August 26 2011, Josh Bell

After six tough levels of play, Day 2 of the 2011 PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Queenstown Main Event came to a close on Friday. The day began with 71 players heading back to the felt and by the start of the third level, over 20 of them had made their ways to the rail. At the end of play, there were exactly 50 players who headed toward the exit on Friday. Ricky Kroesen, Ben McLean, Jesse McKenzie and PokerStars Team Online’s Dale Philip are some of the players who no longer have a chance at APPT glory on this stop.

The player primed with the best chance at making a run at the NZD$94,300 first-place prize is Germany’s Marcel Schreiner. Schriener began the day as one of the chip leaders and even though he had a roller coaster start to the day, by the time his chips went into the bag, his stack was towering over the competition.

A large proportion of Schreiner’s stack came from young Australian Tom Grigg, who is known for crushing online tournaments under the screen name “tollgate.” It looked like Grigg was set to finish the day as the chip leader, but he managed to lose a big chunk of his stack to Schreiner on the third-to-last hand of the day. The two players fought out the massive pot while hand-for-hand play had already ended for the rest of the field.

The pot in question was four-bet preflop, with the aggression continuing onto the flop. By the time the board was showing , one of the biggest pots of the day was building. On the river, Grigg fired out 35,500 into the six-figure pot. Schreiner tanked for several minutes before calling and taking down the pot when his , holding just the high cards was too good for Grigg’s .

Only 21 players will return on Saturday and there are still plenty of familiar names in the field including Andrew Hinrichsen (90,000), Jackson Zheng (121,200) and Hugh Cohen (143,900). Also remaining in the field and returning for Day 3 is 2010 APPT Sydney Main Event Champion Jonathan Karamalikis. Returing with an impressive 192,800 in chips, “xMONSTERxDONGx” is set to give himself a fighting chance at becoming a two-time APPT champion. Below is a look at how all the returning players stack up.

Day 3 Chip Counts

With the small amount of players returning for Day 3 and play not scheduled to finish until Day 4 on Sunday, the tournament will have late afternoon start on Saturday. The action will be kicking off at 1600 NZST (2100 PDT) and the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will again be on the floor with all the action as the 2011 APPT Queenstown Main Event plays down to a final table.

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