$$ Cash 4 Seat $$

PokerStars Macau hosted yet another successful Macau Poker Cup (MPC) and set a new record for participants and prize pool in the Red Dragon Event. The first prize, in excess of HKD $142,000, is the biggest yet in the MPC signature event. China continued to show its continued growth in the poker world as 20 of the 25 prizes were awarded to players of Chinese descent.

PokerStars.net Sponsored player Van Marcus placed 5th in the tough field of the Red Dragon Event and adds to his impressive resume, including a 9th place finish in the APPT Macau 2008 High Rollers Event and 4th place finish in APPT Manila 2007.

PokerStars.net Sponsored Player Celina Lin now has the distinction of being the only player to final table all three major Macau Poker Cup tournaments with her 2nd place finish in the Rebuy Event. Celina placed 2nd in the Red Dragon Event and 7th in the Deep Stack Event in the July’08 Macau Poker Cup.

The next exciting installment of the Macau Poker Cup is December 12-14, 2008 at PokerStars Macau

Summary:
(all figures in HKD)

Macau Poker Cup - Charity Event

Date: Friday – October 24, 2008
Buy-in: $500 (450+50) + $1500 Donation
Players: 43 Players
Prize Pool: $19,350 +$ 127,500 in prizes
Charity: Caritas de Macau

Winners:

1. Roel Pijoers from Netherlands – Prize: $70,000 Package for APPT Sydney
2. Cheung Hoi Wing from Hong Kong – Prize: $10,000 Red Dragon Event Entry
3. Paulo Gomes from Macau – Prize: $10,000 Red Dragon Event Entry
4. Chow Kut Fu from Hong Kong - Prize: $10,000 Red Dragon Event Entry
5. Karen Lee from Hong Kong - Prize: $10,000 Red Dragon Event Entry
6. Jonathan Lin from Territory of Taiwan - Prize: APPT Manila Phase 2 Entry
7. Richard Jenks from Hong Kong - Prize: APPT Manila Phase 2 Entry
8. Charles Ng from Hong Kong - Prize: APPT Manila Phase 2 Entry
9. “Will” Cheong Kuok Wai from Macau - Prize: APPT Manila Phase 2 Entry
10. Wong Ke Hou from Macau - Prize: APPT Manila Phase 2 Entry

Roel Pijoers is part of a 43 player field who’s participation in the Macau Poker cup Charity Event helped raise $64,500 for the Caritas De Macau (http://www.caritas.org.mo) charity. Caritas De Macau is a social service organization of Macau.

Macau Poker Cup – Deep Stack Event

Date: Saturday – October 25, 2008
Buy-in: $1,000 (900+100)
Players: 36
Prize Pool: $32,400

Winners:

1. Christopher Koo from Hong Kong – Prize: $12,960
2. Howard Stribbell from Canada – Prize: $8,910
3. Paulo Gomes from Macau – Prize: $4,860
4. Wu Hong Cheng from China – Prize: $3,240
5. Yu Mei Ping from Hong Kong – Prize: $2,430

Hong Kong’s Christopher Koo dominates the final table on his way to victory in the Deep Stack Event.

MACAU POKER CUP – RED DRAGON EVENT 350K Guarantee

Date:Saturday – October 25, 2008
Buy-in: $10,000 (9600+400)
Players: 37
Prize Pool: $355,200

Winners:

1. Jason Jia from Hong Kong – Prize: $142,080
2. Jonathan Lin from Territory of Taiwan – Prize: $97,680
3. Wu Hong Cheng from China – Prize: $53,280
4. Elton Tsang from Hong Kong – Prize: $35,520
5. Van Marcus from Australia – Prize: $26,640

Jason Jia holds the Macau Poker Cup trophy as the champion of the Red Dragon Event. Jason beats a tough final table that includes PokerStars.net Sponsored Player Van Marcus and local poker pro Wu Hong Cheng.

Macau Poker Cup – Rebuy Event 25K Guarantee

Date: Saturday – October 25, 2008
Buy-in: $100 (90+10) + $200 Rebuys & Add-ons
Players: 56
Prize Pool: $27,320

Winners:

1. Caetano Ramos from Brazil – Prize $10,930
2. Celina Lin from China – Prize: $7,510
3. Hou Jian Kang from China – Prize: $4,100
4. Robert Wong from Macau – Prize: $2,730
5. Fu Fung Wing from Hong Kong – Prize: $2,050

Caetano nearly carries the chip lead from beginning to end on his way to capturing the Macau Poker Cup Rebuy Event.

It’s time for another Macau Poker Cup this weekend at Grand Waldo Casino in Macau, China.

This quality series of tournaments at Macau’s first live poker room always draws a crowd. If you find yourself in that part of the world this weekend, you’ve got a great shot at winning some decent money in the Las Vegas of the East.

The Grand Waldo poker room will host a big freeroll on Thursday. Then, you’ll have a chance to check out a multi-language poker seminar hosted by Fred Leung and Celina Lin on Friday.

