with and there was actually no casualty in the first level of play, which stands in stark contrast to the frantic opening stages on Day 1b. Among the first to bust was JP Le Roux when he saw his pocket aces cracked by fellow South African Steven Radloff.
Vietnam's Tome Dinh fired multiple shells without success and one of his first entries went down in flames against Sardini. Eventual chip leader Matar was also among the casualties who had to re-enter after his combo-draw with a gutshot and flush draw failed to crack the set of local player Ak Ak.
Two further memorable three-way showdowns reduced the field further. Andreas Hadjipaschali got it in with the best of it holding a set of sixes against two flush draws, but both Ak Ak and Tutu Russon improved to a flush. Middle set was no good for Maria De Gouveia when the flush draw of Magani instantly got there on the turn.
In the penultimate level of the night. Lukasz Jedrzejczyk was on the brink of becoming a big stack when his ace-king was up against the ace-queen of Arnas Grygalis but a queen on the turn left the player from Poland without chips and a bad beat story to share.
Ultimately, more than half of the field was sent to the rail in eight levels of 60 minutes each and they still have the chance to re-enter throughout the first five levels of Day 2.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back as of noon local time for Day 2, which is slated to play down to the money bubble and beyond in the first-ever African Poker Championship Main Event in Tanzania.
