Tournament coverage Poker

Macau Millions breaks records

Written by Ben Blaschke

Last week the crew at PokerStars LIVE Macau had expressed cautious confidence that they would break the all-time record for the biggest poker tournament field in Asian history at the 2014 Macau Millions.

With six Day 1 flights, the early signs were good that they would slip past the 1,329 players who took part in the 2011 Macau Millions, but they couldn’t have imagined just how huge this year’s event would be. By the time entries to last Friday night’s final flight had closed, a whopping 1,804 players had taken part to completely obliterate the previous mark.

“It’s been an extraordinary journey to get here. We wanted to ensure we’d be in position to surpass the 1,329 entries when we ran the Macau Millions again but this has exceeded our expectations,” said PokerStars Director of Live Poker Operations Danny McDonagh.

This year’s Macau Millions also saw a Chinese player win the event for the first time with 27-year-old Hao Chen from Shanghai outlasting the field to claim the HK$550,000 first prize. In fact, China enjoyed a one, two, three finish with Sheng Chang finishing second for HK$400,000 and Hong Kong’s Kenny Leong third for HK$270,000.