I’m sure there will some sore heads today in and around the tournament room as the players try and recover from lasts nights great party on the 39th floor.

The action will take place on a special table up at the end of the tournament room with TV cameras in attendance. Tournament Director, Matt Savage had his best suit on and got proceedings underway a little later than planned due to some technical issues.

There was a big gap between Chip leader Inwook Choi and Winfred Yu and the short stacks all had to make an early move with the blinds at 5000/10000 with a 1000 ante.

No one expected our first player to be heading to the rail after only three hands. Casey Kastle who has reached the final table in the previous two APT events got his chips in good with pocket kings against Adrien Allain’s pocket nines. However a board of  8 10 7 A J made a straight for Allain and Kastle was off to collect his  HK $131,500 already.

The action did not slow down after that early elimination. Winfred pushed all in with A 6 and got a caller in Choi with KQ. An ace and a king on the flop meant both players were in with a shout but a Queen on the turn gave Choi two pair and the pot. Yu leaves with HK $202,400

Moments later it was all happening again with Crister Hallbrook eliminated in 7th place for HK $303,600. He raised pre flop for 30,000 and got one caller in Adrien Allain. The flop came down A 4 3 and Allain checked it back to Crister who pushed his remaining 79000 chips into the middle and got the call. Crister had pockets 8’s while Allain had a harmless looking 4 5. However the 2 came on the turn to leave Crister in big trouble and the 3 on the river was no help.

Three down and only 15 minutes played. At this rate we will all be done in record time and be able to get to the bar early.

Literally within a blink of an eye we were saying goodbye to our fourth player. Micheal Woo decided that Q6 of Diamonds was good enough to play and got a caller from Adrien Allain with pocket kings. Although a 6 came on the flop giving some hope to Wuu, he could not improve on that and was gone with HK $404800 in his pocket for finishing 6th.
Allain was now up to about 800,000 chips and looking in devastating form.

After such a high powered opening 20 minutes the action slowed down for almost an hour as JC Tran and David Steicke picked up a couple of nice pots. However we soon had another player heading for the rail. Chris Chau pushed his very short stack all in and got two callers in Inwook Choi and Adrien Allain. Those two checked down a board of innocent looking cards and Choi picked it up with two pair. Chau eliminated in 5th for a HK $506,000 payday.

With only four players remaining the chip counts as the players headed for their first break of the day were as follows –
Adrien Allain – 1,529,000
Inwook Choi – 667,000
J.C. Tran – 547,000
David Steicke – 518,000
Blinds are now at 8000/16000 with a 2000 ante.

Soon after the players were back from the break, well known player and many people’s tip for the trophy David Steicke got his money in pre flop and got one call from Inwook Choi who turned over Pocket kings against Steicke’s pocket nines. No luck on the board for Steicke and he left in 4th for HK $708,300

Poker Pack player JC Tran was now the short stack and although he would indeed be a popular winner, he had a lot to do at this stage to improve his chances of winning.
However over the next hour he got involved in a lot of pots and started shipping more chips than he was winning.

Finally he got his remaining 166,000 chips all in pre flop and both Inwook Choi and Adrien Allain called. Tran’s A8 looked good on a A J 10 flop and a turn of a 9 and even better after an 8 came on the river but that’s because I couldn’t see that Allain had A Q and had made a queen high straight. Tran left the tournament with HK $910,540 for coming 3rd.

So now it was heads up between Inwook Choi with 1,078,000 chips and Adrien Allain with 2,182,000 chips.
The first few hands were very cautious and we did not see a flop for a while as blinds and antes were passed back and forth. Eventually we had some good hands as sizeable pots were won by both players.
However it wasn’t long before we had an all in and a call as all the chips went in the middle with Choi holding a very strong AQ while Allain was dominated holding A3.
But it was obviously meant to be Adrien’s tournament because a 3 came on the flop and that was all it needed to win the hand, the HK $3,035,000 first prize (about US$ 391,000) and the tile of Asian Poker Tour Macau winner 2009. Inwook Choi played very well and took home HK $ 1,660,000 (approx US$ 214,000).

