Eddie Sabat wins the 2008 APPT Macau main event

The APPT's first season was held in 2007 with four legs: Macau, Seoul, Manila and Sydney. Since then, Pokerstars has opened its own Pokerstars branded poker room at the Grand Waldo Casino in Macau. The opening of the room demonstrates Pokerstars commitment to invest in Asian poker. The APPT has also announced an expansion of the tour by including Auckland on this year's schedule.

2008 ATP Macau winners presentation

The day started with eight hopefuls at the table: Casey Kastle (456,000 chips), Michael Pedley (132,000), Joon Hee Yeah (160,000), Chong Wing Cheong (454,000), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (318,000), Quang Nguyen (315,000), Julio Diaz (315,000) and Rober Karian (419,000). The eight players each came from a different country: Slovenia, Hong Kong, Thailand, USA, Spain, Vietnam, South Korea and Australia.

Doyle Brunson opens the APT Macau

The day started with 103 hopefuls fighting it out for the guaranteed US$1.5million prize pool. A further 160 or so players are expected to play in today’s second (and last) flight of day 1.

Kinkade wins Vic Champs (Pic: Pokernews)

Shortly after 11pm last night regular internet poker player Jay Kinkade claimed victory in the main event over Tino Lechich, in an event that included big sporting names in Shane Warne and Jeff Fenech.

Sydney Harbour

The Macau leg of the tour has just concluded – in fact I’m writing this story on the ferry from Macau to Hong Kong as I prepare to return to Sydney for the final leg of this year’s tour. Turbojet’s pork and rice for Superclass passengers was actually quite palatable.

The Macau tournament exceeded the organiser’s wildest expectations. The first ever live money poker tournament in the history of the People’s Republic of China, it was originally slated to be capped at 300 entrants. But overwhelming demand led to hasty last minute negotiations with Government authorities resulting in a final roll call of 352 entrants – a record for the tour so far.

2007 World Series of Poker Bracelet

With 6,358 people in the starting lineup, winning the main event of the World Series of Poker couldn’t be anything other than a dream, even for the absolute best of the best – even for the eight or so former winners of the event that were in the field. But for these nine men now remaining, the dream stage is long past, and each and every one of them can smell victory. They have now made the final table, a very special club comprising nine very special men, who have already endured a grueling 60 hours of intense poker, just to be here.
 

It’s that time of year again – World Series of Poker time. Since Australia’s own Joe Hachem won the US$7,500,000 first prize of the 2005 WSOP main event, interest in the WSOP from the Australian poker fraternity has been huge.

The first ever WSOP main event for which a cash prize was paid was played in 1971, between a mere six people, in a smoke filled room at the spiritual home of World Poker – the Horseshoe Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. It was won by Johny Moss, defeating Puggy Pearson, and pocketing the winner-takes-all US$30,000 prize in the process, serious money in the early 1970s.

But neither Moss nor Pearson could possibly have imagined what the future would hold. The table below shows in the incredible explosion that poker would experience over the next 35 years. Last year the main event took an incredible 8,773 entrants, each coughing up the US$10,000 entry fee the event has had since 1972 (in 1971 the entry fee was “only” US$5,000). That’s a total prize pool of US$87,730,000! It is now played in an enormous hall with a 3,000 player capacity at the Rio casino in Las Vegas. It took eight days for the 2006 champion, Jamie Gold, to overcome his 8,772 opponents in the main event, and claim the US$12,000,000 first prize. The main event is of course no-limit Texas Hold’em Poker, the granddaddy of all poker variants.