Tomaz Yip Leads Day 1B at Red Dragon, Samoh Makes Day 2

Day 1B of the Red Dragon drew 148 players for the second of three Day 1s. That brings the total player count to 258 after a Day 1A of 110 entrants for the Macau Poker Cup’s main event which is being held at PokerStars Macau at the Grand Waldo Entertainment Complex.

Leading the surviving 41 players from Day 1B is Hong Kong’s Tomaz Yip (cover image) with 183,500 chips. Yip relentlessly chipped away at the field in the later stages of the night to build his stack. He caught a fortunate break near the end of the day when his AK cracked Hossein Shabannezhad‘s pocket kings to soar to 2nd overall — trailing only Day 1A chip leader Jordan Westmorland who has 269,000.

China’s Xujun Huang (120,100), Korea’s Chul Woo Park (119,700), Russia’s Vladimir Volov (104,200), UK’s Rickie Vedhara (101,300) and Taiwan’s Chin Feng Lee (101,100) are the other Day 1B survivors over the 100K mark. Team PokerGuru Pro Sangeeth ‘Samoh’ Mohan too managed to make it to day 2 and though short with just 34,800, he will be joining Abhishek Goindi (109,200) on Day 2 tomorrow keeping alive the hope for an Indian winner at the MPC Red Dragon.

Other notables advancing to Sunday’s Day 2 include Team PokerStars Pros Celina Lin (38,300) and Vivian Im (17,900); former Red Dragon winners Wing Cheong Chong (75,600) and Kenny Leong (21,000); and, recent ANZPT Sydney champion Gordon Huntley who ended the day the same way he started with 15,000.

Unfortunately, the day didn’t go well for the 2011 Asia Player of the Year (APOY) Shaq Lin, 2010 Macau Millions winner Justin Chan, and PokerStars sponsored player Nobuhiro Yabuuchi who are out of the Red Dragon and will have to turn their attention to the MPC side events.

Red Dragon Day 1C starts on Saturday at 2:10 PM local time. Notables expected in the 1C field include 2011 Macau Poker Cup Championship winner Raiden Kan along with Team PokerStars Pros Bryan Huang and Raymond Wu.