2015 PokerStars.net ANZPT Sydney Day 2: Min Jae Park Leads Final 54 Players
The latest stop on Season 7 of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour continued on Saturday as 213 players of the 445 starters returned for Day 2 of ANZPT Sydney Main Event.
The plan was to burst into the money and ultimately an exciting day concluded with Sean Lannon hitting the rail as the "bubble boy" during the final hand of the night. Lannon shoved just around three big blinds with the A♠10♥ and couldn’t find what he needed against the 2♠2♣.
With Lannon eliminated, the remaining 54 players bagged up their chips having secured at least AU$3,650 each. They will now return on the penultimate day to try and make the final table and keep themselves in contention for the AU$225,000 top prize. The player arguably in the best position to secure place in the final nine is Day 2 chip leader Min Jae Park.
Day 2 Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Min Jae Park | 421,500 |
| 2 | Guangqi Zhang | 401,000 |
| 3 | Michael Kanaan | 350,500 |
| 4 | Panayotis Panayotis | 332,000 |
| 5 | Dominic Coombe | 299,500 |
| 6 | Josh Trott | 295,500 |
| 7 | Ben Cox | 279,500 |
| 8 | Denis Sekuloski | 277,500 |
| 9 | Manu Austin | 276,000 |
| 10 | Li-ta Hsu | 243,000 |
Park, a Sydney-based Korean, first came onto our radar when we noticed he was wearing a hoody with his name embroidered on the front. Then he started dominating his table and was soon the chip leader and maintained that lead through the last few levels of Day 2.
The largest pot that went Park's way saw him win a crucial coin flip holding the A♣K♦ against the Q♦Q♣. From there Park applied pressure on his opponents, putting multiple players to decisions for their tournament lives when the bubble was looming.
One player in the top five stacks we will be keeping our eyes on is Michael Kanaan. Just a few years ago Kanaan won the 2011 ANZPT Sydney Main Event and will now be looking to become the first player in seven seasons of the tour to win two ANZPT titles.
Both Kanaan and Park have stiff competition, however, with talented players like Dominic "The Spewtard" Coombe, Didier Guerin, Jackson Zheng, 2011 ANZPT Adelaide champion Octavian Voegele, recent Aussie Millions Main Event fifth-place finisher James Rann, and Tim "weygang" English all part of the final 54.
Full end-of-day 2 chip counts and a Day 3 seating draw can be found on the ANZPT Sydney live reporting page.
One of the many players who couldn't make it through Day 2 was Team PokerStars Pro Bryan Huang. It was a roller-coaster day for Huang, who first started building a stack when his A♦A♥ doubled through an opponent's A♣K♥. He then faltered when he couldn’t win a flip holding the A♦K♣ against the Q♠Q♦. Eventually Huang shoved a short stack with Ax7x couldn't survive against Ax9x.
The 54 players surviving players, meanwhile, will return from 12:30 p.m. local time on Sunday and play down to the final table. Be sure to return to PokerNews for all the continued ANZPT Sydney live updates.
Photo courtesy of Poker Asia Pacific.
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