This is Liu's second EPT final table. She finished 3rd at EPT San Remo last season.

The 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event final table has the makings to be an interesting one.  First and foremost, any final table where Faraz Jaka, a player known for his unorthodox style of play, is chip leader is bound to be interesting.  This final table also features some other compelling character, including 2009 PCA Main Event runner-up Tony Gregg, looking to improve on his finish from three years ago, and Xuan Liu, the first female in the nine years the PCA has run to ever make the final table.

These three players and the other five who will be back in action at Friday’s final table had to battle their way through a long day of action that started at 12pm ET and did not wrap up until shortly before 1am.  Along the way, Alex Venovski (23rd), David Peters (22nd), Corey Burbick (21st), Byron Kaverman (18th), Alex Fitzgerald (14th), Phil ‘Auteuil (11th), and Martin Jacobson (10th) all hit the rail.  With long stretches of play without an elimination, the blinds climbed and the final table will feature a relatively low average stack of around 33 big blinds, which is about 4 million chips.

Jaka, who once again ended the day with a chip lead thanks to a fortunate pot late in the day where he picked up pocket aces in a three-way all-in situation, will begin with an above average 6,470,000 and the chip lead, but the title of big stack doesn’t mean as much when you consider that Kyle Julius is second in chips with 6,450,000.  The two are separated by just two antes and Liu is right behind them with 6,355,000.

It looked like Gregg would be the odd man out when play got down to nine-handed action.  He doubled up fellow shortstack John Dibella and was left with just six big blinds on the final table bubble.  He managed to double up to stay alive though, while Lee Goldman fell victim to a two outer when his pocket kings failed to hold up against Dibella’s pocket nines.  Dibella’s lucky nine on the river meant Goldman was the final table bubble boy and Gregg becomes the first player ever to final table this giant event twice.

Rounding out the final table line-up is Dutch poker pro Ruben Visser, Mark Drover, and David Bernstein, who is playing in his first ever $10,000 event after winning his way in via a sweepstakes drawing sponsored by Ukash, a site where players can deposit money on PokerStars.

Here are the chip counts and seat assignments for Friday’s Main Event final table. Play will get underway at 1pm ET on Friday with the livestream of the action with hole cards getting underway on PokerStars.tv 40 minutes later:

Seat 1: Mark Drover – 1,430,000
Seat 2: Tony Gregg – 1,160,000
Seat 3: David Bernstein – 1,960,000
Seat 4: Ruben Visser – 4,400,000
Seat 5: Faraz Jaka – 6,470,000
Seat 6: John Dibella – 3,465,000
Seat 7: Xuan Liu – 6,355,000
Seat 8:  Kyle Julius – 6,450,000

While the Main Event was winding down, the $25,000 High Roller Event was getting underway.  For the second year in a row, the tournament drew well over 125 players.  For the first time ever, the tournament allowed re-entries during the first few levels of action, so the field of  141 players generated 148 entries after Bertrand Grospellier, Chris Moorman, Chance Kornuth, Joe Elpayaa, Michael Mizrachi, Eui Woong Kim, and Nick Yunis, who won both of his seats into the event via satellites, elected to re-enter after busting.  The tournament boasts a prize pool of more than $3.6 million as a result, with first place taking $1,134,930 and the top 16 finishers making the money.

Yunis was near the top of the counts late in Day 1 action, as was the red hot Jonathan Duhamel and Andrew Lichtenberger.  The three day tournament is expected to play down to the eight-handed final table on Friday, but with such a large, tough field, that might be a tall order.  After ten hours of Day 1 action, there were approximately 75 players remaining.

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