The WPT National Philippines resumed today with 114 players returning to the felt for day 2 of the Main Event. By the end of regulation play, only 22 players survived the heat with Norwegian player Markus Garberg stealing the limelight and ending the day as the chip leader with 674,000 chips.
Chip Leader Garberg
Although Garberg travels around the world to play poker, he is certainly no stranger to the Asian circuit arena. Just last year, he won the APT Asian Series High Roller event and took home well over PhP1M. He has also frequented the big poker festivals in Macau.
During the last ten minutes of the Main Event today, Garberg was sitting with slightly over 330K chips while Filipino player John Costiniano held the chip lead with over 600k. In poker however, things can change in just a snap and that’s exactly what happened when Garberg was awarded a huge double up after flopping the nuts against Taiwan’s Li-ta “Leon” Hsu. This instantly catapulted Garberg to the top of the rung.
Bubble and ITM
After losing to Garberg, Hsu thought he was covered in chips only to happily discover that he had 3K left. He sat back down and managed to win several hands to bring his stack up to 65K. Hsu was not only the reason that Garberg ended up as the chip leader, he was also the reason the bubble burst. He eliminated Eddy Liang in 37th place with his ace-jack landing trips against Liang’s pocket nines. Shortly after, Seung Soo Jeon fell in 35th place, then later Raiden Kan in 26th. Just before the bagging, Sam Nee bowed out in 25th place and Kunal Patni in 24th place.
Other Notable Survivors
In addition to the leaders, another Norwegian survived the day, Kai Paulsen, a very well-known player in the Asian circuit. He bagged up 456,000 chips. Filipino player Marc Rivera also made the list despite his stack getting shaved down by China’s Cui Jia Bin. Rivera ended with 261,000 chips while Bin closed with 530,000 chips.
Marc Rivera, – 261,000 Chips
Bust Outs
One big surprise of the day was the amount of notable pros scalped way before the money despite having very good stacks, some with hefty stacks, to start the day. Players such as Linh Tran, John Tech, Lester Edoc, Sim Jae Kyung, SJ Kim, Pete Chen, and day 1b’s chip leader, Chane Kampanatsaynakorn, all fell in this category.
Day 3 of the Main Event will resume at 1pm tomorrow, January 7, 2016. They will play down to the final table of 6.
Chip Count
Markus Garberg – 674,000
John Niko Costiniano – 628,000
Louis Nyberg – 548,000
Jiabin Cui – 530,000
Kai Paulsen – 456,000
Andrei Kaigorodtcev – 429,000
Yuen Wai Loong – 384,000
Michael Tse Hua – 383,000
Alex Henry – 310,000
Samuele Moschetti – 307,000
William Kang – 302,000
Dennis Gamboa – 269,000
Marc Rivera – 261,000
Amit Roshanlal Jain – 243,000
Ying Lin Chua – 221,000
Martin Gonzales – 172,000
Kwangsuk Yuh – 156,000
Thomas Goh – 127,000
Terry Fan – 98,000
Soh Chee Wee – 76,000
Lita Hsu – 65,000
Takuya Yamashita – 37,000
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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