Sunny Jung takes down the 7-day tournament

After a long week of poker action at the PokerStars LIVE poker room in the City of Dreams casino in Macau, the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour Macau Asia Championship of Poker finally came to a close. According to the schedule, the champion was supposed to be determined on Day 6 but play ran into the late hours of the night so the heads-up match was paused and left for Day 7.

The extra day was not for nothing as it took five hours for one of the two remaining players to win the trophy and the HK$4,352,000 prize for first place (~$560,000). At the end of the day, Sunny Jung was the one to receive the honors of besting a 203-player field, including his heads-up opponent, Devan Tang.

The combination of a big buy-in and the slow structure of the tournament attracted a lot of great players from across the world and the play maintained a high speed throughout the week. Only 25 players got a share of the prize pool and the bubble burst at the end of Day 3. When the players came back on Day 4, it only took a few hours to determine the final table, making it a very short day for the players.

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2013 ACOP Main Event Final Table

With an average of 112 big blinds for every player at the final table, Day 5 was not expected to be a short one. A couple of players were quickly sent to the rails once the action started and the pace slowed down for the middle section of the day. As the seats at the table started to clear, it was only down to two players when there were about 45 minutes left in the day.

The two came back on Sunday and Jung had a small chip lead over Tang but the very deep stacks meant that they had over one hundred big blinds each to work with. Jung started chipping away and got off to a great start to have a 2-to-1 advantage early on. Tang managed to make a small comeback but Jung went on the offensive once again and secured three quarters of the chips in play after his pocket Kings turned into a flush.

After seeing that he was in an 8:1 disadvantage, Tang started fighting back for the first time in the day and started stacking up chips consistently. After changing his style and getting a few great hands, Tang took the lead and was in a position of control.

Another 90 minutes went by, in which the two exchanged the chips back and forth, until Jung buckled down and started re-building his stack. When the final hand took place, Jung had a 3:1 lead and Tang started with a min-raise. Jung then made a three-bet to 300,000 and Tang made it 500,000 before calling the all-in shove.

The two revealed their cards and Jung’s Ah-Kh had Tang’s As-Qc dominated. With all hopes placed on a Queen and no kings or hearts, Tang was not looking good in the first called all-in of the heads up match. The board ran T-high with three hearts and Sunny Jung became 2013 ACOP HK$100,000 Main Event Champion.

Interview with the 2013 ACOP Champion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXNXZ_r1dQ0