For poker fans; today had everything.

We witnessed records broken and an indescribable atmosphere as players flooded the poker site here for the third and final opening flight of the Red Dragon.

By the close of late registration it was 512 who joined the search today. That brought our total as much as 1,075 for a record-breaking Red Dragon field. Not just was today the most important Day 1 flight and confirmed we were a few of the biggest iteration of this tournament ever, however it also became the largest-ever freezeout tournament within the whole of the Asia-Pacific.

Of those 512 who did participate today, only 127 would survive the 12 levels of play. Sooner than the pack when all was said and done stood Huitong Cao. He finished with 232,600 prior to Wayne Zhang with 167,600 and Jun Yang Ong on 165,900.

Ahead of the pack on Day 1c - Huitong Cao

Cao has just one previous live cash to his name from a second place finish in a turbo event back in 2014. With that score awarding him only $4,479 Cao is easily on his approach to the largest results of his poker career.

Returning tomorrow to sign up for Cao on Day 2 from today's flight could be four previous Red Dragon champions. Yuefeng Pan (95,700), Zhenru Xie (73,400), Raymond Wu (73,000) and Tom Alner (49,000) all finished with chips.

MPC23 Red Dragon Day 1c Top Ten Chip CountsHuitong Cao (China) - 232,600Wayne Zhang (China) - 167,600Jun Yang Ong (Singapore) - 165,900James Chen (Taiwan) - 150,500Raul Gallego (Spain) - 138,400Leo Cheng (Canada) - 135,100Satrya Wijiya Teja (Indonesia) - 126,500Yongjun Liang (China) - 121,200Marc Rivera (Philippines) - 115,900Vladimir Dobrolskii (Russia) - 114,800

Click here for full end of day chip countsClick here for Day 2 seating draw<</a>

While these lucky players survived the night, for others, it was a distinct story. Our two representatives for the PokerStars contingent couldn't hold on. Bryan Huang was eliminated earlier after a three-way all in didn't result in his favour. Also hitting the rail was Yaxi Zhu who lasted until late within the day but just came up short within the end.

Team PokerStars Pro Yaxi Zhu

We also lost a horde of notable names today with Jason Lo, Aaron Lim, Raiden Kan, Jack Salter and MC HotDog all falling by the wayside.

For the 127 who made the cut, they'll join the qualifiers from the primary two flights back here tomorrow. Play will kick off earlier with a 3:00pm begin to give players a possibility to wait the MPC24 Welcome Party within the evening.

As always we'll be covering all of the action from here at PokerStars LIVE Macau. We are hoping you'll be able to join us for an additional exciting day of poker action!

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