Michael Hala Bags the Monster Lead at the End of Day 1a
Day 1a of the $500 Opening Event at The Star in Sydney has come to an end. Michael Hala bagged the chip lead as the only player above 300,000. Actually, he was the only player above 200,000 with his nearest rival a staggering 155,000 chips behind. Hala went unnoticed for most of the day, however, a dealer filled the media team in saying that in the stretch of an hour that he was dealing to him he saw at least half a dozen eliminations.
There was a total of 296 entries to take to the felt today, in what was an action-packed day inside the Poker Room. After a long 12 levels of play, only 56 players survived to advance to Day 2 on Saturday. Haoran Zhang (124,200) had a stack hovering around 200,000 towards the end of the day, however he was involved in a big hand against Trevor Saunders (138,000) that saw his pocket tens out-flopped by Saunders’ jack-nine for top two pair.
The top five stacks trailing Hala include Jonathon Maurer (186,900), Laurence Hall (171,900), Russell Thio (163,900) Jie Wu (155,600) and Jun Wang (141,400).
There were many notables fortunate to find a bag at the end of the day, including Kan Liu (137,000) Malcolm Tayner (111,100) Jesse Mason (92,100) Ken Demlakian (67,300), Eric Assadourian (45,000) and Sam Khoueis (22,200).
A few of those that were eliminated throughout the course of the day were Paul Murray, Daniel Laidlaw, Antonis Kambouroglou, Michael O’Grady and Paul Tartak.
A full list of those moving on to Day 2, which will be played on Saturday, December 1, will be posted when it becomes available. The action will resume on Wednesday at 6:15pm with Day 1b of the WSOP Circuit Opening Event in Sydney.