The WPT National Philippines was a busy day with day 1a of the Main Event heating up the tables. By the end of late registration, there were a total of 92 entries in the books with each one ponying up the $1,650 buy-in fee.
92 players entered the Main Event Day1A
China's Cui Jia Bin Chip Leader
After nine hours of tournament action, only 36 survived with China's Cui Jia Bin bagging the largest stack of 188,000 chips. Bin is no stranger to being at the top. Just last month, he won the WPT National Korea Main Event, taking home approximately $70,000, and is now back in fine form shooting for a double up. During the last hand of the night, Bin eliminated Filipino player Anacleto Quijano with trip nines against Quijano's big slick. Interestingly, Quijano also had a great end to his 2015 poker year with a second place finish at the PokerStars Live Manila MegaStack 4 in early December. Joining Bin in the leader's tier was Malaysia's Michael Wee Tse Hua in second position with 175,500 chips, and ending the day ranked third was another Malaysian player, Loong Yuen Wai with 127,000 chips.
China's Cui Jia Bin Chip Leader
Notable names
The first flight of the Main Event saw many well-known players from the Asian circuit take to the felt such as Malaysian poker pro Alex Lee, Vietnam's Linh Tran, Hong Kong's Sparrow Cheung, and Austria's Manuel Blaschke. All these players would however find the rail.
Among the notable players who managed to hold on to their chips were Korean players Seung Soo Jeon with 101,400 chips, Sim Jae Kyung (aka Simba) with 64,400 chips and SJ Kim with 44,700 chips, Hong Kong's Raiden Kan with 43,200 chips, Norwegian player Henrik Tollefsen with 39,600 chips, and hanging on with short stacks, were Filipino pro Andrew Gaw with 21,300 chips and Japanese poker pro Tetsuya Tsuchikawa with 17,000 chips.
The Main Event will resume tomorrow at 1pm for day 1b, the final flight of the tournament.
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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