Nam Le Victorious at APPT High Roller Tournament

After two days of play in Macau it came down to the final nine players to battle it out yesterday for the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour High Rollers crown. Overnight chip leader David Steicke had been pulverising tables on the previous two days, but with pros such as Quinn Do, Nam Le and the legend that is Johnny Chan at the table, this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

It proved to be too much for Steicke, as the experience of the pros at the final table started to show. The action started slowly enough, with short stacked Van Marcus the first out after an hour of play. He was closely followed by Ivan Tan who ran his ATs into the AKs of Charles Chua.

Eyes were still firmly cast on Chan as the rail wondered if it could be a fairy tale win for The Orient Express. Unfortunately the two-time WSOP Main Event champion was derailed in seventh after he lost a race with sixes against Steicke’s Ace Queen. By the time the players went to the dinner break Wei Will Ma had also been eliminated, leaving five to think about the $475,000 first place prize.

On their return, Nam Le went to work, taking his micro-stack and doubling up twice in quick time. It got better for Le as he then went to eliminate Steicke after the man who had lead for so long thought his Tens were ahead after being four-bet by Le’s Kings. The flop gave Le something to sweat though as it came Jd-9h-8c, but the turn and river proved to be safe for the Vietnamese-born pro.

Chuck Tran had finished second on the APPT Main Event hours before this event had kicked off, and his late entry proved to be a wise one. He couldn’t equal that result here as he went out in fourth place, but it was another good pay day ($115,384) for the man they call ‘The Truck’.

Of the triplet of players remaining Andrew Scott was clearly the least experienced. When Quinn Do was took a harsh beat with pocket Tens against Scott’s Ace-Ten, it looked that Scott had enough chips to cause a nuisance to Le. In the end Le used his relentless aggression to overpower Scott, who eventually had to settle for second place after he decided to gamble with Jack-Ten against Le’s King-Deuce.