After four days of play here at PokerStars LIVE Macau the ACOP Main Event final table is now set!

The remaining seven will be chasing the HK$5,885,000 (~$759,000) first place prize and the prestigious ACOP title.

When it all began we saw 260 entrants pull up seats to generate the HK$24,206,000 (~$3,123,000) prize pool. It proved to be a stellar field but after playing late into the night on Day 4 on seven return with a chance for glory.

Ahead of the pack is notable American pro Connor Drinan. He's had an interesting week here in Macau and seems to have enjoyed himself as he navigated his way to this final table. Drinan amassed his stack by scooping a few smaller pots and two huge ones where he made full houses against unfortunate opponents.

Drinan has already earned himself over $4 million in live cashes this year and has found himself in a great position to add another big score to his impressive poker resume. He returns today with the chip lead on a stack of 1,755,000.

Joining Drinan at this ACOP final table is another frontrunner, New Zealand's Thomas Ward. The 2014 APPT Auckland Main Event runner-up has already posted some notable scores here in Macau and is hunting his first ACOP title.

Ward was the first player to eclipse two million in chips yesterday after sending Sergey Lebedev to the rail in eighth place. Since then, however, he took a big hit from Nan Tu and finished the day with 1,335,000 in chips.

ACOP Main Event Final Table Draw
Seat 1: Thomas Ward (New Zealand) - 1,335,000
Seat 2: Nan Tu (China) - 1,370,000
Seat 3: Connor Drinan (Mexico) - 1,755,000
Seat 4: Hsien Yuan Yang (Chinese Taipei) - 370,000
Seat 5: Zhou Zhou (China) - 1,210,000
Seat 6: Qi Luo (China) - 980,000
Seat 7: Xixiang Luo (China) - 780,000

Play has now begun with the blinds recommencing at 15,000/30,000 and a 5,000 ante. The average stack is a comfortable 1,114,286 and with no set play-time today, we will play it out until an ACOP Main Event champion.

Be sure to stay with us for this exciting conclusion as seven become one. Who will walk away with the ACOP Main Event title?

Seat 1: Thomas Ward, 25 (Wellington, New Zealand) - 1,335,000 in chips

New Zealander Thomas Ward considers his occupation a professional Counter Strike and poker play, the latter of which he has played for six years. He says his biggest poker influence is Team PokerStars Pro Bryan Huang, and looks forward to a time when he can say he's a fellow teammate.

On top of finishing runner-up in the 2014 APPT Auckland Main Event, Thomas Ward has also seen some success in APPT and APT events throughout Macau. His tournament was nearly over when a cooler saw him all in with pocket kings against an opponent's pocket aces but Ward was able to spike a king to stay alive and score a big double up.

Seat 2: Nan Tu (China) - 1,370,000 chips

Nan Tu is a 28-year old freelancer from Beijing in China with eight years experience in the game of poker.
His tournament record shows a modest US$60,000 in career winnings but perhaps Tu's talents have been honed in cash games. He started playing small stakes in his home town but can now be found playing up to HK$300/600 cash games at the Wynn here in Macau.

Tu enjoys to party and says he is "easy going" which has come in handy being seated next to the fun-loving Connor Drinan for most of the last day!

Seat 3: Connor Drinan, 27 (Chicago, Illinois) - 1,755,000 in chips

Unfortunately Connor Drinan was a little too intoxicated to help us with his player profile, but luckily his manager and long-time poker media fan Jason Mo was at the ready. Mo informed us that away from the poker table Drinan works as a male model and stripper to help manage downswings.

The biggest highlight in Drinan's life thus far was placing second behind Mike McDonald in the Most Handsome contest and one of his favourite pastimes is being the little spoon to Pratyush Buddiga when they cuddle. Mo credits Drinan's success at the poker table this week solely to his excessive red wine consumption.

Seat 5: Hsien Kui Yang, 51 (Taichang, Taiwan) - 370,000 in chips

Taiwan's Hsien Kui Yang is a 51 year-old businessman who has only been playing poker for a year. He tells us he learnt the game online and regularly plays tournaments on PokerStars.