PartyPoker have five players and a couple of adopted players playing under the PartyPoker name. Unfortunately we had Ian Frazer, Maksim Shuts and Philipp Gmunder all sitting on table 15 which was not the preferred start but never mind. Raymi was sitting over in the far corner on table 23 and Gylbert was on table 17. Some notable names still in the tournament included Johnny Chan, JC Tran and Steve Sung.

The short stacks would have to make a move because with 1200/2400 blinds and a 200 ante it would be too expensive to sit and wait for a premium hand. Over on table 18 the first five hands had someone going all in and after only 10 minutes the table was down to 6 players. In fact we lost 13 players in the first 30 minutes of play as the big stacks picked off the small stacks.

Ian Frazer was again using his stack to his advantage over on table 15. A short stacked player went all in for about 15000 chips and Ian re-raised it to 40,000 to scare off the small blind and big blind who both mucked their hands. Ian revealed A¨10¨ while his opponent flipped over the weaker K§ Q©. A flop containing three Jacks did not help anyone and the turn and river brought a harmless 10 and 2 respectively giving Ian the pot.

Philipp from Switzerland was moving table at about 1pm and as he walked over was saying he had not had a playable hand all day. He was moving over to sit next to JC Tran which would not help him increase his short stack. After only an hour and 45 minutes he had to push with K9 and got a call from JC Tran who just happened to have pocket aces. Another player also went all in with Queens and rather miraculously spiked a queen on the river to send Philipp to the rail and leave JC cursing his bad luck.

At the first break we were down to just 6 tables and the average chip stack was about 60,000 but unfortunately we had also lost Raymi who left the tournament room while I was over at another table.

With the top 40 players making the money and only 50 players now remaining it was obvious some players were playing very cautiously in a bid to creep into the money.

One such player who decided to through caution to the wind was Maksim from Belarus. I arrived at his table to see him contemplating a flop of 8 K 10 rainbow which he and another player both checked. The turn brought a Jack and a second club giving straight and flush draws. Maksim bet 9000 into a 30,000 pot. The other player re-raised it up to 25,000 chips and after what seemed like an age, Maksim said he was all in. The other player insta-called and Maksim’s face fell as he knew he was probably behind. Indeed he was as the other player revealed Ace Queen for the nut straight while Maksim turned over pocket kings for top set. Unfortunately the board needed to pair in order to keep Maksim in the tournament. The river brought a harmless 6 and that was the end for Maksim who went over to watch and support his younger brother Mikhail.

We stayed at 41 players for quite a while because we were now playing hand for hand and no one wanted to be the bubble boy. This gave the bigger stacks the chance to steal the blinds and antes from smaller stacked players as they pushed at every opportunity. Eventually we were down to 40 players as Jay Kincaid from Australia busted a guy who decided that a pair of twos was his time to go all in. Jay had AJ and with a Jack falling on the turn we had our 41st placed player and a big cheer went up around the room.

Average stack size was now up to 81500 chips.

Mikhail Shuts was on a table with JC Tran and got involved with a few pots with the Poker Pack pro. One involved a 8 8 9 rainbow flop which Mikail bet 7000 only to see JC Tran re-raise to 17,000. Mikhail called and the turn card was a dangerous looking 10. JC bet 20,000 and Mikhail who only had 50,000 more chips tanked for a long while before mucking his hand. Much later he told me he had pocket jacks so I thought he must have been convinced that JC had either a straight or an 8 or maybe pocket nines to throw away a good hand.

Over the next 30 minutes, Mikhail clawed some of his chips back from JC Tran as they seemed to be the only people on their table willing to play any poker. Eventually JC Tran got the better of the young man from Belarus and I walked over to see Mikhail go all in with top pair against JC’s top two pair. Mikhail came 33rd and collected HK $40,500

Ian Frazer was eliminated in 27th place and collected HK $60,700 for his efforts. I did not see the hand myself as I was in the tournament office but Ian’s friends told me he got his chips in with the best hand and was unlucky to be out.

