HomeIt was a rockstar opening day at the Asian Poker Tour Kickoff 2016 with a large crowd of 273 combined entries – 119 in flight A and 154 in flight B- coming out for the Welcome Event 1M Guaranteed. Alike its previous numbers, this event continued to live up to its popularity with the prize pool swelling to P1,588,900, easily exceeding the guarantee. With a buy-in of only P6,600, one of the remaining 66 survivors will ship in a massive first place purse of P392,500.
Philippines’ Del Ty and Joven Huerto
Flight A Recap
Returning to the APT felt with guns blazing was APT Finale 2015 Main Event champion, Joven Huerto from the Philippines. Huerto entered flight A with his skills and wits fully intact, and then proceeded to take control, amassing 142,400 chips by the end of regulation play to earn him the chip leader status in this qualifying round. Second-in-rank with a healthy fortress of chips as well was Filipino player Richard “Hotsauce” Marquez with 131,000. Flight A had a total of 32 survivors which included notables such as APT Player of the Year 2015 runner-up, Iori Yogo, APT 2013 Ironman champion Damon Shulenberger, Singapore’s Daniel Lim, Filipino player Trifie Montebon, India’s Srinivas Polishetty, and Korean players Lee Jong Yeol and William Kang to mention a few. Among those who burned were quadruple APT POY champion Sam Razavi, Filipino player Jessie Leonarez, American player John King, and several notable players who jumped into the next flight.
Flight B Recap
With more entries tallied in flight B, notables such as APT Finale 2015 Welcome Event champion Sebastian Benz (Germany), America’s Gerald Casey, APT Main Event champions John Tech and Mike Takayama were among those who came out to play but could not hold on to their chips. Fallen players from flight A, such as Tetsuya Tsuchikawa (Japan), Korea’s Sim Jae Kyung and Seung Soo Jeon also weren’t so fortunate despite re-entering. For the 34 players who did survive this flight, the top three players secured the overall chip leader status of the Welcome Event. Filipino player Del Ty took the top spot with 196,100 chips, Filipino player Chris Mateo came in second with a nice big pile of 191,000 chips, and in third was another Filipino, Emman Segismundo with 174,000 chips.
Tomorrow’s Events
The Welcome Event will resume its final day at 1pm tomorrow with 36 players seeing a profit. At 2pm, a newcomer is on the plate, the Pot Limit Omaha High Rollers event. This is a two-day event with a buy-in of P55,000. At 3pm, the Battle of the Nations event will take place. Buy-in per team is P17,600. Capping the day’s events will be the Ante Up for Charity for the “Feed a Child, Build a Nation” Program of RCMN. This kicks off at 7pm with entry fee of P7,500. For all the information and mechanics on these events, head to the APT Kickoff 2016 schedule on the website.