The big action starts on Saturday with a HKD $1,000 deep-stack tournament, followed by the HKD $10,000 Red Dragon event at 6pm that night.

For all the details and a schedule of events, be sure to visit PokerStars Macau.

PokerStars Macau has wrapped up another Macau Cup and the results are in.

If you’re not aware, PokerStars Macau opened a few months back as the first-ever live poker room in Macau. Since then, it’s been home to the biggest poker play going on in China. It will also serve as host to September’s Asia Pacific Poker Tour event in Macau (more about that event at the end of this post.

In the meantime, here are the results from the second Macau Cup event (all prizes HKD).

Macau Poker Cup Charity Event

1. Kim Lee from Hong Kong – Prize: APPT Macau Entry to Main Event
2. Sae Hon Lee from Korea – Prize: APPT Macau Entry to Main Event

59 participants each paid a $500 entry fee and made a $1,500 donation to Caritas de Macau. In total, $88,500 was raised for the Caritas De Macau

Deep Stack Event

1. L Devadason – Prize: $20,520
2. Manuel Chu – Prize: $14,108
3. Barry Chang – Prize: $7695
4. Philip Prause – Prize: $5130
5. Alex Low – Prize: $3847

Red Dragon Event

1. “Denny” Dengfeng Yu from China – Prize: $119,040
2. Celina Lin from Australia – Prize: $81,840
3. Ivan Tan from Singapore – Prize: $44,640
4. Jean-Philippe Buanton from USA – Prize: $29,760
5. Luke Wei – Prize: $22,320

$500 Challenge

1. Ted Fu – Prize: $6120
2. Gang Wang – Prize: $4208
3. Stephen McDonagh – Prize: $2295
4. Kin Man So – Prize: $1530
5. Dak Bong Daniel Poon – Prize: $1147

If you find yourself in Macau in the next month or so, take some time to visit the room for these events.

Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau
September 1-6, 2008
Entry Fee: HKD 25,000
Guaranteed Prize Pool: HKD 10,000,000
Qualify at PokerStars Macau, or online at PokerStars

Saturday 100K Guarantees
Entry Fee: HKD 2500
Guaranteed Prize Pool: HKD 100,000
Every Saturday at 8:00 PM beginning August 9, 2008 at PokerStars Macau

It’s time for another Macau Poker Cup this weekend at Grand Waldo Casino in Macau. The exciting series of events will include a $1,000 buy-in Deep Stack event on Saturday at 12:30 and a $10,000 Red Dragon event at 8PM.

There will also be other events, including a charity tournament benefiting Caritas de Macau on Friday
night, a $500 buy-in MTT on Sunday, as well as APPT qualifiers.

Players from at least six different countries will be participating. Among them, you’ll find:

Here’s a full run-down of this weekend’s activities:

by David Jung

When PokerStars Macau was in the concept phase, it was decided that it was going to be a poker room that was going to be a place where people from Asia were going feel the real poker experience. Our first major satellite promotion at PokerStars Macau was for an all-inclusive package for the World Series. The day started off with a 46-player mega satellite. The mega ended with four winners getting seats into the World Series Main Event Qualifier.

It’s always a special night here in Macau; before the tournament began a couple of lovely ladies from Warrnambool, Australia had been playing at the cash games and were on vacation. They had an inquiry about Joe Hachem. One of the ladies, Terri, let me know that she absolutely adored Joe and was wondering if there was any poster or something special she could have related to Joe. Well, we didn’t have any posters, but luckily we have these 1.6 M high swtands of Team PokerStars members in the room. Because she was so genuine, we presented her with one to take and set-up at home! Needless to say, she was extremely happy and her and her friend Sandra took this picture to show their appreciation to the room and, of course, to Joe!

The WSOP Main Event Qualifier got off to a super quick start with seven players getting knocked out in the first hour and half of the event. But then, the next 13 players really dug in and we got to the final table about three and half hours later.

As we are in Macau, the gaming capital of Asia, we get a diverse crowd of people turning up at the room. On such player who made it to fourth place was Thommy Lam. His family is actually from Macau, but he was raised in Amsterdam and is now a export/importer there.

There was also a Singaporean player who actually flew up from Singapore to play in Macau for the Main Event Qualifier. Ervyn Tan who is also in the trading business had been player Hold’em seriously for about a year and wanted to test our his skills. He got knocked out in 8th place on the final table, but he actually stayed until the end of the tournament to learn as much as he could from the other players.

With the blinds up to the 1000/2000 level, the two short stacked players got knocked out, including Phil Law. The biggest debate of the night was whether or not AJ (2nd place finisher) was a Swede or not because he always protected his blinds and played late position. He didn’t talk very much and when questioned, he mumbled that he was Scottish, but everyone pegged him as a Swede pretending to be Scottish. He is a picture of AJ, you decide.

Eventually, it was heads up between AJ and Steve Chung, who was the massive chip leader. In a couple hands it was over. In the first hand, Steve took the blinds and that put AJ in an even tighter situation. With the blinds at 1500/3000, Steve was first to act and pushed in all-in with his massive stack. AJ called with only 18,000 left. AJ flipped his hole cards to show Kh9d. Steve had 7sAs.

