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2013 Asian Nations Cup: Day 1 Summary

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ANC Day 1 Wrap Up

anc-day1-134Play has concluded and data has been processed by Joe Barnard. Team captains have received hand histories and stats on all 120 hands played and it is now up to them to analyse and interpret and perhaps make adjustments to their play and strategy.

Before play commenced Mongolia was the only team without a public track record and they tried to turn that into an advantage early on – in particular Bold Uundai was a very active player willing to risk a lot of chips to take down the pots and run over his table. It worked! He performed way above the rest of the field over the first 30 hands and pulled his team clear of the field and into a solid first place. However, it seemed like he ran out of steam going into session 2, the rest of the table picked up on his tendencies and played back, now more willing to take flips and go for the big pots confronting him with less than premium holdings. Mongolia took a virtual rollercoaster ride from top to the very bottom of the scoreboard and they will need to work their mystery magic on Day 2 to get back into the game.

Looking at the personal stats from key players in the teams it seemed likely that Australia, Israel, China and India would be the favorites to take the important top four spots, and so far only India has disappointed a bit. The team arrived as the very last competitors and question is if a stressful trip took its toll on the players’ focus.

After Mongolia started sliding it was Australia and China who took over on the leaderboard for the rest of the day, taking turns in the lead. The two teams are virtually tied before the final day, but a lot of points are still at stake and it is still anybody’s game.

player-19MVP of the first four sessions of play:

Session 1 – Bold Uundai/Mongolia

Session 2 – Wu Sai/CPG

Session 3 – Sangeeth Mohan/India

Session 4 – Queenie Kwan Yee Kim/Australia

Overall MVP standings going into Session 5:

1. Wu Sai/CPG

2. Sangeeth Mohan/India

3. Eyal Eshkar/Israel

 

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2013 Asian Nations Cup: Day 2, Session 1

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Australia back on top

anc-day2-0604The battle for first keeps changing. 10 hands ago China held the lead, but the aussies just took it back. Further down Singapore and Israel are consolidating their qualifying positions, and it looks like it is getting closer to crunch time for India and Japan if they are serious about competing for the top spots.

Table 2, hand #138

Action is folded around to Singapore’s Freddy Kwek on the button who raises it to 125. Harsh Saraf folds from the SB, but China’s Ted Wang reraises the pot for an extra 275, Freddy calls. The flop comes 2c 9d Qc, both check. The turn is 3d, Ted leads out with a bet of 600. Freddy raises to a total of 1,900, Ted re-raises to 6,900, Freddy moves all-in and Ted calls. Much to the surprise of the other players Ted reveals Ad Jh for ace-high with no draws, Freddy is ahead with QdJd – and the river brings no help for China and Team Singapore makes a nice score.

Standings after 150 hands:

PositionNation5th Session PointsChange
1stAustralia708▲
2ndChina698.5▼
3rdIsrael670.5=
4thSingapore669.5=
5thCPG662.5=
6thIndia645.5▲
7thJapan639▼
8thMongolia598.5=

Mongolia struggles

anc-day2-0607Hand 124, Table 8

Huang Wen Fei folds UTG, Takuya Suzuki in seat 2 raises to 125, it is folded to Daniel Chua who calls from the SB, Bold Uundai calls from the BB.
The flop is dealt – 9c Ks 8c – Daniel checks to Bold who takes the lead with a bet of 575. Takuya folds, Daniel calls. The turn brings 9d, Daniel checks, Bold moves all-in. After a few moments Daniel makes the call and reveals a pair of Queens, Bold is on an open-ended straight draw with 67o which he fails to get when Jd is exposed on the river. Mongolia drops another chunk of chips.

On table 3 we find the current leader in the MVP race Wu Sai, let’s follow the action in hand #133:

In seat 4 Enkhtuvshin Davaasuren from Mongolia raises UTG to 175. Manish Adnani in seat 5 folds, Wu Sai reraises to 600. Gani Weiss on the button folds, Kyle Sharpe folds in the SB as does Kinichi Nakata in the BB. Action back on Enkhtuvshin who re-pots it to a total 2,550. Action back on Wu Sai, who re-repots it for another 3,825, the Mongolian player calls. The flop is Qc 3h 5c. Enkhtuvshin announces all-in, Wu Sai snap-calls. She is way ahead with pocket rockets against Enkhtuvshins 77, and there is no help for him when the 2d appears on the river. Wu Sai with another solid score for herself and Team CPG.

Standings after 140 hands:

PositionNation5th Session PointsChange
1stChina664▲
2ndAustralia662▼
3rdIsrael631.5=
4thSingapore630=
5thCPG622.5=
6thJapan602=
7thIndia599.5=
8thMongolia556.5=

Tight fight for fourth

Sanya is a great host of IFP’s first Asian Nations Cup.

