China’s Yueqi Zhu came within a whisker of achieving every poker player’s dream after being eliminated on the final table bubble of the World Series of Poker main event on Thursday.
The 55-year-old engineer from Benxi, China, now residing in California, was eliminated in 10th and in incredibly cruel fashion when he found himself in a three-way all-in, with he and France’s Antoine Labay both holding KK against the AA of Nicolas Manion.
Despite his close call, Yueqi pocketed more than US$850,000 for his deep run after charging through the field of 7,874 players – the second biggest WSOP main event field of all time. He also has a WSOP bracelet to his name after winning the Mixed $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better event just a few weeks ago. Yueqi’s main event run was his 77th career WSOP cash.
While he fell agonizingly short of a final table dream for China, Australia will have its first main event final table representative since Joe Hachem won the biggest prize in poker in 2005, with 28-year-old Alex Lynskey sitting fifth in the chip counts.
Lynskey, who hails from Brisbane, survived a rollercoaster Day 7 of the world’s most prestigious tournament and is now guaranteed a minimum US$1 million payday with US$8.8 million awaiting the eventual champion, although he has work to do to catch chip leaders Manion and Michael Dyer with 112,775,000 and 109,175,000 respectively.
Lynskey is no stranger to Australia’s poker community, having already secured a number of impressive scores in recent years. He finished 9th at the 2015 Aussie Millions then fourth in the same event 12 months later, conquered the inaugural Australasian Poker Challenge at The Star in Sydney in 2016 and came within a whisker of a WSOP bracelet in 2017 when he finished runner-up in the $2,620 “The Marathon” for US$427,000. In total he boasts live career earnings of almost US$1.7 million but is on track to more than double that when the final table kicks off later today.
To do so he will need to conquer a former WSOP main event final table champion. In 2009, Joe Cada became the youngest player to ever win the main event at just 21 years of age and has a chance to create history after a late surge on Thursday.
The WSOP final table will be played over the course of the next three days with the winner, who will pocket a massive US$8.8 million, to be crowned on Sunday, Macau-time.
2018 WSOP final table:
Nicolas Manion 112,775,000
Michael Dyer 109,175,000
Tony Miles 42,750,000
John Cynn 37,075,000
Alex Lynskey 25,925,000
Joe Cada 23,675,000
Aram Zobian 18,875,000
Artem Metalidi 15,475,000
Antoine Labat 8,050,000
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