For the second time in a week, Macau is in the midst of a major international poker tournament.

Wednesday saw the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour complete Day 1B of its $5,000 Macau main event. 125 players showed up for the second of three scheduled Day 1 flights at the Grand Lisboa Hotel and Casino. The field was diverse, with players from nearly every continent taking to the felt. At the end of the day only 55 of them remained in contention for an APPT title and what is sure to be a substantial winner’s purse.

Leading the way after seven levels of play was Norway’s Kristoffer Myhre. The Norwegian piled up 183,400 chips, standing more than 40K ahead of his closest competitor at the end of play. Myhre and four other players on Day 1B managed to amass larger stacks than Day 1A chip leader Brandon Demes had acquired on Tuesday.

Among those players was Darkhan Botabayev of Kazakhstan. He ended the day in fifth place with 124,500, thanks in part to a confrontation with 2003 WSOP Main Event winner Chris Moneymaker. The champ’s A-4 couldn’t crack the Kazakh’s pocket queens late in the day with his stack on the line, sending him to the rail and Botabayev to the head of the pack.

Looking further down the chip counts, the first two players to bust from the final table of last week’s APT Macau event, Winfred Yu and Casey Kastle, are both still going after Day 1B at the Grand Lisboa. Also in the hunt are tournament pro Young Phan, 2007 APPT Macau runner-up Ivan Tan, and 2008 APPT Manila champion Van Marcus.

Day 1 play at APPT Macau continues at 12:15 p.m. local time on Thursday with a third and final starting flight, while Friday will see the remaining players from all three Day 1 fields combine and begin playing down to a final table. While you wait, here’s a look at the top of the leaderboard from Day 1B:

APPT Macau Day 1B Top 10 Chip Counts

Kristoffer Myhre (Norway) 183,400
Peter Nielsen (Denmark) 141,500
Roel Pijpers (Netherlands) * 125,500
Darkhan Botabayev (Kazakhstan) 124,500
Suen Kit Cheong (Australia) 118,300
Aditya Agarwal (India) 93,300
Justin Ostrowski (United States)* 80,500
Terry Fan (Taiwan) 75,900
Tu Thanh Le (Australia) 67,700
Sean Wilson (Canada)* 67,000

* - indicates PokerStars online qualifier

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