It was a brave run by Japanese sensation Naoya Kihara, but sadly the Team PokerStars Online player’s ACOP Main Event has been brought to an end.

After navigating his way through three days of poker, Kihara entered Day 4 as the fourth shortest stack with 115,500 in chips. That was still good for over 38 big blinds, but a couple of mistakes and it would be all over.

Kihara was down to his last 49,000 when he three-bet jammed from the cutoff. Aiden Tam was the opponent who called with A♦ K♠ to have Kihara’s K♣ Q♣ in pretty bad shape.

Kihara seemed resigned to his fate as the board was spread 5♦ 9♥ 8♥ 4♥ 9♠ to leave him to depart the PokerStars LIVE Macau poker room.

It’s Kihara’s second deep run on the Asia Pacific Poker Tour this year. He took 11th at the APPT Seoul event in March, so go with three solid cash results at this year’s World Series of Poker. Now he’ll add a 22nd place here at the ACOP Main Event, good for HK$198,000 in prize money as this Team Online pro continued to prove that he has the game to compete on the live stage as well.

Kihara’s elimination leaves Yoshitaka Okawa as the lone representative for Japan with 21 players remaining.

Heath “TassieDevil” Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.

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