Outlasting a field of 261 other players, Neil Arce was able to take home the first place prize of $185,000 from the 2009 Asian Poker Tour Philippines. The final table commenced yesterday at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Manila. 40 countries were represented by the players, all hoping for a piece of the $635,500 prize pool.
The main event took place over a course of four days and saw such names as 2008 APT Philippines winner David Saab, 2008 APT Macau runner-up Steve Yea, Mansour Matloubi, David Steicke, and David “Chino” Rheem.
Steve Yea would again have to settle for runner-up. Yea actually had the chip advantage when entering heads-up play,and it looked like Yea had it in the bag when he went all-in preflop with A-K against Arce’s K-Q. The turn brought Arce his queen though, and desired victory.
Arce claimed that his biggest key to winning the event was position. Yea sat to Arce’s right. Arce explained his luck of position and strategy, “I was so lucky that Steve was sat on my right. If he was on my left, it would have been a completely different final table. I played with Steve all day yesterday when he was on a charge and kept out of his way. I knew that to get anywhere at the final table, I had to keep applying pressure and my game plan worked perfectly.”
Here are the results of the final table:
1st: Neil Arce ($185,000)
2nd: Steven Yea ($100,000)
3rd: Casey Kastle ($70,000)
4th: Didier Cicurel ($46,000)
5th: Susumu Toge ($36,000)
6th: Ron Kluber ($30,000)
7th: Liz Lieu ($22,000)
8th: Vesa Leikos ($16,000)
9th: Kim Tae Hyung ($12,000)
10th: Michael Pedley ($8,000)