This meant that PartyPoker had one remaining player. Gylbert Drolet from Canada was now carrying all our hopes and the last time I saw him he had a bigger than average stack.

When I went back to his table he was now only nursing a 40000 chip stack and gave me a friendly shrug when I pointed at his chips. With the aggressive David Steicke sitting to Gylbert left he knew that any all in raise would probably be called by Steicke especially as he was one of the chip leaders with over 250,000 chips. That moment duly came when Gylbert looked down and saw pocket 7’s.  Steicke duly obliged and called with K 9 and promptly flopped a king to send Gylbert to the rail in 21st position and HK $ 81000 better off.

Today we had a total of 193 players making a total turnout of 326 players in this years event which is a huge jump from the 260 they had in last years event. This has created a huge prize pool of HK $10,919,040 which equates to US$1,408,699 – a very attractive sum indeed.

PartyPoker had 4 players and one invited guest playing today all hoping to get their hands of their share of the cash.
Raymi Sanches Thorm from Sweden
Francesco Canzonieri from Italy
Joerg Shultz from Germany and
Philipp Gmunder from Switzerland.
Kazuki Ikeuchi from Japan

Despite a very busy tournament room, the early play was not particularly eventful for our players. It was not until the fifth level that a great deal happened and it happened with a bang. Francesco went from having a comfortable stack to heading for the rail in a matter of minutes. That was just before the dinner break but unfortunately I could not catch him as he left the room.

After dinner I checked in on Joerg who was now sitting with a short stack having recently lost a big pot.
On a board showing the King, deuce and ten of hearts, Joerg  went all in on the river which his opponent (who surprisingly had an even smaller stack) insta-called. Jeorg showed the six and three of hearts for a flush but his opponent showed the Ace Queen of hearts for a much higher flush. Joerg lasted only 5 more minutes and headed to the rail.

Philipp was also very short stacked and at one point went down to 1975 chips at one stage before getting back up to about 4000. Minutes later he was all in with 8’s and got a call from someone holding AK. A king on the flop did not look good for Phillip but an 8 on the turn gave him the pot as the river bricked. That double up still only gave Philipp a stack of about 8000 chips.

On a separate table in a corner a big money Pot Limit Omaha cash game was getting started with Chris and Tom from the Asian Poker Tour taking on some the Poker pack guys.

I tried keeping up with Raymi from Sweden but he moved around the room quite a lot today as he seemed to always be picking up his chips and getting moved from table to table. It did not seem to put him off his stride because he finished the day on 48900 chips.

I left the tournament room soon after the dinner break to grab something to eat and as I walked back into the room I was very happy to see that Philipp had increased his stack all the way up to 31,000 chips. By the end of the day he was on 25200 and looking forward to Day 2.

By the end of Day 1B there was a grand total of 88 players who would be starting Day 2.  Party still had the following 5 players – Philipp from Switzerland, Ian from England, Gylbert from Canada, Maksim from Belarus and Raymi from Sweden will all need a good nights sleep but I do not think many of them will heed that advice. I saw Maksim at the cash game tables on the second floor at about 2am and Ian was heading off to the MGM with his mate Trigger.

]]> http://www.partypoker.com/blog/asian-poker-tour/partypoker-asian-poker-tour-day-1b.html/feed 0 http://www.partypoker.com/blog/asian-poker-tour/partypoker-day-1-a-at-the-asian-poker-tour.html http://www.partypoker.com/blog/asian-poker-tour/partypoker-day-1-a-at-the-asian-poker-tour.html#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:54:45 +0000 Jeremy Coleman http://www.partypoker.com/blog/general/partypoker-day-1-a-at-the-asian-poker-tour.html Day 1A
Players are back and suitably refreshed.
Soon after the dinner break we lost Ricky from Australia who started the day very well and won a couple of big pots to establish a nice stack but who got no luck later in the evening and hit the rail at about 8pm.

