By Sean Callander

“There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them” was the tagline to the classic 1948 movie of the same title. There aren't exactly eight million PokerStars qualifiers at the APPT Seoul, but there are eight in the final 16, chasing the APPT title at the Walker-hill Casino tonight.

One of those players is Seval Hægeland, a bricklayer from the town of Lyngden in the south of Norway. After conquering a field of more than 800 players to qualify for a trip to South Korea via a $1 buy-in tournament, Hægeland has steadily amassed chips throughout the tournament to be perfectly poised for a shot at the final table. He’s currently fourth in chips, on 200,000.

And even better yarn is emerging with the performance of young Israeli Ziv Bachar. A final table finisher at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2006 (he won $95,000) and victor in the € 500 No Limit Hold'em Event at last year’s EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo (worth €54,400), Bachar is the new chip leader on 430,000. He won his way to Seoul on the back of a $109 satellite on PokerStars.



However, the dream has ended for another PokerStars qualifier, Germany’s Uwe Braukhoff. The freeroll winner grimly hung on after losing much of his stack to Hægeland just prior to the last break, then pushed all-in with pocket 10s.
The call came from another PokerStars qualifier, Swede Ulf Martensson, with Ah Kh. Martensson missed his overcards but rivered a flush on a board of Jh 9c 7s 5h 3h. Braukhoff takes home $4371 for his 15th placing, not bad for an investment of $0.



Braukhoff can also claim that he outlasted the final member of Team PokerStars Pro still in the running for the silverware, Isabelle ‘No Mercy’ Mercier. Short-stacked for much of the day, Mercier endlessly searched for opportunities to double up, but they proved few and far between. Eventually she ran into, you guessed it, James Honeybone. She pushed in for her last 40,000 and received an insta-call from the New Zealander.



He showed pocket aces against Mercier’s pocket eights, and just to rub salt into the wound, Honeybone hit an ace on the flop to send the French-Canadian glamour to the rail.


We’re just three spots away from deciding the final table line-up for tomorrow.

Chip count, day 2 (approximate)

• Ziv Bachar (Israel) 430,000


• Jozef Berec (Australia) 250,000


• James Honeybone (NZ) 240,000


• Seval Hægeland (Norway) 200,000


• Daniel Schreiber (USA) 140,000


• Paul Adams (USA) 126,000


• Roger Spets (Sweden) 90,000


• Shinhan Sid Kim 85,000


• Ulf Martensson (Sweden) 75,000


• Kent Justice (USA) 70,000


• Michel St-Pierre (Canada) 60,000


• Michael Collins (USA) 50,000

Previous APPT Posts:

• Was there something in the food?


• Chinese Poker, it's anyone's game


• A Case of Tae Kwon Woe


• Schreiber stays on top in race for Seoul crown


• ‘Rekrul’ rules late on day one


• Mercier makes her move


• Quality field takes aim at Team PokerStars


• Who are those masked men?


• Seoul Tournament Kicks Off