Phua Busts and Loses Bet to Cao Who Doubles, O’Dwyer Wins From Cheng

With the late arrival of Salman Behbehani, the field increased to 38 entries, though this decreased by a player with the elimination of Paul Phua at the hands of Steffen Sontheimer.

Down to 100,000 before the hand, Phua got the last of his chips in pre-flop from the big blind after a Sontheimer late position raise and the cards were turned over.

Paul Phua:
Steffen Sontheimer:

Unfortunately for Phua, his ducks were gunned down by Sontheimer’s cowboys when the board ran out and Phua headed straight for the cash desk to re-enter while Sontheimer stacked up to 614,000.

Interestingly this hand occurred at the same time Rui Cao and Richard Yong got all the chips in pre-flop as Cao (who was the at risk player) had a last longer bet with Phua. While we do not know how much this was for we do know that Cao, holding the mighty spiked his four on an board to not only out last Phua but double through Yong as well.

We did not catch Yong’s hand but we do know that he was left with 60,000 after the dust settled on the hand while Cao climbed to over 410,000.

Another player whose tournament is going in the right direction is Steve O’Dwyer, who won a decent sized pot from Hong Kong’s Tony Cheng shortly after the Phua versus Sontheimer/Cao versus Yong hand played out.

We caught the action on the flop in a three-way hand involving Peter Chan (small blind), O’Dwyer (big blind) and Cheng, who was sitting in late position.

There was a little over 20,000 in blinds and antes in the pot with the flop reading and we arrived just as O’Dwyer fired out a bet of 8,000. Cheng made the call and Chen folded to take play heads-up to the turn, which saw O’Dwyer fire a second barrel of 19,000.

Although he took slightly longer about it this time around Cheng made the call once more to bring both players to the river. O’Dwyer did not take long to fire once again, this time for 50,000. Cheng hit the think tank for a minute but chose to fold, leaving O’Dwyer to scoop the pot and climb to 325,000 while Cheng dropped 255,000.