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Lebanese Poker Championship – Day 2 report
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2009-07-27 09:30
Day 2 of the Lebanese Poker Championship saw the 111 player starting field slowly whittle down to 28 as the progress was much slower than the organizers had anticipated. The slow nature of how the events unfolded was mostly due to the structure adopted for the event, which allowed players to pick their spots and to play their absolute best. While that may have crossed plans to have the field play down to the final table on Day 2, it certainly meant that the skill factor got a much bigger word to say in the outcome.
At the end of day 2, Fadi Kamar took the chip lead, and a pretty serious lead at that.
Nenad Medic and Raymond Rahme, two of the “name” pros involved, had finished the previous day on extremely short stacks. Medic clawed and squirmed at the beginning of day 2, but he couldn’t even delay the inevitable: he busted out during the first blinds level of the day.
Running out of options, he decided to stake his tournament life on a pair of 6s he’d picked up. He shoved all-in preflop and got called by an opponent with A,Q. The classic coin-flip went his opponent’s way though and Medic headed to the rail.
Rahme, himself a short-stack didn’t last much longer either. He ran into a 3-way tussle with Joseph Mouawad and Ziad Hany, holding A,K. He shoved all-in on the flop which fell 10,3,J. Little did he know that both his opponents had already secured an advantage over him. Mouawad had 10,9 for middle pair and Hany held pocket rockets for the overpair. Two sevens fell on the last two streets to give the pot to Hany and to seal Rahme’s fate.
Chris Karagulleyan had started the day on a massive stack, but he too ran into difficulties. He slowly bled his stack away until he was forced to shove all-in on a hand he thought was a coin-flip. Unfortunately for him though, his A,Q was well behind his opponent’s pocket rockets, and despite spiking a Q on the turn, he failed to catch up.
Nicholas Zachem, who’d started the day on the biggest stack, had it going differently. He kept chipping up all day long and despite the fact that he never managed to take the chip lead back, he finished day 2 among the leaders, on a very healthy stack.
Fadi Kamar was the man with the plan on Day 2. Whenever his plan backfired, Lady Luck took over and bailed him out repeatedly. Thus it happened that his pocket 9s got the better of an opponent’s pocket Js after both of them had shoved all-in preflop.
Eias Aad’s stack was only one step up the ladder for Kamar though. Chady Merhej fell victim to him too as his 8,8 failed to catch up with Kamar’s pocket Qs after the all-in. That pot cemented Kemer’s position atop the provisional leader board as the only player who managed to surpass the 600k chip mark.
The day was called as 28 players remained alive, just 7 players short of the money bubble.
