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WPT Cambodia : 212 players enter the Kickoff event, Keith Ong chip leader

The first ever World Poker Tour in the capital city of CambodiaPhnom Penh, has begun today. An exciting 18-event festival at Nagaworld is on its way and it started with two flights of the $440 Kickoff tournament and a satellite into the $1,100 Main Event.

Kickoff Event attracts 212 entries

WPT Cambodia Overview
WPT Cambodia

A total of 212 entries battled it out in two flights of the WPT Cambodia Kickoff event today, creating a $82,256 prize pool.

Day 1A started at 1pm and came to a conclusion at 9.30pm. 14 players remain from the 108 entries in this flight. Keith Ong finishes flight 1A as the chipleader with 485,000 chips and is also the chipleader going into Day 2.

Day 1 Chipleader
Singapore’s Keith Ong

Day 1B attracted 104 entries and at the end of play at midnight only 13 remained. Michael Norman Wood ended up on top of Day 1B with 324,000.

Play ended for both flights when they reached the money with all players securing a min cash of $615.

Notables in the field

Linh Tran
Linh Tran

Some familiar faces could be found at the felt today. Amongst others there were Linh Tran, second in the Vietnam All Time Money list, WPT Philippines Nationals 2016 Champion Ying Ling Chua, runner-up of the APT Philippines II 2019 Jae Kyung “Simba” Sim and Dhanesh Vijaykumar Chainani, one of Singapore’s most consistent players.

Team India

Abhinav Iyer
Abhinav Iyer

With high taxes and limited options in their home country, Indian players have started traveling to most of the poker events hosted in South Asia. Some of them are still in action in the last events of APT Vietnam and are expected to join WPT Cambodia in the coming days. However, a few top Indian pros could already be found in action today.

WSOP champion Abhinav Iyer tried is luck in the Kickoff event, but didn’t make the cut. His compatriotes Rajneesh Katoch, Raju Jaruplavath and Paawan Bansal were more fortunate and will return tomorrow for Day 2.

WPT Kickoff Day 2 chip counts

1 Ong Xun Keith 485,000
2 Michael Norman Wood 324,000
3 Trung Hieu Tran 288,000
4 Rajneesh Katoch 238,000
5 Kok Weng Beh 235,000
6 Raju Jaruplavath 211,000
7 Corbin Benjamin White 209,000
8 Steffen Endres 192,000
9 Lai Heng Foo 173,000
10 Bin Mohammad Muhei 161,000
11 Tan Kok Fye Darian 159,000
12 Mengyin Zhang 152,000
13 Marc Anthony Joseph 152,000
14 Quanlin Wang 143,000
15 Jakub Kotas 142,000
16 Nick Roscoe Blackburn 120,000
17 Chun Kiat Tan 119,000
18 Anthony Do 106,000
19 Kok Wai Sim 103,000
20 Yunsheng Sun 87,000
21 Tadashi Ogawa 84,000
22 Ngoc Khanh Le 81,000
23 Christopher James Shebat 77,000
24 Chi-Ming Yang 67,000
25 Paawan Bansal 58,000
26 Zhiren Quan 48,000
27 Gyula Ryan Revai 30,000

Tomorrow

The Kickoff event will resume with Day 2 at 1pm and will play until a winner is crowned. The first World Poker Tour Cambodia side event champion will take home $19.983.

At 1.30pm a Main Event Warm-Up event is scheduled. This is a single flight, 2-day event with a $1,000 buy-in and one re-entry.

Sunday will also feature another $150 Main Event satellite and Flight 1 of the $300 Nagaworld Cup.

WPT Cambodia – Full Schedule

Cash Games

Up to 9 cash game tables were busy throughout the day and night with limits from $1/$3 to $5/$10. Amidst the action in the cash games we spotted the legend Men “The Master” Nguyen.

Bigger cash games are expected to take place in the coming days.

WPT Cambodia Full Coverage