HomeAfter five days of intense action, the Asian Poker Tour Philippines 2016 II crowned its newest APT Main Event champion, Japan’s Shinichiro Tone, who overcame a field of 114 entries at Resorts World Manila to claim the first place purse of US$56,600, the APT Championship Trophy, and the APT Championship Ring.
APT Philippines 2016 II Main Event Champion, Shinichiro Tone
Tone entered the final day of the Main Event as the massive chip leader. With blinds very low in comparison to his stack, he played conservatively in the early rounds, winning a minimal number of pots. Amongst the Final 8, it was Guam’s Annie Bordallo who came out with guns blazing.
Bordallo was clearly the most active player at the final table, entering numerous pots at every round. She delivered the first casualty of the day, eliminating Filipino player Kim Enriquez in 8th place with A♠ J♠ besting A♣ 9♣ on a board of 4♠ J♣ 2♣ Q♥ 9♦. Bordallo climbed to over a million chips when she muscled previous APT Main Event champion Canada’s Linh Tran out of a big pot, and then escalated further in a hand against Japan’s Aso Seitaro, the player who entered the day running second-in-chips. Seitaro recovered some of those lost chips after ending the hopes of Tran in 7th place. Similar to Enriquez’s elimination, Seitaro had A♠ J♣ and dominated Tran’s lower hand of A♦ 8♣.
With six players left, it was now the “rise of the short stacks”. Korea’s Ki Nam Kim caught a lucky break with his A♠ 10♣ against Bordallo’s K♦ K♥ on a board of 3♣ J♣ K♣ 5♠ 6♣; India’s Vikram Kumar was all in four times, splitting the pot on two of those occasions, and then doubling up on the other two, one with pocket nines against Seitaro’s ace-four offsuit and the other with king-jack suited against Bordallo A♠ 6♠.
Despite Kim’s double up, he still couldn’t get out of the danger zone and ended up leaving the crew in 6th place, booted out by the chip leader Tone. After this elimination, Tone began to get very involved and claimed his second victim by crushing Bordallo in two big hands. The first blow was A♠ 5♣ that found a couple of fives on the board, and the second one, the hand that sent Bordallo packing in 5th place, was A♦ 6♣ defeating A♣ J♠ on a board of 10♥ 7♥ 3♦ 8♦ 6♥.
Prior to the next casualty, Korea’s Lim Yo Hwan managed to take some of Tone’s winnings but quickly lost a chunk of it to Kumar. With enough chips to back him up, Kumar called Seitaro’s all in and burned him in 4th place with A♣ Q♣ dominating 9♣ 7♣.
At three-handed, Tone had two-thirds of the chips-in-play at his disposal. He focused his attack on Kumar who couldn’t survive three big hits from the leader and was out in 3rd place. The heads up round was very lopsided with Tone holding a 5:1 chip advantage over Yohwan. The Korean would win a couple of early pots nearly doubling his stack, but it was short-lived. Yohwan lost four successive big pots to go from 1.3M down to 550k chips. The final hand of the Main Event saw Tone’s A♥ 2♥ complete a straight against Yohwan’s Q♣ J♥ on a board of Q♦ 5♥ 4♣ 3♣ 6♥.
photo L-R: Lloyd Fontillas – APT Executive Tournament Director, Shinichiro Tone – Main Event Champion, Lim Yo Hwan – Main Event Runner-Up, Arturo Basa – RWM Gaming Operations Director, and Sandy Amida – RWM Director of Business Development, Slots Department
Congratulations to Japan’s Shinichiro Tone for capturing his first APT Main Event championship title! Tone came in as the Final 8 chip leader, held on to his massive chip advantage, and proceeded to ship it all in.
Final 8 payouts
1st Shinichiro Tone – Japan – US$56,600
2nd Lim Yohwan – Korea – US$33,100
3rd Vikram Kumar – India – US$22,900
4th Aso Seitaro – Japan – US$16,700
5th Annie Bordallo – Guam – US$13,800
6th Ki Nam Kim – Korea – US$11,400
7th Linh Tran – Canada – US$9,400
8th Kim Enriquez – Philippines – US$7,600
If you missed the Final 8 action, you can watch it in Twitch.tv or read up on the action in the Live Reporting section of the website.