By Sean Callander

We’re underway here at the Grand Waldo Hotel and Casino in the first APPT Macau: Asian Poker Open $2500 buy-in main event. We started with 352 players, and just nine remain in the chase for this historic title.

Play starts at level 20 with blinds at 6000/12,000 and 2000 antes. The button is starting with William Tam in seat 3, meaning the blinds will start with ElkY Grospellier (small) and Joe Hachem (big).

• Seat 1: Simon ‘vuka’ Randall (UK) 125,000


• Seat 2: Liz Lieu (United States) 384,000


• Seat 3: William ‘walrus_poker’ Tam (Australia) 201,000


• Seat 4: Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier (France) 467,000


• Seat 5: Joe Hachem (Australia) 325,000


• Seat 6: Dinh ‘Darren’ Le (England) 657,000


• Seat 7: Guillaume ‘TheGrrr…’ Patry (Canada) 552,00


• Seat 8: Sangkyoun Kim (South Korea) 261,000


• Seat 9: Ivan Tan (Singapore) 553,000

Hand 1: Dinh Le

Button: Tam (seat 3) – Le raises to 37,000 total and takes down the pot.

Hand 2: William Tam

Button: ElkY (seat 4) – Randall raises to 35,000 before Tam moves all-in for 197,000. Play folds to the Londoner, and he lays them down.

Hand 3: Dinh Le

Button: Hachem (seat 5) – Lieu raises to 28,000 before Dinh Le pops it up to 78,000. Lieu folds and the chip leader makes it two out of the first three pots.

Hand 4: William Tam

Button: Le (seat 6) – Tan bets 30,000, with Patry and Kim in the blinds joining the action. We see our first flop for the final table of 5c 8h 3c. Tam bets 100,000 and scoops the pot.

Hand 5: Joe Hachem

Button: Patry (seat 7) – Team PokerStars claims its first pot of the final table when Joe Hachem raises 68,000 pre-flop to take the blinds and antes.

Hand 6: Simon Randall

Button: Kim (seat 8) – In our first all-in of the final table, the short stack Simon Randall pushes all-in with pocket sixes, and gets a call from Ivan Tan with pocket eights. Randall makes a set on the flop of 2c 6s Kc, then quads when a 6h landed on the river. Randall takes down a nice pot of almost 200,000.

Hand 7: Ivan Tan

Button: Tan (seat 9) – Tan bets 42,000 on the button and Lieu calls from the big blind. The flop reads As 5c 3s, Leiu checks, Tan bets 65,000 and immediately recoups some of the chips he lost in the previous pot.

Hand 8: Guillaume Patry

Button: Randall (seat 1) – Hachem calls and Patry follows into the pot. The flop is 6d 7c 4d, Hachem c-bets 55,000 and Patry moves all-in for almost 450,000. He has Hachem well covered. After about 90 seconds in the tank, Hachem folds.

Hand 9: Dinh Le

Button: Lieu (seat 2) – From early position, Dinh Le bets 70,000 and takes down another pot.

Hand 10: Simon Randall

Button: Tam (seat 3) – Randall’s pre-flop raise to 80,000 is enough to take down the blinds and antes.