The rapid-fire pace of the first three eliminations of the APPT8 Macau final table was never likely to keep up. It was of course possible, but simply unlikely. That's what I was thinking anyway. But I was wrong, so very wrong, as just over two 60-minute levels we are down to four players.
It was the last hand before the first break of the day that we would lose our sixth-place finisher.
The player to hit the rail was Carlos Chang. He was down to 715,000 in chips and opted to three-bet all in from the cut off (blinds at 20,000/40,000) after Cyril Andre had opened to 80,000 from under the gun. Back on Andre and he made an extremely quick call and turned over [qs][qh].
At this point Chang sort of slumped his shoulders, not excited at the sight of the pocket queens. He turned over his [9d][9h] and got out of his seat. The [8d][7c][7h][ah][td] board didn't improve Chang's mood as he was sent home with HK$464,000 and so the tournament was left with four players.
Immediately after Chang's elimination, the five players went on a ten-minute break to regroup. Then they came back and two minutes later, Chang's fellow Taiwanese player in Yen Han Chen was eliminated in fifth place.
Chen's final hand began in the small blind. It was folded to him and he jammed for 575,000. Cyril Andre snap-called and turned over [tc][ts]. Chen reluctantly tabled his [as][6c].
The [6d][3d][qs] flop gave Chen a piece of it and his big rail of support began screaming for an ace. Unfortunately for Chen, the screams were unheard as the [8d] turn and the [7d] river would send him to the rail with a HK$575,000 score.
Shortly after Chang and Chen were eliminated, Australian Poker Hall of Fame member Billy "The Croc" Argyros began building a stack towards 2 million in chips. Plenty of these came when he manages to river a Broadway straight against Cyril Andre.
You can read all about The Croc's rise up the counts and more, over in the live updates section of the APPT8 macau page.
The four remaining players are currently guaranteed HK$737,000 - a six figure score in US dollars - and will be fighting hard to become the next Asia Pacific Poker Tour champion, so stay tuned!