Lam Leads After Day 1 of PokerStars.net ACOP; Cheong Has Solid Day
Day 1 of the 2012 PokerStars.net APPT Macau: Asia Championship of Poker HKD$100,000 Main Event has come to a close after a short day on the felt today. The buy-in was a fairly hefty one, but a very solid field of 184 runners came out for action and generated a prize pool worth HKD$17,305,200. Topping the pack as the early favorite to take home the HKD$4,240,000 first-place prize was Yue Hin Lam with 122,525 in chips.
Lam was all over the place early, but doubled up on the following hand to really get the momentum going. From middle position, Marc Convey raised to 425 to start off the action. Shengqing Zhu called from the cutoff seat, and Richard Chow called on the button. Then, Lam reraised to 1,775 from the small blind. After the big blind folded, things got a bit tricky.
The dealer began to pull in all the original bet amounts of 425. Then, Convey and Zhu called the reraise, and the dealer pulled those in, but Chow was still to act. After a couple minutes of reconstructing the pot, Chow made the call and all four saw a flop.
The flop came down 
, and action checked around to Chow. He bet 2,300, and the three-bettor Lam moved all in for 11,875. After a fold came from Convey and Zhu, Chow thought for a minute, then called. Chow held the 
for a combo draw, but Lam had flopped trips with the 
. The table seemed to be quite surprised with the two hands that were turned over in this big, three-bet pot. The turn was the 
, and the river was the 
. Lam's trips held up, and he won the pot to more than double his stack.
There weren't a ton of tables in play on Day 1, but there were plenty of notable faces filling up the seats all around the tournament room of PokerStars Macau at the Grand Waldo Entertainment Complex. Of those in the field were plenty of Team PokerStars players. Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Eugene Katchalov, Raymond Wu, Bryan Huang, Angel Guillen, Viviam Im, Celina Lin and Max Lykov represented Team Pro, while Randy Lew and Naoya Kihara were sporting the Team Online patch.
Other notables in the field were Joseph Cheong, John Juanda, Johnny Chan, David Steicke and Jeff Rossiter. Cheong and Rossiter played late into the night yesterday in the HKD$25,000 Warm-Up event. Rossiter went on to win the event for HKD$1,777,000, while Cheong took third place. In the event, Rossiter was the one who exited first, and Cheong finished on 101,850 in chips. Juanda and Chan were also eliminated on the day.
Cheong was the beneficiary of an early double up that really got his day off to a fast start. According to Cheong, one player raised to 275 from early position, then Cheong reraised to 825. The original raiser reraised to 2,525, and Cheong called.
The flop came down 
with two diamonds and one heart. Cheong's opponent bet 2,600, and Cheong made the call to see the 
land on the turn. With two hearts now joining the two diamonds on the board, the first player checked, and Cheong bet 5,600. The player raised, then Cheong reraised all in. His opponent called with 
for top pair, top kicker, but Cheong's 
held a hammerlock on the hand with a wheel. The river blanked off, and Cheong doubled up.
With a tad under 150 players remaining, play will resume tomorrow at 5:00 PM local time here in Macau for Day 2. PokerNews will be on hand for all of the action, and we hope to have you right here following along.
