Friday, 29th March 2024 00:50
Home / Uncategorized / 2014 ACOP Main Event Day 1: Macau’s premier event ready to reach new heights

The PokerStars LIVE Macau poker room has been a bee hive of activity over the last week. Nine champions have already been crowned, including Steve O’Dwyer who won the gigantic MBP Super High Roller yesterday.

There is no doubt that all these events have been very exciting, but that was just the beginning. Just the appetizer to the main meal known as the Asia Championship of Poker Main Event.

Over the last two years this HK$100,000 (~US$13,000) buy-in tournament has steadily become the largest tournament of its kind in this region. You could even say that every event in Asia is simply a build up to the ACOP Main Event.

PokerStars_LIVE_Macau_ACOP.jpg

PokerStars LIVE Macau has been buzzing during the ACOP so far

In the inaugural year there were 184 entrants, which created a HK$17,305,200 prize pool. It was Xing Zhou who won the event and a gigantic first-place prize of more than half a million US dollars.

Last year, the ACOP Main Event grew by just around 10% as 203 players created a HK$19,800,000 prize pool. Sunny Jung was the player to end up becoming the now reigning champ as he overcame Devan Tang to win the HK$4,353,000 top prize (~US$560,000).

Now, in 2014, the ACOP Main Event is shaping up to be bigger than ever as the team at PokerStars LIVE Macau have been experiencing record-numbers throughout the year and over the last week or so.

As this little introduction to the Main Event is typed there is a satellite running in the PokerStars LIVE Macau poker room. There will be eight players winning a seat into the HK$100,000 buy-in event. They will be added to the 23 that have already qualified here in the poker room and the 42 online qualifiers.

That makes it 73 total qualifiers into the event and when you throw in all the direct buy-ins you are looking at one mighty field size. There is a HK$15 million guaranteed prize pool on the tournament too and it’s likely that will easily be surpassed and the way things are tracking, it’s also likely this will be the largest ACOP Main Event in the tour’s history.

“There are already 150 total players registered and more interest than I have ever seen for this event” APPT President Danny McDonagh told the PokerStarsBlog. “The field is definitely going to be up on last year. I think it could go upwards of 250.”

“In terms of how many dealers and staff we have here in the room I hope it’s not too much bigger than that as well!” McDonagh added with a laugh.

The ACOP Main Event will run with a single Day 1 and then play out as a five-day event with the final table taking place this coming Saturday. At that point one player will be immortalized as an ACOP champion and will certainly be a hell of a lot richer.

ACOP_Poker_STOCK.jpg

Right here on the PokerStarsBlog will be the best place to find out how all the action plays out. There will be live updates at the top of the APPT / ACOP page provided by our friends at PokerNews, while yours truly will be trying to dig up some interesting stories about players in the field and anything that comes up over the week.

Study Poker with Pokerstars Learn, practice with the PokerStars app