Danny McDonagh of PokerStars Macau has an uncanny ability to predict the course a tournament will take. Getting things started this afternoon, McDonagh said that we would play seven levels and get pretty close to the money bubble. It didn’t seem likely — we still had 168 players and only 48 will be paid — but McDonagh said it, so we all believed it. And not even McDonagh himself could have known exactly how right he would be.
Day two of APPT7 Macau has just wrapped and we have 49 players still involved. That means we one from the money and a minimum HK $34,600 payday. We might have even burst the bubble, had a player all in on the final hand not managed to double up. All day long, players either flew out the door or went about building a monster stack. This was not the time to just nit it up and hope for the best.
The chip leader, with a mighty 484,000 is Yan Cui, who knows more acutely than most how fortunes can fluctuate in this game. He bounced back from a torrid end to his opening flight to show what he is capable of. Cui had a huge stack at about the mid-point of day one, but lost almost all of it, bagging only 32,400 to bring back today. But it was one-way traffic this time around, without the hiccup, as he soared back into contention.
If he looks over his shoulder tonight, Cui will see Jay Tan, who started the day requesting a table change to avoid sitting next to her boyfriend, but finished by employing his services to help count her enormous 475,000. She had had only 67,700 at the start.
David Man is also right up the top. He won most of his chips in a confrontation with Ivan Kalac, turning a full house to oust Kalac’s flush when both of them had sizeable stacks. Man put Kalac’s chips to exceptionally good use and now has 451,000 at close.
There has been some other remarkable surges made today. Team PokerStars Pro Vivian Im started with 29,000 and bagged 133,000. (She was even reported out at one point, but joined Lazarus with a back-from-the-dead adventure.) Andrew Scott had only 20,100 at the end of day one, but has 193,000 24-hours later. Meanwhile the fearsome Vladimir Troyanovskiy finished with 262,500.
Now we are so close to the money, the first point of order tomorrow will be to burst the bubble. We will start with hand-for-hand play. There’s one unlucky person in the remaining field who may sleep soundly tonight but will come back for only the briefest and most miserable passage of play tomorrow. Don’t let it be you.
It’s goodnight from Macau, but they’re playing on in Marbella. Head over there for some more action if that’s your bag.