The flop came out 5 of hearts, 10 of diamonds and Ace of Hearts. While the crowd was behind AJ, the turn was an ace of diamonds. Danny McDonagh, the APPT tournament director, called it as all over with a six of spades on the river. With that, PokerStars Macau sends forth Steve to represent all of Macau at the WSOP. Make us proud Steve!

Steve is 45 and was born in Kored. He moved to Dallas, Texas back in 1967. He was overwhelmed with winning the WSOP package. It was actually his first live tournament ever. He normally just plays cash games. His opinion on the experience was, “It’s a little bit different than playing cash games and you have to be pretty aggressive. I’ll have to adjust my style and game when I get to Vegas.”

It was actually a very interesting day for Steve, as he came to Macau on the 6am ferry from Hong Kong this morning (it’s a 1 hour ferry ride) and then promptly had to go back to Hong Kong upon his arrival cause he forgot his passport (A Hong Kong ID is enough to leave Hong Kong, but not enough to get into Macau).

“All I wanted to do was play golf,” he said.

Then he took the ferry back home, went to sleep and was again woken up by his good poker buddy InSun who had already decided to head to Vegas for the WSOP. Steve came with InSun to PokerStars , played the cash games, and was about to go home when he heard the Aussie-accented voice of Danny McDonagh on the mic system saying that there was just a couple of seats left for the WSOP qualifier. InSun again urged Steve and, out of weakness and love for poker, Steve turned away from the exit, pulled out 5000HKD and bought in.

So now Steve has committed 2% of his winning to InSun for the WSOP, and the two buddies are off to the WSOP. Hey, isn’t this like a similar story when Aussie friend A asked Aussie friend B to come to the 2005 WSOP and then the Aussie friend B went and won it all? I guess that is what InSun is thinking as well!

Good luck to the poker buddies around the world.

Today, in a first of its kind event, PokerStars cut the ribbon on the brand new and first live poker room in Macau.

Players from all over China walked into the Grand Waldo Casino today to see the opening of PokerStars Macau. Surrounded by hordes of local press, APPT President Jeffrey Hass, Grand Waldo Casino General Manager Gary Woolard, Team PokerStars Pro Lee Nelson, and Hong Kong actor Kevin Cheng cut the ribbon and opened the doors of the live poker room.

This weekend will see the first ever tournaments played in the new room. The Macau Poker Cup China Earthquake Relief Charity Tournament kicked off the big weekend. PokerStars donated more than 150,000 HKD to help the Red Cross Society of China aid the stricken regions of mainland China. Among the prizes for the inaugural event:

Entries for the 54 players who chose to buy-in amounted to $117,000 HKD that PokerStars then matched, making it a 234,000 HKD donation (not including the 150,000 HKD in donated prizes for the event). Another 4,000 HKD was donated by three players who placed in the money after they chose to turn the tournament seats for which they qualified into cash donations to the Red Cross.

Celebrities from all over China and the poker world came for the first big day at PokerStars Macau.

The winners of the kickoff charity tournament are all familiar faces on the APPT. The top three places went to Fabio Kim, Bob Hwang, and Jeppe Drivsholm (who has the distinction of being the first person to ever be knocked out of an APPT event after suffering his elimination at the APPT Manila event last year).

The opening weekend at PokerStars Macau continues with some big tournaments and cash games over the course of the next couple of days. Come back here for more updates on the historic events in Macau.

A couple of years back, somebody in Las Vegas whispered to me, “Why do you think PokerStars hasn’t opened a live poker room yet? Just imagine…”

I spent the next couple of years imaginging just that. Of course, there are a lot of logistics to deal with and such. Still, just imagine.

Today we learned that it’s no longer just a flight of fancy. This week, Pokerstars is opening PokerStars Macau, Macau’s first live poker room. The Grand Waldo Hotel and Casino room will have seats for 160 players, offer cash games, and boast of a pretty nice weekly tournament schedule.

The new poker room opens this Friday with a charity tournament to raise money for the victims of the recent earthquake in Western China. Players will be fighting for $150,000 HKD in prizes, including entries to the $25,000 HKD buy-in APPT Macau event in Spetember.

The charity event will be the first event of the “Macau Poker Cup” – a series of poker tournaments scheduled during the May 23-25 weekend, including a $1,000 HKD buy-in Deep-Stack event, the $10,000 buy-in Red Dragon event and the first of many satellites to the Asia Pacific Poker Tour.

If you open up your PokerStars tournament lobby, you will also now see a PSM tab. There you will find a few satellites to the above events.

The Asia Pacific Poker Tour’s is still working out the full schedule for its second season. One thing is for sure, though. It will kick-off at the Grand Waldo Casino with the September 1-6 APPT Macau Main Event, a $25,000 HKD buy-in No-Limit Hold’em poker tournament with a guarantee of $10,000,000 HKD.

For more information on the live poker room, visit: PokerStars Macau

For more information on the APPT, visit: Asia Pacific Poker Tour.