This article first appeared in the Chinese New Year 2010 special issue of World Gaming magazine.
The Macau poker boom is in full swing with the recent opening of the Poker King club at StarWorld and the new Venetian poker room. They join the two more established rooms – Pokerstars at the Grand Lisboa and the Wynn poker room. World Gaming has heard that even more poker rooms are on the way in Macau.
The opening of the Poker King club was an expansion of the Poker King brand after the release last year of the Hong Kong-made The Poker King movie, starring Sean Lau, Louis Koo, and Josie Ho. Last month the Poker King club offered its first ever tournament: the Asian Poker King Tournament.
The tournament was played at StarWorld casino. Mr Jerry Soh, Operations Manager of StarWorld said, “having the APKT at StarWorld, shortly after the release of The Poker King movie, which was shot on location at StarWorld, helps put us on the map.”
The heads-up battle
The most surprising feature of the tournament was the Korean domination of the event. New online cardroom 7win Poker brought 47 players to the tournament, mostly Koreans, boosting the total entries to 174. This was far more than industry experts believed was possible for the Poker King’s first foray into tournaments. The Poker King club had guaranteed total prize money of HK$750,000 but the strong turnout boosted the prize pool to HK$870,000.
As well as adding 47 players to the field, Chuck Choi of 7win poker marketing played in the tournament himself. “There are a lot of promising young Korean poker players but they don’t have many places to play in Korea,” Mr Choi said. “I wanted to expose them to an international event where they can compete amongst players from other countries. As I suspected the Korean players did very well – only about 30 percent of the field was Korean but they made up eight of 10 players at the final table.”
Poker King club manager Mr Winfred Yu was clearly delighted at the turnout. The event had an excellent slow structure given the relatively low entry fee of HK$5,400. Blind levels were 45 minutes in length, starting at 25/50, with a starting stack of 10,000 chips. By the end of day one just 49 of the 174 starters remained alive in the tournament, and when day two closed just the 10 final table contenders remained.
In typical Poker King club fashion, gorgeous models paraded around the floor for the entire tournament and were the centre of attention at the exclusive party held on the evening of day two at the lavish party suite on the top floor of StarWorld Hotel.
The final table was played out the next afternoon in the luxurious surroundings of the 16th floor of StarWorld casino. The 10 final table players were: Roberto Wong, Fabio Augusto Kim, Soo Bum Kim, Seung Chul Shin, Charles Choi, Il Wong Yoo, Hong Seung Jae, Danny Sim, Michael Kim and Patrick Kim.
Eliminations occurred quickly until only Korean countrymen Il Wong Yoo and Soo Bum Kim remained. Then, in complete contrast to earlier play, it took an incredible three hours for Il Wong Yoo to emerge champion from an epic heads-up battle, picking up HK$284,200 for his victory. Soo Bum Kim earnt HK$155,000 as runner-up, and Fabio Kim collected HK$77,500 for third.
Prior to this tournament only Pokerstars offered tournament poker in Macau. With the success of the APKT all that has changed, and World Gaming expects more tournament poker offerings from the Poker King club very soon. Competition in tournament poker has arrived in Macau and that can only be a good thing for us players.
