Tournament coverage Poker

The Railbird Report

Written by Railbird Ronny

This article first appeared in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.

It’s been an action-packed couple of months for the Asian tournament poker scene, especially for the Chinese, and there’s plenty more to come before the 2012 tournament season concludes.

First off back at the end of August, Macau hosted the world’s largest one-day poker tournament – the Macau High Stakes Challenge. You can read about this in more detail on page 30, but in a nutshell this monstrous HK$2 million tourney offered competitors one re-buy and generated a whopping HK$182,360,000 prize pool. China’s Stanley Choi battled through the 73-strong field to take down the HK$50,149,000 first prize, triumphing over a star-studded final table featuring Phil Ivey, John Juanda and Sam Trickett.

The 2012 WSOP October Nine

The 2012 WSOP October Nine

This was followed in September by PokerStars return to the Grand Waldo for the grand finale of the Macau Poker Cup tournament series – the Macau Poker Cup Championship – where 1,476 players from over 20 different countries competed for more than HK$10 million in prize money. Again China came up trumps. Rui Chen’s victory over the 270-strong MPCC Main Event saw the Chinese businessman walk away with the HK$1,108,500 first prize and make it a three-from-three clean sweep for China in the 2012 MPC tournament series.

Also in September over in the Philippines, the Php50,000 (HK$9,200) APT Asian Series Manila attracted an impressive 316 runners with Filipino Jav Medina taking down the Php3,521,000 (HK$650,840) first prize.

Jav Medina

Jav Medina

However, this railbird is more excited about the spectacular ending to the 2012 poker season. The WSOP final table on 29 October will see one of nine remaining players walk away with the coveted bracelet and US$8.5 million first prize.

The exciting conclusion to the highly contested Asia Player of the Year (APOY) race takes place at the PokerStars Asian Championship of Poker (ACOP) running from October 26 to November 11. With a HK$100,000 Main Event and a wealth of big buy-in side events this promises to be a superb poker carnival.

As if this is not enough the World Poker Tour (WPT) have announced their first foray in mainland China. The inaugural WPT National China Tournament will be coming to Hainan Island on 14 to 17 December. Taking place at the luxurious MGM Grand Sanya Resort, this is a milestone in China’s tournament poker development and should be a hotly contested affair.

For a complete list of upcoming tournaments and previous results of particular interest to Asian and Australian poker players and fans, check out Railbird Ronny’s Tourney Tracker on our website wgm8.com.