6:30pm: Notables
Level 1 - Blinds 25/50
The registration queue is a long one stretching the length of the poker room. Those players fortunate enough to already be seated include Dong Guo, reigning Asia Player of the Year Jack Wu, former APOY Pete Chen, Event #7 champion Anson Wong, Japan's Maeda Azusa, Linh Tran, high roller specialist Quan Zhou, Portugal's Antonio Martins, India's Dhaval Mudgal and Raghav Bansal, Philippines Mike Takayama and John Tech, Malaysia's Victor Chong, Hong Kong's Sparrow Cheung and France's Sebastian Clot to name but a few.
6:00pm: Cards are in the air
The time to shuffle up and deal is here and cards are now in the air. There are 327 runners so far and a huge queue of people still lining up to register so it could well be a full house here for the HK$8,000 Baby Dragon.
5:30pm: Baby Dragon Ready to Hatch
While it may well be the Year of the Rooster, this week it's all about dragons. While the Red Dragon is currently still slumbering, at least until Sunday 12 February, its little brother the HK$8,000 Baby Dragon is awake and stoking the blast furnace.
We are a scant 30 minutes away from the action at the Macau Poker Cup 26 Baby Dragon. If past numbers are anything to go by it looks like the Baby Dragon is growing up fast and could well easily surpass its HK$2 million guarantee.
This time last year 346 runners anted up to try and tame the young dragon whelp, with Hong Kong's Kwok Chun 'Derx' Lai emerging victorious for his first tournament career score for a very respectable HK$421,398 (~US$54,187) pay day.
Lai returned to successfully defend his title in September's MPC26 seeing off challenges from an impressive 575 runners to take down the HK$522,770 (~US$67,390) first prize.
Will there be a three-peat? Anything is possible and Lai will be returning to defend his title for a third time so stay tuned to the PokerStars blog as Ben Wilson brings you all the tournament thrill and spills when action gets underway shortly.