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Home / Uncategorized / Manila Megastack 5: Another massive turnout with Day 1b drawing 258 entries

It was another bustling day at PokerStars Live Manila with the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event Day 1b drawing in 258 entries to the Grand Ballroom of City of Dreams Manila. With a deep starting stack of 30,000 chips, players flocked the registration booth, and by the time cards were in the air, there were at least twenty tables already filled up with more opening up shortly after. By the end of late registration / re-entry, the day’s prize pool grew to a massive P5.6M.
Shih Chieh Su -MM5 Day 1b leader.jpg
After sixteen rounds of scheduled play, there were 59 players who remaining with Chinese Taipei’s Shih Chieh Su bagging the largest stack of 367,000 chips. Su had a steady run of accumulating chips throughout the day and then landed a massive pot with a nut flush. During the hand, Su called a player’s all in shove on a flop of A♥ 5♥ 2♦ while holding K♥ 8♥ , and he was up against ace-five two pair. The turn of 8♣ was no help but the river of 7♥ gave Su one of the outs he needed for a winning flush. For his successful gamble, he shipped in a pot that sent his stack straight into the leader’s seat. Finishing the day second-in-chips was Korea’s Soojing Hong with 327,000 chips and rounding out the top three was Chinese Taipei’s Tzu Chieh Lo with 309,500 chips.

Day 1b saw a good performance by several Chinese Taipei players with five of them ending the day within the top ten of the chip ladder. Chuang Yi Wu finished in sixth position, Jack En-Ching Wu in eighth position, and Chia Iin Chang in tenth position. For En-ching Wu, he amassed his stack just before the final hour of the tournament when he landed back-to-back pots, with the second one earning him a pot of nearly 250k. He finished the day with 213,500 chips. For Chang, she battled for a big pot against Hong just before the final round of the day to bring her up to 198,500 at the close.

Throughout the day, there were many hands that left players in disbelief. One of those crazy hands was won by Japan’s Kenichi Takarabe who had A♥ K♣ and was up against another player with A♦ Kâ™  . The board ran four hearts giving Takarabe the nut flush. There were also several full house over full house hands with India’s Jayde Fernandes’s nines-over-eights falling victim to a player’s kings-over-eights.

Despite the grueling battle at the felt, there were players who had their fair share of winning pots to end the day with the chips in their arsenal such as Canada’s Karl Thorson, Germany’s Matteo Rechtien, China’s Hui Yao, Australia’s Piyush Gupta, Japan’s Mitsutoshi Yamagoshi, and Filipino players Joven Huerto and Anacleto Quijano to mention a few.

With just over twenty percent of the field surviving the night, a good number of well-known players and PokerStars regulars were part of the mix that were not so fortunate and found the rail instead. Among them were China’s Zhinning Chen, Norway’ Kai Paulsen, Japan’s Tempei Kotani, USA’s Gerald Casey, Korea’s Sim Jae Kyung, UK’s Jean Issa, Welcome Event champion Japan’s Daiki Iijima, and previous Manila Megastack champion Filipino player Euryd Rivera.

Final day action resumes tomorrow, Sunday, May 8, 2016, at 1215pm. For a read on some of the action at Day 1b, head to the Manila Megastack 5 Day 1b Updates.

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