Friday, 29th March 2024 02:39
Home / Uncategorized / ACOP Warm-Up: Tom Chio Smashes Day 1B; 145 Remain for Day 2

Day 1B of the 2013 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) Warm-Up is now in the bag and it is Singapore’s Tom Chio who steam-rolled the field to end the day as the overall chip leader.

From a hand perspective, Chio would have a fairly quiet day as anytime the PokerStars Blog staff ventured over to his table he was never getting involved. After several hands of stalking him for a hand to write up we would be led elsewhere to catching a double or an elimination. However on the next pass by his table he all of a sudden had added chunk of chips to his already dominating stack. – maybe Chio just isn’t one for poker media attention?

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Day 1B chip leader Tom Chio

Either way Chio dominated Day 1B as he had already amassed more chips than Day 1A chip leader Kai Sheng Yang relatively early and just used that momentum to motor him over the 200,000-chip threshold in the last few hands of the night before ending with an impressive 198,200. It felt like light years between Chio and the next best Nang Nguyen who bagged 114,200 while Australian Alvin Cheam (101,900) and Sixiao “Juicy” Li (99,300) rounded out the top ten. Cheam was the culprit in eliminating 2013 Asia Player of the Year front runner Tetsuya Tsuchikawa when his 10♦ 10♣ held up against the Tsuchikawa’s preflop shove with pocket fours. That seat however was taken by Chio himself, and just like it was for most of today, Cheam will find himself on Chio’s direct left when play resumes on Day 2.

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Alvin Cheam … Not getting the best seating draws

Like every poker tournament, there will always be players that have rough days, and today was no exception as over half the field eventually found themselves on the rail. Recent WSOP Asia Pacific bracelet winner Aaron Lim arrived late and left early while players such as Randy “nanonoko” Lew, Lee Nelson, Trung Tran, David Borg, Didier Guerin and PokerStars Team Asia Pro Bryan Huang also found themselves on the unhappy side of the rail.

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Bryan Huang at better times

Previous Asia Player of the Year Yosuke Sekiya may have regretted arriving early as he was eliminated before the conclusion of the first level in dramatic fashion. Sekiya opened with a raise and then continuation-bet a J♣ 7♦ K♦ flop and found one caller before Julius Colman check-raised. Sekiya bombed it all in and Colman instantly called with his 7â™  7♣ , but he would be in for a cruel awakening at the sight of Sekiya’s Kâ™  K♣ . That feeling of disgust would soon switch players as the dealer delivered the painful 7♥ on the turn to give Colman a one-outer and send the Japanese player home once he couldn’t find his one-outer on the river.

Top 10 Day 1B Chip Counts
1: Tom Chio (Singapore) – 198200
2: Nang Quang Nguyen (Vietnam), PokerStars Live Qualifier – 114200
3: Masayoshi Tanaka (Japan) – 113200
4: David Foran (Ireland), PokerStars Live Qualifier – 104900
5: Saehoon Lee (Korea) – 102400
6: Alvin Cheam (Australia), PokerStars Player – 101900
7: Wei Hsiang Yeu (Malaysia) – 100000
8: Juicy Li (China) – 99300
9: Shashank Rathi (Hong Kong) – 99200
10: Yibo Zhou (China) – 99100

Full End-of-Day 1A and 1B Chip Counts can be found here
Complete Day 2 Seating Draw can be found here

With the 80 survivors from today joining the 65 survivors from Day 1A a field of 145 will take to the felt tomorrow to battle down to the money – or as close to it.

Play will begin a little earlier than the previous two days at 3:00pm local time, and the PokerStars Blog will be on hand to provide all the live updates from PokerStars Live at the City of Dreams.

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