In what can only be described as a modern day coincidence, we believe that we have spotted the Asian Winnie Cooper. For those of you that are a bit too young to know, Winnie Cooper was the girl in the hit series, "The Wonder Years."
Here we compare our modern day equivalent, Fred Savage + Winnie (Wonder Years) vs Matt Savage + Air (APT Manila)
Yes folks, that is her real name, Air.
Put's a whole new meaning to that song by Jordan Sparks, No Air.
Norihito Suzuki has emerged as the new tournament chip leader after taking down several pots including most of Toto Leonidas' chips.
Most recently the small blind completed before he checked his option in the big blind. The flop fell down and the small blind led out for 800, before Suzuki raised to 1,600, with his opponent making the call.
The turn landed the and Suzuki's 3,600 bet was enough to take the pot down and moved him to over 57,000 in chips.
Suzuki is in some good company on his table. Being the last to break for the tournament, it includes: Neil Arce, Julio Diaz, Damien Oborne, Toto Leonidas and Mansour Matloubi.
After Tricia David sent Andrew McGill to the rail a few minutes ago, she and Wally Sombero were comparing their stack sizes. David felt that she somehow did not have as many chips as she expected to have. Sombero felt that he had more chips than he would have expected. There was a short stack of chips that was kind of between the two players which the dealer had indicated were Sombero's.
As Sombero and David discussed the McGill elimination further, Sombero realized that the dealer pushed chips to him that actually belonged to David. Tournament Director Matt Savage was called over to the table and listened to the tale. With no dissent from any players at the table and with the dealer indicating that he felt Sombero might be correct, Savage awarded the chips to David.
Sombero and David know each other quite well and had a good laugh about the incident. No hard feelings there.
There is a small cadre of local Filipino poker-industry movers and shakers on Table 4, and they are representing their country well. We've already mentioned Filipino poker godfather, Wally Sombero (28,000). He's joined at his table by Filipino Poker Tour CEO Alan Escano (4,500); and local Tricia David, who leads all runners with 46,000.
Casey Kastle was the only person to call his opponent's bet of 2,000 chips on the turn of a board that showed . When the turn fell , Castle's opponent checked. Castle fired out 1,000 chips, a seeming value bet that his opponent wanted no part of. As he dragged in the pot, Castle flashed a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile.
It's hard to believe that we could be at this stage of the tournament already, but a massive slowdown is underway in the ballroom of the Dusit Thani hotel. Part of the issue is that, with only 75 runners starting in the field, we're already at the stage where only five tables are in play. That means that we're just not getting the volume of hands that we would normally expect at this stage of the tournament.