PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker site, has released a 20-day schedule for the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau Spring Festival of Poker, set to take place at the PokerStars Macau Poker Room at Casino Grand Lisboa from May 3-23, 2010.

APPT Macau, the event that first brought Texas Hold’em Poker to China in 2007 is set to dazzle the world’s gaming capital once again with 25 landmark events over three weeks of intense competition.

The US$40,000 HKD (US$5,160) Main Event, scheduled for May 18-23, is again expected to be an international affair, attracting players from across Asia and the rest of the world.

In 2009, 429 players from 46 countries entered the Main Event, competing for a prize pool of HK$16,130,400 (more than US$2 million). Irishman Dermot Blain topped the field, claiming the HK$4,194,000 grand prize. The 25-year-old won his seat in a live satellite at PokerStars Macau, the largest poker room in continental Asia.

The action begins on Monday, May 3 with one of the many live ‘step’ satellites scheduled throughout the festival and culminates with the showpiece HK$40,000 Main Event, which kicks off at 12:10 pm on Tuesday, May 18.

“The success of APPT Manila means huge numbers are expected for APPT Macau,” said APPT President Jeffrey Haas. “We have great momentum right now, and all our players and staff are excited about the prospect of having at least three events in our fourth season with prize pools greater than US$1 million. More than just larger prize pools, the larger fields tell the real story. It seems that these years of nurturing poker’s growth in Asia are really starting to have a positive effect on the game’s growth across the region.”

Among the 25 events scheduled for the Macau Spring Festival of Poker is a broad range of buy-ins and innovative formats, including a HK$1,000 deep stack event, a HK$1,500 “No Limit Hold’em Express” tournament (in which players only have 20 seconds to act), a HK$2,000 bounty tournament (in which every player has a $500 bounty on their head), six-max events and a heads-up tournament.

As in Season 3, the HK$88,800 high roller event, set for May 18, should prove another highlight. Last year’s event attracted 64 entries and was won by Russian Vladimir Geshkenbein with Johnny “The Orient Express” Chan finishing second and Philippines Champion Neil Arce third.

Team PokerStars Pro and former world champion Joe Hachem said, “I played the very first APPT Macau in 2007 and I’ve been amazed at how quickly poker has taken off in this region. The APPT is now by far Asia’s largest and richest poker tour and has seen incredible growth. My brother Tony recently competed in the sell-out APPT Manila: PAGCOR Chairman’s Cup, straight after winning ANZPT Perth. By all accounts, it was a phenomenal event so I expect APPT Macau numbers to go through the roof.”

The full PokerStars.net APPT Macau ‘Festival of Poker’ schedule is detailed below. For further event details and updates please visit http://www.appt.com .

To read our exculsive coverage on Macau Poker Cup Championship 2010, SUBSCRIBE to the online edition of Baller today – from as low as $2.99 per month!

Seoul is currently ranked 9th in the 2008 Global Cities Index, making it one of the most important cities in the world. The city has also hosted one of the Asia-Pacific region’s largest poker tournaments – the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT).

Despite being one of the stops on the APPT, Seoul has yet to establish itself as a world-class poker destination. The city has only two casinos that offer poker – the 7-Luck Casino and the Walker Hill Casino. However, you won’t find many natives at the poker tables. Korean nationals are forbidden to enter all but one of the country’s casinos, and the Korean government has strict rules when it comes to gambling.

In addition to being unable to get their live poker fix, it is also tough for Koreans to get a game of online poker. Any form of online gambling is technically illegal in Korea, and online poker sites like Full Tilt and Party Poker are blocked. In spite of this, there is still a highly-skilled group of Korean players plying their trade online, based out of Macau and the Philippines.

Koreans seem to have a natural flair for the game, and seem to do particularly well online. The Korean Poker League (KPL), also run free play tournaments – and are at present the only way Korean nationals can play legally in their home country.

With the Korean government looking unlikely to change their stance on poker anytime soon, the KPL is the only avenue for live poker in Korea for Korean nationals. Koreans can’t even play in the APPT when it rolls into town. The numerous restrictions means few new players come into the game, so its future looks to be uncertain for now.

To read more about the Korean poker scene, subscribe to Baller magazine!

The Asian Poker Showdown has come to Singapore to find the next poker star! Eight amateur poker players from Singapore will be chosen to live together and test their skills in the most demanding challenges faced by professional poker players. In a game where you are always just one heart-wrenching bad beat away from elimination, our contestants will be stretched beyond their limits to separate the good poker players from the next Asian poker icon!

Bryan Huang, Pokerstars Team Asia Pro and Singapore’s most successful poker player, will be mentor and judge in season one of the Asian Poker Showdown. Together with Claire Jedrek who is host of the show and Bryan’s eyes in the mansion, the contestants will be bringing exciting poker action and outrageous antics to you!

