HomeDespite the monsoon rain beating down the city streets, the Asian Poker Tour was up and running for its eighth leg of the calendar year, the APT Poker Weekend Series Manila 2016, held at their APT Poker Room hub inside the Waterfront Manila Pavilion Hotel & Casino. The series is scheduled to fill up your poker calendar for nine days, running from August 9-17, 2016.
The series kicked off its festivities with a crowd favorite, the highly enjoyable Welcome Event P1M Guaranteed. There were two qualifying heats for this opener, the first one at 1pm for those eager early birds and the other at 5pm for those opting to start later in the day. Although the first heat only registered 51 entries, the second one drew in a much larger field of 133 entries for a photo finish to meet the guarantee. The combined total reached 184 entries, slightly bumping up the guaranteed prize pool to PhP1,070,900. The eventual winner will be shipping in a sweet piece of the pie, a payout of PhP267,700. But since this is a two-day event, that has yet to be determined. For now, here are the flight leaders of the day including the overall chip leader, Singapore’s Hermann Lee.
Herman Lee is overall chip leader entering Welcome Event Final Day
Flight A wrapped up with 14 survivors with two players Korea’s Hyun Jun Kim and Filipino Renato Villanueva Jr., bagging up identical large stacks of 94,700 chips. Korea’s Seung Min Kim would have had the chip leader’s status but on the last hand of regulation, he lost a sizable pot against Villanueva to bring him down to a respectable third spot holding 93,100 chips. Joining the leaders with chips bagged up were a few APT regulars, Korea’s John Kim, Peru’s Yohn Paredes, Filipino Rommel Angeles, and the current leader in the APT Player of the Year race, Japan’s Iori Yogo.
With a much larger turnout for Flight B, the number of survivors was also higher with 35 players bagging up chips at the end of regulation play. Leading the party was Singapore’s Hermann Lee with 176,700 chips. Lee was already one of the chip leaders before the close of day but secured the top spot at the final buzzer with a winning full house. Lee will be entering the final day as the overall chip leader. One other player who crossed the century mark in Flight B was Filipino player Lito Quijano with 120,200 chips. Other notable players who survived the heat were Singapore’s Lim Yah Loon, Korea’s Jae Wook Shin, Lim Yo Hwan, and Japan’s Tetsuya Tsuchikawa.
The Welcome Event P1M Guaranteed will resume tomorrow at 130pm. The final eight showdown will be featured on the RFID table and can be viewed on the APT Youtube channel.