513 entries were recorded for the HK$ 16,500 buy-in Main Event at the inaugural Oriental Poker Championship at The Venetian Macau Resort & Hotel this week.
When the final table formed it was Malaysian Ivan Leow holding the chip lead, fresh from his $ 183,833 first placing cash in the HK$100,000 High Roller competition just four days earlier.
Leow continued to dominate much of the action through to the heads up, but he met his match there in Chinese pro Xiaobo Zhou who emerged at the three-handed stage as a strong player with a chip stack that enabled him to enter the heads up against Leow with a 5 to 1 advantage.
The finale did not start well for Leow, who lost a significant portion of his chips in the first hand of the heads up, enabling Zhou to administer the coup de gras just three hands later, sending Leow to the exit and a second placing prize of $129,589.
Zhou’s first prize reward was $184,946, whilst the other final table cashes included:
Chang Bo Feng $83,346
Wayne Zhang $61,652
Austin Walton $46,242
Sang Hwang $37,103
Yazhou Chen $30,922
Yuefeng Pan $24,638