Day 1a of the 2013 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) Warm-Up event has come to and end following a short but action-filled day of poker on the felt of the PokerStars Live at the City of Dreams.
The final tournament series of the season in Macau was not only the location for winning money, capturing titles and ending cold streaks, but also a place where the 2013 Asia Player of the Year (APOY) would be decided. Like years before, the race for the title would be close and expected to come down to the wire. Terry Fan (2nd overall), Sparrow Cheung (4th overall), Ryan Yu (6th overall) and Alexandre Chieng (7th overall) all made valiant efforts to keep their name in the loop as they survived into Day 2.
Fan flirted with the chip lead from the start of the day, and even a stacked table that featured at times Ryan Hong, Ricky Kroesen, Celina Lin, Ivan Zalac and Johnny Chan didn’t stop him from ending the day with 64,300 in chips – good for ninth overall. Lin would fare better than her PokerStars Team Asia Pro counterpart Raymond Wu who lost a race to join the masses on the rail as she ended the day with 40,700.
Chan made up for a late arrival by eliminating a player and winning multiple pots to find himself well clear on top of the leaderboard, but that lead was cut right down when he lost a big hand with J♥ J♣ to pocket kings as he ended the day with just 15,000.
Other notable survivors of the day included fellow WSOP bracelet holders Naoya Kihara (41,700) and Jarred Graham (40,700), Australian’s Michael Kanaan (33,500), Michael Guzzardi (30,000) and Billy Argyros (19,700), and Macau regulars Ken Wong (60,900), Nathanael Seet (34,400).
However the day would belong to PokerStars Player Kai Sheng Yang who shot out of nowhere to bag a very impressive 120,500 and be one of only three players in the six-figure club as Michael Sun (115,700) and Scotland’s David Vamplew (111,100) are left snapping on his heels with the top ten rounding out as follows.
Top 10 Day 1a Chip Counts
1: Kai Sheng Yang (Chinese Taipei) – 120,500
2: Michael Sun (Canada) – 115,700
3: David Vamplew (Scotland) – 111,100
4: Theodoros Aidonopoulos (Greece) – 95,900
5: Yue Hin Lam (Macau) – 84,900
6: Bernard Trong Huy Vu (France) – 81,100
7: Wesley Pantling (Canada) – 73,100
8: Calvin Kwok Sze Ho (Hong Kong) – 72,000
9: Terry Fan (Chinese Taipei) – 64,300
10: Ken Wong (Hong Kong) – 60,900
Full Day 1a End-of-Day Chip Counts can be found here
With these 65 players all surviving the trecerous battleground known as the poker tables, they will now get to enjoy a day off before returning on Friday at 3:00pm local time to join the survivors of tomorrow’s flight.
Day 1b is expected to draw roughly 200 players with hopes of eclipsing the 358-player field set in November last year. Play is set to begin at 6:00pm local time Thursday night, so make sure to return to the PokerStars Blog for all the live updates.
Back to Top
