After five opening flights and a Day 2 that saw 118 hopefuls return to the felt, the $1,500 Platinum Player Championships will need overtime to decide a champion at the Australian Poker Open. With hand-for-hand play in progress on the final table bubble, 10 remaining players bagged for an unscheduled Day 3 at Doltone House Western Sydney at Club Marconi.
After 11 and a half levels of play, Justin Woo bagged the chip lead and will return to action with 54 big blinds. Woo sits just a single 25,000 chip ahead of Alex Lee, who had the advantage for much of the day and dictated play at his table for several hours.
Woo is no stranger to bagging the most chips this week, as he led the field on Day 1c. The list of 10 surviving players includes two other Day 1 chip captains, as Ken Demlakian (Day 1d) and Chris Moussa (Day 1e) both remain in the hunt to claim the APO trophy on Tuesday night.
The tournament saw a total of 937 entries and smashed the guaranteed prize pool, finishing at A$1,218,100. The majority of that money is still to be handed out, including the top prize of A$248,000. Each of the remaining contenders have locked up at least A$14,000, with a spot at the final table worth an additional A$4,200.
End of Day 2 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Justin Woo | Australia | 8,150,000 | 54 |
| 2 | Alex Lee | Singapore | 8,125,000 | 54 |
| 3 | David Hirst | Australia | 5,325,000 | 36 |
| 4 | Khanh Le | Australia | 4,950,000 | 33 |
| 5 | Paris Sitzoukis | Australia | 4,900,000 | 33 |
| 6 | Ken Demlakian | Australia | 4,875,000 | 33 |
| 7 | Campbell Ashton | Australia | 4,100,000 | 27 |
| 8 | Sergio Colosimo | Australia | 3,950,000 | 26 |
| 9 | Chris Moussa | Australia | 1,600,000 | 11 |
| 10 | Michael Sleiman | Australia | 875,000 | 6 |
Among the notable names in the final 10 is Sergio Colosimo, who began Day 2 with by far the shortst stack of anyone remaining. Colosimo sat down with just 135,000 chips, good for 14 big blinds, but built up his stack through well-timed aggression to secure 3,950,000 by the end of the night. Demlakian got his stack going in the right direction with some early knockouts, and finished the day by moving all in on the final hand to pass Campbell Ashton on the leaderboard.
One of the chip leader entering the day was APO Main Event champion Hasan Onay, who was looking for another deep run in this big field event. Ultimately, Onay was eliminated in 41st place ($4,500) but immediately switched into rail mode to cheer on his wife. Elisa Onay kept the prospect of a family double alive late into the night before she was knocked out in 13th spot for $8,500.
Other notable names that returned to play inside the money included APO Ambassador Rehman Kassam, who had to settle for 52nd spot ($4,080). One of the fun stories to follow was that of Eric Xu, who survived his opening flight with just a single big blind on Day 1d. After blinds were rolled back to match the earliest opening flight, Xu’s 21,000 chips became two big blinds but he had spun that up to 400,000 by the first break. He was unable to build any momentum from the point, earning several pay jumps before hitting the rail in 49th place ($4,260).
Day 3 Remaining Payouts
| Place | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1 | $248,000 |
| 2 | $176,000 |
| 3 | $114,000 |
| 4 | $70,600 |
| 5 | $43,500 |
| 6 | $31,000 |
| 7 | $26,700 |
| 8 | $22,500 |
| 9 | $18,200 |
| 10 | $14,000 |
The added day will begin at 4 p.m. local time, starting on Level 27 with blinds of 100,000/150,000 and a 150,000 big blind ante. Levels will continue to be 60 minutes in length, with scheduled breaks after every two hours of play.
All of the action will be streamed on the Australian Poker Open Twitch channel beginning at 4:30 p.m. local time. As always, stay tuned as the PokerNews team will be on the scene to cover all of the big moments on the way to handing out a trophy on Tuesday night in Sydney.
