HomeIt was a monstrous Day 2 for UK’s Neil Raine at the PHP 38,500 Main Event of the APT Manila 2017 at Winford Hotel & Casino. Raine entered as the overall chip leader from the combined starting days and closed the day exactly in the same spot. This time however, he not only topped the competition, he amassed an enormous 1,217,000 stack.
Main Event Day 2 Chip Leader, Neil Raine
To give you an idea of how large Raine’s stack was in comparison to the rest of the Day 2 survivors, the first player down the rung was Japan’s Nakajima Shigenori with 564,000 in chips. That’s a deficit of 653K. With that emphasized, let’s get on with how Raine amassed this gargantuan amount of chips.
Day 2 began with 47 players back at the felt for another scheduled 8 rounds of play. Raine brought on the thunder and quickly rose in chips. While he maintained his high status for a good part of the day, it wasn’t until the final two rounds did he take a commanding lead. He attacked Alain Walder’s stack and took all of it with his 8♥ 8♦ holding up against A♦ Q♠.
When the field downsized to the final two tables, Raine claimed the biggest pot of the day by railing the reigning APT Main Event champion, New Caledonia’s Andre Moracchini. Raine shoved on a turn board of A♦ 10♣ 8♦ A♣ with Q♣ 5♣ then spiked the lucky J♣ on the river to complete a flush to defeat Moracchini’s A♠ Q♦ trips. Hand History
This was a very upsetting elimination for Moracchini who also played superbly all day. He held the chip lead several times and was never in danger of elimination until this moment. After that massive takedown, Raine claimed a few pots from William Ysmael to close Day 2 as the only player in the seven-digit range.
Finishing Day 2 in second rank, or shall we say the top rank of the rest of the players since Raine was clearly on a zone of his own, was Shigenori. Shigenori was on a steady rise since the starting buzzer but only came into our radar after he eliminated China’s Jin Bo. This gave him a commanding lead at his table and the chip leader’s status. Along the way he also booted Kosaku Akashi and put fear on Taro Kimura for one of the most talked about hands of the day. Shigenori four-bet Kimura preflop and Kimura tank-folded while showing K♠ K♣. Needless to say, everyone at the table was stunned. Shigenori didn’t show. Hand history
The next player down the rung was Australia’s Anthony Abram. Abram got a boost in chips with a sweet double up from Yukiko Ogasawara. Abram had aces and Ogasawara with queens. For Ogasawara, she came into Day 2 running second and in chips and staged a great run until this hand happened. She had difficulty recovering and busted in the ensuing rounds. As for Abram, he also earned more chips by railing USA’s Marcel McGray during the final round of the day. Abram bagged up 443,000 in chips.
Another player right up there with the leaders was William Ysmael. As one of the handful of local players that joined the Main Event, Ysmael is now the only Filipino left in the lineup. While he ended the day with a healthy 411,000 he did stun the table with a couple of hands. The first one was exposing Filipino Anton Del Rosario’s bluff while holding just ace high then later folding the nut flush to Shyh Chyn Lim. Hand history
To round out the players above average stack was Scotsman Chris Morrison. Although he had his fair share of wins and losses, it wasn’t until his pocket sevens turned quads that he got maximum pay. From there he maintained his stack and bagged up 386,000.
Day 2 closed with 12 players remaining. Other notable players making it through were Main Event Warm Up champion Joon Won “James” Lee and Japan’s Kosei Ichinose.
The Main Event resumes at 1pm on Sunday, November 12th. Only 10 of them will see the money which means the bubble round is almost at hand. They will play to a winner and the Final 8 action will be streaming live (with a 30 minute delay) on the APT Twitch station.
You can read up on all the thrilling action in the Live Updates page.
