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Lo and Behold – Taipei’s Tzu Chieh Lo

The Main Event of the fifth edition of the Manila Megastack saw Chinese Taipei’s Tzu Chieh ‘Bruno’ Lo take the title.

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The Manila Megastack 5 Main Event hosted by PokerStars Live Manila and Asia Pacific Poker Tour, came to a close in City of Dreams Manila with Chinese Taipei’s Tzu Chieh Lo reigning victorious to capture the massive first-place cash prize of PHP 2,392,350 and the championship trophy.

Manila Megastack 5 Main Event Recap

This fifth edition of the Megastack series featured a PHP 25,000 buy-in Main Event with a PHP 6 million guarantee, PHP 2 million guaranteed Kick-Off tournament plus a variety of side events and satellites. There were a total 478 entries at the Main Event generating a prize pool of PHP 10,432,350, going well past the guarantee of PHP 6 million. After three intense days of Main Event action, it came down to the final table action with some of the toughest players in the Asian poker scene. Entering the final table as the chip leader was Norway’s Henrik Tollefsen followed by Germany’s Julian Hasse.

It was Japan’s Eichi Mizuno who delivered the first blow, eliminating Chinese Taipei’s Fu Lung Hung in 9th place. But immediately after, it was Lo and Chinese Taipei’s Shih Chieh Su who began to dominate the action, taking down pots with several aggressive bets and raises. Lo eliminated Canada’s Karl Thorson in 8th place, Tollefsen railed Mizuno in 7th place, and then Tollefsen took a painful blow to his stack when his big slick lost to Su’s set of threes.

Tollefsen managed to gain some of it back but after Lo eliminated Australia’s Angelo Peter Scicchitano in 6th place, Lo had a dominating lead. With the blinds quite high, the only action seen at the felt was the all-in shove. Eliminations went by quick with Tollefsen railed in 5th place by Hasse, then Hasse eliminated by Lo in 4th place, and China’s Keiji Ye in 3rd place after falling to Su’s straight.

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The heads up round had Lo ahead in chips against Su but after ten hands with a few flops hitting the felt, Su overtook Lo by nearly 2M chips. But in heads up, there is usually that one crucial hand that turns the tide and it happened when Lo moved all in on a board of 5♥7♣8♣ and Su snap-called. Lo had A♠9♦ and Su with A♥6♣. When the turn of J♠ and river of 5♠ completed the board, Lo was awarded the biggest double up of the Main Event, climbing to over 12M chips while Su fell to 1.8M chips.

Two hands after, the last hand saw Lo eliminate Su in 2nd place with his K♦8♦ against 9♥6♥ on a board of 2♦T♠2♥A♦J♣. Impressively, this is Lo’s second Megastack triumph this year having won the Macau Poker Cup 24 HKD 5,000 NLH Megastack in February. Prior to the final table, there were 108 gunners who entered the final day. Holding court at the top was Su, and Lo within range in fourth position. With 45 players seeing the money, reigning Asia Player of the Year champion Hong Kong’s Alan ‘Kinglune’ Lau finished in a respectable 12th place, Japan’s Kenichi Takarabe (Red Dragon winner in July 2010) took 25th place, and Australia’s Ken Demlakian just made the money in 39th place.

Another player who ran well was Korea’s Seung Soo Jeon who nearly bubbled to the money (almost railed by Su), then made it to 10th place, one spot shy of the final table. Indonesia’s Sammy Bolung finished in 14th place; he was one of the many players Su eliminated throughout the day. The Main Event drew in an international crowd representing 29 countries led by the Philippines with 104 players, Japan with 84 players, Taiwan/Chinese Taipei with 51 players, Korea with 40 players, and the USA with 34 players.

The Main Event also posted some record-breaking numbers with 220 entries at Day 1a, the largest number of entries for a first day flight of the series-to-date. The total entries of 478 also surpassed the previous record turnout of 375. To cap it all, this was the largest prize pool for the series, over PHP 10.4M, crushing the past record of PHP 3.2M.

Indian Participation

There was a small mix of Indian and Indian-origin players in attendance for the event. New Delhi’s Dhaval Mudgal played in most of the events but was unable to do much save for the last event where he made the money but just missed out on the final table busting in 10th place in the Deep Stack Turbo event.

Piyush Gupta made a deep run finishing 4th in the Opening event for PHP 195,000. Other Indian players at the series include Jayde Fernandes, Sudhir Agarwal, Sandeep Nasa, Sumit Behl, Atul Nagpal, Jordan Gomes, Deepesh Khemka, Raveen Kumar and Abraham Attokaran. However, none of these players made any noteworthy scores.

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(This piece was originally published in Gutshot Magazine Jun-Jul 2016 edition, and you can take a look at such pieces in our repository of all past editions by clicking here)

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