Rafferty Takes the Chip Lead in The Star Sydney Champs A$20,000 High Roller with Nine Left
With six minutes left in Level 12, nine players bagged up their chips for the final day of the A$20,000 High Roller at The Star Sydney Champs. In total, 37 entries were collected throughout the first nine levels of the day to break another record in the 2019 edition of the series and create an A$703,000 prize pool. The winner will walk away with A$316,350 and accompanying trophy.
Heading to bed with the chip lead is Tom Rafferty with 469,500 in chips, which is worth 117 big blinds. If Rafferty wins when they return, it would be his biggest live cash ever in a tournament to take his career earnings up to almost $800,000. Rafferty added to his stack when he eliminated Andrej Senic with pocket kings and held against pocket sevens.
Rafferty is trailed by Ebon Bokody with a difference of ten big blinds. Bokody finished in second place last year in the same casino during the WSOP International Circuit High Roller and will be looking to better that result. Bokody had the chip lead at one point when he eliminated David Wang, who qualified through one of the in-house satellites.
Closing out the podium is Vincent Huang, who is no stranger to the feature table as he finished in second place only a few days ago, just ahead of Bokody in the $5k Challenge. Huang went on a bit of a run when he first eliminated Travis Endersby and then took out Nauvneel Kashyap to finish in third place in the chip counts.
Even though nine players will return, they’re not in the money yet as only four players will be cashing for at least A$70,300. Gautam Dhingra, Sean Ragozinni, and Michael Egan all bagged below-average stacks but with more than 40 big blinds, they still have more than enough room to play with. It’s a bit of a different story for Mladen Vukovic, Hun Wei “Andy” Lee, and Matthew Wakeman as they bagged fewer than 20 big blinds, so they will be looking to double up from the start of the final day to be in with a shot for that first-place prize.
When the players return at 2:15 p.m. local time, they will finish the last six minutes of Level 12 which features a small blind of 2,000, big blind of 4,000, and a big blind ante of 4,000. Play will continue until a champion is crowned and the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be on the floor to bring you all the action.
The stream will be available again via the Run It Up Twitch channel with commentary by Ricky Guan and Jimmy Cappucci with the hole cards on a security delay but the updates here will be live from the start.
Final Table Seat Assignments
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ebon Bokody | Australia | 429,000 | 107 |
| 2 | Tom Rafferty | Australia | 469,500 | 117 |
| 3 | Gautam Dhingra | Australia | 182,000 | 46 |
| 4 | Vincent Huang | Australia | 240,000 | 60 |
| 5 | Mladen Vukovic | Australia | 72,000 | 18 |
| 6 | Michael Egan | Australia | 158,500 | 40 |
| 7 | Hun Wei Lee | Australia | 67,000 | 17 |
| 8 | Sean Ragozzini | Australia | 175,000 | 44 |
| 9 | Matthew Wakeman | Australia | 60,000 | 15 |