Walking past one table I noticed all the players were making a lot of noise. It was easy to see why because we had an all in raise and two a callers. The cards were flipped over to reveal pocket queens v pocket kings v pocket aces. A situation you rarely see. The flop and the turn were all low clubs but no one had a single club for a flush. The river bricked and the guy with aces took down the pot but his heart must have been beating like a drum.

We lost Mikhail from Russia and Vic from the Philippines during the 8th level and were down to Gylbert, Ian, and Maksim as our last three remaining players for day 1A.

Over at Maksim’s table I saw him sitting and considering a huge call on a board showing all sorts of straight and flush possibilities. I could tell he really wanted to call a bet of about 20,000 chips but if he lost it would have crippled his stack. That was in the back of his mind and he eventually let the hand go and flipped over a 10 for 2nd pair. His opponent could wait to show his 5 6 for a total bluff. Maksim looked devastated.

Gylbert from Canada - cooler than a cucumber in the Arctic

French Canadian Gylbert Drolet is a very cool customer at the poker table and takes plenty of time when considering his moves. I saw him bully a few players off pots pre flop and post flop with well timed and considered bets that opponents would not call.
One hand that I did see him win featured a flop of A 4 2
Gylbert smooth called a 5000 bet when another A came on the turn. The river brought the
8. Gilbert’s opponent rather bizarrely only bet 3000. Gylbert sat and considered his options. I thought he would come in over the top and he duly did with a bet of 10,000 which received an insta-call. The other guy turned over A9 for top set and was expecting to scoop the pot. For a split second I was convinced Gylbert was beat but he duly turned over A4 for the full house and a huge pot.

As the tenth and final level was coming to an end I wandered over to Ian Frazers table and saw the guy on the button raise pre flop up to 3200 only for the small blind to re-raise it up to 9500. Ian sitting in the big blind sat and thought for a moment before saying those immortal words “I’m all in”. The button quickly folded but the small blind certainly wasn’t happy to let this one go. One other player at the table who was obviously a fan of Ian’s was jumping up and down and creating a bit too much noise bearing in mind he was not in the hand. Eventually the small blind threw his cards into the muck. Ian resisted the urge to reveal his hand but he told me later he only had the 7 & 8 of Hearts. I wasn’t sure if that was true but it took down the pot and meant Ian ended the day in a strong position.

That was the end of play for the day and the remaining 37 players bagged up their chips ready for Day 2 on Saturday. Our three remaining players occupied three of the top 10 positions with Ian Frazer looking good in 2nd on 67900 chips. Gylbert Drolet was in 7th with 56200 chips and Maksim Shuts was in 10 with 43000 chips. Another notable player still in the mix was Maksim’s younger brother Mikhail who travelled here with his brother and bought in direct. He plays all his poker on PartyPoker and we have adopted him as another PartyPoker player. Mikhail ended in 13th on 40000 chips.

Tomorrow is Day 1 B with a much bigger field expected it will be interesting to see how many we get in total and whether the total prizepool will exceed a huge HK $ 10,000,000.
Jeremy Coleman

Day 1A started today at 12 noon local time. Partypoker have 11 players registered for play today all eager to do their best in the second Asian Poker Tour Macau main event.
A total of 133 players sat down although some must have overslept and arrived in the tournament room up to 40 minutes late.
Todays plan is to play 10 levels today with a 60 minute dinner break after the 6th level. This means play should be all wrapped up soon after 1am

But before we can think about the end of the day and soft warm beds or hours of drinking excess, we have 10 hours of poker action to enjoy.

One player who only enjoyed about 1 hour’s worth of poker was Marc Gravel from Canada. Marc had his stack crippled when his straight ran into a higher straight. After a short while he had the misfortune to run his pocket kings into the pocket aces of an opponent. Marc’s wife came looking for him after another hour or so thinking he would still be in the tournament. We had to break the unfortunate news to her and she went off to find him.

Ian Frazer had a slow start to the afternoon and even when he had the good fortune to look down at pocket aces in the big blind and made a standard raise, no one wanted to play along.

