The $10,000 WSOP APAC Main Event has reached a final table of six!
There were 18 players to begin the penultimate day of action and it took around ten hours of play to see 12 players hit the rail. The first elimination of the day was Sean Winter followed by Brandon Shack-Harris.
The end of Shack-Harris’s tournament saw him all in preflop holding against 2010 WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kasella’s . The flop brought about an ace and with no help on the turn or river, Shack-Harris was eliminated in 17th place.
Immediately following his elimination, Shack-Harris jumped in as a late entrant in the $25,000 High Roller. Unfortunately he was quickly sent to the rail in that tournament, meaning Germany’s George Danzer is guaranteed to be the WSOP Player of the Year after a nail-biting two-week battle with Shack-Harris.
Plenty of prominent players were still in contention to make the WSOP APAC Main Event final table with 15 players remaining. Many of those, such as bracelet winners Gary Benson (15th), AJ Antonios (14th) and Jackie Glazier (12th), and JJ Liu (13th) all fell short of making the final six.
When play reached an ‘unofficial’ final table of nine, the USA’s Kyle Montgomery had a slight chip lead over Australians Jason Guiliano and Victor Teng. The plan from here was to lose one more player, deem the final eight to have made the official final table, then play down to six and return for a live televised final day on Saturday telecast on ESPN network both in the US (ESPN2 10 pm PT/1AM ET Saturday/Sunday) and in Australia (ESPN 4 PM local time).
The player who was eliminated in 9th was Henry Szmelcer when he was short stacked and all in preflop with and couldn’t catch the cards he needed against Scott Davies with .
From there, it would take quite some time before Jason Guliano hit the rail in 8th and then it was a case of just needing one more player to the rail before the day was over.
The eventual final hand of the day would see start-of-day chip leader Victor Teng eliminated in 7th place. Teng had been bleeding chips all day and was down under 1 million by the time blinds were 15,000/30,000 in what was ultimately the final level of the night.
Teng’s closing moments in the WSOP APAC Main Event began when Jack Salter opened to 65,000 and Davies flat-called from the cut off. Teng then three-bet to 210,000 from the button, Salter four-bet to 375,000 and Davies quickly folded. Back on Teng and he five-bet all in for around 1.1 million. Salter snap-called and tabled his , which was well ahead of Teng’s . No help on the board and Teng was sent home with a $87,514 score.
Once the final table was set and the chips were counted it was Jack Salter as the chip leader with 3,255,000 in chips which is well ahead of Scott Davies with 2,210,000. Next up is Taiwan’s Henry Wang with 1,700,000, followed by two-time bracelet winner Frank Kasella with 1,250,000. The USA’s Kyle Montgomery has the second shortest stack, while Melbourne local and the last lady standing Ang Italiano is the short stack with 510,000.
2014 WSOP APAC Main Event – Final Six
Seat 1: Frank Kasella – 1,250,000
Seat 2: Scott Davies 2,210,000
Seat 3: Kyle Montgomery – 950,000
Seat 4: Henry Wang – 1,700,000
Seat 5: Ang Italiano – 510,000
Seat 6: Jack Salter – 3,255,000
The final six have locked up at least $118,769 and now have a day off on Friday to get prepared for Saturday’s climax. When they return, there will be the WSOP APAC Main Event bracelet on the line, along with the $850,136 top prize.