Michael Falcon Leads After Day 1b in Manila
The second of three starting days of the 2017 PokerStars Festival Manila Main Event saw an additional 177 entries take part, consisting of 148 unique players and 29 re-entries that all ponied up PHP55,000 (~$1,092) each. With now 309 entries in total, only 100 further additions to the field are needed for Day 1c on August 5th, 2017, however the biggest single field is expected when the cards go back in the air at 2 p.m. local time.
After 12 levels of 45 minutes each, it was Denmark's Michael Falcon who emerged with the biggest stack among the 43 Day 1b survivors, claiming 307,100 to his name. The 55-year-old housing developer lives in nearby Thailand. "I had too much money committed already," Falcon said after firing multiple bullets for Day 1. His total was up to six before finally finding traction here on Day 1b.
"To be honest, normally when I play I’m either deep or out. That’s my style you know? I’m never the one who’s gonna go to the second day with a medium stack. I’m either out or deep.”I have a girlfriend here in the Philippines, and it’s convenient to combine these things. I love the venue here. I love the fact that you don’t have all the cigarette smoke around. The only thing I would hope they could improve in the future is the food."
Second in chips is Germany's Andre Peters (241,500) followed by Dhane Chainani, who also fired three bullets on Day 1b before eventually bagging up 235,200. Other notables and big stacks include Andy Xueyan Li (218,000), Singapore's Alex Lee (212,500), Michael Brunner (211,400), Linh Tran (194,300), Shinji Katsushima (171,900), Alexander Grocott (157,200), Victor Chong (148,600) and Celine Lee (101,200).
Among those to take part and fail to bag up chips for Day 2 just yet were High Roller Shot Clock champion Peter Plater, Tom Or-Paz, Geoff Mooney, Antti Halme, High Roller runner-up Sathesh "Stash" Muthu, Sam Nee, Dhaval Mudgal, Maxim Sorokin, Sam Polishetty and Lester Edoc to name just a few.
Mark Gruendemann was the first player to bust right away in level one when his second nut flush ran into the nut flush. Irishman Gruendemann ran up a big stack on the next entry before putting his hopes on a ten-high flush draw only to see Michael Falcon quickly call with ace-king for trips aces in the last level of the night.
Linh Tran won a big flip with ace-king against the pocket queens of Badri Kedar Gosavi to send the Aussie home empty-handed. Just prior to that, Antti Halme went from hero to zero in a matter of two hands. First Halme doubled with pocket aces versus queen-six suited only to run with pocket kings into the very same aces the very next hand.
Manila Megastack 7 champion Po-Yi Wu failed to hold up with ace-jack versus king-deuce suited. Early on, Andre Peters was part of a memorable three-way all in that emerged after a six-way king high flop. Two-time APT champion Seung Soo Jeon tripled up with ace-king for top pair and top kicker while the ace-eight suited of Peters for the nut flush won the side pot against an inferior flush draw. Peters was down to less than the starting stack but recovered quickly before spinning it up in the last levels of the night.
While Day 1b is in the bags, all players that haven't bagged up a stack yet can take another shot at the juicy prize pool on Day 1c and unlimited re-entries are available during the first nine levels of 45 minutes each. The registration will officially close in level 10 and the prize pool information will be released before all Day 1 survivors return to the tables on Sunday August 6th for Day 2.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor to provide all the action as per usual.