In an effort to capitalize on the success of its recent large scale tournament in Macau, the Asian Poker Tour has signed up three of the region’s most exciting young players as its ambassadors. J.C. Tran, Nam Le and Quinn Do have all signed on the dotted line to represent the APT across the globe. CEO of the APT’s parent company, AsianLogic, Tom Hall was understandably delighted to have captured the signatures of these three valuable poker stars: “We have big plans for these guys and are happy they signed with us to spread the word about the APT worldwide.”
Things took a turn for the even better when the APT High Roller event came to a conclusion this morning. The event, which was designed to cater to the top professionals already in town for the APT Macau, featured a buy in of $19,250. The 61 players who turned out for the event built the prize pool to a very healthy $1,282,052. The new promotion deal proved luck as not only did Quinn Do finish third for $153,846, but Nam Le ended up as the overall winner of the event. When commenting on pocketing the $474,358 first prize he seemed as enthused about having signed on to represent the APT as he did about his recent victory:
“I’m truly delighted to have won and so happy to have got my deal with the APT off to the best possible start. I’m looking forward to representing the Tour around the world. It wasn’t looking great for me in this tournament at one stage but I was always confident that I would bounce back.”
Quinn Do has an impressive seven WSOP cashes to his name over the last four years. He confirmed his status on the high stakes tournament circuit earlier this year, narrowly missing out on his first WPT title – finishing second at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic.
Nam Le has an even more commendable total of fifteen WSOP cashes and is already a WPT Champion, having taken down the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star in 2006.
Undoubtedly the most well known of the trio is J.C. Tran, who this year captured his first WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 No Limit Hold ’em event. In a strange piece of foreshadowing, Tran also finished second in the L.A. Poker Classic the year before Do, in 2007. However later that year he would go one better, outlasting all opponents at the 2007 WPT World Poker Challenge. All this having contributed to over $6,000,000 in lifetime tournament earnings.
The APT itself is in its second season, having undergone a massive overhaul at the hands of new owners AsianLogic. The Manilla based company, which is listed on the London stock exchange, set up a tour consisting of four tournaments, each with a guaranteed $1,000,000 prize pool. The first of these was held in the Philippines, and the second the recently completed Macau event. Tournaments in Seoul and Singapore have been planned and preparations for a six event 3rd season are already underway.