Opening day of the Asia Poker League Road Series Vol.1 Philippines saw numerous tables getting mileage at the Royce Hotel & Casino in Angeles City, Pampanga with a healthy turnout of players partaking in some of the events on offer. Kicking it all off was of course Day 1A of the Main Event P5,000,000 Guaranteed with 30 entries ponying up the P27,500 entry fee.
Although this was a light field, it certainly didn’t diminish the action with several notable players falling brutally hard. By the end of the scheduled 12 rounds of 40 minutes each, only 6 players survived the onslaught. Benefiting from some of these eliminations was Canada’s Eric Wasylenko who delivered a couple of those big punches to finish with the largest stack of 186,400.
Eric Wasylenko takes control of Main Event Day 1A
Prior to Wasylenko’s rise to the top, it was Philippine pro Mike Takayama cruising in the early rounds that from our standpoint, he seemed invincible. As one of the early players at the felt, his stack steadily grew earning him the chip lead after taking down Denmark’s Michael Kim Falcon.
As a decorated pro with plenty of big stack experience, Takayama maintained his high status until Level 9 where it all came to a crashing halt. He 3-bet shoved his nut flush draw against Wasylenko’s set of fives and lost the race. This sent his stack spiraling down and from there, he simply couldn’t recover. He lasted another two rounds before Wasylenko ended his misery with A-Q toppling pocket queens.
Takayama wasn’t Wasylenko’s only casualty of the day. The Canadian also drop-kicked Mark Amparo with one of the most shocking of defeats. On a jack-high flop with two dressed in spades, both players were all in with Amparo backed by 
and Wasylenko with 
. You can pretty much guess what happened next… a sick runner-runner spades came slapping down for a winning flush awarded to Wasylenko.
Also advancing to Day 2 with the leader were Redentor Edoc 167,200, Venoni “Bong” Paltep Jr 155,400, Eun Ho Kwon 136,000, Kevin Han 69,400, and Dennis Pineda 29,600. You can read up on some of the action witnessed by the Somuchpoker team in the live updates post.
More: Day 1A Live Updates
Warm Up event ends with 6 players
The Warm Up event ran alongside the Main turning up 50 entries to the tables. With 9 players still in the running at 1am, the tournament director agreed to resume tomorrow once the money round of 6 players was reached.
Two and a half hours later, the bubble finally burst with India’s Niwesh Sharma ending the hopes of one of his countrymen. Bagging up the most chips was Korea’s Tae Joon Cho with 189K.
Another player making the cut was Richard Allen who owned the chip lead several times throughout the day. One of the hands that zoomed him to the upper bracket happened midway through the day. Allen and another player were all in on a turn board of 
with Allen holding 
trips and his opponent with 
full house. When a landed on the river, Allen overtook with a higher boat sending his opponent steaming like a hot kettle as he stormed out of the tournament floor.
Cash Games action
In addition to the scheduled tournaments, ample action was also seen at the cash tables. The highest stakes were the Pot Limit Omaha games of P100-P200-P500. At one point, 5 tables were running simultaneously.
Article by Triccia David
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.
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