Upon the recommendation of APT Japan Corp, a franchise of the APT, the mother company has booked the dates from April 26-May 7, as early as now, to take advantage of Japan’s Golden Week, a series of holidays happening within the span of April 29-May 5, often considered by most Japanese as the longest vacation time of the year. And accordingly, the APT event will be called APT Philippines Golden Week Championship.
PAGCOR rules force operators to reserve in advance the most profitable dates
Reserving dates with PAGCOR 8 months prior to the event itself is not at all surprising as the competition for peak schedules in the Philippines is stiff. There are 2 main reasons for this: 1) PAGCOR has a rule that no 2 tournaments, local or otherwise, with a guaranteed prize pool of Php1,000,000 or its equivalent can overlap; 2) With the amount of poker rooms in the country, the market is saturated with tournaments with the stipulated prize pool, forcing operators to go on a mad rush to reserve the most profitable and advantageous dates in PAGCOR’s calendar.
This holds true for the APT as this move has allowed them to steal the slot from PS Live Manila, who recently enjoyed a massive international participation, with over 80 players coming from Japan, for the Megastack 5 Tournament which was held on these exact same dates for 2016.
The recommendation of the APT Japan Corp. also reflects the growing popularity of poker and the developing poker community in the Land of the Rising Sun.
An ambitious schedule
The APT Golden Week will be a 12-day festival which will feature a Main Event and a Championship Event. And although Executive Tournament Director Lloyd Fontillas has not divulged all the details for the festival, he has stated that the Main Event buy-in might be in the range of US$1,100- $1,650 while the Championship Event may be in the $2,200- $2,750 mark. He also assured that he will be making this festival a player’s event and something everybody will look forward to for 2017.
-Gabrielle Ruiz-Barredo
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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