Bentley Leads APPT Melbourne; Defending Champ, Boxell Close Behind
It took just under 12 hours, but finally Day 2 of the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Melbourne Main Event has come to an end. There were 167 players who started the day with high hopes of surviving the night, but only 44 managed to bag up some chips. Of those players, Wayne Bentley snagged the chip lead with a stack of 450,000. Close behind Bentley is, amazingly, the defending champ, Leo Boxell.
Boxell, who took down $330,000 for winning this event in 2011, could become the first player to win two of the same APPT events in back-to-back years.
Some of the players who fell by the wayside during the early stages of the day include World Series of Poker bracelet winner Andrew Hinrichsen, James Broom, Julian Cohen, Van Marcus, Tim English and Team PokerStars Pros Raymond Wu and Celina Lin.
It didn��t take long for the field to be cut in half and at this point, Haibo Chu was far and away the chip leader, while Tom Grigg, Michael Kanaan and Bentley all held the lead at one point during the evening. Unfortunately for Grigg, he would fall way down the leader board during the last level, and while he would survive, the rest of the above players survived with far healthier stacks.
Some of the other players who won��t be joining the Day 3 field include Aaron Benton, Jai Kemp, Didier Guerin and Jay Kinkade as they all found their way to the rail throughout the night.
Those who will are still alive and well heading into Day 3 include Sam Razavi, James Bills, Billy Argyros, Jarred Graham, Krsitian Lunardi, Gary Benson and PokerStars Team Online member, Roy Bhasin. Joining Bentley and Boxell at the top of the counts will be the likes of Brendon Rubie, Dale Marsland and Benn Skender. See below for a full list of survivors.
It is the top 28 players who guaranteed a min-cash, so join us tomorrow as we play into the money and move on our way to the final table. Day 3 kicks off at 12:30 PM local time. Until then, poker fans!