From Nine to One

[user75032]

We're in a new setting today for the 2009 PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Main Event. A small set has been built in the center of the Grand Lisboa casino floor, with limited stadium seating on the sides and fiercely bright spotlights illuminating the final table itself.

When we left last night, nine stalwart competitors remained from a field that first numbered 429. Those players are:

Seat 1: Dermot Blain (507,000)
Seat 2: Mike Kim (1,653,000)
Seat 3: Daoxing Chen (1,747,000)
Seat 4: Brandon Demes (578,000)
Seat 5: Stefan Hjorthall (454,000)
Seat 6: Dbinder Singh (696,000)
Seat 7: Darkhan Botabayev (1,455,000)
Seat 8: Jicheng Su (778,000)
Seat 9: Pontus Kers (491,000)

The structure for this tournament ensures that the clock will be rewound to allow for an average stack of 40 big blinds. That means we'll be starting at 10k/20k blinds today, rather than the ridiculous 20k/40k at which play ended last night.

We expect that chip leader Daoxing Chen will be put on notice very, very quickly that his glacial play and tendency to tank over every decision will not be tolerated. Hopefully that will encourage a quicker pace of play than we saw last night.

The action is set to begin in a few minutes time. We'll have a new champion in a few hours.