Half an hour out from the start of Day 2 of the 2014 ACOP Main Event and PokerStars LIVE Macau is the quietest it has been all week. Side events are currently on the backburner as the big dance is holding the attention of everyone in town and only the odd player or two from the Main Event are waiting on the rail at the moment.
Players can be forgiven for not coming in too long before play. After all, Day 1 was a late night, finishing up 2:00 a.m. local time. There were 172 players who wandered out of the City of Dreams casino at the early hour having just bagged up chips.
Some of those players, like Australian Rory Young, went to bed feeling pretty good. Well, at least you would think that would be the case having finished Day 1 with 150,100 in chips.
That was good for the chip lead, with the next closest player being Jian Yang with 147,600. The third largest stack belongs to Dong Guo, but his 120,400 is quite a ways off Yang and Young.
There is no doubting that Young has had a great year so far. Most recently Young won the $1,650 8-Game Dealer's Choice event at the WSOP APAC and become one of just a handful of Australian gold bracelet winners. He also made the final table of ANZPT Sydney In March. Young also just finished runner-up in the HK$11,000 Deepstack Championship here at the 2014 ACOP.
While Yang hasn't had quite the 2014 Young has, his 2013 is unrivalled by any other in the region and that's why he was crowned last year's Asia Player of the Year. Yang won the ACOP Warm-Up for more than US$200,000 last year and that was just one of several big results here in Macau. If Yang manages to win the ACOP Main Event this year, he will be a threat to become the first player to claim back-to-back Asia Player of the Year titles.
Yang and Young are certainly familiar faces in this region of the world, but there is a player in the top five chip stacks heading into Day 2 who is a superstar on the world stage. His name is Daniel Colman and you may remember him from such final tables as seemingly every event this year. He's posted more than US$22 million in results over the last six months and is clearly still in good form after recently final tabling the ACOP Super High Roller.
Considering 172 players are returning to the felt on Day 2, it's hard to mention all the notable players, but Joseph Cheong, Terrence Chan, Joe Hachem, Dan Smith, Jonathan Karamalikis, Tobias Reinkemeier, Sorel Mizzi and Shawn Buchanan are just some of those still in contention for a share of what is likely to be a gigantic prize pool.
There are also quite a few Team PokerStars Pros alive and well, including Raymond Wu, Celina Lin, Eugene Katchalov, Naoya Kihara, Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier and Jonathan Duhamel.
The exact field size and prize pool won't be confirmed until early into Day 2 and that's because registration is still open until cards are in the air. Until then, we can tell you that there have already been 286 total entrants - a new record for the ACOP Main Event and a 40% increase on last year's event.
Play begins on Day 2 from 3:00 p.m. local time and you will be able to find feature stories here on the PokerStarsBlog, along with live updates provided courtesy of PokerNews which can be found at the top of the 2014 ACOP page.
The plan today is to play five 90-minute levels, finish up at around 11:00 p.m. and then the players will be heading to the famous ACOP pool party for drinks, food and a prestigious beer pong tournament.