Main Event (18,500 PHP)

The smoke is barely clearing from the battles on the felt for Main Event Day 1A in the Manila Super Series 22 at Pokerstars Live here in Okada Manila but in the end, 34 players from 224 total entries move on to Day 2 with the chip lead changing favors multiple times before the money bubble was eventually burst.

It looked to be a cruise for the Netherland’s Germ de Haas as he was the first to breach the 200,000 chip mark in the early levels but it slowly became apparent that Park Sangsub was out to control the proceedings as he gained the chip lead in the midway mark. Then came Ryuki Shirase of Japan following the outmuscling he did of China’s Li Zhouji. Edgar Asehan of the Philippines also momentarily sat atop the leaderboard but then de Haas began regaining traction and officially stamped his name on the chip leader position after busting Japan’s Takahashi Miyamoto with quads.

But the tournament was still waiting for the money bubble to be burst and Filipino Buds Ampatuan did just that when he flopped a set against Motoya Sato of Japan and it ensured that the 34 left would all be ITM.

De Haas amassed 715,000 in chips and is followed distantly by Shirase with 589,000. Third place is shared by Taiwan’s Yang Chih Chun and Edliberto Gopez of the Philippines with identical stacks of 369,000.

Day 1B commences tomorrow (June 13) still at 12:00NN (UCT+8).

On the river of a board that reads: T♠ A♣ 9♥ 5♠ 4♠ , big stack Edgar Asehan of the Philippines goes all-in and gets called by Taiwan’s Yang Chih Chun.

Asehan shows Jack-Ten offsuit while Yang takes the pot and much of the Filipino’s luster with Ace-Jack offsuit.

The loss drops the former momentary chip leder down to a near short stack while Yang closes in on the leaders.

Taiwan’s Chou Kuan Jui raises from the +1 position for 8,000 and gets calls from chip leader Ryuki Shirase of Japan on the D and Filipino Edgar Asehan in the BB.

The flop comes 4♣ J♥ 9♠ as Asehan checks. Chou continues for 12,000 as Shirase calls. Asehan then check-raises it to 40,000 as Choi re-raises all-in for his last 83,000. Shirase folds but Asehan makes the quick call.

Chou tables J♦ T♦ for top pair on the flop while Asehan unfurls J♠ 8♣ for top two pairs on the flop. The turn card is the 8♦ giving the Taiwanese players more outs on the redraw to the open-ended straight. However, the river card is the 3♠ ending his campaign in Day 1A and installing Asehan as the new chip leader.

Timothy Ferrari of the United States opens from UTG for 8,000 and it folds to the D where chip leader Ryuki Shirase 3-bets it 20,000. In the BB, Edgar Asehan of the Philippines 4-bets all-in for 114,000. Ferrari calls all-in for his last 107,000 while Shirase sees that this is the biggest pot of the tournament thus far and joins in.

Asehan tables J♣ J♠ while Ferrari has A♠ K♠ . Shirase is in bad shape with 9♣ 9♥ .

The runout goes Q♣ Q♠ 7♠ 2♥ 3♥ to give the Filipino a virtual triple up as Ferrari is eliminated and Shirase’s chip lead is not as imposing as it was prior to the start of this hand.