Since late October, the 2016 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) has been playing out at PokerStars LIVE at the City of Dreams in Macau. The festival, which featured dozens of events over 17 days, concluded this past weekend with victories by Vladimir Geshkenbein in the Main Event and David Peters in the High Roller.
Geshkenbein Makes History
The 2016 ACOP HK$100,000 Main Event, which took place November 7-12, drew 302 players and created a prize pool of HK28,116,200 ($3,623,922 USD). Geshkenbein, a 28-year old former poker pro, began the ACOP Main Event final table as the chip leader, and he rode it all the way to victory for HK$5,743,000 ($740,220 USD).
In addition, he made poker history by becoming the first player to win APPT and European Poker Tour (EPT) titles. Geshkenbein, now an economics student, previously won the 2011 EPT Snowfest.
Neel Murphy, who began the final table on the short stack, held strong and eliminated Kahle Burns in third place to take a 3-to-1 chip advantage into heads up play against Geshkenbein. However, with 57 big blinds, Geshkenbein had a lot to work with and eventually evened out the stacks before striking a deal.
With HK$600,000 and the title to play for, Geshkenbein took charge. On the final hand of the tournament, the two got it in on a T♣3♣7♦ flop with Geshkenbein holding the J♣6♣ flush drawn and Murphy the T♠4♣ for top pair. Geshkenbein missed his flush draw, but he made a bigger pair when a jack spiked on the river.
Final Table Results
1 Vladimir Geshkenbein (Switzerland) HK$5,743,000/$740,220 USD*
2 Kahle Burns (Australia) HK$5,143,000/$662,885 USD*
3 Kahle Burns (Australia) HK$2,662,000/$343,107 USD
4 Jimmy Zhou Zhou (China) HK$2,101,000/$270,799 USD
5 Shinobu Tanaka (Japan) HK$1,541,000/$198,620 USD
6 Bryan Huang (Singapore) HK$1,261,000/$162,531 USD
*Denotes heads-up deal. Winner also gets buy-in to 2017 ACOP Main Event.
David Peters Dominates High Roller
On the final day of the 2016 ACOP, poker pro David Peters topped a field of 71 runners to win the HK$250,000 High Roller for HK$4,885,200. Peters did it in impressive fashion finishing as chip leader on Days 1 and 2 before taking a massive chip lead into the final table. His 6,535,000 was more than twice the stack of his nearest rival Artem Metalidi, who had 3,180,000.
Paul Newey, who was making his second final table in a week after finish in third in the Super High Roller, ended up making it to heads-up play against Peters, albeit at a 7-to-1 chip disadvantage.
After an hour, Peters moved all in and received a quick call. Peters held A♣8♦ to Newey’s K♦6♠. Peters was ahead and held that spot after the board ran out 8♣J♦3♠7♠4♠.
“I feel amazing,” said Peters. “This was a very nice tournament to win and it went very smoothly. Usually it’s a little rougher but things went my way and I felt I played great the whole tournament. I felt like I was in the zone the whole time.”
High Roller Results
1 David Peters (USA) HK$4,885,200/$629,722 USD
2 Paul Newey (UK) HK$3,507,000/$452,066 USD
3 Daniel Dvoress (Canada) HK$2,279,000/$293,722 USD
4 Artem Metalidi (Ukraine) HK$1,720,000/$221,715 USD
5 Leo Cheng (Canada) HK$1,336,000/$172,215 USD
6 Yaxi Zhu (China) HK$1,035,000/$133,415 USD
7 Roman Korenev (Russia) HK$818,000/$105,443 USD
8 Shunu Zang (China) HK$635,000/$81,854 USD
9 Yaqi Sun (China) HK$484,000/$62,389 USD
Tan, Lin, and Danchev Among Side Event Winners
Earlier in the week, China’s Yuan Li topped a field of 45 entries (33 unique + 12 rebuys) to win the 2016 ACOP HKD$500K Super High Roller for HKD$6.7 million/$863,657 USD after striking a heads-up deal with poker pro Justin Bonomo, who secured $5.595 million/$721,218 USD.
There were some other notable winners over the course of the 2016 ACOP. Jay Tan captured the Ladies Asia Championship title for HKD$96,009/$12,375 USD. Fun fact: she won the same title back in 2013.
Meanwhile, 2014 World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific Main Event champ Scott Davies won the $2,000 Deepstack for HKD$100,580/$12,965 USD, and former PCA champ Dimitar Danchev topped a field of 145 to win Event #4: HKD$11,000 Six-Max Championship for HKD$368,975/$47,562 USD.
Finally, Celina Lin defeated Edison Nguyen in heads-up play to win the HK$11,000 Deepstack Championship. Not only did she win HK$475,350/$61,274 USD, but she also became the first player to win two ACOP Spadie trophies.
