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Home / Uncategorized / Manila Megastack 3: South Korea’s Jeon dominates Day 1a

Seung Soo Jeon from South Korea was clearly the man of the hour. We don’t even know how many players he railed but with a massive stack of 605,000 at the end of day 1a of the Manila Megastack 3 at the PokerStars Live Manila poker room in City of Dreams Manila, that’s equivalent to a total of twenty starting stacks, and a good number of those were amassed from merciless scalping.

Seung Soo Jeon, Day 1a chip leader.jpg

In the Manila Megastack 3 updates, Jeon had crossed the 200k chip mark well before registration closed and then proceeded to dominate the table for the rest of the day. He eliminated most of the short stacks at his table, sometimes multiple players at a time, and gave some of the average stacks a difficult time earning their chips. Of course Jeon had hands, and most of the time they were simply unbeatable. The last player he eliminated tried to take a stand with his short stack by going all in with ace-three off suit, but Jeon’s pocket eights were too good as it landed a full house.

Coming in second in chips, though far behind Jeon, was local player Jester Intia with 363,000 chips. Although we seemed to miss Intia’s hands, we did notice that his stack kept growing steadily at each level. Upon speaking to Intia , he kindly gave us the scoop on how he earned some of his chips. Having already accumulated over 250k, he railed two players simultaneously at the last level of the day. Intia had pocket aces versus two lower pocket pairs held by the other players in the hand. With everyone all in preflop, the board ran four spades, and with none of them having a spade, and none improving, Intia claimed the pot and eventually bagged up a hefty stack well above average stack for day 2.

Other notables who made the cut into day 2 were Renato Villanueva (Philippines) with 256,000 chips, John King (USA) 231,000 chips, and Yang Zhang (China) with 145,000 chips. Zhang is currently third in the Asia Player of the Year 2015 leader board.

Local player Bruce Wayne Fabillaran was also making waves at the felt. At one point he overtook Jeon as chip leader after claiming two big pots nearly back-to-back in level 12. We are glad to have caught the action on those hands just before the shipping, they are posted in the updates.. Fabillaran ended the day with 302,000 chips, fourth in chips just behind Bernardo Angeles with 308,000.

Though not very many women participated in the main event, one of them did qualify, Maria Cristina Argao, who is in fine shape, currently in fifth in chips with 264,000.

Among the fallen were Per Douglas Olsson, runner up of the APPT 2015 Manila main event, Jesse Leonarez, third place finisher at the APPT 2015 Manila main event, APOY 2014 winner Pete Chen, Alan King Lun Lau who leads the APOY 2015 leader board, Team Asia PokerStars pro Bryan Huang Diwei, local pro Lester Edoc, and local celebrity sponsored player Anton Diva.

The Manila Megastack 3 saw a total of 168 entries with a buyin of P10,000 each. This brought the total prize pool just for day 1a to over PHP1.4m. This event has a 2M guarantee, and with today’s numbers, it is looking very much like this will exceed the guarantee after tomorrow’s final day 1 flight, especially that only 29 players made the cut into day 2. Additionally, there is an added value for the winner, an Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) 2M GTD Spadie (HKD2,000,000) package inclusive of airfare from Manila and some spending cash.

Day 1b will begin earlier so for those looking to get in, and possibly avoid being an alternate, the event will begin at 1230pm, Saturday September 26, 2015.

Congratulations to all the qualifiers!! See you tomorrow!

Day 1a Survivors: 29
Seung Soo Jeon – South Korea – 605,000
Jester Intia – Philippines – 363,000
Bernardo Angeles – Philippines- 308,000
Bruce Wayne Fabillaran – Philippines – 302,000
Maria Cristina Argao – Philippines – 264,000
Jae Wook Shin – Philippines – 257,000
Renato Villanueva – Philippines – 256,000
John King -USA – 231,000
Takahiro Abe – Japan – 213,000
Felix Michael Weis – Luxembourg – 191,000
Nickolai Alexandrov – USA – 176,000
John Niko Costiniano – Philippines – 158,000
Michael Campos – Philippines – 151,000
Yang Zhang – China – 145,000
Byeong Jun “Tom” Cho – Korea – 143,000
David Colclough – UK – 138,000
Grogorii Kavin – Russia – 134,000
Christian Mabalot – Philippines – 125,000
Cecillio Hodreal – Philippines – 121,000
Edwin Marzan – Philippines – 100,000
Kwangyeop Choi – South Korea – 94,000
Sebastian Jonsson – Spain – 89,000
Wei Chieh Chang – Taiwan – 77,000
Aldrien David Villanueva – Philippines – 77,000
Teofisto Pelayo – Philippines – 76,000
Paul Gianfriddo – Australia – 71,000
Tyler Huff – USA – 68,000
In Sin – South Korea – 57,000
Srinivas Polishetty – India – 57,000

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