Outside of poker Yang is a big golf fan and his biggest moment in the tournament this week was when he scored a triple up to stay alive with pocket sevens. Yang doesn't appear to have any live cashes to his name yet but he finds himself in an envious position with this final table appearance.

Seat 6: Zhou Zhou, 28 (Las Vegas, Nevada) - 1,210,000 chips

Chinese American Zhou Zhou is a 28-year old poker pro, who resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He's been playing poker for seven years now after evolving his poker game from playing Real Time Strategy games. He usually can be found playing No Limit Holdem Heads Up games, ranging from $5-10 right up to $50-100.

Zhou has shown plenty of determination and a "never give up" attitude in this tournament, grinding his short stack for several hours to now be sitting with a seven-figure stack at this final table.

Seat 7: Qi Luo, 29 (Shen Zhen, China) - 980,000 in chips

China's Qi Luo is a restaurant worker who found poker four years ago. He got his start playing tournaments online and he's currently in fine form after placing 10th in the Red Dragon for $17,677 only two months ago.

Luo says he's felt comfortable at the tables this week and has a good feeling for the game. He had a steady climb throughout Day 4 and enters the final table fifth in chips.

Seat 8: Xixiang Luo (China) - 780,000 in chips

The fourth representative of China here on this final table is 41-year old Xixiang Luo. In his three years playing poker, Luo has collected almost US$50,000 in live tournaments winnings, exclusively in Macau and China.

Luo has loved the structure of this event but says that he got very lucky with a one-outer [6d] during the tournament. He'll need a bit more of that luck today as he enters the final table as the second shortest stack.

Before there was ElkY the poker star, there was ElkY the video game rock star. Now, they are one in the same.

Today, Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier became the newest member of Team Liquid, the eSports professional gaming sponsor. This is the first time PokerStars has had one of its Team Pros signed to top gaming sponsorship.

While ElkY continues his role as one of poker's best ambassadors and Team PokerStars Pros, he will play Hearthstone for Team Liquid.

This marks ElkY's returns to his root. Prior to his poker stardom, ElkY was among the most successful StarCraft players in history. In 2001, he finished second in the World Cyber Games in 2001 for StarCraft and in the Ongamenet WarCraft Retail League in 2002. A year later, won the Euro Cyber Games. It wasn't long after that when he was discovered by PokerStars. Since then, he's won more than $10 million, a coveted Triple Crown (EPT, WPT, and WSOP titles), and earned a Guinness World Record for the most Single Table Sit & Go's played online in one hour.

ElkY said, "When I discovered poker, I had to make the difficult choice to leave the competitive gaming world to focus my energy fully on poker. Hearthstone is one of the first games that shares the same skills as poker, and I am very excited for what the future holds in my multi-gaming career."

Lee Jones, Director of Poker Communications at PokerStars, said, "There are many similarities between poker and gaming, and ElkY's unrivaled success in both fields is a testament to his unwavering thirst for skill and strategy games. As the boundary between poker players and strategy gamers continues to blur, it is trailblazers such as ElkY who are narrowing the gap between people who consider themselves gamers, and those who consider themselves poker players. We look forward to the new era of strategy gaming that ElkY's appointment represents."

ElkY's first official tournament with Team Liquid will be today in the SeatStory Cup IV Hearthstone tournament. The four-day tournament, which began yesterday and concludes on Sunday, November 15, will see 32 of the world's best Hearthstone players battle it out for a total prize pool of $20,000. The tournament will be broadcast live on Twitch: twitch.tv/taketv_hs.

As ElkY would say, "So sick!"

Plans change.

And that was the case as the Main Event action transgressed into the early hours of the morning.

When play began the plan was to play down to our final six but things dragged on and a decision was made to cut the day short. We almost made it. Of the 23 returning players this afternoon it was seven who would ultimately survive the night.

The pace ebbed and flowed with a few very slow patches throughout.

