David Peters Leads Final 16 as Liv Boeree Exits in 17th Place in PCA Main Event
Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree has been eliminated from the 2018 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event in 17th place, running queens into the kings of Maria Lampropulos. It made for a short day of tournament play in the Bahamas, with Lampropulos ending the day as one of the biggest stacks in the room. David Peters leads, and Koray Aldemir and Adrian Mateos are also amongst the players returning for Day 5 of the PCA Main Event.
Just 43 players started Day 4 of the Main Event, with the goal of playing down to 16 players or 5 full levels. Lachezar Plamenov Petkov busted in the first hand of the day, followed by PokerStars Ambassador Maria Konnikova. Konnikova won the National event earlier this festival for $84,600, and now she added $22,020 for her 42nd place. She started the day short stacked and never got back in it. In her last hand, she got it in drawing slim with queen-jack versus ace-queen and aces and didn't survive.
Oliver Weis got it in better but the result would be the same: a place on the rail. The German regular had aces versus tens on a jack-high board, only to see his opponent river a ten to crush his dreams.
Aaron Olshan and his mother Sharman Olshan busted in quick succession of each other. Aaron lost with ace-jack to ace-king, Sharman lost ace-king to queens, and the Cinderella story of mother and son making the final table together was over.
High stakes regular Orpen Kisacikoglu doubled early on, but it wouldn't serve him well. He lost queens against ace-four when an ace hit the flop. Kisacikoglu instantly put his Main Event cash on the line and went on to register for the $25,000 High Roller.
Meanwhile, the other habitual high rollers Adrian Mateos, Koray Aldemir and David Peters showed how to play poker like a beast. The three all crushed their tables, forcing folds of better hands left and right, getting value of worse hands, and inducing bluffs against them.
Start-of-day chip leader Karl Stark did have Aldemir sweat a little bit. After an open from Liv Boeree and a call from Stark, Aldemir squeezed with ace-king. While Boeree got out of the way, Stark chose a more aggressive answer; he pushed all in for 76 big blinds. Aldemir called but wasn't too happy when he saw he had nothing more than a flip against Stark's nines. The flop and turn didn't help Aldemir, but the king on the turn paired him up, and Stark exited while Aldemir built a 1.5 million stack.
Jack Sinclair got to the feature table, only to leave one hand later. He handed his chips to Adrian Mateos in a hand he was uncertain about after it had happened. Mateos checked back a flopped set and eventually pushed against Sinclair, where the 2017 WSOP Main Event final tablist had rivered third pair. Sinclair opted for the call but was crushed by the Spaniard.
As more players hit the rail, the average stack grew bigger and only a few shorties were left. It was a cooler that ended the day, with Boeree on the wrong end of that confrontation. As mentioned earlier, she found herself all in with queens to Lampropulos' kings.
"I knew it," Boeree muttered before the dealer dealt a board full of blanks to end the day.
And like that, the day was done. 16 players remain, and they'll return to the flashy television set in the Imperial Ballroom of the Atlantis Resort on the Bahamas. Day 5 gets back underway at noon on Saturday, with the full 90 minutes left in the new level of 10,000/20,000, 2,000 ante. Check back then for PokerNews coverage of the penultimate day of the Main Event.