image from bankrollbacker.com

The Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) sponsored by PokerStars has officially kicked off with the Day 1A flight. Popular players such as Doyle Brunson, his son Todd Brunson, former WPT champ Nam Le, and the always striking Liz Leu joined 103 players today as they played down to 23 to await all survivors of the 1B flight tomorrow.

Rhyming with the chip authority is Guray Turkay who will bring back the big stack tomorrow (I'm a lyrical poet, don't you know it!) with 117,800. Turkay is closely followed by Carter Gill at 97,300 and Vang Kou with 91,900.

The Orient Express Johnny Chan held on for several hours today, but fell four places short of moving on to day two along with the aforementioned pros above. For live reporting of the event, hit up PokerNews.com (where the lovely chip counts and stories are coming from).