Cheong Surprises Zhan

Remember we said earlier that Sam Cheong shows up with hands you don’t always expect – well this hand is a good example of that and it certainly caught Kaiyuan Zhan by surprise.

Pre-flop it was Cheong who was the initial aggressor, making it 150 to go from under-the-gun/cut-off (both the same when you are five-handed) and Zhan clicked it back on the button with a raise to 300 in total.

Cheong threw in the extras and then checked the flop over to Zhan, who quickly fired for 600, and was called just as quickly. This pattern repeated in the turn, only the Zhan bet was a slightly bigger 1,000.

The river saw Cheong check for the third time and Zhan fired again, this time for 1,500, only to see Cheong quickly check-raise to 3,100 in total.

This sent the Chinese player into the tank for a good five minutes, possibly longer as he though over all his options. Eventually, he elected to call and Cheong rolled over which elicited a surprised gasp from Zhan who tapped the table, showed and threw his cards into the muck leaving Cheong to scoop a decent-sized early pot.

Zhan spent so long in the tank that the field size increased from five to nine with Hong Kong’s Justin Chan, Chunkit Leung, Wingkei Chan and the awesomely named [Removed:151] all taking their seats.