The final two flights of the 2014 World Series of Poker Asia/Pacific’s (WSOP-APAC) inaugural event, the $1000 No Limit Hold’em “Accumulator” tournament, took place on Friday. While the overall numbers were vastly lower than the 2013 version of the event, the remaining field promises some exciting play as Dan Heimiller and Peter Longmore emerged from the action as the Day 1B and Day 1C chip leaders, respectively.
Day 1B was the first to head off on Friday, with several of the contenders from Day 1A (under the “Accumulator” rules, players could play all three of the Day Ones and add their stacks together from the days to move onto Day 2) making a return appearance. Vanessa Rousso, Mike Leah, Roland Israelashvili and Ismael Bojang were just a few of the notable names who returned to the felt battleground, but many eyes were on the WSOP Player of the Year contenders as they either made their first foray into the WSOP-APAC or took another shot at the “Accumulator.” Current POY leader Brandon Shack-Harris (first shot), George Danzer (second) and Daniel Negreanu (first) stepped up to potentially add more points to their totals.
This particular battle didn’t last long, courtesy of the defending World Champion. Ryan Riess was responsible for knocking out first Negreanu and then Danzer in the early action, but Shack-Harris wasn’t able to take advantage of the situation. Shack-Harris got his final chips in good with pocket fours against an opponent’s K-J, but the board didn’t cooperate in coming down with both a King and a Jack. All three of the players thus set their sights on the 6PM Day 1C flight as the Day 1B action continued.
Coming into the Day 1B play via late registration, Heimiller didn’t waste any time in growing his 3000 chip starting stack. Within roughly an hour of starting the “Accumulator,” Heimiller had increased his stack eightfold. By the end of the Day 1B proceedings, Heimiller was able to more than double that stack to sit as the chip leader for Day 1B.
1. Dan Heimiller, 50,700
2. Piyush Gupta, 47,500
3. David Bowen, 45,325
4. Daniel Levy, 40,500
5. Minh Nguyen, 39,450
6. Luke Brabin, 38,500
7. Jeff Madsen, 35,800
8. Gijs Voppen, 30,900
9. Daniel Murphy, 28,075
10. Giacomo Fundaro, 23,650
Out of the 227 players who started Day 1B (larger than the Day 1A field), only 33 would survive the action.
Day 1C started six hours later than Day 1B and was the final chance for players to gather chips in the “Accumulator” while running simultaneously as the 1B action finished up. As such, it was a bit smaller than its previous two counterparts (187 entries), bringing the total entries for the event to 611, vastly under what occurred during last year’s tournaments (1087 entries).
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that Phil Hellmuth, who had late regged for the previous two Day Ones, decided to step in from the start on Day 1C. He would find a double up through Julius Colman to crack the 7K mark in chips, but that would be as high as he would reach. As the play wound down on the Day 1C action, Hellmuth would eventually relinquish his chips, marking an 0-for-3 run in the “Accumulator.”
Hellmuth wasn’t alone in missing the Day 2 starting field. Riess, Jonathan Duhamel, Ami Barer and Jeff Gross also took the 0-fer, while Longmore used a huge double up through Stephen Lindeblad (in a cooler pocket Queens (Longmore) versus Jacks (Lindeblad) situation) to catapult to the top of the Day 1C standings.
1. Peter Longmore, 43,875
2. Thomas Gleeson, 32,500
3. Rory Young, 32,425
4. Andrew Roberts, 25,325
5. Hussein Mrad, 24,975
6. Michael Wang, 24,000
7. Christopher Gurney, 22,500
8. Simon Chahine, 22,075
9. Colin Galloway, 21,925
10. Julius Colman, 21,475
The 31 players that made it through Day 1C will join the previous flights to make for a Day 2 field of 95 players.
Plans are for Saturday’s action to play down to the final table, with those final nine players returning on Sunday to determine the first bracelet winner of the 2014 WSOP-APAC. Along with the bracelet, the eventual champion will take home a $131,365 (Australian) payday.
