HomeThe Asian Poker Tour concluded the first flight of its APT Poker Weekend Series Manila 2016 Main Event at the APT Poker Room located in the Waterfront Manila Pavilion Hotel & Casino. There were a total of 77 entries, each one dishing out the PhP27,500 buy-in fee. By night’s end, there were only 29 remaining with Filipino Kim Michael Enriquez holding the torch as the leader with 127,300 chips.
Main Event Day 1A Chip Leader, Kim Enriquez
Day 1a began with 24 players getting to the felt early to avail of the Main Event Bubble Protection. As the day went on, the field grew with many notable players and new faces at the tables. There was no clear chip leader for a while until Enriquez won several pots and then ousted UK’s Kenneth Buck with his K♠ 10♦ landing trips on the river on a board of 4♥ 10♠ 9♠ A♥ 10♥. This hand sent Enriquez skyrocketing to over the century mark that held until bagging time.
Coming up second-in-chips and right at the heels of Enriquez was Japan’s Satoshi Okuda with 126,200 chips. Okuda’s rise was quite dramatic with a couple of hands that could have sent him way down instead was saved by the river. The first one was against Japan’s Daichi Tatsumi who was all in with A♠ Q♠ and Okuda with 5♠ 5♥. The board ran 6♠ 8♠ K♣ 4♠ 7♠ giving Okuda a winning straight flush against Tatsumi’s nut flush. The next one was against Singapore’s Ceesvin Abdulla with Okuda all in on a turn board of K♠ A♣ 7♣ 6♠ holding A♠ Q♣ top pair against Abdulla’s A♥ 7♦ two pair. The river of K♣ switched the lead to Okuda for a double up. Okuda’s final big hand was when he eliminated Canada’s Linh Tran with his A♠ 3♦ straight.
There were several notable players who made it through, Korea’s Gyeong Byeong Lee, Jae Wook Shin, Byung Il Park, John Kim, Kimura Jong Yeol Lee, Japan’s Aso Seitaro, and Filipino Lester Edoc.
While there were the survivors, so were there the fallen. Among them were previous champions Samad Razavi, John Tech, Lim Yah Loon, and Kwan Kit Kwok. Luckily for them, there is one more flight to get back in the running.
There were many exciting moments at Day 1a, you can read up on some of those moments along with Chip Counts in the Live Reporting section of the website. We will return tomorrow, Saturday, August 13th, for Day 1b of the Main Event beginning promptly at 1pm.