Relative Unknown Takes Asia Pacific Poker Tour

The weekend saw the culmination of the latest Pokerstars Asian Pacific Poker Tour, held at the Grand Waldo Hotel in Macau. Despite a star-studded entry field of 352 hopefuls, it was the relative unknown Dinh Le who finally prevailed in a tough, eight and a half hour final table to decide the event on its third day. As the first major poker tournament held on Chinese soil, the APPT was organised in grand style with an impressive oriental feel generated through an opening ceremony replete with gongs, drums and a Chinese lion dance before international poker veteran Scotty Nguyen made the traditional shuffle up and deal call. Among those in the field were top global players like Joe Hachem, Liz Lieu, Isabelle Mercier, John Juanda, Jeffrey Lisandro and Bertrand Grospellier, all eager to win the $225 640 main prize. In short, the Macau outing was worthy successor to previous Pokerstars epics that have been held in Korea and the Philippines (see previous Online-Casinos.com/InfoPowa reports). By Day 2 the field had thinned to 74, with stars like Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem, Bertrand Grospellier, Bill Chen and Internet hotshot Hevad 'Rain' Khan still in the hunt. It had been a tough haul, demanding discipline and control as highly skilled and experienced players fought to stay in the hard-fought game, but inevitably the field was whittled down to the final table of nine, with chip counts as follows: Dinh Le (710 000) Guillaume Patry (575 000) Ivan Tan (549 000) Bertrand Grospellier (455 000) Sangkyoun Kim (422 000) William Tan (293 000) Liz Lieu (232 000) Simon Randall (159 000) Joe Hachem (130 000) Eight and half hours later, after less than 10 hands of tense heads up play between Ivan Tan and the relatively unknown Dinh Le, it was the latter who prevailed with pocket eights versus A-T to take home the title and the $225 640 main prize, leaving Tan with second placing and a check for $129 536. The Macau event ends this week with a $15 000 buy-in high roller contest in which several big name poker pros have entered.

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