Three Partypoker players started off on the same table with the brothers from Belarus, Maksim and Mikhail sitting across from Gylbert from Canada. I walked over and saw a  strange hand involving Gilbert which he will probably want to forget.
On a checked board of  8¨ 7ª 4© A© 2¨ Two players checked it to Gylbert who tried to steal the pot with a $550 river bet. One player mucked and another player took a while before calling. Gylbert’s trick didn’t work and let out a big “woops” as he mucked his hand as his opponent showed an 8.

Soon after that the table broke as players were being eliminated all over the room and our 133 starters were now down to 103 players. We had also recently lost Georgetta from Italy and Ihar from Belarus so we were down to only 8 players remaining. Looking around the tables all our guys were doing reasonably well. Ian Frazer had managed to pick up a few nice pots and was in good shape at about 25,000 chips.

I followed Maksim over to his new table and saw that a short stacked player pushed all in for his last 6000 chips with a pair of 7’s. No one wanted take on the challenge and all folded round to Maksim who easily had the guy covered and was holding A 10 and decided to flip that coin. The flop brought J 10 Q rainbow pairing Maksim’s 10 and putting him ahead. An ace on the turn strengthened his hand still further but didn’t really change anything. His opponent was dead to a 7 which din’t come and Maksim duly picked up a very tidy pot.

At 17:00 The Poker Pack Head Hunter side event started with a HK $500 bounty on all players except the Poker Pack guys who all had a HK $2500 bounty and a cuddly donkey on their heads. I kept an eye on this event and saw David “Chino” Rheem go all in for his last few chips with A§ 4 § and get called by the man on his left who flipped over K© 9©. All it took was a 9 on the turn to eliminate Chino and pass his bounty & donkey over to the victor.

It’s 6.30 and dinner break time. We still have 7 PartyPoker players of the remaining 64 playing despite the late elimination of Zdenek from the Czech Republic. Players have an hour to each and relax before coming back and playing another 4 levels.

Wednesday saw the “Battle of the Nations” tournament start with 13 teams each representing a different country. The PartyPoker players in Macau have come from a variety of countries and the only country that had the three required players was Belarus.
Brothers Mikhail and Maksim Shuts and their friend Ihar Pliashko took on the teams from destinations such as USA, Korea, Australia, China and Hong Kong.

This was a points based tournaments with each player playing for the team first and themselves second. Points were scored based on a players finishing position so the player who busted out first would earn 1 point all the way up to the winning player who received 39 points. The team with the most amount of points would claim victory and the HK $406,060 team championship prize.  The top three individual players would also win substantial cash prizes.

There was a very impressive mix of players all doing their bit for their actual or adopted nation. As well as the Poker Pack players, we also saw legendary former WSOP Champion, Johnny Chan and Aussie Millions winner Stewart Scott and many feared tournament players from the online world.

An early casualty was the team representing Great Britain which comprised of Tom Hall and Chris Parker from the Asian Poker Tour Team and Eddie Hearn from Matchroom Sport. The team from Japan were also collectively making for the exit much sooner than they would have anticipated.

Play was friendly but competitive and there was no doubt that players were considering their team-mates and the points situation when deciding whether or not to call a big raise.

Representing Korea was two of the Poker Pack players, David “Chino” Rheem and Steve Sung together with Brandon Wong. Speaking with Steve before they got started, he agreed to wear a couple of PartyPoker badges. He is a very nice guy and was happy to slap a few badges on his shirt and be an adopted PartyPoker player for the evening.

As play carried on it was clear that the team event was coming down to either Korea, Canada or Vietnam. The Vietnamese team was very much a family affair. Poker pack player Nam Le was playing with his brothers Tommy and Allan and all were doing very well in the late stages. Also doing well was Mikhail from Belarus who finished in a very respectable 12th and ensured the Belarus team came 7th overall.

