The Red Dragon Main Event of the Macau Poker Cup kicked off on Saturday with the opening flight Day 1a attracting 110 entrants. After 11 levels of action at “PokerStars LIVE Macau” poker room, the field was slashed down to 26 runners led by the Dutch player Danny van Zijp (137,500). The HK $12,000 Main Event which boasts off a HK $5 million prize pool saw many notable pros as in Justin Chan, Tetsuya Tsuchikawa, Mikal Blomlie and the Adda52 Team Spades pros from India – Amit Jain, Aditya Sushant and Kunal Patni joining the opening day action.
Team India
Indian contingent is off to a fantastic start in the Red Dragon event with 5 Indian players including 3 Team Spades pros securing their seat for the Day 2 play. Haresh Kukreja finished the day’s play in 6th place with 83,700 chips closely followed by Team Spades pro Kunal Patni with 80,300 chips in the 7th place. Rajeev Raut who finished 4th in the PLO deepstack event last week is also in the race of the Red Dragon title with 69,400 chips in the 14th place. Team Spades pro Aditya Sushant (65,300) and Amit Jain (37,300) will also return for the action on Day in 17th and 24th place respectively. 9 Indians joined the opening flight of the Red Dragon event out of which 4 players as in the newly sponsored PokerStars Pro Aditya Agarwal, Sailesh Lohia, Phurba Sherpa and Neville Shroff got eliminated by the end of day’s play.
Only 3 players including the chip leader Danny van Zijp could finish with a six-figure stack on Day 1a. Jaehun Kim (120,800) of Korea and Yang Zhang (106,800) of China are in the 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
Here are the Top 10 players from Day 1a:
| Position | Player | Country | Chips |
| 1 | Danny van Zijp | Netherland | 137,500 |
| 2 | Jaehun Kim | Korea | 120,800 |
| 3 | Yang Zhang | China | 106,800 |
| 4 | Huidong Gu | Macau | 92,700 |
| 5 | Haney Daryanani | Hong Kong | 85,600 |
| 6 | Haresh Kukreja | India | 83,700 |
| 7 | Kunal Patni | India | 80,300 |
| 8 | Liam O’Donoghue | Ireland | 80,100 |
| 9 | Xu Tan | China | 73,800 |
| 10 | Chak Fung Lam | Hong Kong | 70,800 |
The Red Dragon event drew a record 995 entrants in 20th edition of Macau Poker Cup and with 3 more flights remaining in the on-going tournament, the organizers are confident of reaching the milestone of 1000 entries and the prize pool exceeding the guaranteed amount of HK $5million.
The second flight of MPC22 Red Dragon kicks off at 3 PM IST on Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned to OPN for all the latest results and updates on Red Dragon Main Event.