R18K High Roller Day 2 Preview: AH claims top spot

African Ace Poker Desk · 2026-09-10

AH made late moves to become chip leader going into Day 2 of the R18K High Roller at Emerald.

It was an action-packed day as only 10 players remain from the 36 entries on Day 1.

There are 5.4M chips in play, an average stack of 540K.

AH leads on 1.2M, 122 big blinds deep, 2.2 times the average.

This is mainly thanks to a late showdown with Max Deveson, which saw him overshove Jacks on a A103 flop. Max snapped call with A10, which had AH’s Jack in terrible shape.

But a miracle Jack gifted AH the a chip lead pot, while Max was dented down to the bottom stack.

Muaaz Gani, who was leading the field for most of the day, finished second in chips with 1,17M.

You can expect many players to late reg coming into Day 2 - buy-in and add-on gets you 35 big blinds.

Players will kick off the action at 12PM on Level 11, with blinds at 5000-10000-10000.

What The Counts Mean

Four players return with 50 big blinds or more, deep enough to play post-flop rather than just shove.

The top three hold 57% of the chips in play, so the field is top-heavy.

4 of the 10 sit at or above the 548,000 average.

The Tables

Table 9 carries 1,797,000 across 5 seats, an average of 359,000, led by Rudolf Fourie on 692,000.

Table 10 carries 3,684,000 across 5 seats, an average of 737,000, led by AH with 1,217,000. It is the seat draw with the most pressure, holding 5 of the eight biggest stacks.

Chip Counts

| # | Player | Chips | Big Blinds | Table | Seat | | ---: | :--- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | 1 | AH | 1,217,000 | 122 | 10 | 8 | | 2 | Muaaz Gani | 1,175,000 | 118 | 10 | 3 | | 3 | Mystery Player 1 | 713,000 | 71 | 10 | 1 | | 4 | Rudolf Fourie | 692,000 | 69 | 9 | 4 | | 5 | Hennie Appel | 368,000 | 37 | 9 | 7 | | 6 | Patmaseelan Naicker | 340,000 | 34 | 9 | 3 | | 7 | Imran Bhojani | 329,000 | 33 | 10 | 6 | | 8 | Jaime Vilela | 250,000 | 25 | 10 | 2 | | 9 | Marko Nortje | 237,000 | 24 | 9 | 5 | | 10 | Max Deveson | 160,000 | 16 | 9 | 1 |