The flights are over and the hunt has begun.
We’ve had 158 players sign up for the tournament the past two days and now the survivors have plopped down in the same room. The money is now in sight as well, with the end of Day 1s came the birth of our prize pool, PHP 14,099,920
While 76 players remain, only 20 will get a nibble of that Filipino prize. Making the money will guarantee a PHP 141,000 payday and, we shed players, that guarantee will go all the way up to our 1st place prize of PHP 3,948,000.
But that prize requires all the chips and there are still 76 people hanging on to theirs. The player who’s currently holding on to the most is PokerStars qualifier and true Aussie, Ivan Zalac. Zalac finished Day 1A with 109,100 and no one could top him in Day 1B.
Day 1A also brought us our 2nd in 3rd in chips. Those places, respectively, go to Khac Tran (105,900) and Sotirios Koutopas (101,800). Our Day 1B leader, Milan Gurung, will come in at 4th with 99,900. Just one pesky grey chip away from a six-figure chip mark.
The young ex-pat contingent also showed up for this tournament. Stevie Chidwick, Dan Kelly, Vincent Rubianes and Jim Collopy showed up, but only Collopy remains to fight it out in Day 2.
There’s also a small hometeam contingent. We have three surviving players from the Philippines: William Mcauley (81,500), Jose Medina (46,200) and Victor de Guzman (12,500).
Also in the field is Team PokerStars Pro Bryan Huang, with 19,800. Huang was one of four Team PokerStars Pro to take a crack at APPT Cebu, and now he’s the only one left standing.
Play is now underway and we’ll be following the same format as the previous two days. We’ll play six one-hour levels with a 10-minute break every two.
For live updates on this event, go head and check out our live-updates page.
Alexander Villegas is wearing sandals for the PokerStars Blog.
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