John Juanda has just arrived and taken a seat at the secondary feature table.
Secondary Table
*Seat | Player |
1 | John Juanda |
2 | Phil Ivey |
3 | Erik Seidel |
4 | Nick Wong |
5 | Winfred Yu |
6 | Dan Smith |
7 | Daniel Negreanu |
John Juanda has just arrived and taken a seat at the secondary feature table.
*Seat | Player |
1 | John Juanda |
2 | Phil Ivey |
3 | Erik Seidel |
4 | Nick Wong |
5 | Winfred Yu |
6 | Dan Smith |
7 | Daniel Negreanu |
"All in on the feature table," is what we heard the floor person announced. Paul Phua had just pushed in for 125,000 or so on a board reading with three diamonds, putting the pressure on Gus Hansen. "The Great Dane" thought for several minutes before releasing the hand.
Unfortunately we're not able to get close enough to the final table accurate counts, but there is a break at the end of this level so we'll be sure to get them then.
Just before the level up, we had a monster pot develop that left Nick Wong crippled. On a board reading f , Wong led out for 5,500 and was called by Winfred Yu. Phil Ivey then raised to 18,000, Wong three-bet 48,500, Yu folded, and Ivey four-bet to 118,000. Wong made the call and then checks the river.
Ivey pauses, stares down his opponent, and then announces an all in. Wong makes the call and discovers that his full house was no good against Ivey's boat. The stacks were close, and after they were counted down it was discovered that Wong was left with just 10,500.
Interestingly, Ivey had lost a monster pot yesterday in the Main Event when he flopped a set of fours but lost to a set of sevens. This time he was on the good end of things.
Player | Chips | Progress |
---|---|---|
Phil Ivey |
490,000
240,000
|
240,000 |
|
||
Nick Wong |
10,500
-239,500
|
-239,500 |
Level: 2
Blinds: 1,000/2,000
Ante: 300
We have limited access to the feature table, but we do know that we just lost Tom "durrrr" Dwan. It happened when he held against Gus Hansen's . There was a on the board, and we known Hansen filled up on the river.
While we don't know the betting action, we can confirm that Dwan has been eliminated.
Player | Chips | Progress |
---|---|---|
Gus Hansen | 500,000 | |
|
||
Tom Dwan | Busted | |
|
According to John Juanda's Twitter, he is on his way to the Crown with a few friends. We can't help but think he is coming here for the $250K.
"Getting ready for 250K HR in Aussie Million. Been a long time since I played a tourney; and been even longer since I won one! #maybeimdue"
Winfred Yu is one of the players in today's field that may not be known to the poker masses, but that's not to suggest he isn't experienced in the game. On the contrary, Yu has been around for quite awhile and often plays the high-stakes cash games in Macau. Asia PokerNews caught up with Yu a few years ago to get his thoughts on poker. Here is a short blurb from that interview:
Hi Winfred. First off, let’s talk a bit about you. How did you get into poker?
I was born in Hong Kong before immigrating to Canada with my family when I was 14. I then went to university there, taking up math and statistics. So basically, I got something that was related to poker, so that’s how I first started playing.
So what was the scene like back then when you first started off?
At first, they didn’t even have any commercial casinos in Toronto back then because of laws and regulations. I first started off playing poker when they introduced the game to charity casinos about fourteen years ago. I had some friends who played a lot in casinos so I ended up learning the game there. I met players like Daniel Negreanu and Evelyn Ng because we played in the same rooms together.
After I graduated, I started working at a marketing company, where I got to work with some of the charity casinos.
So how did you eventually end up in Macau?
Poker’s been around for a long time in North America, although it just recently exploded in popularity thanks to things like big cash prizes, online poker, and the showing of live hole cards, percentages, and things like that on TV.
Because of the spread of poker’s popularity into places such as Sweden and Russia, I thought that China is definitely one place where the game can grow. I wanted to bring the game to the market and show that the Chinese can definitely be good at poker.
Chinese people like to gamble and at the same time they are very interested in a lot of challenging and skill games. Also, a lot of them are very good at math, so that helps as well.
Given it's the first level and stacks are so deep, there haven't really been any noteworthy pots. We recently watched four hands on the secondary table, and here are how they went:
Hand #1: Dan Smith, who won the $100,000 Challenge earlier in the week, raised to 3,000 from under the gun and received a call from Daniel Negreanu in the hijack. Smith continuation bet the flop and Negreanu simply mucked.
Hand #2: Phil Ivey opened for 3,000 from the hijack and received calls from Nick Wong on the button, Winfred Yu in the small blind, and Dan Smith in the big. It was four-way action to the flop, which all the players checked. When the hit the turn, Yu led out for 7,500 and the rest of the field folded.
Hand #3: Erik Seidel raised to 2,500 under the gun and was called by Wong in middle position and Negreanu in the small blind. Negreanu was first to act on the flop and he checked, opening the door for Seidel to bet 4,500. It was enough to get the job done as both his opponents folded.
Hand #4: Smith raised to 3,000 from the cutoff only to have Negreanu three-bet to 9,500 from button. The blinds got out of the way and Smith released his hands.
We told you it wasn't much, but these are the sort of hands you can expect here in the early going.
Find out the who has hit the lead and so much more as Nicki Pickering recaps on all the action from Day 4 of the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event.
From what we can tell, Patrik Antonius will be joining the field shortly. We overheard a tournament official state that he will likely arrive around 6:00, which is just five minutes from now.