2008 Victorian Poker Championships Day 15: Sheldon Leads Final Table

129 eager players returned to the Crown Poker Room for Day 2 of the 2008 Victorian Poker Championships Main Event. They were led by Michael Pinzone and he maintained that lead in the early goings as the big name players started to drop away. Early eliminations included Marlon Goonawardana, Steve Topakas, Mitch Carle, Kenny Ng and Eric Assadourian.
 
The chip leaders throughout the day provided a nice mix of experience and youth. Lisa Walsh emerged from the pack after taking down a monster pot against fellow big stack Ewan Morgan when Walsh’s help up against Morgan’s . Meanwhile Julian Powell settled in for a long day when his ran into an opponent’s to see him sky-rocket up the leaderboard.
 
The talk of the room was the #1 ranked online player in Australia, Jay “Seabeast” Kinkade who claimed the chip lead half way through the day and never looked back. The online phenom was going to be hard to stop once he accumulated chips, especially when if picked up some cards, as evident by his aggressive approach on the bubble that included hands such as pocket kings and ace-king.
 
The bubble would take more than 30 minutes to burst and in the end it was Celina Lin who was the unfortunate victim of a bad beat. Lin had her money in the middle with against the of John Maron but another queen on the flop would end the dreams of glory for Lin in dramatic fashion.
 
Once the bubble bursts the action heated up with Billy Sukkar, Van Marcus, Emanuel Seal and Koun Choy all hitting the rail with some profit, before they were joined by early chip leaders Pinzone, Walsh and Jim Mastorakos. Walsh exited after her top set of queens were run down by the running flush of Sheldon Mayer (who prefers to be known as simply "Sheldon") who claimed the chip lead with 18 left. The experienced trio of Leo Boxell, Sam Khouss and Peter Aristidou all made deep runs but also fell just short of a final table berth.
 
When Patrick Fletcher was eliminated in 11th place our final table had formed but we had to lose one more player until play would end for the day. The unfortunate player was Garth Kay who lost the race with against Tino Lechich’s to give us a final table of nine.
 
Sheldon continued to wield his big stack right up until the final table was formed in the early hours of the morning and will take a healthy chip lead into the final table tomorrow. Here is the final table lineup:
 
Seat 1: Ben Delaney – 443,000
Seat 2: Julian Powell – 705,000
Seat 3: Harris Pavlou – 563,000
Seat 4: Minh Nguyen – 725,000
Seat 5: Tino Lechich – 1,431,000
Seat 6: Sheldon – 1,863,000
Seat 7: Jay Kinkade – 782,000
Seat 8: John Maron – 205,000
Seat 9: Tim Horan – 420,000
 
We hope that you will join us at 4pm tomorrow as the Poker Network brings you live coverage of all of the final table action from the floor of the Crown Poker Room at http://www.pokernetwork.com/reporting, as we look to crown the 2008 Victorian Poker Championships Main Event Champion and award the first place prize of over $200,000!