It was another bustling day at PokerStars Live Manila with the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event Day 1b drawing in 258 entries to the Grand Ballroom of City of Dreams Manila. With a deep starting stack of 30,000 chips, players flocked the registration booth, and by the point cards were within the air, there have been no less than twenty tables already filled up with more opening up shortly after. By the top of late registration / re-entry, the day's prize pool grew to an enormous P5.6M.After sixteen rounds of scheduled play, there have been 59 players who remaining with Chinese Taipei's Shih Chieh Su bagging the most important stack of 367,000 chips. Su had a gentle run of accumulating chips within the day after which landed a major pot with a nut flush. Throughout the hand, Su called a player's all in shove on a flop of A♥5♥2♦ while holding K♥8♥, and he was up against ace-five two pair. The turn of 8♣ was no help however the river of 7♥ gave Su some of the outs he needed for a winning flush. For his successful gamble, he shipped in a pot that sent his stack straight into the leader's seat. Finishing the day second-in-chips was Korea's Soojing Hong with 327,000 chips and rounding out the highest three was Chinese Taipei's Tzu Chieh Lo with 309,500 chips.

Day 1b saw an excellent performance by several Chinese Taipei players with five of them ending the day throughout the top ten of the chip ladder. Chuang Yi Wu finished in sixth position, Jack En-Ching Wu in eighth position, and Chia Iin Chang in tenth position. For En-ching Wu, he amassed his stack earlier than the overall hour of the tournament when he landed back-to-back pots, with the second earning him a pot of nearly 250k. He finished the day with 213,500 chips. For Chang, she battled for a large pot against Hong ahead of the general round of the day to bring her as much as 198,500 on the close.

Throughout the day, there have been many hands that left players in disbelief. A kind of crazy hands was won by Japan's Kenichi Takarabe who had A♥K♣ and was up against another player with A♦K♠. The board ran four hearts giving Takarabe the nut flush. There have been also several full house over full house hands with India's Jayde Fernandes's nines-over-eights falling victim to a player's kings-over-eights.

Despite the grueling battle on the felt, there have been players who had their fair proportion of winning pots to finish the day with the chips of their arsenal similar to Canada's Karl Thorson, Germany's Matteo Rechtien, China's Hui Yao, Australia's Piyush Gupta, Japan's Mitsutoshi Yamagoshi, and Filipino players Joven Huerto and Anacleto Quijano to say a few.

With just over twenty percent of the sphere surviving the night, a lot of well-known players and PokerStars regulars were a part of the combination that weren't so fortunate and located the rail instead. Among them were China's Zhinning Chen, Norway' Kai Paulsen, Japan's Tempei Kotani, USA's Gerald Casey, Korea's Sim Jae Kyung, UK's Jean Issa, Welcome Event champion Japan's Daiki Iijima, and former Manila Megastack champion Filipino player Euryd Rivera.

Final day action resumes tomorrow, Sunday, May 8, 2016, at 1215pm. For a read on one of the crucial action at Day 1b, head to the Manila Megastack 5 Day 1b Updates.

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