Opening day of the PPPoker World Championship (PPWC) was a tough battleground with 10 teams going at it at the Teams Event for a spot into Day 2. By the end of the scheduled three games, two teams fell out of the running leaving 8 teams to advance to Day 2. Recap below.
Teams Event
The Teams Event got underway with 10 teams on the floor. Each team ponied up the PHP 550,000 (US$10,478) buy-in, which in sum was well behind the PHP 10 Million (US$190,530) guarantee making for a big overlay and huge returns for the the eventual top two winning teams.
Here’s the final tally of the day’s action:
The two teams at the bottom, Team Chinese Taipei and Team India, failed to advance. For the rest, this is how they secured their spot into Day 2.
Team Malaysia on fire
Team Malaysia was on fire. Led by team captain Ian Lee, they crushed the competition at the 6 Max SNG with a dominating 108 points earned. They continued to exert pressure at the heads up matches and won both bouts (Double Heads Up and Heads Up) for another 70 points.
The Heads Up match saw notable player Ying Lin Chua defeat Norwegian team captain Borge Dypvik. Team Malaysia accrued 178 points total.
Team Norway also fared well at the 6 Max SNG finishing in a strong second position however they fell flat at both heads up matches to stay at 92 points.
Team Brazil was the opposite. They had a mediocre start but pulled through in the end winning both heads up rounds to accrue 121 points. Team Singapore maintained third position ranking with 119 points.
Team Thailand’s captain Kannapong Thanarattrakul won his heads up match. Thannarattrakul was fresh off his Main Event victory at the recently concluded APT Tokyo Japan. The team accrued 103 points.
Other advancing teams were: Team Australia, Team Philippines, and Team USA.
When the teams return tomorrow for Day 2, the slate will be wiped clean. Teams start back at zero. They will once again battle it out on the same three formats. Only the top two teams advance to the Final Day and only both will be guaranteed a chunk of the massive prize pool.
Action resumes at 12pm on Saturday, February 16.
Tricia David
Tricia David has long experience as a recreational poker player and has been covering poker events since 2010 for numerous outfits in Asia. She spent one year working part time with Poker Portal Asia then became editor and lead writer for all event coverage of the Philippine Poker Tour (PPT). Under the PPT, she overlooked content for their website, and produced live updates on all their events. In addition, she served as the live and online events website content writer for the Asian Poker Tour. Currently, she does live events reporting in Asia for online news site Somuchpoker and is also one of their news contributors.
Follow Me:
