Day 1A
Players are back and suitably refreshed.
Soon after the dinner break we lost Ricky from Australia who started the day very well and won a couple of big pots to establish a nice stack but who got no luck later in the evening and hit the rail at about 8pm.
Walking past one table I noticed all the players were making a lot of noise. It was easy to see why because we had an all in raise and two a callers. The cards were flipped over to reveal pocket queens v pocket kings v pocket aces. A situation you rarely see. The flop and the turn were all low clubs but no one had a single club for a flush. The river bricked and the guy with aces took down the pot but his heart must have been beating like a drum.
We lost Mikhail from Russia and Vic from the Philippines during the 8th level and were down to Gylbert, Ian, and Maksim as our last three remaining players for day 1A.
Over at Maksim’s table I saw him sitting and considering a huge call on a board showing all sorts of straight and flush possibilities. I could tell he really wanted to call a bet of about 20,000 chips but if he lost it would have crippled his stack. That was in the back of his mind and he eventually let the hand go and flipped over a 10 for 2nd pair. His opponent could wait to show his 5 6 for a total bluff. Maksim looked devastated.
Gylbert from Canada - cooler than a cucumber in the Arctic
French Canadian Gylbert Drolet is a very cool customer at the poker table and takes plenty of time when considering his moves. I saw him bully a few players off pots pre flop and post flop with well timed and considered bets that opponents would not call.
One hand that I did see him win featured a flop of A 4 2
Gylbert smooth called a 5000 bet when another A came on the turn. The river brought the
8. Gilbert’s opponent rather bizarrely only bet 3000. Gylbert sat and considered his options. I thought he would come in over the top and he duly did with a bet of 10,000 which received an insta-call. The other guy turned over A9 for top set and was expecting to scoop the pot. For a split second I was convinced Gylbert was beat but he duly turned over A4 for the full house and a huge pot.
As the tenth and final level was coming to an end I wandered over to Ian Frazers table and saw the guy on the button raise pre flop up to 3200 only for the small blind to re-raise it up to 9500. Ian sitting in the big blind sat and thought for a moment before saying those immortal words “I’m all in”. The button quickly folded but the small blind certainly wasn’t happy to let this one go. One other player at the table who was obviously a fan of Ian’s was jumping up and down and creating a bit too much noise bearing in mind he was not in the hand. Eventually the small blind threw his cards into the muck. Ian resisted the urge to reveal his hand but he told me later he only had the 7 & 8 of Hearts. I wasn’t sure if that was true but it took down the pot and meant Ian ended the day in a strong position.
That was the end of play for the day and the remaining 37 players bagged up their chips ready for Day 2 on Saturday. Our three remaining players occupied three of the top 10 positions with Ian Frazer looking good in 2nd on 67900 chips. Gylbert Drolet was in 7th with 56200 chips and Maksim Shuts was in 10 with 43000 chips. Another notable player still in the mix was Maksim’s younger brother Mikhail who travelled here with his brother and bought in direct. He plays all his poker on PartyPoker and we have adopted him as another PartyPoker player. Mikhail ended in 13th on 40000 chips.
Tomorrow is Day 1 B with a much bigger field expected it will be interesting to see how many we get in total and whether the total prizepool will exceed a huge HK $ 10,000,000.
Jeremy Coleman