Singapore and Israel are making a charge for the qualifying spots.

Standings after 130 hands:

PositionNation5th Session PointsChange
1stAustralia619=
2ndChina616=
3rdIsrael593.5▲
4thSingapore585▲
5thCPG583.5▼
6thJapan567=
7thIndia5553.5=
8thMongolia526.5=

Teams are getting ready

Breakfast time on the final day, the teams are gathering in groups to work out their game plan for the final stretch. We caught up with the Australian team, everybody dressed in uniform, going through the data from Saturday’s sessions. David Borg: “We expect all other teams to be folding to our bets today!” Laughs around the table, team captain Julius Colman adds: “We are proud of Queenie’s performance last night, but most of us had a horrendous performance in session 4 and we are all determined to improve today – go Aussies!”

We also found a few players from Team China, Nicky Jin shared his thoughts with us: “We believe the team as a whole delivered a pretty good performance all day yesterday, and we have high hopes on our chances to win this trophy!”

Huang Bing Fu of the CPG team tongue-in-cheek: “Our main goal today is to take down Team China!” A couple of the players from Team Japan looking seriously focused on their way to the playing area: “We are not content with our current standing and we are making adjustments to our strategy so we can move up and compete for the trophy.”

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2013 Asian Nations Cup: Day 2, Session 2

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Check back to this page throughout the day for regular updates, the latest of which will appear at the top of the page.

Home field advantage

The field of teams and players have now played 75% of the hands and are off to a lunch break. They will now get a chance to go through the re-player when they come back and adjust play if they believe it necessary. Australia has had quite a negative outcome of the most recent session and China has brought themselves in a very favourable position for the Championship. In the middle of the pack a fierce fight is about to unfold to secure a spot in the Nations Cup Final.

Standings after 180 hands:

PositionNation6th Session PointsChange
1stChina850.5=
2ndAustralia825.5=
3rdSingapore821=
4thCPG820.5=
5thIsrael809.5▲
6thIndia799▼
7thJapan773=
8thMongolia740.5=

Action from table 5

anc-day2-2Let’s take a look at table 5, hand #158

Zang Shu Nu folds UTG, Izzy Kranz raises to 150 followed by folds around to CPG’s Fu Jun in the BB who finds the calling chips. The flop opens with 5h Js Ac followed by check-check. The turn is 4s, Fu Jun checks again, Izzy bets 350. After a minute’s pause Fu Jun min-raises to 700, Izzy folds.

Same table, hand #162

Hadas Wilf folds UTG as does Fu Jun, China’s Zang Shu Nu raises to 150. Izzy on the button folds. Singapore’s Lin Min Soon pauses in the SB, finds a re-raise to 500, Zang calls. The flops comes out 10s 6d 10c. Lin continues with a bet of 600, Zang calls. The turn brings the Js, check-check. The river is the Jd. Lin bets 750, Zang calls. Lin tables pocket aces, “nice hand” says Zang and flashes the Ac.

Standings after 170 hands:

PositionNation6th Session PointsChange
1stChina800.5=
2ndAustralia774=
3rdSingapore774=
4thCPG760.5▲
5thIndia757▲
6thIsrael756.5▼
7thJapan739=
8thMongolia686.5=

Back to play

anc-day2-0609After a short break teams are back to session 6 of ANC’s final day.

There are three more sessions to play today before IFP officially announces the winner of its first Asian Nations Cup. Four teams in total will qualify for the world’s Finals. Team CPG won’t be able to progress.

Standings after 160 hands:

PositionNation6th Session PointsChange
1stChina749.5▲
2ndAustralia746▼
3rdSingapore730.5▲
4thIsrael717.5▼
5thCPG712.5=
6thIndia703.5=
7thJapan695=
8thMongolia669.5=
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2013 Asian Nations Cup: Day 2, Session 3

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Check back to this page throughout the day for regular updates, the latest of which will appear at the top of the page.

Last hand of session 7

anc-day2-5334Hand 210, Table 2

Fu Jun folds UTG, Singapore’s Daniel Chua raises from 2nd position to 175. Three folds around to Kinichi Nakata in the BB who makes the call. The flop comes out 4h Kc Ad. Kinichi leads out with a bet of 325, call from Daniel. The turn is 3c. Kinichi check-raises to 2,600 after a bet of 1,025 from Daniel – Daniel calls. The Ace of spades shows up on the river – Kinichi fires out 3,000, Daniel moves all-in and Kinichi folds. Daniel shows AQo for trip aces.

