This past week saw the ‘PokerStars LIVE Macau’ poker room complete ACOP Platinum Series IX from June 9-14. The six-day series had six Official Asia Player of the Year (APOY) events which, in total, drew 557 players and awarded nearly HK$2 million in prize money.
While the standard narrative in poker and sports is to focus on the winners of the biggest events, this week’s champions were perhaps overshadowed by Team PokerStars Pro Celina Lin and Hong Kong’s KC Wong.
Lin inched her way towards another milestone after placing 5th in the HK$3,000 NLH event. That feat marks her 29th final table to extend her all-time lead for final tables in APOY events. Lin needs just one more final table to be the first to reach 30. Her nearest competitor is Raiden Kan who has 27.
Reigning Asia Player of the Year Pete Chen is having a fabulous follow-up season. Chen, a PokerStars sponsored player, won Event 5 in a gritty performance. He overcame an 11-to-1 chip deficit in heads up play to win the HK$10,000 NLH event which moves him into the Top Ten on the leaderboard.
2015 Asia Player of the Year rankings can be found here.
However, heads up play would stretch to more than 2 hours where, at one point, Lam even managed to take the chip lead. Eventually, Kim would regain that lead and win the tournament with just King high after a pre-flop all-in with K8 vs. JT where neither player improved after five streets.
In total, 21 players cashed for a share of the HK$816,400 prize pool.
FINAL TABLE RESULTS
1. Alex Kim (Korea) — HK$204,100
2. Gary Lam (Macau) — HK$134,700
3. Sam Cheong (Macau) — HK$85,700
4. Xiang Zhou (China) — HK$69,400
5. Minghua Zhou (China) — HK$55,100
6. Alex Ward (UK) — HK$44,900
7. Edward Gildar (Hong Kong) — HK$36,700
8. Ning Wang (China) — HK$28,600
9. KC Wong (Hong Kong) — HK$20,400
For complete results visit the ACOP Platinum Series homepage.