Ceesvin Abcaham Tops Day 1c of Record-Breaking 2019 WPT Cambodia Main Event

After the first two successful starting days of the Season 18 World Poker Tour Cambodia $1,100 Main Event, a new record was looming and the third and final flight once again exceeded the expectations for the first WPT stop at the NagaWorld Integrated Resort in Phnom Penh and second WPT festival in the Kingdom of Cambodia.

Held in cooperation with Connaissance Management and official sponsor Singha, the flagship tournament of the festival attracted a field of 750 entries thanks to an additional 346 entries on the final flight. The new record for an open WPT event in the Asia-Pacific Region perfectly showcases how popular Cambodia has become for poker enthusiasts from near and far.

It is also the largest live poker event in the history of the Kingdom and comes with a total prize pool of $727,500, which will be spread among the top 94 finishers. The winner can look forward to a payday of $131,430, the bragging rights and the trophy that comes along with it.

Key numbers of the three starting days at a glance

Day 1a: 188 entries (24 re-entries), 34 survivors
Day 1b: 216 entries (41 re-entries), 43 survivors
Day 1c: 346 entries (79 re-entries), 72 survivors

All reasons to smile at the end of the night had Singapore’s Ceesvin Abcaham, who topped the Day 1c leaderboard with a stack of 442,000. Two other players claimed more than 400k to their name including Richard Marquez (417,000) and Eui “Edgar” Kim (406,000). Marquez, currently 11th on the all-time money list of the Philippines and aptly nicknamed “hot sauce” by his poker friends, indeed ran very hot throughout the day and cracked pocket aces twice while also hitting a straight flush against quads jacks.

Other notables with big stacks on Day 1c include Aladin Reskallah (303,000), Jaegwang Kim (239,000), Jae Kyung Sim (228,000), Ying Lin Chua (174,000), Ping Liu (156,000) and Yuwen Pan (143,000).

Season 17 WPT Asia-Pacific Player of the Year Vincent Chauve advanced with a stack of 131,000 and WPT DeepStacks champion Hari Varma (pictured above) follows close behind with 126,000. Varma currently sits atop the Season 18 POY race with 1,500 points and the winner of WPT Cambodia will earn as many points to join the contenders for the highly sought-after title.

Second-placed Hamish Crawshaw failed in his bid to earn a stack for Day 2 as he busted twice, Ashish Munot also came up short when his queen-jack suited was only good on the flop but fell behind on the turn against the nine-seven suited of Edgar Kim.

Other notables that joined the long list of Day 1c casualties were Men “The Master” Nguyen, Corbin White, Michael Falcon, Ankit Ahuja, Aaron Lim, Victor Chong, Phachara Wongwichit, $5,000 Super High Roller runner-up Gabriel Carter, Michael Egan, Konstantin Pogodin and Tomaz Kogovsek to name just a few.

Benjamin Gonzva suffered the same fate on all three starting days as he was eliminated in the final level each time. On Day 1c, his kings were cracked by the pocket tens of Ari Kumpumäki.

When the dust had settled after 15 levels of 40 minutes each, only 72 players bagged up and that leaves 148 hopefuls out of the 750 entries in contention for Day 2. Whether or not the final table will be reached on the penultimate tournament day remains to be seen.

The action recommences on Sunday, November 24th, 2019, as of 12 p.m. local time with blinds of 2,000-4,000 and a big blind ante of 4,000. The first three levels of Day 2 remain 40 minutes long and the duration then increases to 60 minutes each for the remainder of the tournament.

Stay tuned to find out who makes the money as the WPT.com live reporting team will be on the floor to cover all the action from start-to-finish. Full coverage of the event is also available on Somuchpoker.

*Pictures courtesy of Somuchpoker