Provisional 2014 Asia Championship of Poker Schedule Released

13th May 2014 // News, Poker Tournaments

2014 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP)

There may be more than three months until its panned start and several major poker festivals taking place before it, but that has not stopped PokerStars from drafting the schedule for the 2014 edition of the popular Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) and releasing it into the public domain.

The 2014 ACOP will take place at the PokerStars LIVE at the City of Dreams in Macau and is pencilled in to start on October 24 with the final event wrapping up 17-days later on November 9. Unless the schedule changes dramatically between now and the planned start of the 2014 ACOP there will be a grand total of 14 ACOP Title Events that award the coveted ACOP trophy, or “Spadies” as they have been come to be known, and seven low buy-in events to complement them.

Kicking off what will be the third edition of the ACOP is a HK$2,500 No Limit Hold’em Rebuy Championship that also opened proceedings at the 2013 ACOP. On that occasion, 139 unique players bought in and purchased 208 rebuys between them, creating a HK$757,328 prize pool that eclipsed the $500,000 guarantee.

PokerStars is playing its cards close to its chest in regards to the guarantees for the 2014 ACOP events, with only one tournament receiving one so far. That tournament is the brand-new HK$8,800 buy-in event that assures no less than HK$2 million is awarded to those souls fortunate enough to finish in the money places.

Returning for another year and displaying Macau’s penchant for high stakes poker is the HK$250,000 buy-in (US$32,250) ACOP High Roller. Last year’s High Roller saw 37 entries make nine rebuys to boost the prize pool to an impressive HK$10,216,800 (US$1,317,545). The lion’s share of this huge sum of money found its way to the bank account of the United Kingdom’s Senh Man Ung who returned home with HK$4,086,700 (US$527,016) after besting a final table that housed talented Australian duo Jeffrey Rossiter and Jonathan Karamalikis. Expect similar, if not bigger, figures for the 2014 High Roller.

If HK$250,000 is not deemed high enough stakes for Macau’s finest, they should be delighted to learn of the HK$500,000 buy-in (US$65,000) ACOP Super High Roller that is set to run on November 1. This new event is sure to attract the world’s finest – and richest – poker players to Macau and will be the second largest buy-in tournament ever held in Asia behind the 2013 GuangDong Asia Millions.

Sunny Jung: 2013 ACOP Main Event champion

The tournament that everyone wants to win is the third annual HK$100,000 buy-in (US$13,000) ACOP Main Event and thanks to it being scheduled to start as the Super High Roller finishes, could see a record attendance.

In 2012, 184 players piled into the Grand Waldo Hotel for the HK$100,000 Main Event, a tournament that concluded with a heads-up chop between champion Xing Zhou and Andy Ying Kit Chan. Both won HK$3,547,500 (US$457,712).

The following year the Main Event headed to its new home at the PokerStars LIVE at the City of Dreams and a more substantial crowd of 203 players bought in, again for HK$100,000. The 2013 champion was South Korea’s Sunny Jung whose HK$4,352,000 (US$561,228) first place prize catapulted him from relative obscurity to second in the South Korean all-time money listings.

PokerStars Macau is asking players for feedback on its provisional schedule and promise to implement any changes that are demanded strongly enough. Why not let Flushdraw.net know your thoughts too?