PokerStars APPT Sydney, Day 1b: Jason Gray Takes Commanding Lead

The second day of the 2008 APPT Sydney at Star City casino has now been completed and it is Australian poker professional Jason Gray who is way out ahead of the pack. The 2nd day had a considerable more amount of players than on Day 1a by having 172 players begin play compared with 108. With the extra players came the big names from both Australia and abroad. Big names playing on the day included Mark ‘Pokerbok’ Vos, Gavin Griffin, Billy ‘The Croc’ Argyros, Raymond Rahme and Jeff Lisandro.

Sadly, for those that are a keen admirer of Billy ‘the croc’ he was knocked out in sensational fashion. On a flop of A 10 6 his pocket 6’s weren’t good enough to stand up against his opponents’ 1010. Losing with set over set is even more painful for him as he had a 10k prop bet with Peter Eastgate that he would last longer than him.

Other notable exits from the Australian poker tournament include Peter Aristidou, Jeff Lisandro, Raymond Rahme and 2007 champ Grant Levy.

The pace setter of the PokerStars tournament so far though is Jason Gray who amassed 185,000 chips and is miles ahead of his nearest competitors. he won a massive hand early when he called a raise with rags and then a bet on the flop. He turned a straight and his opponents over pair didn’t improve.

In second place on the leader board for the day is team PokerStars pro Gavin Griffin. He finished the day with 1300,000 chips to place himself in with a fighting chance for the rest of the tournament.

Mark Vos has also performed very well on the first day. He was dealt pocket aces in quick succession and managed to double up on both occasions shooting him up the leader board. He lost some chips late in the day but still managed to finish 4th on the day with 74,000 chips.

The top 10 chip counts at the end of play on Day 1b in the PokerStars APPT Sydney are as follows:

Jason Gray – 185,000
Gavin Griffin – 130,000
Andy Meldrum – 78,000
Mark Vos – 74,000
Sam Korman – 73,000
Marlon Goonawardana – 68,000
Andrew Scott – 61,000
Suzy Khoueis – 45,000
Assadour Assadourian – 45,000
Jamie Pickering – 42,000