Ivan Leow Wins 1st Tournament Title, Ships OPC High Roller Macau For HK$1,442,300

Ivan Leow Wins First Tournament Title
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  • PG News May 25, 2018
  • 5 mins Read

After an intense battle between 43 players who fielded the Oriental Poker Championship (OPC) Macau High Roller, the tournament that was hosted at Venetian Hotel & Resort in Macau found its champion in Malaysian player, Ivan Leow (cover image).

Leow shipped the tournament, cashing the top prize of HKD 1,442,300 and his own career-first tournament title. This is the first time a High Roller event has been held under the banner of OPC Macau.

The title win has brought Leow’s overall live earnings to $776,741 and has sprung him to the sixth slot in the Malaysia All Time Money List. Earlier in May, Leow also final tabled two Triton Super High Roller events in Montenegro.

The High Roller tournament started out with 31 players and 26 players survived the first 7 levels to reach Day 2 when re-entries took the player field to 43 entries in all, creating a HK$4,003,300 prize pool.

The final table of nine players started after a seven-hour grind and some of the pros who missed the final-table action were Matt Moss, high-stakes champ James Chen and Thomas Ward.

Final Table Recap

China’s Yang Wang entered the final table as chip leader but soon other players took over in the intense action that followed. Over the next six hours Danny Tang from Hong Kong busted out empty-handed. Chung Yuan Yu was already very short stacked and lost out in the eighth position with his king-six against the ace-high of Wengling Gao.

Leow, who had crept up in chip counts right before the money bubble, was soon overshadowed by Albert Paik. Wang’s queen-ten out-flopped Tony Cheng’s king-nine on a ten-high board, bouncing Cheng out at seventh place

Next, the pre-flop action saw Leow and Victor Chong getting all their chips in with Leow’s king-queen clearly dominating the latter’s king-jack. The board busted out Chong out at sixth position for HK $220,000 and brought a massive chip lead for Leow. However, Wang doubled up from Leow, denting the latter`s stack.

Taiwan’s Chihwen Chen led the chip counts for a while but got eliminated at fifth place when Leow snapped his ace-deuce suited over Chen’s pocket fours on a flop.

After a long duel between the final four, Wenling Gao went all in with ace-king against Wang’s king-ten but stumbled when Wang got four to a flush. She was eliminated at fourth position cashing HK$400,000.

The three-handed play saw the chip lead rotating between Paik, Wang and Leow before Paik played a big hand against Leow by going all in. With both playing having a pair of eights, it was Leow who eliminated Paik at third place with a higher kicker.

Leow’s heads-up confrontation with Wang was brief. Wang was already short-stacked and in the final hand, Wang moved all-in pre-flop with queen-deuce suited and Leow called with pocket nines to win the tournament.

Ivan Leow
Ivan Leow

Final Table Results (HKD)

1. Ivan Leow – $1,442,300

2. Yang Wang – $921,000

3. Albert Paik – $580,000

4. Wenling Gao – $400,000

5. Chihwen Chen – $280,000

6. Victor Chong – $220,000

7. Tony Cheng – $160,000

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