Poker has a tremendous habit of ignoring reputations. You can come to Macau as the reigning world champion, for example, buy in to a $3,000 tournament and be knocked out in round about an hour.
Such was the lot for Greg Merson today, who won’t have much to write home about from APPT7 Macau. But part of the game’s appeal is that someone has to win your chips, and someone else has a chance to shine. Tonight it is three players: Nahum Lum, Matt Carter and Nan Hong who are beaming widest, each of whom has right around 150,000 chips, the most of anyone in the remaining field.
None of Lum (158,500), Carter (154,800) nor Hong (149,300) are especially well known on the international scene, but each now has the hopes of South Africa, New Zealand and China resting on their shoulders. Of course each has a long way to go to turn their day one profits into real money. This is a five day event, finishing on Sunday, and this was only the opening flight.
But Hong won the most possible with aces right at the death, eliminating two opponents at once, Lum managed to survive a day sitting next to the Team PokerStars Pro Raymond Wu, and Carter accumulated steadily from the off, so each every right to sleep soundly.
Despite the hasty exit of Merson, as well as Celina Lin who lasted only about a level longer, this was also a day on which some of the big names in a buoyant field made their presence felt.
Nick Wong is on an enormous heater at the moment, having won the warm-up event at the GuangDong Asia Millions last week, which was good for more than half a million bucks. He was quick out the blocks here today as well, and finished with 104,800.
Vladimir Troyanovskiy is perhaps more accustomed to playing on the high stakes tables of Europe, but he too had a good day here. He has 96,800.
Day 1B starts tomorrow at PokerStars Live at the City of Dreams, and we are expecting another bumper field. We had 184 today, of which only 81 survived the seven levels, but there are sure to be more tomorrow. The target is 400 total, and it looks like we will make it.
Join us tomorrow from 3pm local time for all the action. You can look back on today’s coverage via the panel at the top of the main APPT Macau page, or at the feature coverage below.
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