Player of the Year Showdown Looming at ANZPT Queenstown

An ANZPT player of the year showdown is looming in Queenstown with John Maklouf, Andrew Scarf, Jason Gray, and Vesko Zmukic all alive and kicking coming into the fourth day of play in Queenstown. All four players have made the points earlier in the season and with the leaderboard so tight you could throw a blanket across the field, the points are going to mean just as much as the cash tomorrow.

The day started out with mild conditions outside, but hot action on the felt would see another short shift for the players taking just six hours to get down to the 15 players making the money. The final fifteen include many familiar names including chip leader Vesko Zmukic (479,000), Andrew Watson (393,700), Julian “intimad8or32” Cohen (294,000), Bryan Huang (226,000) and Michael Spilkin (210,000) filling out the top five spots.

Further down the list Jie Gao (150,300), Jason Gray (122,400), John Maklouf (74,100), Robert Wang (53,900), Tim Clarke (44,300) and Andrew Scarf (16,000) are all still in contention. Scarf will need to look to do some early damage to stop Maklouf and Gray grabbing a substantial advantage in the player of the year race.

 After sitting in the top three in chips yesterday night Team PokerStars Pro Lee "Final Table" Nelson can consider himself unlucky, he fell short of the cash in 17th place. Two spots shy of the money Nelson got involved with Jie Gao and Andrew Watson. All three put 11,200 into the pot preflop and Watson took charge firing 16,700 at the flop. Gao got out of the way, but Nelson made a stand check-raising to 42,500, which Watson called. The turn was the which Nelson moved all in for another 78,600 sending Watson into the tank. When he emerged three minutes later he made the call with to have his pair out in front of the big move by Nelson’s flush draw. Watson faded Nelson’s flush outs and took down a huge pot sending Nelson home short of the dough.

Also among the 35 players bowing out in day three action were Tony Hachem, Chris Levick, James Bills and Rick Kroesen. Play gets underway again tomorrow at 10:15am AEST tomorrow as they play down to a champion. PokerNetwork will be back with a full event recap following the conclusion of the 2010 ANZPT Queenstown.