Perhaps the worst one was when the final table bubble was approaching. It would finally burst during Level 24 when Patrick Mahoney made an ill-timed jam and was called by Hsien Kui Yang. Mahoney held pocket threes and couldn't improve against the pocket jacks of his opponent. The elimination signalled a final table redraw and a 40-minute dinner break.

It was then that things slowed down even further. It would take over three hours for the first final table casualty, that unfortunate honour going to Guoliang Wei. It was a one-two punch that knocked Wei out of the tournament. The first saw opponent Zhou Zhou open to 50,000 in chips before Wei played back at him for 131,000. Zhou came back over the top for his last 500,000 in chips and Wei called it off to see the bad news.

Wei: [Qh][Qc]
Zhou: [Ah][Ad]

The [2s][5c][2c][4d][6d] runout was safe for the aces and would see Zhou hold and cripple his opponent who was left with only two big blinds.

Wei committed those two big blinds the very next hand and despite turning the nuts with [jc][th] on a board of [7h][9c][kd][qd][tc], Xixiang Luo would river one better, tabling [ac][js] for Broadway to eliminate Wei.

We didn't have to wait too long for the next bustout as Sergey Lebedev found himself on the wrong end of a flip. He was all in preflop holding ace-queen against Thomas Ward's pocket jacks. Ward spiked a set on the turn as the board landed [6c][9c][3d][js][8c] to leave his opponent drawing dead.

When all was said and done though it was Connor Drinan who bagged up the chip lead again - but not before he managed to slide backwards in his chair and fall off of the final table podium. The railbirds erupted in laughter as the red wines that Drinan had been consuming during play seemed to have well and truly taken effect.

Despite that incident, Drinan finished the day with 1,755,000 in chips, ahead of China's Nan Tu on 1,370,000 and New Zealand's Thomas Ward who will come back with 1,335,000 to play with tomorrow.

ACOP Main Event Final Table Draw

Seat 1: Thomas Ward (New Zealand) - 1,335,000
Seat 2: Nan Tu (China) - 1,370,000
Seat 3: Connor Drinan (Mexico) - 1,755,000
Seat 4: Hsien Kui Yang (Chinese Taipei) - 370,000
Seat 5: Zhou Zhou (China) - 1,210,000
Seat 6: Qi Luo (China) - 980,000
Seat 7: Xixiang Luo (China) - 780,000

The action recommences at 2pm tomorrow as we play down to a sole survivor and prepare to crown a new ACOP Main Event champion. In the meantime you can check out the final table player profiles and we hope you can join us here at the PokerStars Blog for the exciting conclusion!

Yes, yes, we know. It's barely November. Christmas and all the high holidays are still weeks away. But, listen...even if you're not ready to hear holiday songs, even if you don't already have tinsel hanging from your tree, even if you're not roasting chestnuts over an open fire...you like money, don't you?

Between now and the end of the year, PokerStars' Christmas festival will be paying out $10 million in prizes. Need to get some Christmas shopping done early? A few (or a few hundred thousand) extra bucks can't hurt.

Wanna know more? Keep reading.

Ready to be festive? Here you go.

DAILY DOUBLE JACKPOT

Starting November 16, PokerStars will run the Daily Double Jackpot tournament series. In all, you'll have access to 84 tournaments over two weeks. That's six each day on this schedule:

• $1.10 DAILY DOUBLE 1 - 13:00 (Mon-Sat $5k GTD / Sun $10k GTD)
• $1.10 DAILY DOUBLE 2 - 13:00 (Mon-Sat $5k GTD / Sun $10k GTD)
• $11 DAILY DOUBLE 1 - 14:00 ET (Mon-Sat $50k GTD / Sun $125k GTD)
• $11 DAILY DOUBLE 2 - 14:00 ET (Mon-Sat $50k GTD / Sun $125k GTD)
• $55 DAILY DOUBLE 1 - 15:00 ET (Mon-Sat $75kGTD / Sun $250k GTD)
• $55 DAILY DOUBLE 2 - 15:00 ET (Mon-Sat $75kGTD / Sun $250k GTD)

Why play them all? Well, PokerStars has kicked in a big incentive. Anyone who wins two Daily Double tourneys at the same buy-in level will win a $1 million jackpot. What's more, tickets to the $250k Sunday events will be randomly added to all tournaments from Monday until Saturday. On Sundays tickets to the $5 Million Sunday Million will be randomly awarded.

