There is a mini-war being played out in Manila over the past few months with the hard-earned cash of the Philippines’ poker community the prize for the winner.
All images courtesy of PokerCast Asia
Since the start of 2015, the Asian Poker Tour (APT), PokerStars and Poker King Club (PKC) have all launched new poker rooms in the Filipino capital while the Metro Card Club has joined the party by offering its own lucrative tournaments whenever similar events are being held by its rivals.
However, it is the fight for cash game players between the Winfred Yu’s Poker King Club at Solaire and the PokerStars LIVE Manila room – currently being overseen by Mike Kim – that is most intriguing.
Kim previously ran the room at Solaire only to be turfed out by Yu when the PKC took over operations in May, but the pair were soon going head to head for customers after Kim was surprisingly asked to run the cash tables at City of Dreams.
Needless to say they’re not best of friends, so it was intriguing to see the two of them not only go deep in last week’s APPT Manila main event but find themselves seated together on the final three tables!
The fact that one was dressed in all white (Kim) and the other in all black (Yu) was purely coincidence, but for the record it was Yu getting the better of this battle as he reached the final table – eventually falling in 8th – while Kim finished in 15th.
