The Red Dragon spread its wings again today and now Day 1b is within the books.

Dwarfing the hole flight yesterday, today's proceedings had the room here at PokerStars LIVE Macau packed out. While Day 1a attracted a field of 205, we saw that smashed by the tip of late registration this afternoon as another 358 pulled up seats in a bid to chase the most efficient looking trophy in poker.

After eight hours on the felt those 358 were knocked all the way down to 83 and it was the Ukraine's Kamel Mokhammad who made a late charge to bag up the chip lead by the realization of play. Mokhammad ended with 210,600, comfortably in front of yesterday's chip leader Chao Yang who will bring 168,700 through to Day 2.

End of day chip leader - Kamel Mokhammad

With only $3,850 in live earnings to his credit, even a small cash here within the Red Dragon will greater than double his lifetime result. Mokhammad's only score to this point came last month when he finished first in a $300 Nightly Hyper Turbo in Famagusta.

Another who survived the night was Team PokerStars Pro Kosei Ichinose. The japanese Team Pro was the one of his teammates flying the flag for PokerStars here on Day 1b and he amassed 49,100 in chips throughout play. Also joining Ichinose on Day 2 may be Wing Cheong Chong (128,300), Garry Lam (109,100), Eric Ng (96,800) Long Meng (83,200) and Jianxun Wu (72,700).

For most of our other notables, however, Day 1b ultimately brought elimination. Kitty Kuo, Henrik Tollefsen, Alex Ward, Joe Hachem, Chen Hao, Russel Thomas and Lacey Jones all hit the rail over the 12 levels of play.

Lacey Jones

For folks who survived though it is a time without work tomorrow because the players within the third and final Day 1 flight battle it out. Those through to Day 2 will return come Wednesday to continue their quest for the distinguished Red Dragon title.

Here's how today's top ten finishers stack up.

MPC24 Red Dragon Day 1a Top Ten Chip CountsMokhammad Kamel (Ukraine) - 210,600Houmao Hua (China) - 201,400Weihang Chen (China) - 156,000Xian Xiao (China) - 149,400Chien-jung Huang (Taiwan) - 148,700Chin Wei Lim (Malaysia) - 147,000Valentyn Shabelnyk (Ukraine) - 141,600Jin Chao Zhang (China) - 129,200Chia-chi Liu (Taiwan) - 128,500Wing Cheong Chong (Hong Kong) - 128,300

Click here for full end of day chip counts

So now it's directly to Day 1c tomorrow. Hopes are high that with 563 entrants within the first two flights that we'll eclipse the 1000-player mark with tomorrow's field.

We're scheduled for a later start this time around with Day 1c kicking off at 7:00pm local time. We are hoping you'll join us again for what promises to be another great day of poker here in Macau!

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