APPT Melbourne Day 1 of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Main Event got underway yesterday with a total of 260 players coughing up the AUD $5000 buy-in. Thanks to the cavernous Crown Casino Poker Room it was the first time in history that a main event for the APPT was able to fit its entire field into a single Day 1. The combined prize pool generated was AUD $1,220,000 with the top dog at the end of the four-day event set to receive AUD $330,000.
A number of big names were there for the tournament, including the 2003 WSOP World Champion Chris Moneymaker, who kicked off proceedings with the obligatory “shuffle up and deal”. Of course, Australian notables were littered throughout the room, such as Tony Hachem fresh from his deep run at the 2011 WSOP Main Event, his brother 2005 WSOP World Champion Tony Hachem, 2008 APPT Manila Champion Van Marcus, 2009 Aussie Millions winner Stewart Scott, reigning Aussie Millions Champion David Gorr and 2010 APPT Sydney winner Jonathan Karamalikis, just to name a few.
Some more familiar names from the Asian poker scene in attendance were Charles “Mr Macau” Chua, PokerStars Team Asia Pro Bryan Huang, Sixiao “Juicy” Li and Hong Kong-based David Steicke. At the end of the day, Chua was the only one of those to bust. His stack was crippled after his Big Slick ran into the Pocket Aces of Chris Moneymaker and he was then railed a short time later when his top pair got crushed by the flopped set of Fours of his opponent. Bryan Huang ended well in contention with 66,875 in chips, which was also the best of the Team PokerStars Pros.
Meanwhile, Juicy Li had an interesting rise. Late in the day, she tried to re-raise an opponent preflop with throwing in one 5000 chip and waving a finger. With no verbal declaration it was ruled a call and the flop came 
. Li then check-raised all in against her opponent and was quickly called by 
. Her ambitious 
looked to be on death row until the 
turn pinged for the wheel and the 
river delivered around 70,000 in chips her way.
The next few days are promising just as much action and you can catch all the hand highlights at PokerStarsBlog.com.
February 22, 2012 by Posted By: Adam Smith
The Dirty Ice Cream Cup (DICC) is returning to Metro Card Club on March 15-20, 2012 and what better way to get the lowdown on it than to go to the man behind the tournament, Neil Arce. Every year, Arce holds the DICC to help celebrate his birthday and the tournament has been constantly growing with bigger fields and prize pool guarantees with every running.
Arce has an impre...
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February 22, 2012 by Posted By: Triccia David
DafaPoker has just announced the creation of two new mini sites, the Mega Million De Zhou Poker Tournament and the Mega Million, aimed at promoting their upcoming tournament, the Mega Million Main Event on July 7, 2012. Although these sites are in Chinese and targeted towards the Chinese market, the event itself is open to all registered DafaPoker players.
As previously rep...
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February 21, 2012 by Posted By: Adam Smith
PokerStars Macau issued a press release earlier this month announcing the postponement of the Macau Millions tournament and the ending of its three-year partnership Casino Grand Lisboa in March, 2012. Ever since there has been speculation on where Asia’s biggest and most successful tournament room would relocate.
The norm with these kind of releases is to also announce a n...
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February 20, 2012 by Posted By: Triccia David
The PokerStars Macau room at Casino Grand Lisboa kicked off this weekend with a field of 196 players taking to the felt for the opening event of the 2012 Macau Poker Cup: Red Dragon. After all the excitement, it was Xiao Yang Cui from Australia who claimed victory in the HKD $3000 No Limit Hold’em event, earning himself HKD $127,100 in winnings.
"This is my first time play...
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February 17, 2012 by Posted By: Triccia David
One of the things we observed at APT Asian Series Cebu at the beginning of the month was that no players from the Philippines managed to make it to the final table. At last year's event, more than half of the final tablists were Filipinos and, with our curiosities piqued, we decided to take a closer look at the stats and found a few surprises.
In 2011, a large percentage of ...
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February 16, 2012 by Posted By: Adam Smith
Another running of the rake-free PokerGuru Tour (PGT) was completed last weekend with Vinay Suchede taking out top honours in the INR 25,000 buy-in Main Event. He conquered a field of 58 players to take home INR 550,000 in first place prize money.
On Saturday, play went down until the money bubble burst courtesy of Vineet Bailur who departed at seven-handed. Many of the not...
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February 16, 2012 by Posted By: Adam Smith
Crown Melbourne’s VIP gaming salons have recently won the ‘Casino VIP Room of the Year’ title at the International Gaming Awards (IGA) 2012 in London. The ultra-luxurious VIP gaming salons are one of the showpieces of a AUD 1.5 billion redevelopment project at the complex, which is due to be completed later this year.
Poker players the world over should be familiar wit...
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