With only 10 players remaining, it was calculated that the Korean team would win the team prize. All three players were still playing and regardless of the results they would be crowned champions and win the HK $406,060 team championship prize. They were delighted to win and receive their trophies while the Korean national anthem was played

After an hour or so, the individual prizes were eventually awarded in the following order;
David “Chino” Rheem from Korea came third for HK $26,100 (as well as a third of the HK $406,060 team prize)
Nam Le came second for HK $52,200
Allan Le took first prize and a cool HK $95,700
All the players enjoyed the event and I’m sure this tournament could be a feature of Asian Poker Tour events in the future.
Jeremy Coleman

Tuesday night was party night for the PartyPoker players and our special guests. The venue was beside the pool at the brand new Hard Rock Hotel in the City of Dreams resort complex over on the other island here in Macau. This place was an excellent venue for the party and the players had a great time.

To start with we all had VIP passes for the new attraction called “The Bubble” which was a very exciting yet unusual 3D cinematic show a little bit similar to an IMAX cinema.

Up at the poolside, there were cocktails served in pineapples and coconuts and some delicious Asian food for everyone to enjoy. The players were really enjoying the relaxed atmosphere, the balmy evening and the music beside the pool. Rumour had it that a Saudi oil sheik was also having a private party on the other side of the pool.

When a group of very tall models arrived and walked over there we realised that was probably true. Either that or The DevilFish was in town. We had our own beautiful girls in the shape of some of the Asian Poker Tour models enjoying themselves at the party and Team Party player Ian Frazer wasted no time in introducing himself to them.

The management at the City of Dreams very generously gave each player a HKD$200 free credit to use in their casino downstairs. Some of the players were very keen to get downstairs and try their luck. Others went off to a huge party held at “Cubik”, one of Macau’s hottest clubs. I am sure there will be a few sore heads tomorrow.

Luckily there is not much poker action on Wednesday except for the Battle of the Nations – a 3 person team event which starts at 17:00 local time. With several teams representing countries from all over the world it will be a very popular and well supported event.

Jeremy Coleman

The APT is officially open

PartyPoker – Asian Poker Tour Macau.

It doesn’t seem like it has been 7 months since I was over in Manila for the Asian Poker Tour event there but the time has flown by and here we are at the fantastic Galaxy Starworld Hotel and Casino for the Asian Poker Tour event in Macau. The guys at the Asian Poker Tour really know how to put on a great tournament and I am looking forward to the next week.

I arrived on Sunday afternoon having flown into nearby Hong Kong. The local people are really concerned about swine flu and everyone must fill in a health declaration form when they arrive. The airport staff all wear face masks so they do not catch any germs from any of the thousands of travellers they see every day. I don’t know what would happen if anyone sneezed in the arrivals hall. They would probably get thrown in quarantine for 6 months.

The venue for this event is one of Macau’s finest hotels. The Galaxy Starworld is a 5 star luxurious venue with a very nice ballroom which will be hosting the poker this week. Speaking with Asian Poker Tour CEO, Chris Parker, he is hoping for about 350 players in the main event. That would indeed be a good turnout and would create a prize pool well in excess of USD$1 million.

The Poker Pack pose with the APT models.

Although the Asian Poker Tour has been running for a few days already, today was the official opening ceremony. After plenty of photos with the Asian Poker Tour models and the Poker Pack players like JC Tran, David ‘Chino’ Rheem, & Quinn Do we were entertained by some absolutely amazing Chinese drumming. The girls were dressed to impressed and the drumming was even more impressive.

Quickly following this we had the start of the invitational celebrity event. This four table event featured a fun mix of local TV celebrities, the Poker Pack and other invited players. It was all very light hearted and I imagine that the Poker Pack does not normally laugh so much at a poker table but this was more for fun than the usual tournament. The serious business will start on Thursday when Day 1 A of the main event will begin. Until then there is a packed schedule of satellites and big money tournaments to keep the players entertained. Bring it on.

Jeremy Coleman

‘This is just great,’ said Arce, who is a well known figure on the Filipino poker circuit through running the Metro Card Club in Manila. ‘I always felt it would come down to me and Steve. For me, the key to winning the tournament was position. I was so lucky that Steve was sat on my right – if he was on my left it would have been a completely different final table. I played with Steve all day yesterday when he was on a charge and kept out of his way. I knew that to get anywhere at the final table I had to keep applying pressure and my game plan worked perfectly.’

