TLPT MAIN EVENT 15K (SHR) - 8 HANDED ($15,000)

The Lord Poker Tournament SHR Main Event with a prize pool of a whopping $3,000,000 has attracted a total of 191 players that all ponied up the $15,000 buy-in and now has 15 hopefuls left standing that will compete for the $750,000 top prize, the trophy and bragging rights for making history as the inaugural champion.

All of the remaining players had to go through a star studded field with bracelet winners Daniel "Jungleman" Cates, Dominik Nitsche, Yinan Zhou, Mao Renji, Lei Yu, Calvin Lee, Ami Barer, Dong Chen and a flurry of high stakes players from all around the globe.

Topping the leaderboard with a huge gap to the rest of the field is German Marius Gierse who is famous for his online accomplishments, but racked up several million dollars in live earnings over the past decade as well. He was one of the people that took a starting stack from Ivan Zhang when he tried to spin up a stack during the closing levels of late registration that got him to a 62BB stack at the end of level 14. From then on he consistently chipped up, becoming chip leader of his table and then took the overall lead during level 20 and never looked back. Busting Raffaele Sorrentino in 17th on the buzzer to put a 20BB cherry on top of his 7,545,000 (94BB) stack.

Second in chips is Martin Sedlak - another German who has several final tables to his name in 2025 already - who came back from the brink in level 20 and finished the day with the elimination of Calvin Lee for 20BB and shortly after Yunkyu Song in 16th for another 7BB that concluded Day 2. He will unbag 4,755,000 (59BB) tomorrow.

AAPoker Ambassadors Ivan Zhang - 3,550,000 (44BB) and Quan Zhou - 2,140,000 (27BB) are also still in the stacked Top 15.

Day 3 will start at 13:00 local on Sunday the 18th with 16 minutes left in level 22 and finish when a champion is determined.

The SMP Live Updates will cover the action from start to finish.

Song evades the two-outer on K♣ 9♥ 5♣ 8♣ 6♥ for a double up and some breathing room.

Cutoff Quan Zhou puts 70,000 in the middle and fills up after small blind Junbo Qu increased the fee to 225,000. Qu's 225,000 c-bet gets the job done on 9♣ 7♦ 9♥ .

Before the showdown Xin Tong says aces versus kings and Song is in disbelief saying 'How did you know?' before he gets up and puts on his jacket for the all-in ritual.

With 49 out of 191 total entries remaining that all want to get to the 29 money places we see Gary Thompson closing in on chip leader Bin Leng in the hunt for the top prize of $750,000.

Junbo Qu min-raises and takes button Yunkyu Song to the flop 3♦ Q♠ Q♣ before double barreling 55,000 and 75,000 with Song calling until the board completes 7♠ and 2♠ . Slowing down to a check, Qu needs three time banks to find a fold after Song put him all-in, using a time bank of his own.

Junbo Qu's gamble pays off on 5♦ T♥ 6♥ 7♥ 9♦ for a triple up.