Manila Millions takes Asian poker to a new level

This article first appeared in the Jul/Aug 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.

The Asian Poker Tour and Genting’s Resorts World Manila have upped the ante for Asian poker with the introduction of the region’s richest tournament so far – the Manila Millions.

While Asian poker’s biggest game may be in Macau, all eyes were focused on Resorts World Manila in the Philippines during April for Asia’s first ever Super High Roller Event – the inaugural Manila Millions. Boasting a hefty HK$1 million buy-in the tournament – the first of its kind to be held in Asia – set the record for the region’s richest poker event. A grand total of 31 super-high-rolling players anted up and competed for a whopping HK$32.7 million in prize money, making the Manila Millions the richest tournament in Asian poker history.

Big money attracts big names and poker luminaries like Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, John Juanda, Joe Hachem, Johnny Chan, Nam Le and JC Tran all made the trip over to the Philippines. Some of Asia’s finest were also in attendance including: Poker King’s Winfred Yu, Devan Tang, Anson Tsang and several of Macau’s “big game” regulars including Malaysia’s Richard Yong, Hong Kong’s Tom Hall and the UK’s Chris Parker.

With deep stacks, an aggressive structure and some of poker’s best and brightest battling it out at the baize the action promised to be fast and furious and did not disappoint. Despite all the big names in the field, it was time for a new star to shine and it was US-based poker professional Allan Le who emerged victorious.

While well-known players like Tom Dwan and Joe Hachem bowed out early and others like Phil Ivey, John Juanda and Johnny Chan came up agonizingly short, Le successfully circumnavigated the tournament minefield to reach the final table. Once there he saw off challenges from Chris Parker, Winfred Yu, Jun Wei Liu, high roller specialist Keith Gipson, Richard Yong and Sun Sheng before defeating China’s Devan Tang in a grueling heads-up battle that saw the chip lead change hands on five separate occasions.

Le was forced to dig deep into his bag of poker tricks to emerge triumphant, finally edging out Tang when the latter moved all-in from the button for his last 800,000 in chips with K7 and Le found himself looking at pocket queens. The board ran out 4♣ A♦ 8♦ 4♠ A♥ to award Le victory in the richest tournament in Asia’s history and the monstrous HK$13,080,000 on offer for first place.

This is Le’s largest ever career cash to date though he is no stranger to high-pressure poker situations and has several World Series of Poker cashes under his belt, including a 2011 WSOP final table appearance. Le also comes from a family with a strong poker pedigree and is the younger brother of poker professionals Nam and Tommy Le.

Although Devan Tang may be disappointed to have got so close only to fall at the final hurdle, he netted himself a consolation prize of $8,175,000 for his 11 hours of hard work.

While this has set the precedent for the largest-ever Asian tournament poker prize pool it might not be long before that record is broken. The Manila Millions was a joint venture between the Asian Poker Tour and Genting and both organizations seem keen to run further events.

Mr David Chua, President of Genting Hong Kong and Chairman of Travellers International (Resorts World Manila), stated, “We’re very proud to have ‘Manila Millions’ as the inaugural event of the ‘Genting Poker League’ (GPL). We are also grateful to the Asian Poker Tour and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) for their strong support in making the event a great success.”

He continued, “The GPL aspires to be the premier poker tournament globally. We look forward to extending the GPL to multiple Genting Group-related locations, such as Resorts World Genting (RWG).”

Genting already run a successful UK poker tour and Mr CY Lee, President of Genting Malaysia has hinted that the “London Millions” may well be a possibility in the not too distant future.