HomeIt was a grueling day of ups and downs with stacks swinging all over the place at Day 2 of the APT Poker Weekend Series Manila Main Event held at Casino Filipino, Waterfront Manila Pavilion Hotel and Casino. From 53 players starting the day, the field shrank down to the Final 8 with APT Player of the Year 2012-2014, Samad Razavi (UK), holding court at the top of the rung with a dominating 788,000 chips.
Leading the Main Event Final 8, Sam Razavi
Razavi entered Day 2 in the middle of the pack but that quickly changed when he railed Giovanni Regidor in the first hand of the day. Regidor had K♥ K♦ and Razavi had A♣ A♠. This win catapulted Razavi into the top ten of the chip standings, and with a bigger arsenal of chips to work with, Razavi entered many pots, eliminating a few more short stacks in his way.
At bubble stage, Razavi attempted to rail Olivier Frederic Duran (France) with his 7-2 but when it proved unsuccessful, he tried again, this time with a much better hand, 10♥ 10♦ against Duran’s A♦ K♥. When the board offered no help to Duran, Razavi won, and everyone celebrated, (especially the short stacks like Steve Arnold who had only one orange chip left worth 5K), as they were now guaranteed a cash prize. Later, Razavi dealt a double elimination with his set of nines, ending both Angelo Felix and Gerald Casey’s run for a final table berth.
Running second-in-chips is Piyush Gupta (Australia) with 559,000 chips. Throughout the day, Gupta challenged players in quite a number of pots, and alike Razavi, he managed his stack very well, eliminating several players along the way. In the money stage, Gupta bagged himself a huge triple up while railing Akira Ohyama (Japan) at the same time. Not long after, he eliminated Erick Marzan with his pocket aces, John Beveridge (Canada) with his pocket queens, then Ferlyn Cabaling (Philippines) in 9th place with another pocket aces to seal the Final 8.
At one point in the day, Gerard Bringley (Japan) held a massive stack of over 400K, but after his pocket aces were cracked (which we saw a lot of today) by Calvin Tan’s pocket sixes landing a full house, his stack took a big dive down sending him straight to the bottom of the rung while Tan celebrated for avoiding elimination.
Final 8 of the APT Poker Weekend Series Manila Main Event
The Final 8 will return tomorrow at 1pm to battle it out one last time. They will be looking to capture the championship trophy and the first place purse of PHP911,000.
Final 8
Sam Razavi 788,000
Piyush Gupta 559,000
Antonio Angeles Jr. 490,000
Julian Hasse 317,000
Calvin Tan 292,000
Benjie Lim 200,000
Jung An Yoon 166,000
Gerard Bringley 130,000
Congratulations to the Final 8 players! See you tomorrow at 1:30pm!
You can read up on some of the action of Day 2 in the Live Reporting section of the website. Payouts of all the players who cashed in the Main Event are also posted.