Chan and Chen Get There on the River -- Wong Out

Two big hands have recently played out that have changed the playing field, at least for the middle of the pack as Sam Cheong still holds the chip lead.

In the first, it was Justin Chan and Wingkei Chan battling it out once more, with Justin opening the action from under-the-gun for 2,200. This is the third hand in a row Justin had raised and rather than just calling Wingkei chose to play back at him and re-raised to 6,200 in total, leaving himself around 33,000 behind.

While Wingkei had Justin covered it was pretty close between the two and after mulling it over Justin chose to play the hand in position and made the call.

The flop saw Wingkei fire for another 6,000 and Justin thought things over for a few minutes before deciding to call again to keep the action heads-up to the turn.

That did not look like it changed much so Justin looked as surprised as we were when Wingkei checked the action and while Justin looked sorely tempted he decided to not to shove and checked it back – after at least 4 minutes in the tank.

The river saw both players check once more and Wingkei turned over and looked less than impressed when Justin rolled over for a rivered top pair to take down a decent sized pot and climb into second on the chip stack rankings.

Pete Chen got his last 8,000 in from the cut off the very next hand and was looked up by Fat Cheong Wong, who re-shoved to isolate from the button.

The cards were turned over with Chen’s trailing to Wong’s . It was all looking good for Wong when the board ran out . However, having covered Mr. Chen before we know he gets there on the river a lot of the time, and this time was no exception with the giving the Taiwanese player a double up and putting Wong on life support.

Wong was left with just 2,200 in chips and could not recover, departing right before the 40-minute dinner break with the rest of the field stack up as follows: