Sheng Sun Leads APPT9 Macau 50K Freezeout After Day 1
The first of two days for the inaugural Asia Pacific Poker Tour Season 9 HK$50,000 Freezeout saw a field of 81 entrants take to the felt at the PokerStars LIVE Macau at City of Dreams. After 12 levels of play, Sheng Sun topped the field of 26 survivors with 365,000 chips, while Allen Wang (318,000) and Rajeev Raut (274,000) round out the top three.
Action got underway at 18:00 local time and at the end of the second level, the first participant had run out of his 50,000 starting stack entirely. Darian Tan followed soon after and quite a few other notables hit the rail as the day progressed including 2014 Asia Player of the Year (APOY) Pete Chen and the current 2015 ranking leader Yuguang Li. The UK's JP Kelly registered late and lasted all of two hands, while Aaron Lim's and Xing Zhou's day on the felt wasn't any more fortunate either.
Winfred Yu, who recently hosted the grand opening of the Poker King Club (which was attended by Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Johnny Chan) as well as 2014 World Series of Poker Asia Pacific Bracelet winner Sam Higgs didn't make it to the end of Day 1 either and the last level of play saw the departure of both Bryan Huang and Celina Lin within a mere five minutes. WSOP APAC champion Scott Davies almost went the same route but tripled up in the last four hands to bag up 173,000.
Other big stacks and notables include Kim Wittendorff (242,000), Jack Hu (223,000), Thomas Ward (158,000) and David Steicke (93,000). Day 2 will resume at 15:00 local time with blinds at 3,000-6,000 and a running ante of 1,000. The remaining 26 players will fight for the top 10 spots, guaranteeing at least HK$ 110,790 whereas the winner takes home HK$ 997,100.
Day 1A of the HK$25,000 Main Event also gets underway on Wednesday as well, and the PokerNews live reporting team will bring you updates from both events as of 14:00 local time. Have a good night and thanks for tuning in today!