2014 ACOP: Joseph Cheong tops stacked Super High Roller field
November 2nd 2014
By Heath "TassieDevil" Chick
The 2014 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) is now into its second week and the action kicked up to a new level on Saturday with the first of the feature events of the series.
The Macau Billionaire Poker $500,000 Super High Roller Event would attract some of the biggest players in the world, as well as a throng of wealthy Asian businessmen, to battle for a record ACOP prize pool.
Headlining the field was the immortal Phil Ivey who was undoubtedly desperate to get back onto the poker felt after missing the recent WSOP APAC due to his edge sorting court case in London. Others to join Ivey included Max Altergott, Stanley Choi, Rono Lo, Dan Colman, Peter Chan, David Yan, Isaac Baron, Winfred Yu, Jack Salter, Isaac Haxton, Jonathan Duhamel, Tobias Reinkemeier, Mike McDonald, Sorel Mizzi, Dan Smith and Australians Jeff Rossiter, Aaron Lim, Julius Colman and Geoff Mooney.
Just seven levels of play on Day 1 would produce few eliminations but plenty of rebuys. The starting field of 52 entrants combined for another 50 rebuys, with just five of those players failing to progress through to Day 2. The prize pool was close to HK$50 million (~US$6.25 million), with a top prize of over US$1.8 million.
Click here for the complete prize pool breakdown
Olivier Busquet, Ismael Erkenov, Byron Kaverman, Vladimir Troyanovskiy and Schichun Wu were the only players to fail to make it to Day 2, while at the other end of the leaderboard is former November Niner Joseph Cheong (pictured).
After landing a big pot with quads late in the day, Cheong was able to bag up over 3 million in chips for a clear advantage over the surviving 47 players. Rather incredibly the high roller crushers Dan Colman and Tobias Reinkemeier have continued their hot form to sit inside the top three.
HK$500,000 Super High Roller Day 1 Top Ten Counts
Joseph Cheong - 3,052,000
Daniel Colman - 2,583,000
Tobias Reinkemeier - 2,567,000
Ryan Fee - 2,499,000
Mustapha Kanit - 2,209,000
Connor Drinan - 1,902,000
Mike McDonald - 1,823,000
Jason Mo - 1,777,000
Guanfei Zhu - 1,629,000
Pratyush Buddiga - 1,496,000
Phil Ivey (1,280,000), Dan Smith (1,242,000) and Sorel Mizzi (1,216,000) are all above average while short stacks include Julius Colman, Winfred Yu, Stanley Choi and Eugene Katchalov.
Click here for the complete Day 1 chip counts and Day 2 Seating Draw
The 47 remaining players will resume at 2pm on Sunday to play all the way down to a final table of eight. The MBP Super High Roller Event is a three-day event with the final table set for Monday afternoon, before the HK$100,000 Main Event commences on Tuesday with a HK$15,000,000 prize pool guarantee.
Head to the PokerStars Blog for live updates or check back with Poker Asia Pacific for daily recaps of all the action from the 2014 Asia Championship of Poker.