Haxton, Sulsky Advance in $100k All Star Showdown

Battling Alex "Kanu7" Millar in an epic quarterfinal that took up most of the day yesterday, Haxton had to come back from a major deficit to move forward in his debut event as a Team PokerStars Online pro.

Haxton said in advance of the match he expected a long one and he was right as Millar matched him move for move for most of the day.

Haxton surged to an early $60k lead by around hand 1,000 but by hand 2,000 Millar had taken a similar lead.

When they reached 3,000 hands the blinds were doubled, as per Showdown rules, and Haxton had whittled Kanu7's lead down to about $40k.

Bigger and bigger pots changed hands over the next couple of hours as Haxton cut into Millar's lead before taking control late and surging to the victory in hand 3,881.

All told the two battled for over 17 hours and agreed the match could have gone either way:

Kanu7: congrats gg Ike Haxton: thanks Ike Haxton: gg Ike Haxton: crazy match Kanu7: yeah Kanu7: win the QQ vs AK 1 time ffs Ike Haxton: lol Ike Haxton: indeed Kanu7: can't remember the last time i was more card dead than the last couple of hours as well :( Kanu7: ah well, shame someone has to lose such an epic match but best of luck for the rest of the tourney Ike Haxton: yeah, i believe it Ike Haxton: it really felt that way Ike Haxton: thanks, you played really well

Haxton Meets Sulsky in Semis; Cates, Galfond On Deck

Now that Haxton has advanced he'll have to switch his attention to Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, his opponent in the next round.

Sulsky had a much quicker go of it in his quarterfinal on Saturday, leading Tobias "KTPOKP" Kuder wire to wire and busting him in less than six hours.

Four more heavy hitters are still to hit the tables this week on the other side of the bracket including high-stakes heroes Dan Cates and Phil Galfond.

Action picks up again on Tuesday with the remainder of the schedule as follows:

30 October: Alexander 'Sussie Smith' Roumeliotis vs Dan 'w00ki3z.' Cates 31 October: Phil 'mrsweets28' Galfond vs Ben 'ben86' Tollerene

Semi-finals

2 November: Haxton vs. Sulsky 3 November: Semi-final 2

Finals

4 November: The All Star Showdown final

For a full recap of all the action over the weekend, check the PokerStars blog.

The eight-person heads-up event has a $100k buy-in with action over four tables at once.

The ultimate winner will take home over $500k. More info on the structure of the challenge here.

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