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).

The action folds to the HJ where China’s Li Zhouji shoves his last 37,000. It gets all the way to the SB where chip leader Ryuji Shirase of Japan makes the call.

The Chinese player flips over T♣ T♥ while Shirase shows A♠ K♠ .

Li puts the mater beyond doubt: 5♥ T♠ 6♣ 3♣ 9♦ and doubles up. This time, the dent wasn;t as big for the Japanese player, but it is a dent nonetheless.

The action opens from the CO as it gets raised to 6,000. It folds to the D where China’s Li Zhuoji 3-bets it to 16,500 and when it gets to the BB big stack Ryuki Shirase, he goes into the tank and eventually 4-bets it to 35,000. The original raiser folds as now Li goes into the tank and makes the call.

The flop is J♥ 4♠ 6♥ as Shirase bets 100,000. Li once again tanks but this time elects to fold, leaving only 51,000 in his stack.

Shirase is now the Day 1A chip leader.