Michael Hawkins Bags the Chip Lead in Day 1D, the Final Main Event Flight at the WSOPC The Star Sydney
The final flight of The Star Sydney $2,200 Main Event is in the books and after bringing out 462 more entrants, The Star Sydney topped it's personal best, creating its biggest WSOPC Main Event field so far with 1,191 players. That number also represents one of the largest Main Events on the World Series of Poker Circuit tour, with similar numbers to Harrah's Cherokee (one of the biggest stops on the American circuit) which brought out 1,127 at it's most recent run in late November. In total, the event created a total prizepool of $2,382,000. A payout structure for the event hasn't been posted yet, but when available it's available PokerNews will provide an update.
At the end of the day, 97 players were left standing with Michael Hawkins leading the way out of this flight with 362,000. Hawkins is relatively unknown, capturing the chip lead at the end of the night as other players traded massive pots and he fell into the role. Hawkins currently has no recorded cashes to his name so locking one up here at Sydney would be his first. Despite bagging the lead in this flight, it wasn't enough to bag the overall chip lead though, as those honors still belong to Michael Spencer who bagged 545,000 on Day 1C.
Others to make it into Day 2 during the final starting flight included Jan Suchanek (191,000), Shivan Abdine (280,000), Sam Capra (278,500), James Broom (255,000), Dean Blatt (182,000), Sean Dunwoodie (360,000), Johnathan Hargrave (154,000), Heidi May, (193,00) Morten Mortensen (198,000), Daniel Laidlaw, (200,500) and Michael Fraser (160,000) just to name a few. James Broom had a roller coaster of a day, at one point moving over 500,000 chips after knocking out an opponent with ace-queen against ace-jack, but by the end of the day he was back down to 255,000 after losing a big pot in a flip to Allen Yu. Yu doubled up to 352,500 in the hand and nearly finished the day as the chip leader, but fell just short.
Among those who didn't make it through to Day 2 were Sam Khoueis, Hannah Lee, Michael O'Grady, Brett Trevillian, Bruno Portaro, Gautam Dhingra, Tony Hachem, Hari Varma, Grant Levy, James Hopkins and Matt Wakeman the $5,000 Challenge champion from earlier this series. Wakeman busted near the end of the night after shoving two pair into a turned straight. That would be the end of Wakeman in the Main Event with no more chances left to re-enter.
Play resumes on Saturday, December 15th at 12:30 p.m. with the remaining 230 players collapsing down into one room. Action kicks back off in level 15 with blinds of 2,500/5,000 and an ante of 500. The plan is to play 14 level or stop at 27 players and return for Day 3 on Sunday, December 16th. PokerNews will return with coverage of this event once again and we'll be here from start to finish, so make sure to not miss a thing.
flop. 
and the small blind checked. Broom immediately moved all in and had his opponent covered. It didn't take long for Broom's opponent to give up on his hand and throw it away. 
and Broom raked in the pot and added to his already large stack after out-kicking his opponent.
and Abdine's aces held up to earn him the double to over 150,000. Wakeman was left with right around 60,000 after the hand. 
for a bit of overkill and with that, Graham would take down the pot. Stacks were counted and Graham had just a bit more than Green, so he was eliminated from the tournament while she more than doubled up.
