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There’s no denying that poker in Macau is flourishing.

Once an emerging market, the poker landscape here has shown us steady and impressive growth.

A driving force behind that popularity is the Asia Championship of Poker. The prestigious flagship event has returned to PokerStars LIVE Macau for a 17-day festival as the richest poker series in the Far East is now in full swing.

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The 2015 ACOP kicked off on October 30 and if what we’ve seen so far is anything to go by, it seems another exciting week of poker is on the cards. With the HK$250,000 (~$US32,000) High Roller already underway the ACOP is attracting some star-studded fields.

Among those in contention on the felt are Erik Seidel, John Juanda, Sam Trickett, Pratyush Buddiga, Stephen Chidwick, Mustapha Kanit and Jonathan Karamilikis to name a few.

Also out in force is the PokerStars contingent with Team Pros Celina Lin, Chen-An Lin, Bryan Huang, Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew, Naoya Kihara and Kosei Ichinose already spotted at the tables over the past week.

And for the soccer fans (or football fans depending on where you hail from), legend of the game Ronaldo Nazario has confirmed his attendance. He says he’s excited about his first trip to Macau and with a $42,180 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event cash to his name already, he’s proven he has some poker chops too.

They’ll all be chasing a victory in the feature tournament here – the 2015 ACOP Main Event. Boasting a HK$15,000,000 guarantee the Main Event is set to begin on Monday November 9. Last year it looked like Sunny Jung was destined to win back-to-back ACOP Main Event titles but at the dying stages it was Canadian Gabriel Le Jossec who would stop Jung one short. Le Jossec overcame a field of 291 entrants and walked away with HK$6,300,000 (~US$812,000) for his victory.

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Last year’s Main Event champion – Gabriel Le Jossec
To finish off the series after the Main Event wraps we’ll see players battle it out in the Super High Roller. That illustrious event holds a HK$500,000 (~US$65,000) buy-in and is expected to both draw a stellar field and generate a huge prize pool.

Away from the tables, however, there is even more excitement on the schedule. Players are free to take part in the ACOP Welcome Party, the notorious beer pong championship, as well as dice and dart competitions.

We’ll have more on all of that this week as we bring you coverage from this edition of the Asia Championship of Poker. The Main Event commences 3:00pm local time on Monday November 9. We hope you can join us then!

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