Coming November 9 to 19, the most popular poker room in the Philippines, the Metro Card Club aka Metro will host its biggest event of the year, the RVS CUP 2018 Philippine Poker Championship. Running for a fifth consecutive year, this highly anticipated series once again brings to the table a PHP 5 Million (US$ 93,300) Guaranteed Main Event. Unlike its previous editions, this year’s festival has been extended to 11 days instead of its usual six with ten exciting events to look forward to.
For those unfamiliar with the Metro, many of the country’s top pros got their start at the card room including the first homegrown Filipino WSOP winner, Mike Takayama. Among the numerous reasons that attract players to the Metro tables are the low buy-in tournaments and generous guarantees. The upcoming series is proof of this with the Main Event buy-in at just PHP10,000 (~US$187) and side games ranging from PHP1,650 to PHP11,000. To get things started, over PHP1 Million in additional guaranteed prizes will be offered prior to the main feature.
Pre-Event PHP750K Guaranteed
The RVS CUP 2018 opens with the Pre-Event PHP750K Guaranteed. This is a three-day tournament running from November 9 to 11. Another guaranteed prize pool event is the PHP300K Guaranteed taking place on November 13. This is a scheduled one day tournament. Both events have buy-ins of PHP3,300. Filling up the rest of the days are No Limit Hold’em tournaments with varying formats, Pot Limit Omaha games, and two High Rollers events – High Roller PLO and High Roller Hold’em. These two events extend the largest buy-ins of PHP11,000 each.
Main Event PhP5 Million Guaranteed
Side events aside, the tournament everyone will want to attend is the headliner, the PHP5 Million Guaranteed Main Event. The event runs from November 14 to 19 There are four starting days offered followed by Day 2 and the Final Day. Players begin with a very healthy 20,000 stack (equivalent to 400x the opening big blind). It will utilize the Big Blind Ante format adopted by the WSOP. Blinds increase every 30 minutes. Once ITM is reached, it goes up every 40 minutes. Buy-in is PHP10,000.
- Day 1A – Wednesday, November 14
- Day 1B – Thursday, November 15
- Day 1C – Friday, November 16
- Day 1D – Saturday, November 17
- Day 2 – Sunday, November 18
- Final Day – Monday, November 19
RVS CUP past winners
A brief look back on the RVS CUP’s beginnings, the first event was held in 2014 with 282 runners. That number swelled to 644 the following year, dipped to 562 in 2016, then ballooned to a massive 1,176 last year. The event consistently attracts both local and foreign players, though a non-local has yet to win it. Now on its fifth year, the RVS CUP has become the most hunted Metro title.
Below are the event’s past champions:
- Lester Edoc – 2014 champion
- Richard Marquez – 2015 champion
- Anacleto Quijano – 2016 champion
- Christopher Chua – 2017 champion
RVS CUP 2018 Player of the Series
Along with the extended schedule, for the first time the Metro will award an RVS CUP Player of the Series. The player that accumulates the highest number of points throughout the festival earns the title along with a 4D/3N accommodation at The District Boracay with airfare.
Article by Tricia David
Tricia David
Tricia David has long experience as a recreational poker player and has been covering poker events since 2010 for numerous outfits in Asia. She spent one year working part time with Poker Portal Asia then became editor and lead writer for all event coverage of the Philippine Poker Tour (PPT). Under the PPT, she overlooked content for their website, and produced live updates on all their events. In addition, she served as the live and online events website content writer for the Asian Poker Tour. Currently, she does live events reporting in Asia for online news site Somuchpoker and is also one of their news contributors.
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