Arce had been chip leader after Day 1A and had even guaranteed Asian Poker Tour CEO Chris Parker before the event got underway that he would emerge victorious in the tournament. He was third in chips at the final table and faced some formidable opponents including the impressive Yea and internationally respected professionals Liz Lieu and Asian Poker Tour Macau 2008 finalist Kasey Castle.

The key hand came just after the talkative Arce had taken the chip lead from Yea. He showed willingness over a series of hands to up the pre-flop aggression. On the final hand, he made what had become a standard open for him of 100,000. Steve Yea re-raised to 300,000. Arce moved all in and Yea called in a shot. Arce held Ks-Qs with Yea Ad-Kh, leaving Arce as 3-1 underdog. The flop came 4s-6c-7h and Yea was two cards away from a massive double up. When Qh came on the turn the partisan crowd exploded. The river came 6h which was of no use to Yea and the 2009 Asian Poker Tour Philippines had itself a very popular champion.

After two consecutive Asian Poker Tour runner-up spots and a dominating performance over the last few days Yea could only say, ‘Next time I will do it.’

First out on the nine seat final table was Kim Tae Hyung from South Korea, followed by Finland’s Vesa Leikos. Glamorous US pro Lieu went seventh, followed by fellow American Ron Kluber and Japan’s Susumu Toge. Cicurel Didiwe from the Seychelles finished fourth and US pro Castle in third. When it got heads-up Yea held the chip lead with 1,572,000 to Arce’s 1,048,000. Notable cashes in the event include 12th place for Nam Le and 13th place for fellow member of The Poker Pack Steve Sung.

Parker said, ‘There were some tired eyes after the FHM party the night before but the atmosphere around the final table was buzzing. Neil’s win is fantastic for poker in the Philippines – we hope that it strengthens the appeal of the game even further.’

Party time

Back at the PartyPoker Sit and go we reached our final three players. Jason from England, Julian from Argentina and I were in the money. However, we all had one eye on the clock as the FHM Asia party would be starting soon and no one wanted to miss that. Once Jason hit the rail Julian and I played heads up for a while with the chip lead changing almost every hand. Eventually, we split the cash. In the interest of pride and bragging rights though we had a look at our final hands, Julian flipped over Q-2 while I had Q-9. With a nine and a queen coming on the board my two pair won and we all rushed off to the party.
 
I stopped by Erik’s table to see him leave in 25th place and collect $6,000 for his tournament. Erik’s A-Q was up against the K-J of Vicente Pena but a jack and a king on the flop sent Erik to rail and he rushed straight upstairs to join us at the FHM extravaganza. Daniel Haglund also had a smile on his face, having cashed for 30,600 pesos in the Pot Limit Omaha side event.
 
The FHM party by the pool was very exotic. With beautiful models everywhere and free food and drink, it was a great way for the players to unwind after a week of intensive poker action.

Eddie was still in the main event but came and had a drink with us during the dinner break. I promised to come and watch him shortly but was slightly distracted for a while due to the fun going on around me. As I entered the tournament room an hour later I saw Eddie walking towards me. ‘Sixteenth,’ he said. I think he was a little relived as he wanted to get back to the party, plus he had an early flight in the morning.
 
A short while later we had our final table:
 
Seat 1: Ron Kluber (USA) 310,000
Seat 2: Cicurel Didiwe (Switzerland) 182,000
Seat 3: Steven Yea (Korea) 754,000
Seat 4: Vesa Leikos (Finland) 94,000
Seat 5: Neil Arce (Philippines) 377,000
Seat 6: Kim Tae Hyung (Korea) 168,000
Seat 7: Susumu Toge (Japan) 102,000
Seat 8: Liz Lieu (USA) 144,000
Seat 9: Casey Kastle (Slovenia) 503,000

Alas, no PartyPoker.com players but a final table that promises plenty of excitement in revealing the new champ.