By Darren Wee, 2021 and 2023 Team Member

The 2023 Asian Nations Cup was held in Hong Kong from 24th to 26th February 2023. Along with 11 other teams from Asia, Team Singapore was looking to secure a strong finish and qualification to the Nations Cup Finals held in Switzerland later this year. Being the first year where a prize pool was up for grabs, we expected tough competition from our old rivals such as China, Taiwan and Israel. Even so, we had high hopes and expectations for our performance, with many rigorous group training sessions held over Zoom in the preceding weeks before leaving Singapore.

Friday evening saw the teams gather in a university lecture theatre for an opening ceremony, where all the teams were introduced to each other and all team captains, including Team Singapore’s Lisa, give a short opening speech.

Although the teams had been asked to dress formally, it seems that it was an advisory rather than a strict enforcement, as many other teams just showed up wearing their team jackets jerseys while Team Singapore looked ready for a hotel wedding banquet. Still, we hoped that our level of preparedness in attire would match our performance on the table during the competition.

As the event kicked off proper on Saturday morning at 9am, many of the team could not resist grabbing a coffee from the nearby Pacific Coffee shop. Some delays and technical issues gave us some time to discuss some team-specific strategies, as the 12 teams had been divided into 2 groups of 6. Team Singapore’s group, Group A, included traditionally strong teams such as Taiwan and China, but India and Israel, which also had showed strong performance in years past, were in Group B. Out of each group of 6, only 3 would qualify to the final group qualifier. Finally, out of the 6 teams, 4 would qualify to the finals in Switzerland in September to face other countries from the rest of the world.

For our first group, we would have to play 3 rounds of 100 hands each. Having selected our starting lineup and had our team huddle, we set off to our allocated seats.

Group Stage - First Round

Out of 6 teams, Team Singapore managed to finish… 6th.

As we were able to look at hand results with the help of a laptop computer, we quickly reviewed the hands that we were only able to get 1-2 points in. Many of the hands were due to our opponents making questionable plays and hitting their drawing hands. For example, one opponent limped and called 76o UTG and ended up buying a straight on A8965 against Team Singapore’s set of 9s. As no other player in the same seat made that play, Team Singapore could only get the minimum points while our opponent was rewarded for being a donkey by getting maximum points. While there was nothing wrong with Team Singapore’s play in this hand, the results showed that we did the worst.

We resolved not to change our strategy wildly and stick with what we had planned and discussed, and also shared some player-specific reads that could help our teammates - this was because the players would be changing tables between rounds.

Group Stage - Second Round

Team Singapore did much better in the second round, managing to overtake Mongolia and the Philippines and placing 4th.

With Taiwan (1st) and China (2nd) too far ahead, we set our sights squarely on Hong Kong (3rd) to overtake. The standings meant that any hand we played against Hong Kong had double effect on the points as we only needed to overtake them.

Still, Singapore had a 30 point gap to overtake Hong Kong at the end of the second round - a big gap.

Exhausted after a long Saturday of grueling poker, Team Singapore adjourned to a Hong Kong street restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui, where we had a delicious dinner of chicken soup, salt and pepper squid, and roast pigeon. With the stress of having to overcome a big points gap, we didn’t get much sleep, especially since the event ended at 12am and we had to report at 9am.

Group Stage - Third Round

With the results not being shown till the last hand was complete, there was a lot of stress and worry in the fan zone, notably from team captain Lisa who was spamming the refresh button on our laptop as each hand result came out. A few shock results in the last 5 hands changed the standings considerably, being:

Hand 1: Team Singapore had ATo and went all in preflop against Team Mongolia’s 85o, who was gambling with any two cards at that point. Unfortunately, Team Mongolia hit an 8 and Singapore lost maximum points in this hand.

Hand 2: On the other table, Team Mongolia went all in preflop with K3s and hit a flush against Team Hong Kong’s AKo, also making sure that Hong Kong got minimum points in this hand.

Hand 3: The cards dealt were KQ in the cutoff, with AA in the small blind. The board ran out Qxxxx meaning that KQ would usually have lost a big pot in this scenario. However, because the player with AA was from Taiwan, who was playing extremely tight and solid, Team Singapore folded preflop and only lost 150 chips in this hand. All the other players with KQ were unable to avoid losing a big pot.

(I’m not a big believer in luck, but somehow all the factors aligned just nice for Singapore to overtake Hong Kong in the last round. Actually, if Hong Kong had played much more conservatively, we would have a very difficult job on our hands. But we saw that Team Hong Kong was just a group of players thrown together without any real central management or organisation and each player was just doing their own thing.)

The final calculations showed that Singapore had qualified to the final group by just 4.1 points over Hong Kong. The .1 points is due to a new calculating factor, the amount of chips won/lost acts as a multiplier to the points won.

However, a few teams had their own Excel spreadsheets up to do the calculations. Singapore, of course, had our own strategy/Excel data hub back in Singapore in the form of our captain from previous years Lim Min Soon and he told us that Singapore had actually qualified by just 0.4 points. This was also pointed out to the IFMP organisers by Team Taiwan and the final result was adjusted to show that Singapore had only qualified to the final group stage by 0.4 points, probably the smallest margin ever in Match Poker history.

We couldn’t quite believe it. That margin meant that every single one of our decisions had an effect on us qualifying. After a gigantic team effort, we had overcome Hong Kong and scraped into the final groups by the skin of our teeth!

Our team advisor Min Soon even likened it to the ‘Miracle Of Istanbul’, where Liverpool overcame a 3-0 deficit against AC Milan at half time to draw the game 3-3 and win on penalties in the 2005 Champions League Final.

Final Group Qualifier

After lunch, Team Singapore reported back to the venue and saw that the final 6 teams were Singapore, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Israel and South Korea. Of these 6, only 4 would qualify. We made our strategy planning and adjustments and headed off to the tables.

With the burden of having to overcome a big gap lifted from our shoulders, we played with much less worry and stress and managed to finish 4th after the first round of 100 hands. All around, we felt that the players were much tougher and they didn’t make as many glaring errors. Everyone had to be on their A-game.

The second round of 100 hands saw Singapore still at 4th, but with Vietnam in 5th lurking very dangerously behind. South Korea were much farther behind in 6th. Taiwan and China were way ahead in 1st and 2nd. It seemed that we would have to scrap for our tickets to Switzerland with Vietnam, until…

Patrick McNally, the president of IFMP, marched to the fan zone and announced, “Due to the scheduling for the closing ceremony venue being booked for 7pm, we need to cut the tournament short now. We’ll be bringing the top 5 teams to Switzerland in September”.

The teams present cheered and exchanged high-fives and fist bumps, notably Singapore and Vietnam who would have had a big battle on their hands for the last team ticket but who would now both be able to travel to the finals in September.

The final standings saw Taiwan in 1st, China in 2nd, Israel in 3rd and Singapore finish 4th - with a notable unfortunate last hand that cost us a podium finish in 3rd seeing Singapore’s KK get all in with 75%+ on the turn but lose to South Korea’s 85o, who was in full gambling mode at that point. Unfortunately, no podium finish for us this time, but we have our sights set squarely on the World Nations Finals in Switzerland and aim to better our 4th-placed finish from last year!