CHRISTMAS CALENDAR

Think of this as an advent calendar stuffed full of money. From December 1-25 you can enjoy the Christmas Calendar. Check out the Challenges window in the PokerStars lobby. Each day, you can open a new door and see what's inside. Over the course of the 25 days, PokerStars will give away $2 million in Milestone Hands, Golden Sit & Go's, Spin & Go Challenges, Zoom Challenges, PCA Package Giveaways, special tournaments, bonuses and much more.

$5M GTD SUNDAY MILLION

If you ever opened up a bunch of small gifts and then found your one HUGE gift of the year...that's what this is. At the end of the Christmas Festival, PokerStars will run a special $5 million guaranteed Sunday Million on December 27 at 14:30 ET, featuring a $215 buy-in and minimum first prize of $500,000. Online satellites to the event are running around the clock and start December 1 from just $1.

How's that sound for a holiday season. Need more information? Go check out the PokerStars Christmas Festival home page.

The tournament floor here is absolutely bustling now with three events running simultaneously.

The Main Event is fast-approaching the final table bubble, the HK$15,000 NLH has just reached the money and the HK$500,000 Super High Roller is now underway!

The latter already has 29 official entrants with 21 taking their seats so far. Late registration will run an hour into Day 2 and with two rebuys allowed at any time up until the end of Level 8 the prize pool is expected to be more than impressive.

The plan for the Super High Roller is to play seven one-hour levels tonight and finish up at around 1:30am. As expected the big buy-in has attracted a star-studded line up.

Some of those already in their seats include Fedor Holz, Pratyush Buddiga, Jason Mo, Stephen Chidwick, John Juanda, Martin Kozlov, Mustapha Kanit and tonight's live satellite winner Andy Andrejevic.

Joining them are Team PokerStars members Mikhail Shalamov and Isaac Haxton. Shalamov busted the Main Event is 18th place today and took to Twitter to poll his followers on whether he should take a shot at the Super High Roller. He is now among the action so it's apparent Shalamov was convinced to play it one way or another.

Also hit with elimination from the Main Event today were Steve O'Dwyer and Christoph Vogelsang, but while they plan on playing the Super High Roller, they are taking some time off before pulling up seats. O'Dwyer is the reigning champion of this very event and will be looking for a repeat performance here in Macau this week.

O'Dwyer was painfully close to a Main Event final table finish, knocked out in 15th place for HK$350,000. Peddling a short stack for most of the day he did well to survive as long as he did, but ultimately found the exit after a preflop jam for his last six big blinds. O'Dwyer held [qh][6h] but was called by Nan Tu in the big blind who was in front with [kd][td]. Tu would hold that lead as the board bricked out and O'Dwyer was eliminated.

O'Dwyer finished six shy of the final table and as of right now only 11 still remain in contention. Word is that players will have a dinner break once we reach nine players, and then push on until our final six who will return tomorrow.

Stay tuned to the PokerStars Blog as we edge closer to the final table here for this ACOP Main Event!

Looking for something to do this weekend? Start here...

To play

All the weekend majors are on the card this weekend, culminating in the Sunday Warm-Up and Sunday Million. Merin09 and swonnny won them last weekend, taking a share of combined prize pools worth more than $1.6 million.

The weekend action is not limited to those two events. Check into the PokerStars lobby at any point to check out what's in store, with a full list of last week's winners giving you some idea of what we mean.

To read

For players who prefer the view from their armchair events in Macau should provide some excitement over the weekend. That's where the Asia Championship of Poker will conclude, with the Main Event down to 17 players at the time of writing.

