Home / Poker News September 2009 / APPT Macau: Blain and Geshkenbein walk away with the goods
APPT Macau: Blain and Geshkenbein walk away with the goods
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-09-02 09:17
The Asia Pacific Poker Tour’s final day saw two of the stop’s most important events conclude. The Main Event saw the final 9 players return to action as the 429 registrants combined buy-ins for a monster prize-pool which gave the eventual winner a $541,089 prize.
As usual, as soon as the action kicked off, short-stacked players began looking for opportunities to double up. Stefan Hjorthall thought he’d picked up the perfect hand towards that end, and he shoved all in on his pocket 9s. He got called by Pontus Kers who had A,Qo in his pocket. The board landed both an A and a Q to make matters clear and it sent Hjorthall to the rail.
Dermot Blain, the eventual winner, got rolling when his K,K got the better of Brandon Demes’ Ah, 9h to eliminate the American in 8th place.
Dbinder Singh was the next to find the path leading to the rail as his Q,Q fell against Blain’s A,K which managed to catch an A on the flop. Jicheng Su was the next to head to the rail, followed by Pontus Kers. Darkhan Botabayev first dropped a massive chunk of his stack to Blain, then with his back against the wall, he disposed of Pontus Kers when his 9,7o outran the Swede’s K,6s.
Daoxing Chen locked horns with Darkhan Botabayev next and he folded his pocket Js against the latter’s pocket 10s on a flop which gave him a flush draw as well. That win wouldn’t be enough to keep Botabayev in the race though. He eventually fell to Chen who kept up the pressure and managed to break Botabayev’s 10d,4d with his Ac,Qc.
Despite his win though, Chen was the next to be bounced as the heads-up stage between Kim and Blain was set. As the last round of the action kicked off though, it was an easy guess that Blain would end up the winner as he held an 8-1 lead over Kim. The final hand of the day saw Kim’s 10,9 go up against Blain’s K,10. Kim picked up $484,999 for his second place finish.
The high rollers’ event saw a field of 25 survivors return to the tables to duke it out for the $266,690 first prize. As soon as the action started, players began fading away left and right, among them Terrence Chan, Lee Nelson and Elton Tsang. Yevgeniy Timoshenko found the rail too, together with J.J. Liu who was eliminated by Grant Levy. Jonathan Karamalikis became the bubble boy of the event when Vladimir Geshkenbein cracked his pocket Ks and sent him to the rail one position short of the money.
Players continued to drop out at an increased rate after the flop and soon, double WSOP Main Event Champion, Johnny Chan found himself heads-up against Vladimir Geshkenbein. Chan had to fight back from a 4-1 chip disadvantage and he did quite all right initially. Eventually though, Geshkenbein managed to hammer his advantage home and his K,8 offsuit settled the issue for good against Chan’s Q,8o in the final hand.
