Alex Ward: Dominant chip leader in Macau

APPT Macau has reached it magnificent final seven, the results of a swashbuckling day within the PokerStars LIVE card-room on the City of Dreams--and person who came straight from the dreams of the young British player Alex Ward.

Really, this couldn't have gone better for Ward, who has a huge chip lead heading to tomorrow's final. He has previously picked up a title when the APT headed to Cebu, within the Philippines, nevertheless it was worth a comparatively meagre US$37,469. 

Tomorrow, Ward has 4,715,000 chips in his stack, that's about 45 percent of the full chips in play. He'll have his eyes fixed firmly at the HK$2,694,000 first prize. That's about $US$350,000, i.e., nearly ten times his previous high tournament cash.

It's all of the more remarkable for the reason that when play resumed today with 64 players, no person was yet guaranteed anything. It was the stone bubble, and Ward didn't also have some of the biggest stacks within the room.

Crucially, he did not have some of the smallest either and was capable of chill as Hong Wang got the last of his chips in against Weijian Xie. Wang's pocket jacks were cracked by Xie's K♠9♠ and that began the push of eliminations that follows the bursting of the bubble.

Hong Wang bursts the bubble

That's when Ward went to work and was just about unstoppable. The likes of Mikal Blomlie, Christopher Soyza and Constantine Paparestis all picked up min-cashes before Chen An Lin became the last of the Team PokerStars Pros to perish. But Ward just went up and up.

Although Ying Fu, Yu Han and Hanyang Peng all had the lead at one point or another, none of them made the overall nine. Neither, for that matter, did Juicy Li's whose tournament resulted in 11th.

When they return tomorrow, they'll line up as follows: 

Seat 1) Jiayi Jin, China - 465,000Seat 2) Weijian Xie, China - 1,215,000Seat 3) Ying Fu, China - 1,105,000Seat 4) Zhiyi Feng, China - 685,000Seat 5) Jian Guo Sun, China - 1,055,000Seat 6) Alex Ward, Uk - 4,715,000Seat 7) Bernard Vu, France - 1,420,000

You can have a look back at the way it all played out by scrolling in the course of the blow-by-blow action at the Day 3 coverage page. And head to the payouts page to look what all of them picked up.

Ward was coy about his chances tomorrow, reluctant to assert the title was already won. But he was by some measure essentially the most irresistible force within the room today and goes to take some stopping after they play to a winner.

Join us from 2pm tomorrow.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Asia Pacific Poker Tour]