Welcome to Day 1A of the 2020 WPT Philippines Main Event
Feb 13, 2020
The World Poker Tour has already hosted two festivals on the Philippines, both held just a few hundred meters away at the Solaire Resort & Casino, and this is the first time that the poker action kicks off at Okada Manila. Spread over 44 hectares of picturesque oceanfront in Parañaque City, the luxurious five-star resort offers a wealth of luxury dining, leisure, retail and entertainment for all ages.
Nearly 100 spacious rooms provide views on Manila Bay or The Fountain and contain a mix of Japanese style (magokoro and omotenashi) and Filipino warmth. Extensive fitness and wellness options are available and the latest attraction of Okada Manila is “The Garden”, an open green space of more than 30,000 square meters with breathtaking views of the Manila bay sunset.
Back in 2014, it was Japan’s Tetsuya Tsuchikawa that topped a field of 385 entries to become the first-ever WPT Champion on Philippines soil.
Two years later, the WPT partnered with Triton Poker and German superstar Fedor Holz was among those to take home a trophy after taking down the Triton Super High Roller. In the 2016 WPT Philippines National Main Event, Ying Lin Chua from Malaysia finished on top of a field of 268 entries while the Norwegians Markus Garberg and Kai Paulsen had to settle for second and third place respectively. Chua’s last two recorded cashes come from the 2019 WPT Cambodia festival with a 6th place in the Super High Roller and a 61st place in the Main Event.
The WPT festival is set up in The Coral Lounge next to the main casino floor with its stunning coral glasses and the oval setup of the room with bar in the middle features more than 30 poker tables.
Flagship tournament of the festival in Manila is the WPT Philippines Main Event which comes with a buy-in of PHP 75,000 (~US$ 1,500) and a guaranteed prize pool of PHP 12 Million. It features two starting days and all players receive 30,000 in chips. The late registration is available for the first nine levels and following break, a single re-entry for each Day 1 is also available.
The tournament is played in the big blind ante format and the single ante will be posted by the player in the big blind, in the amount equivalent to the big blind. Ante is posted before the big blind and players are eligible to collect the entire ante, even when out of the big blind.
Each Day 1 will play a total of 14 levels of 40 minutes each and the level duration then increases to 60 minutes each as of Day 2 on Sunday, February 16th, 2020, on which the event is scheduled to play down to the final table. The first of two starting days will kick off at 4 p.m. local time and wraps up in the early morning hours, while tomorrow’s Day 1b gets underway at noon local time.
Stay tuned right here on WPT.com to find out who will battle for vital points in the WPT Season 18 Asia-Pacific Player of the Year race and engrave his name into the history books of the popular mid-stakes tour.
@WPT