While the Asian Poker Tour Macau had a rather low turnout, the real story during the tournament has been the reported cash game Full Tilt Red Pros Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Chau Giang and John Juanda have been playing with some Chinese businessmen.
The game has been taking place mostly at StarWorld Casino, though a few sessions were held at the Hard Rock Casino (the mega-property more commonly referred to as “City of Dreams”) during the tournament.
The game was reported to start off at HK$5,000/HK$10,000 but was soon moved up to HK$10,000/HKD$20,000. To put this in perspective, the exchange rate is 7.7568 HKD = 1 USD making the blinds approximately $644.50/$1289.
All four of the pros have been said to be up quite a bit during the week, with Juanda rumored to be the biggest winner. Ivey was reported to be stuck a large amount before winning it all back plus more.
While hand histories are few and far between, some have been mentioned. Tom Dwan won a 20 million HKD pot with AK vs QQ vs TT in a 3 way all in preflop pot. This amounts to $2,578,380. Chau Giang was also said to have won an over 20 million HKD pot when, in a HK$10,000/HK$20,000HKD blinds HK$10,000 Ante game, his AA took down AJ on a J-J-T-A-3 board. Apparently poker is nice for Giang.
As of the last reports, the blinds were moved up to a staggering HK$50,000/HK$100,000, which are said to be the highest ever played in Macau! We hope to bring you more information on this impressive nose-bleed stakes game soon!
UPDATE: As of this morning (Thursday, November 18th), Tom Dwan had been playing heads-up No Limit Hold’em against a Chinese businessman for 12+ hours with blinds being 30,000/60,000 HKD. The game also had an interesting twist where both players are forced to show their hand, regardless of whether it goes to showdown. Early reports had Dwan down over 10 million HKD but no definitive results have been released.