Standings after 210 hands:

PositionNation7th Session PointsChange
1stChina1003.5=
2ndSingapore973.5▲
3rdAustralia959▼
4thCPG953=
5thIsrael942.5=
6thIndia917.5=
7thMongolia893.5▲
8thJapan881.5▼

Teams reviewing IFP’s re-player

The power of IFP’s re-player can hardly be overestimated – during the lunch break all players enjoyed this amazing tool in team sessions where they were able to go through each and every hand they wanted to see all the action both in a log and in an animated version. As play is getting closer to the finish every decision becomes more crucial to team standings and every little piece of information on opponents’ play can prove vital.

IFP’s re-player will be available online on pokerfed.org after the event.

 

 

 

 

Standings after 200 hands:

PositionNation7th Session PointsChange
1stChina957.5=
2ndAustralia926▲
3rdSingapore922.5▼
4thCPG909=
5thIsrael903.5=
6thIndia869.5=
7thJapan858.5=
8thMongolia853.5=

Two more sessions to go

player-25During a break I talked to Stas Tishkevich, the president of The Israeli Poker Union:

What were your expectations going into this event?

Our expectations were first of all qualifying for the finals in Brazil, anything less than 4th place would be a failure. We are aiming for 1st place, as the Israeli team is combined of very good poker players and most of them play poker for a living.

How did you pick your national team and how did you prepare?

I’ve picked the team according to live tournaments winnings given by HendonMob, online poker winnings given by OPR, and volume in MTTs. Israel is a small country, and the poker community knows each other, so it was easy to choose the players, whom I personally know.

As for preparations we talked strategy in our 8 hour stop in Amsterdam, on the way to China.

After day 1 you are at 543 points (540 average) and just above the qualifying threshold. Are you happy with your performance? Will your team be analyzing Day 1 play and make adjustments?

After day 1 we made not so impressive results. After sitting all night and analysing the hand log given to us by IFP, we realised 2 things – the main thing was that we were over-thinking regarding the tournament structure instead of just playing poker.

2nd thing was realising that the tournament results are greatly affected by teams playing against the Mongolian team. Our team ran poorly against them in All-Ins pre-flop, unstacking with our TT losing to K3o etc. We believe that if IFP checks results without team Mongolia we will be in the top 2 at least.

Tell me a little about your national federation. How many members do you have and what kind of activities are you organizing? What are the plans and ambitions for the future of your NF?

Our national federation is very young – just 2 months old and we have yet to start recruiting members. The Asian Nations Cup is the first official competition of the Israeli team, and it is actually the first official activity of the union. We are planning to make Match Poker competitions in Israel, we will try to bring an official WPT event into Israel and have many more activities on the go. You will definitely be hearing about us in 2014, we hope to make IFP proud!

Standings after 190 hands:

PositionNation7th Session PointsChange
1stChina905.5=
2ndSingapore879.5▲
3rdAustralia876▼
4thCPG870=
5thIsrael853.5=
6thIndia840=
7thJapan816=
8thMongolia799.5=
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2013 Asian Nations Cup: Day 2, Session 4

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Check back to this page throughout the day for regular updates, the latest of which will appear at the top of the page.

Who will be Asia’s team poker champion?

anc-day1-134Play is coming to an end, in just a few hands’ time the winning team will be determined. Who will be taking Asian Nations Cup’s the trophy home? Who will be crowned as the tournament’s best individual player? Who are the best players of each eight sessions?

We will keep the suspense until the gala dinner and the award ceremony where trophies and medals will be awarded to the best players and teams. Not until then will it be revealed which teams have qualified for the Nations Cup Final – and the grand moment awaits when we will celebrate the Asian Nations Cup Champions!

Stay tuned for a final wrap up later tonight. A couple of highlight videos and interviews will be shortly available as well as IFP’s re-players and an ind-depth Match Poker analysis of the Asian Nations Cup.

Final stretch

anc-day2-042630Hand 211, table 7

Last session has started. Results will not be posted until after the last hand has been played out, but we will keep an eye on some of the key players and tables. Mongolia bounced off the last place ranking with an impressive surge and high scores from Temuulen Dashbat sitting at Table 7:

Australia’s Garth kay raises UTG to 175, CPG’s Mo Wei Liang and Temuulen both call as does Sangeeth Mohan in the SB. The flop is 7c 2c 7h. Check-check followed by a bet of 600 from Mo, Garth is the only one to call. The turn is Jc, both players check. The river brings 2h, and the players check it down. Garth is playing the two pairs on the board with an ace kicker but Mo wins with a better two pair holding pocket fives.

Hand 212, table 7

Mo folds UTG, Temuulen calls in 2nd position. Israel’s Hadas Wilf raises to 150 but Sangeeth on the button re-raises to 575 followed by folds around to Temuulen who calls as does Hadas. The flop is Ad 3c 4s and it is checked around to Sangeeth who takes down the pot with a bet of 1,550.

Charging batteries for the final session

Teams are getting together for the last stretch.