Vietnamese wins Cebu leg of Poker Tour

The 2012 Asia Pacific Poker Tour Cebu Main Event has just concluded , with Hoang Anh Do crowned as the champion. He pockets P 5,927,000 and all the bragging rights that go with it. 245 players from 45 countries participated in this big event with all kinds of poker action from April 24-30 lured by all the publicity online acclaiming Cebu as a tourist paradise not only in Asia but all over the world.. The APPT Cebu tournament has been a favourite among players. More like a tropical holiday with hardcore poker action thrown in, the tournament was won last time by the first female to ever take down an APPT title. Im Young Shin – now known as Team PokerStars Pro Vivian Im – conquered the P100,000 buy-in Main Event in 2010 over a 236-player field to win P5.81 million in prize money Hoang Anh Do is the first APPT Champion to come from Vietnam . He is a 27 year old banker who came to Cebu to holiday on the beaches but thought he would also like to give the APPT a try, having only taken up poker six months ago. Here are the players on the final table, their starting chips ,some background and their winnings in the tournament.. Seat 1: Antoine Amourette, London, England, PokerStars Qualifier (50,000 in chips)-28-year-old Antoine Amourette is one of the most accomplished players left in the tournament. He regularly plays online satellites for live tournaments . 9th place-P494,000. Seat 2: Sameer Rattonsey, Mumbai, India (908,000 in chips)-one of two final table players that hails from India, is a virtual unknown to the high-stakes poker world. His career highlight to date in more than 10 years of playing poker was finishing 2nd at the November 2011 APT Asian Series Goa Main Event ($25,749).6th place-P1,043,000. Seat 3: Alistair Duff, Melbourne, Australia, APPT Cebu Satellite Winner (486,000 in chips) 3rd place-P2,086,000 Seat 4: Nick Wong, Hong Kong (142,000 in chips)-is a 44-year-old investor who seems to specialize in investing tournament buy-ins into high roller events and then winning the events for a healthy return. He has two high roller wins under his belt, both in Macau: one in November 2011, one in November 2010.2nd place-P3,732,000 Seat 5: Jacky Wang, Singapore (402,000 chips) Wang shot to prominence in Australia last year in bizarre fashion when he was the victim of a unique angle-shooting case at a local tournament that sent shockwaves throughout the poker community. 7th place-P823,000. Seat 6: Do Hoang Anh, Hanoi, Vietnam (810,000 chips)-champion. Seat 7: Michael Kanaan, Sydney, Australia, PokerStars Qualifier (399,000 chips)- is a 28-year old professional poker player hailing from Sydney .He won the 2011 ANZPT Sydney title.4th place-1,592,000 Seat 8: Jae-Hyung Sim, Manila, Philippines (205,000 chips)-- “Simba” as he likes to be known, was listed as hailing from Korea, but his bio sheet indicates that his home town is Manila, which suggests that the locals have someone to cheer for on this final table. 8th place-P658500. Seat 9: Amit Varma, Mumbai, India (1,241,000 chips)-38-year old Amit Varma grabbed attention as our Day 2 chip leader and that’s a position he held throughout Day 3 to enter our final table as easily the biggest stack in the room. Amit has been playing poker for three years after getting started on the play money games on PokerStars. 5TH place-P1,317,000. The “bubbles” or those who missed out from the final table were Sungsik Bae and Bobby Zhang who won each P329,000. Many thanks to the team of PokerStars for giving me day to day updates of the main event as well as all the side events of this classic tournament. boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com