We're barely 45 minutes into play and we've already lost our second player of the day. Surely we can't continue at this break-neck speed. Can we?
This time it was Chenxiang Miao who felt the brunt of elimination pain. It was a wild hand that started with Miao opening to 16,000 from early position. Chip leader Alvan Zheng made the call and Devan Tang came along in the big blind to see a flop of [qd][9h][8s].
Tang checked and Miao moved all in for his last 95,500. Zheng called and action was back with Tang. He wanted to isolate the short stack as he slid out three towers of yellow 5,000-denomination chips in a check-raise to 300,000 but that move backfired when Zheng announced himself all in.
Tang almost leapt out of his seat in disbelief before eventually tossing his cards back to the dealer. Miao showed [qc][kc] for top pair but Zheng had flopped the nuts with [jc][ts].
The turn was the [7c] and river the [jd] to see Miao eliminated as Zheng increases his chip lead.
Miao collects HK$594,000 for his efforts in taking 8th place here at the ACOP Main Event.
Meanwhile Zheng is now up to 2.1 million for around a third of the chips in play. The only way we're going to get out of here before the sun rises tomorrow is if Zheng can continue on his giant-killing ways! At the other end of the scale, Randy Lew has slipped back to the short stack with around 130,000 and will be looking to make something happen shortly.
Heath "TassieDevil" Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.