This article first appeared in the May/Jun 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.
Railbird Ronny
Lately, it seems all doom and gloom for poker in the West. It’s been just over a year since Black Friday, we’ve had the Epic Poker League claiming bankruptcy, Bodog.com seized, Calvin Ayre being indicted by the Feds, and Americans moving to Canada and Mexico to play online poker. It’s a good thing poker in the East is slowly but surely growing stronger.
I have to give a big hand to Jeff Mann and his Asian Poker Tour (APT) team for creating more great poker events in Asia. Just this past March the MGM Sanya Resort hosted the APT sponsored China Poker Carnival. The invitation-only event saw 414 players head to Hainan, China to compete in the RMB 1 million guaranteed freeroll. In the end, Chao Ma from Beijing was RMB 300,000 richer and even got some new gold bling on his finger.
The APT and our friends at Resorts World Manila held the largest buy-in tournament Asia has ever seen: The Manila Millions, boasting a HK$1 million buy-in. This super high roller tournament took place during the APT Philippines event, and drew some big names like Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. Getting 31 players at short notice for a super high roller event like this was a fantastic effort and bodes well for the future of poker in Asia. The APT Manila main event champion was Divan Le Roux from South Africa who collected a handsome US$197,000 for the win.
I mustn’t forget to mention the fine work done by the Asia Pacific Poker Tour. The APPT’s Seoul instalment had 268 runners, by far the largest tournament ever in South Korea. Due to local casino rules South Korean nationals were ineligible to enter, so it was only fitting that American-born Korean Andrew Kim took home the first prize of KRW 145 million (over US$125,000).
If you headed to the Sydney round of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour, you would have found the likable Scot Gordon Huntly overcoming the 461 entrant-field to pick up AU$226,812 and his first major poker title.
Clockwise from left: Chao Ma, Andrew Kim and Gordon Huntly
The attention of the poker world now moves to the WSOP in Las Vegas, still without question the biggest and best poker carnival in the world. But I can’t help but feel every year poker in the US becomes that little bit smaller, and poker in Asia becomes that little bit bigger.
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.
