MPC21: Zhenru Xie Slays the Dragon, Takes Red Dragon Trophy back to China

mpc21redThe 21st Edition of the Macau Poker Cup(MPC) ended here yesterday at the PokerStars LIVE, City of Dreams Casino with the Red Dragon Trophy returning to China with Zhenru Xie defeating Australian Mathew Ryan for the top honours and HKD 1,667,000. It is after a hiatus of 2 years when Celina Lin in 2012 slayed the dragon that the trophy has gone back to China despite almost 50% of the runners belonging to the country. On this final table particularly, the odds were heavily in favour of a Chinese winner with 4 players being in the foray. But in the end, Xie defeated the lone Australian to thwart the island nation’s dream of having the first ever Red Dragon Winner.

The Final table started off with Hu Liu from China leading the pack. But the first four eliminations went off in a breeze with Wai Leong Chan started the proceedings. He exit in 9th place followed closely by Enming Zhang, Vietnamese John Hoang and Chen Wang. Liu continued his aggressive playing style and continued to chip up. A remarkable style of his game on the FT included going all in on a wide variety of hands. He fell to one such all-ins when Takuya Yamashita’s Pocket Queens prevailed.

With Pete Chan exiting in 4th place went down the hopes of Chinese Taipie though he had something to be happy about. He sealed his top place at the Asia Player of the Year Award for 2014 and managed to better his Macau showing to beat his previous best of a 5th place at APPT Macau. It was Yamashita’s turn to exit in 3rd place and ;eave the battle between China and Australia.

Xie had a slight chip lead when the heads up battle began and the final two hands played down like this. Ryan decided to push the pedal holding  K diams8 hearts on a 8 spades3 spades3 heartsA clubs board. But Xie was sitting pretty  with A diams3 clubs for the full house! Ryan was left very short stacked and with less than 8 blinds left, he moved all in with J diams4 spades. Xie took a gamble with the  7 spades2 spades but proved lucky when the board came  9 clubs8 hearts7 heartsA hearts5 clubs.

Congratulations to Xie for winning the third largest Red Dragon event!