Macau is typically a tournament venue good for drama, helped by the quality of the field this year which was dotted with high rollers from Europe and the United States making the trip. Make that South America too, specifically Brazil, represented by among others Team PokerStars SportStar Ronaldo Nazário.

You can read live coverage of everything that's happened so far from Macau, as well as everything that will happen between now and a winner being declared, on our live coverage page.

To hear

It's podcast time again. As always it's best letting the team do the talking ...

"Joe is finally back in New Jersey, while James remains in London. But an ocean can't keep them apart! On the agenda this week: Joe's impersonation of a billionaire industrialist, a round-up of the WSOP Main Event final table, and a brief discussion of this year's Poker Hall of Fame inductees (complete with bonus contest). Plus, the latest TV show is put under the microscope, as the boys talk to online qualifier Cory Pansano about his 'Shark Cage' experience. There's also a special message from Pagan Events about one of next year's EPT festivals. Things get serious when Joe comes to the assistance of a Superfan in need, and James provides some useful tips on how to protect your PokerStars account. Finally, Michael Uong sets out to prove he knows more about soccer than Joe in 'Superfan vs Stapes'." #EPTNotLive

Links:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ept-not-live/id970248920?mt=2
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ept-not-live
https://www.pokerstars.com/ept/podcast/?source=12382610
https://www.pokerstars.eu/ept/podcast/?source=12382610
https://www.pokerstars.uk/ept/podcast/?source=12382610

To watch

The fifth episode of Season 2 of Shark Cage is now available, with a line that guarantees fun. This episode features Ronaldo Nazário and Tito Ortiz, as well as poker pros Jake Cody and Sam Grafton. Punches will not be pulled.

To look forward to

As we wrote about today the UKIPT is heading back to Edinburgh later this month.

Dean Hutchison (left) defeated Team Pro Liv Boeree heads up last year to win the UKIPT Edinburgh title

Last year Dean Hutchison defeated Team Pro Liv Boeree heads-up, a feat that almost involved ignored a fascinating city beyond the tournament room walls. Could you do the same? Read about the event here, along with details of how to qualify.

All that's left to say is good luck at the tables this weekend. Tell us all about it on Twitter @PokerStarsBlog

It's still early into Day 4 here for the ACOP Main Event, but with the action expected to carry deep into the night, players will be doing what that can to keep their stamina up.

Every little edge helps at the poker table and fatigue can play a detrimental role in decision making. That might be why players are taking full advantage of the table service on the tournament floor.

On top of the impressive food menu and the adjacent Flame Bar, Red Bull - the official energy drink provider of PokerStars LIVE Macau - has provided fridges stocked up for players here at ACOP to enjoy free of charge.

While some of the remaining players sip cans of Red Bull in a bid to keep their energy levels high, one man is taking a different approach with regard to beverages. The overnight chip leader Connor Drinan put away a few glasses of red wine yesterday, and was spotted at the bar again during the first break just recently.

Drinan's decision might have been prompted by the final hand he played before stepping away from the table. The American made a big river fold on a three-flush four-straight board after his lead was raised by Nan Tu. We'll keep an eye on Drinan's alcohol intake and see how he fares at the table as the night progresses.

Another familiar face enjoying a drink is ACOP High Roller final tablist Stevan Chew. He was eliminated in the earlier stages of this tournament but has come down to rail the final two tables. Chew is watching on as friend and fellow Australian Matthew Wakeman fights for a final table spot, and he shared his thoughts on Wakeman's poker table eating habits.

"He just loves eating anything fatty really. Chips, burgers, pizza, you name it" Chew told us. "He also said he's been going to the gym this week but I think he was bluffing."

Wakeman hasn't been spotted with any food at the table tonight, but he has managed to run his stack up from the 126,000 in chips he started with to now sit at 615,000. We'll be following Wakeman's progress and see whether he manages to sneak in a snack as Day 4 lingers on.

For now though it's back to the action. Only seven remain in this ACOP Main Event. Stay with us!