In this episode, the eight Asian Poker Showdown contestants become coaches to randomly assigned Pokerstars models. Given 1
hour to teach and impart their knowledge, the Pokerstars models will get to show off the skills and strategies learned from their “coaches”.

The stage was always set for Binh Nguyen to do something special in Manila.

With 430 players stumping up the US$2,500 buy-in to create the largest-ever tournament prize pool in Filipino history, the Efraim C. Genuino International Poker Tournament had attracted plenty of local interest, not least because the final table was staged in the middle of a packed SMX Convention Centre on the opening day of the Asia Gaming and Entertainment Expo, complete with bright lights, cameras and a raucous crowd of spectators. A host of big name players made the trip to the Philippine capital for the event, including the likes of Tony Hachem, fresh from his win at the ANZPT Perth just days ago, Macau Poker Cup winner Raymond Wu and international poker legend Barry Greenstein.

When the dust settled after four days of play, Nguyen, who currently lives in Las Vegas, had to contend with a tough final table that included “Mr Macau” Charles Chua, gifted internet player Terrence Chan, South Korea’s Sunny Jung and local hero Kirby Te, the only Filipino player who made the final table. Always displaying a confident control of his huge stack, the American, who came second at the WPT LA Poker Classic in 2009 to win over US$900,000, showed particular class and dominated the closing stages against the short-stacked Chua and the rookie Gordon Huntly.

As his advantage with the big stack grew bigger he dispatched first Choon Kwang Lim then Sunny Jung, and then Chua to take a more than 3 to 1 advantage into the heads up against Huntly, an amateur player from Edinburgh, Scotland. Huntly, though, was up for the fight, doubling up with a flush over flush to seize the lead, and then aggressively hammering away at Nguyen, who for the first time in the tournament seemed like he had lost his way. Huntly patiently played a waiting game, at one point reaching the three-to-one advantage Nguyen had started with. But Nguyen regrouped, won back the chips he’d lost and in the last hand saw his pocket sevens survive a race against the Scot’s K-Q to bag his first major title.

“I wanted to have fun,” said Huntly. “I didn’t play great throughout but I watched them very closely but not close enough. [Nguyen is] a worthy champion.”

A delighted Nguyen, who is in Manila on vacation with close friend and fellow final tablist Victor Chang, said, “This might be the best vacation I’ve ever had.”

FINAL TABLE PAYOUTS

1st – Binh Nguyen (USA) – $260,700
2nd – Gordon Huntly (UK) – $166,800
3rd – Charles Chua (Malaysia) – $93,850
4th – Terrence Chan (Hong Kong) – $71,500
5th – Sunny Jung (Korea) – $54,700
6th – Choon Kwang Lim (Singapore) – $44,300
7th – Victor Chang (USA) – $33,900
8th – Kirby Te (Philippines) – $26,600
9th – Jackal Lee (Chinese Taipei) – $19,800

In recent years, Asian players have been making their presence felt at live events in the region and beyond, but Shanghai-born Tao Jin has taken a very different route.

Preferring to wreak havoc from behind his computer screens instead of glitzy casino card rooms, he has been absolutely killing the online tournament scene, and is now aiming to make a splash at this year’s World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas. Jin has won in excess of US$185,000 in the past three months from playing Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) on PokerStars and Full Tilt, and feels that the online environment allows him to reduce the variance in his game.

“I prefer online play because I can play so many more MTTs in a single day as opposed to live. In general, I play between 30-35 MTTs in a full session, and I simply can’t think of any way I’d be able to clock that sort of volume playing live. Volume is very important to me because it allows me to lower the variance in my results, the ability to deal with the downside of variance is the key to profitability in MTTs. I’ve played in some big live events with buy-ins ranging from $1,000 to $2,000, but for me, these are shot-takes more than anything. I’m not counting on winning any of them when I play,” he explains.

Jin is also philosophical when asked to weigh in on the perennial live versus online debate, and doesn’t think it’s fair to say that online players are technically stronger than live players.

“I don’t think it’s fair [to say that]. What is definitely true is that if you play 6 tables at a time, you are probably getting 480 hands an hour, as opposed to 20-30 hands an hour playing live. As such, players who have a solid grounding in online poker will naturally be good at hand reading, constructing ranges for their opponents, and generally processing information very quickly.”

Seeing as he is young, talented and loaded, Jin is enjoying being a full-time poker pro, and does not regret dropping out of college to pursue his dreams. But how does indulge himself after a big win?

“I’ve tried to be wise about it. I’ve invested a lot of my winnings,” he says. But with a grin on his face, he adds, “I have a weakness for designer stuff though. And I just bought a Porsche Cayenne for my girlfriend not too long ago.”

