Since the opening of the APT Poker Room and Poker Stars Live Manila, competition between rooms In Manila has heated up. Last weekend Metro Card Club, Pokerstars Live Manila, and the APT Poker Room all hosted a P$100K guaranteed tournament with the same starting time. This competition should be good for players as each room tries to sweeten their offers to lure more players in, and it indicates poker is in good health across Philippines.
Tournaments
Tournaments across many live rooms have been busy lately. The Metro Card Club offering events with guarantees between P$40K and P$75K through week days, with a P$100K guaranteed event on Saturday (Full Schedule here)
Pokerstars Live Manila room has tournaments running between Wednesdays and Sundays, with start times of 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, and 9pm. Many will be Sit & Go's but these are accompanied by deep stack tournaments and KO events on certain days (Full Schedule here). Next major event for PokerStars Live will be the Manila Megastack 2 taking place March 25 buy in and P$2 million guaranteed for the prize pool (Full Schedule here).
The APT Poker Room offers deep stack turbo events with a P$550 buy in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by a regular Holdem event on Thursday, and a bounty tournament on Friday. Currently Saturdays involve a P$100K guaranteed with a P$1,200 buy in, rounding up a good weekly schedule of tournaments (Full Schedule here).
Resort World Manila is not offering regulars tournamanents but will host starting from April 14th the APT Philippines (Full Schedule here). Satellite Series (Full Schedule) are starting in few days and will guarantee several seats to APT Main Event.
Cash Games
Cash games between P$10/20 and P$100/200 for Holdem and PLO are running in most rooms in Manila. If you are looking for higher stakes your first choice should be Solaire. The Solaire Poker room take pride in their cash game schedule, with their facebook page pointing out that their tables have been filling, up to P$100/200 regular Holdem games, P$500/1000 deepstack Holdem, and P$100/200/500 PLO. They also have regular tournaments running, and certainly scored popularity points in the competition between poker rooms when they photographed Phil Ivey paying their room a visit.
Phil Ivey at Solaire
Promotions
Other innovations across live Asian poker rooms are appearing regularly as they stake their claim as the best place to be playing poker. The APT Poker Room has a promotion offering cashback and shirts to players who start playing 4pm, along with a progressive jackpot for winning with AAA88 or better. Getting pocket Aces cracked also results in a P$200 bonus (Details here).
As you can see, tournament schedules and cash games across Philippines are getting better and better, and continue to bring in a good number of players each week as poker rooms try to steal the headlines with something new. It is important to note that if these options isn't to your liking, there are plenty of other live poker rooms in Philippines right now!
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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