With four qualifying heats to the P2M Guaranteed Kickoff opening event of the Manila Megastack 5, the Grand Ballroom of City of Dreams Manila was full of poker action all throughout the day. This is the first time that PokerStars Live Manila has offered this type of format and it truly was a successful one. By the end of all the heats, there were 333 total entries with only 35 left by the end of the last qualifying heat.

At Flight 1, there were 113 entries with 12 players advancing to the Final Day. Ending that flight as the chip leader was Filipino Luke Pangan with 252,000 chips. Pangan bagged his chips in two big hands; he claimed a big pot againt Sudhir Agarwal with his ace-king connecting on the board for a higher pair against Agarwal’s pocket queens and then upped his stack with trips against two players for the pot. Pangan would have actually ended with more chips however his pocket aces were cracked by Remedios Flores’s nut flush holding ace-ten suited.

Flight 1 survivors: Luke Pangan 252,000, Switzerland’s Oleg Mordassov 162,500, Thomas Larsen 158,500, Japan’s Tempei Kotani 137,500, Filipino Remedios Flores 129,000, France’s David Perreau 92,500, China’s Jing Liang Chen 58,500, Japan’s Shigeho Yoshioka 43,000, Japan’s Yususke Kakiuchi 37,500, Canadian Louis Lam 28,500, Japan’s Mikiya Kudo 19,000, and Filipino Anthony Gabitan 18,000.

Flight 2 began at 6pm and by the end of late registration, the field recorded 175 total entries. With only 18 players making the cut into the Final Day, play lasted way past the midnight hour until the bubble was finally delivered by Swiss player Alain Walder. Walder ended Flight 2 as the chip leader with 197,000 chips.

Flight 2 survivors: Alain Walder 197,000; Filipino Christopher Mateo 193,500, India’s Jayde Fernandes 191,000, India’s Piyush Gupta 162,500, USA’s Ronnie Tate 152,000, Russia’s Andrei Dementev 151,500, Filipino Julian Tolentino 136,000, Chinese Taipei’s Ssu-Ping Chen 119,500, Filipino JC Sayo 77,500, Denmark John Riad 66,000, Chinese Taipei’s Hung Sheng Lin 65,000, Germany’s Heiko Kilmanschewsky 45,000, New Zealand Neil Hartstein 41,500, Filipino John Tech 38,000, Korea’s Johnjin Kim 37,500, Chinese Taipei’s Pohsiang Yang 34,500, Korea’s Jeong Jaeman 19,500, and Spain’s Jose Lopez 18,000.

The Turbo Flight of the Kickoff saw 45 entries with only 5 players qualifying into the Final Day. Here is a list of the survivors and their chip counts: Japan Daiki Ijima finished on top with 136,500 chips; in second was Soomil Kweom with 122,000; Chinese Taipei’s Yuan Kai Hsu 86,000; Norway’s Henrik Tollefsen 65,500, and Japan’s Azusa Maeda with 40,000.

Unfortunately for the Flipout Flight, there were only a handful of takers, not enough to meet the minimum number.

The Final Day of the Kickoff will resume at 2pm on Wednesday, May 4, 2016. For a read on some of the Kickoff action, head to the Manila Megastack 5 Updates post in the PokerStars Live Manila website.

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