When it was announced that Perth had been added to the schedule for the second season of the PokerStars.net Australia -New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT), players rejoiced on either side of the country. For the first time, Western Australia’s best would be able to test themselves against top players from the eastern seaboard. A record-breaking field of 222 players converged on the Burswood Casino for the A$2,500 Main Event, while the prize pool of A$510,600 was also the largest-ever in Western Australia’s history.

Following three days of thrilling action, it was the Perth locals who looked set to dominate the event, with seven of them making the final table. It was local mining engineer Zaffer Soemya who entered with the chip lead, but things quickly went against him on a tough final table.

Early on, chip leader Soemya got involved in a massive confrontation with Aleks Lackovic in what was the defining hand of the final table. Lackovic pushed all-in with his A♦ 4♦ flush draw on the flop, with the board reading 10♦ J♥ 5♦. To his dismay, however, Soemya called instantly, flipping over a set of tens. Lackovic was looking for a diamond, but the turn and river gave him an unlikely wheel straight and a monster chip lead. Soemya’s downturn in fortunes would continue as he was eliminated in 7th place when his top pair failed to hold up against Dale Marsland’s straight draw.

All the hype going into the final table surrounded PokerStars Team Australia Pro Tony Hachem reaching yet another ANZPT final table, and whether this would be his time to finally capture a major title. Hachem started to surge through the pack as Tu Le fell in 5th place, losing a race with A♠ Q♥ against Lackovic’s pocket fours.

Next to fall was Dale Marsland, as he busted at the hands of Hachem with A♦ 6♠ against A♥ Q♥. As if coming up against a dominated hand wasn’t enough, Hachem proceeded to flop the nut flush for measure. Three-handed the momentum was with Hachem as he continued to surge ahead, but it was a dour affair with deep stacks as the three dug their heels in.

Hachem fended off the two locals, and eventually got the better of Vesko Zmukic to eliminate him in 3rd place. It was Zmukic’s Js 10s up against Hachem’s pocket threes which held when the board was spread 4♣ K♦ A♥ 4♠ 5♥.

Going into heads-up play, Hachem held a two-to-one chip advantage and the weight of expectation on his shoulders as most were preparing themselves for an epic heads-up duel. However the pair quickly found their chips going all-in preflop with Hachem’s J♥ J♣ up against Lackovic’s Ace King. The flop came down 9♦ 3♣ Q♣, and Hachem implored the dealer to “keep it low”. The 5♥ turn and 3♦ river meant that Tony Hachem had become the first-ever ANZPT Perth champion! Hachem grabs his first major title and his remarkable run in the ANZPT continues. Six cashes from seven events, back-to-back final tables, a big lead in the 2010 Player of the Year race and now a shiny new trophy to go along with $132,750 in prize money. A combination of elation and relief reduced Hachem to tears, along with more than a few of the spectators who knew what the champion had been through on the road to victory. Joe Hachem, following the action from his Melbourne home, was equally thrilled by Tony’s win.

COMPLETE FINAL TABLE PAYOUTS
(All figures in Australian Dollars)
1st Tony Hachem – $132,750
2nd Aleks Lackovic – $84,250
3rd Vesko Zmukic – $47,500
4th Dale Marsland – $38,300
5th Tu Le – $32,000
6th Jimmy Wong – $26,800
7th Zaffer Soemya – $21,700
8th Eoin Kennedy – $16,600
9th Wade Beavis – $12,750

As if the tropical weather wasn’t hot enough in Manila, things are heating up even more this weekend as the Philippine capital gears up for the first-ever Efraim C. Genuino International Poker Tournament (also known as the Chairman’s Cup), which will be held from 20 – 25 March.

The tournament is being co-sponsored by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) and the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), and the organisers have put up a US$1 million guarantee as the prize pool looks set to be one of the biggest in Philippine poker history. The buy-in has been set at US$2,500 + $200, and the four day event will be held in the Coral Ballroom at the Pavilion Hotel, while the final table will be held at the SMX Convention Centre, coinciding with the 5th Asian Gaming and Entertainment Expo.

The Chairman’s Cup will feature a host of Asia’s top stars, including Taipei’s Raymond Wu, who enters the event fresh off the back of a resounding win at the Macau Poker Cup early this month. His fellow Team PokerStars Pros, Singapore’s Bryan Huang, Korea’s Tae Joon Noh and Australia’s Celina Lin are also expected to be in attendance, along with Korean Full Tilt pro Somyung Sim and local favourite Neil Arce, who will enjoy home field advantage as he is certain to be cheered on by a legion of adoring Pilipino fans.

You can follow the action right here on ballermagazine.com, and as usual, we will have a special report on the tournament in the next edition of Baller Magazine!