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 Japan’s Kohei Takami opens for 10,000. It folds to the BB where Nichols Manalo of the Philippines 3-bets it to 110,000 to which Takami 4-bet shoves for his last 95,000. Manalo calls.

Takami shows A♣ Q♣ while the Filipino has him dominated with A♦ K♦ .

The runout goes T♦ T♠ J♠ A♠ 2♦ as Manalo’s kicker player an in effect kicks the Japanese player out of the competition for today.

India’s Ridesh Sejpal opens from UTG for 1,300 and gets called by Nichols Manalo of the Philippines on the D and the player in the BB.

The flop goes 2♦ 7♦ Q♣ as the player in the BB checks. Sejpal continues for 2,400 and the Filipino calls. It is Heads-Up to the turn where the 3♥ shows up. This time, Sejpal checks and Manalo fires 4,000. Sejpal folds.