Home / Poker News August 2009 / APT Macau – Day 1B: expected 200 player starting field falls short
APT Macau – Day 1B: expected 200 player starting field falls short
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2009-08-24 05:58
Organizers had expected over 200 players to show up for the second Day 1 flight of the APT’s Macau stop. Unfortunately, those hopes weren’t met as only 193 registrants took to the green felt on Day 1B. That still took the overall number of registrants to 326, a reasonable increase from last year’s 257 entrants. Even more promising was the fact that most of this year’s registrants were local players, which is an obvious sign that poker is in fact gaining a strong foothold in Asia.
Day 1B of the APT’s Macau Main Event featured fierce action from the get go. David “Chino” Rheem and Tommy Le didn’t find this of a good auspice though as the two of them went down among the first victims of the day.
Both of them took bad beats to head to the rail: Rheem was eliminated by an opponent who spiked a third K on the river to improve his pocket Kings to a set. Le went up against a player who had pocket threes, on a flop which gave Le a two pair. The opponent hit a third 3 on the turn though to send Le packing.
Other “name” pros found the early going tough as well. Steve Yoh found himself eliminated early too, and he was soon followed to the rail by John Juanda and James Akenhead.
Stewart Scott on the other hand, enjoyed a much smoother ride. His A,K managed to land an A and crack an opponent’s pocket Ks to offer Scott a double-up and a lease on his tournament life.
After the break, the action heated up even more. Don Carmona was the headliner of this post break period as he landed a nice pot with an A-high by making the correct call against an opponent’s bluff. He celebrated noisily by running up and down among the tournament tables.
Poker divas Liz Lieu and Liv Boeree also faded away after the break, just as Cecilia Nordenstam began to build up her stack.
JC Tran in the meantime was busy staying alive. The early going had taken its toll on the double WSOP bracelet winner and it took some skillful short-stack action from him to stave off elimination. He did manage to hit a straight with his A,3o against two of his opponents’ dominating hands and that was all he needed to return to his winning ways and to build his stack back up.
51 players remained in contention at the end of the day, and the provisional chip lead went to Eugene Teh, who had accumulated around 95,000 chips to clinch the top spot.
Stewart Scott and Don Carmona were both hot on his tail though. Johnny Chan also survived the day, as did Steve Sung and David Chiu.
Given the fact that the winner is guaranteed a $390,000 prize, the survivors have plenty of motivation to wage some heated battles throughout the remainder of the tournament.
