Poker Blog - 6-Handed Day 1

Time has been called on the day's play in the PokerMedia Australia 6-handed event with eight players to return to The Star Poker Room tomorrow afternoon to play down to a winner.
Just a few days after the Opening Event attracted its biggest ever field, the PMA 6-handed repeated the feat by attracting over 200 entries for the very first time. The final figure of 205 smashed the 156 who bought in for this event at last year's Sydney Championships but the bigger field didn't last long as it was slashed to just one person shy of the final table over the course of 17 levels.

The one to watch tomorrow, however, will be Hannah Lee who dominated the final levels to bag up 958,000 - almost double her nearest rival in Najeem Ajez. Ironically, Ajez had one foot out the door just 10 minutes before the end of the day's play when he clashed with Chao Duan. Ajez shoved on a  flop holding  and couldn't believe his bad luck when Chao rolled over . But the  turn and  river miraculously filled him up to keep his hopes alive.

The players return tomorrow as follows ...

 Hannah Lee - 958,000
Najeem Ajez - 552,000
Chao Duan - 441,000
Samuel Kennedy - 392,000
Jason Pritchard - 238,000
Nick Polias - 233,000
Steve Pappas - 193,000
Ross Coveney - 72,000

We're now down to eight players and the final table bubble following Sanjeev Joshi's elimination.

Joshi shoved with  and found himself needing some help against the  of Samuel Kennedy. None arrived as the board ran out .

We may or may not lose the three players we need to reach the final table, but either way this will be the final level of the night!

Blinds are up to 4,000/8,000 with Ray Lapitan's elimination leaving us with 10.

Jim Psaros won't be adding the PMA 6-handed trophy to his cabinet after going cold at exactly the wrong time. He has also been joined at the rail by Jianzhou Chang as the field drops to 11. 

Hannah Lee has gone on a heater at the perfect time to become our monster chip leader with 550,000 - more than double her nearest rival.

But her good fortune wasn't such great news for Michael King who contributed a large chunk of that stack. In what proved to be a brutal cooler, King flopped a flush holding  on a  board only to find that Lee had flopped the nuts with .

He takes home $4,100 for his efforts. 

We've witnessed an explosion of activity since the bubble burst with four players hitting the rail in the last five minutes alone.

The carnage began when Paul Lockwood's  couldn't hold on against  with Igai Augerten, Marcel Tartak (all $3,075) and Francesco Losi ($4,100) joining him at the cashier. 

14 players remain.

At almost exactly the same time, two of our remaining short-stacks ran out of steam to rocket us into the money with 18 players remaining.

We are now down to our final three tables with each player guaranteed at least $3,075.

With nine minutes remaining in Level 15, the plan is to play  until the end of Level 17 unless we reach our seven-player final table first.

Francesco Losi has survived a sticky situation after shoving for his remaining 55,000 from the small blind with and running into the  of Jim Psaros.

Needing some help, Losi hit paydirt as he filled up on a  board to move back over 100,000.

With 20 players remaining, we are now just two eliminations from the money - but more interesting is the fact that 6 of those players boast stacks of 100,000 chips or less.

Blinds are currently at 2,000/4,000 so it's not necessarily situation critical for all of them yet, however we don't expect the bubble too last too long tonight.