Travel Report: APPT Macau, ACOP Warm-Up, Day 3

Not too much scribblin’ time today, but did want to check in with a quick update.

The Asia Championship of Poker Warm-Up event went late last night, not ending until around 3 a.m., and I was up another couple of hours after that tying up loose ends. Meanwhile, today starts the Main Event with that big buy-in of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $13,000 USD). So between preparing for that -- and being mildly distracted by the election coverage that’s yammering away on the teevee in my hotel room -- I’m not so able to produce a full post today.

Yesterday’s Day 3 of the ACOP Warm-Up played from 18 down to a winner, with Jeff Rossiter of Australia coming out the victor.

Both Johnny Chan and Joseph Cheong made the final table. Chan ended up finishing seventh, having been unable to get things going once the final table started and Rossiter began building on his chip lead. Cheong made it all of the way to third place and could well have won, I think, although by the time they got to three-handed Rossiter’s lead was formidable enough to make a comeback less likely.

They’re optimistic about getting a decent-sized field for today’s Main Event -- probably at least 150, with hopes of maybe even getting to close to 200. There will be a lot of Team PokerStars Pros and other familiar faces in the field today, with a lot more of them familiar to me now that I’ve been here for four days following the Warm-Up.

There’s a welcome party tonight which will provide another chance to get outside the hotel and see a little more of Macau. And the schedule has been thoughtfully constructed to end early today (Day 1) and start late tomorrow (Day 2), which means I’ll probably try to do a little sight-seeing during the day on Thursday, too.

Has been fun thus far, and really I can’t praise the APPT/ACOP staff and PokerStars folks enough for how hospitable and helpful they’ve been. Sure, traveling 8,000 miles from home to go to work represents a helluva commute. And the days have been long and exhausting at times. But once again I find myself in an incredibly supportive work environment, something I’ve been fortunate to experience frequently in the poker world.

Check over at the PokerStars blog to follow the ACOP Main Event today through Sunday. The PokerNews peeps are here now, too, and so there’ll be even more updates and chip counts, plus videos and more.