Thursday, 28th March 2024 22:23
Home / Uncategorized / ACOP Warm-Up: Tom Alner Crushes Day 2; Money Bubble Looming

Day 2 of the Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) Warm-Up has now concluded with the United Kingdom’s Tom Alner the chip leader over the remaining 40 players.

Alner began the day log-jammed in the middle of 145-player returning field but soon saw his chip stack grow upwards. However his rocket to the top of the leaderboard wouldn’t happen until after the first break when he dispatched of Sparrow Cheung. Alner opened with a raise only to have Cheung three-bet then snap-call it off as Alner four-bet shoved. Cheung tabled K♦ K♣ to be in dominating shape against Alner’s 9♦ 9♣ but the Qâ™  10♣ 9♥ 10♦ J♣ board would see Alner connect and find himself on close to 300,000 – or roughly 1,600 big blinds.

Chip leader Tom Alner

Only a handful of players would accumulate a stack that could contend with Alner during the middle part of the day, and at one point ANZ Player of the Year Iori Yogo took the lead by the smallest of margins. However Alner – or the poker gods – must have caught wind that he had been knocked off his perch as the biggest pot of the tournament so far would take place. Following a few limps Alner would bump it up on the button before Alvin Cheam three-bet the small blind. The big blind then moved all in and both Alner and Cheam called. The flop landed 10♦ 6♦ 3♣ and Alner bet-called Cheam’s all-in to be in great shape holding Aâ™  A♥ against Cheam’s K♦ K♥ and the big blind’s J♣ 10♣ . The turn and river blanked out and Alner scooped the massive pot to take him to 525,000.

Alner then never looked back as he ended the day with 546,000 over the remaining 40 players that are just two more eliminations away from being in the money and guaranteed a HK$45,000 payday.

Top 10 Chip Counts
Tom Alner (UK) – 546,000
Saehoon Lee (Korea) – 408,000
Victor Hon (Australia) – 377,500
Calvin Ho (Hong Kong) – 321,500
Iori Yogo (Japan) – 312,000
David Foran (Ireland) – 305,500
Patrick Crivell (Canada) – 287,500
William Te (Philippines) – 265,500
Keita Koyama (Japan) – 265,000
Paul Cheng (Hong Kong) – 234,500

End-of-Day 2 Chip Counts

Saehoon Lee and Calvin Ho quietly amassed giant chip stacks as well, while Yogo got bounced from table to table as he accumulated an impressive stack. Macau regulars Juicy Li, Kai Paulsen, Ken Wong and Raymond Chow survived while Australian’s Michael Guzzardi, Julius Colman and Billy Argyros also made it through.

ACOP2013_WarmUp_Day2_TerryFan.jpg
Terry Fan eyeing more than a min-cash as valuable Player of the Year points are on the line

However many eyes will be on Terry Fan as this result can drastically shape the 2013 Asia Player of the Year standings as he is sitting behind Tetsuya Tsuchikawa by a narrow margin. A big result here and Fan will have one hand on the trophy heading into the second week of the series.

Day 3 Seating Draw

Day 3 will commence at 3:00pm local time with the PokerStars Blog providing continuous live updates as we firstly burst the bubble and then play down till a final table of nine is reached.

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