Wei Guoliang Tops Day 1B Poker King Cup Macau Main Event
The second of the Poker King Cup Macau Main Event’s three starting flights is now in the books. A total of 131 players anted up the HK$15,000+$1,500 buy-in to bring the total number of entrants for the two starting flights so far up to 200, with Day 1C still left to play.
The action was non-stop from start to finish with several players battling it out for the chip lead as the day progressed, but it was China’s Wei Guoliang who emerged on top, finishing the day with 179,100. While this saw Guoliang top the 1B leaderboard the overall lead still belongs to Day 1A front runner Alex Lee from Singapore, closely followed by the USA’s Benjamin Hamnett, with Guoliang now rounding out the top three.
The Chinese player started the day slowly and only made his run for the top in the last four levels, pressuring Taiwanese poker pro An Lin in a hand to win without showdown and pad out his stack still further.
Other sizable stacks included China’s Liang Xu (155,400) and Hong Kong’s Raiden Kan (145,500) with Liu Lifu (138,100) and Haoyu ‘Rain’ Hu (137,200), also both from China, rounding out the top five.
Other notables to make the cut included Guo Dong who also finished in the six-figure club with a stack of 115,800, though this was his second attempt as the Chinese player failed to make it through Sunday’s Day 1A.
Dong was one of the more active players of the day, along with Hu, and the two of them played a vast number of hands, most of which went swimmingly judging by the size of their stacks. High Rollers Canlin Chen and Weizhou Zha were two more who fared well, finishing the day with 98,600 and 93,200 respectively.
Of course, poker being a zero sum game, that meant some players fared slightly less well with China’s Xixiang Luo failing to make the cut for the second day in a row.
Hong Kong’s Park Yu ‘Sparrow’ Cheung and Macau’s Sam Cheong endured a rollercoaster ride of a day, though Cheong had the best of it compared to Cheung. Down to his last 5,000 in chips midway through the day, Cheong dug deep into his bag of tournament tricks to finish the day with 89,200 while Cheung’s tournament went in the opposite direction.
The Hong Kong player should have finished the day on over 50,000 in chips but a brutal cooler against Li Zujie on the last hand of the day saw both players get all the chips in pre-flop with pocket kings.
Cheung had the two black kings and Zujie the red ones, resulting in a roulette-like result when red hit the board hard – with the community cards running out four hearts to give Zujie the flush and a stack of 51,700 while Cheung finished the day on 24,200. The only solace for Chueng is the fact that he made it through to Day 2, something he did not manage on Day 1A.
In total 58 of the 131-strong field made the cut to guarantee their Day 2 seat and the third and final starting flight kicks off at 1pm on Monday 22 May and will follow the same format as both other Day 1’s with eleven 40-minute levels on the schedule and will conclude a little after 9pm so join us then.