Tournament coverage Poker

It’s always Sunny in Macau

Written by Ben Blaschke

It took a day longer than expected but the Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) finally came to its thrilling conclusion overnight with Korea’s Sunny Jung prevailing in the HK$100,000 Main Event to claim the title and handsome HK$4,352,000 first prize.

Jung eventually prevailed in an epic heads-up battle with Hong Kong’s Devan Tang, who pocketed HK$3,667,000 for his efforts, but they were forced to come back for an extra day after a halt was called to play on Saturday night following 12 long hours which failed to produce a winner. The pair continued for another five hours yesterday before Jung finally prevailed.

Despite the exhausting finale, the team at the PokerStars LIVE Macau room at City of Dreams will be thrilled by the results of the past week or so with 2,235 players taking part in the 17-day series – combining for a combined prize pool of HK$49,149,514. This was a prize pool record for both ACOP and the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour.

“We’re extremely pleased with the growth of the ACOP,” APPT President Danny McDonagh explained afterwards. “There’s no doubt ACOP will develop into becoming one of the most important poker series on a global scale. The winners of today will surely be the legends of tomorrow.”

This year’s ACOP attracted players from across the globe and we had some familiar faces lifting trophies across the 12 ACOP title events. Jay Tan, who made the final table of this year’s Aussie Millions, won her first live title in the Ladies Asia Championship while Celina Lin added another trophy to her already glittering cabinet with victory in Event 12.

And congratulations to WGM’s very own Michael Mariakis who outlasted a field of 90 players to win the Turbo Championship. It’s good to see Michael flying the flag for us at City of Dreams!