The Red Dragon took flight again today.

The feature tournament of this Macau Poker Cup 24 generated an electrical atmosphere around the room here at PokerStars LIVE. When late registration was locked out it was a complete of 205 who had posted up the HK$12,000 buy-in but if all was said and done only 49 remained.

Of those it was China's Chao Yang who rose to the highest within the closing stages of Day 1a. Yang bagged up 168,700 on the conclusion of play to edge out Koen Breed in second spot with 152,300 and Shuang Hu who rounded out the rostrum on 137,300.

End of day chip leader Chao Yang

Yang has a complete of $33,004 in live earnings and together with his showing today he's well on his option to adding some more to that tally. His biggest score thus far was here in Macau when he shipped the HK$3,000 Midnight Turbo event for $11,951 last year.

Joining Yang on Day 2 could be former chip leader Steven Cody (66,700), Japan's second-ever WSOP bracelet winner Takahiro Nakai (51,400) and reigning Asia Player of the Year Alan King Lun Lau (49,700).

While the survivors can have a two day respite before returning for the official Day 2, for everybody else it just wasn't to be. Three PokerStars Team Pros were within the running but only Chen-an Lin (50,000) managed to outlive the day. Celina Lin was eliminated by means of a flip within the later stages and Aditya Agarwal registered late and did not last the simpler a part of half an hour before finding the rail.

Eliminated: Team PokerStars Pro Celina Lin

Also chucking up the sponge were MPC22 champion Yuguang Li, Asia Player of the Year runner-up KC Wong and 2014 Asia Player of the Year Pete Chen.

MPC24 Red Dragon Day 1a Top Ten Chip CountsChao Yang (China) - 168,700Koen Breed (Netherlands) - 152,300Shaung Hu (China) - 137,300Yiu Wah Kwok (Hong Kong) - 136,100Gang Wang (China) - 119,600Yan Li (China) - 91,200Takashi Ogura (Japan) - 88,900Weichun Jiang (China) - 86,100Soon Ann Gan (Malaysia) - 85,900Yuexin Wang (China) - 79,200

Click here for full end of day chip counts

And that takes us to the second one opening flight. That's expected to be even bigger than today and we glance on the right track for one more impressive MPC field. Things are only heating up and it's promising to be a spectacular week of poker.

Day 1b kicks off at 2:00pm local time on Monday. We'll be here again for all of your live reporting needs. We are hoping you'll be able to join us!

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Asia Pacific Poker Tour]